“Staying Positive In A Negative Situation” and “Think Your Way to A Better Golf Game” pointed out how important it is to stay positive and take charge of your thinking. In addition to what we are thinking impacting our game when we are actively thinking is another aspect that impacts our golf game. We need to distinguish between the right and wrong time to actively think. Having a conscious thought process at the right time will help your body perform the intended shot better. Having a conscious thought process at the wrong time will impede your intended shot; even with positive thoughts. This is sometimes referred to as over thinking a shot or needing to quiet your mind.
Some teaching professionals may encourage active swing thoughts. I would discourage active conscious thoughts during your swing. Having a quiet mind during sport performance allows the full power of the brain to be used.
Why do I recommend this? It is based on how our mind works. We have conscious thoughts and unconscious thoughts that direct physical actions. In order to have a conscious thought we must engage our conscious mind. Our conscious mind can only manage about 50 muscles effectively in 3-4 seconds because it is sequential and deliberate in function. It is estimated that about 400 of our approximately 750 skeletal muscles are used in concert for an average golf swing. Keeping our conscious mind actively engaged during your swing makes it harder for our body to perform our intended shot. It can be helpful to have different pre-swing thoughts for significantly different situations.
If you have active thoughts during your swing I would suggest adjusting to a pre-swing thought that is very simple. If you don’t have any directed thoughts as part of your pre-shot routine I would encourage you to identify some to organize your body to perform the intended physical action; your golf swing.
An example of a pre-swing thought for long shots with a golfer whose errant shots are typically a result of being to quick on take away and not finishing shots on follow through is “slow, finish” done while taking a slow deep breath in and exhaling. This serves several purposes. The ritual alerts the mind to organize around the golf swing, it is a mental and physical cue anchored via hypnosis to shut off conscious thought process & relax and it addresses the common physical fundamental errors for this golfer.
Remember, one of the most important skills in our golf performance is learning to turn on and off our conscious thought process. If you watch the faces of top professional golfers you can see the shift take place. Some of them do it well before addressing the ball and some do it as part of building their stance. For peak sport performance it is crucial to know when to engage our conscious thought processes and when not to and just quiet our conscious mind, stop giving direction, and let our mind-body connection do what it knows how to do.