Before we begin, I have to warn you, especially if you're listening in
your car. At around the twelve minute mark, you're going to hear sirens,
but they're passing by our guest's apartment as she lives in downtown London.
I'm sorry I couldn't remove it, but I just wanted to make sure that
it doesn't scare you or you react to it. And one more thing.
This is episode nine twelve and we're publishing it on nine twelve, twenty three.
It's like my buddy John says, when he hits a golf shot that
has a great result, just like I drew it up. It's not the
golfer's job to try to hit the perfect shot. It's a golfer's job to
try to be connected mind an attention in the breathing, in the body,
in the center of gravity in the feet, and when that state is realized
as in a connection, then movement is connected. Every single person who's ever
been in the flow state, nobody has said I was thinking always technical thoughts,
oh sinking, how brilliant a golfer. I am thinking everything that my
mind coach had told me. No, they don't say that. They say
I was balanced. I was relaxed, I was ready. I had a
clarity of intention, and my body moved. It was effortless. This is
Jeff Watson, sant Anna, California. I play at a Willowick golf course
and you were listening to Golf Smarter episode nine twelve, Connecting your mind,
breath and movement on the greens with author and teacher Jane's story. This is
Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf mines to help
you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred
Green. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Jane. Hello, Fred,
it's great to be seeing you again online. Thanks for asking me to
come back. Oh absolutely, because new content. I'm excited. Took a
new approach this time to your Connected series. This is Connected putting, which
is one of my favorite topics. I don't know why, because I just
keep wanting to learn more to try to improve my putting. And this is
not just a book. Actually it isn't a book. It's actually an audio
program which is available on my website. And I'm sure you're going to give
the link at some point, but it's an audio program that I put together
for people who have read Breathe Golf, which was my first book, and
Connected Golf. If you have read those two books or listen to them audible,
then you'll have some kind of idea of my background and the approach that
I'm bringing to the performance space and Connected Putting is really a follow on from
from those two books. It's actually it's a unique approach. This is not
the same kind of approach you get from a you know, a golf instructor
who's writing a book. You come at it from a very different place,
not necessarily as a golfer, but definitely as an instructor. I come at
it from a completely different place. And it's taken me twenty years of hard
work to even to begin to be listened to by the golf you know,
the people in the golf village. As one of my mentors likes to call
it. I'm not a golfer. I'm a movement and performance coach, and
my background is in the martial arts, the Eastern arts like martial arts,
tai chi, and meditation, And rather than watering down those practices to make
them easier and more palatable for people, I decided to stick with the authentic
practice and just bringing out the essential elements of tai chi and a true and
traditional practice of meditation to help golfers in two respects. Really, so my
work is divided into two pillars. One is about breathing, awareness of the
breathing and following the breath in a formal meditation practice, which most of my
readers and clients are doing. If they're not doing it every day, they're
certainly practicing three or four times a week, and we've unpacked this on a
previous podcast episode. But the breathing meditation, it helps to quiet and the
mind control the bi io chemistry, the nerves, and the anxiety. And
when all that stuff is quiet, then the body can move freely. So
the body does not like to it cannot respond to a checklist of instruction,
Do this, do that, do this, do that, which is like
a checklist approach to golf and to sport. The body moves freely and naturally
when the mind is put to one side. That's the analytical mind, the
thinking mind is put to one side. The other part of my work is
about fundamental movement principle. So this is from thirty six years of tai chi
training and This is all spoken about in Connected Golf, and of course we've
done a podcast on that as well. So they're fundamental movement principles, how
to set the body in a way that's athletic but also relaxed, and those
two approaches unite to help the golfer bring their mental and their physical, their
mind game and their technique together as one. And nowhere is that needed more
than on the putting green. Absolutely absolutely, Why did you pick golf if
you're if you know, you come from martial arts and you don't play Yeah,
yeah, why did you say jack Nickolas? It's all because of Jackney
class. And in fact, about twenty five years ago, when I was
still teaching tai Chi classes. I taught them for about ten or fifteen years,
you know at the local wreck, at the local sports center, the
health center, the local village hall, and a lot of my students were
coming back to the classes week on week and they were winning golf tournaments,
and they were winning swimming tournaments, and they were having these amazing, you
know, in the zone experiences when they were on holiday skiing. So I
started to think there's something in this. And it was mostly the golfers who
were saying, oh, my game's improved, or you know, I'm not
thinking so much when I'm over the board, or my swing feels more connected.
And so of course, if you if you know nothing about golf and
you start to look in that, you know that time, that's twenty years
ago, it was Jack Nique Class. I thought, well, i'll study
from the best. And Jack said that golf has played with the feet.
You know, all the movement in golf is anchored in the feet, with
the legs that are loaded. And he was famous for leaving his footprints in
the ground after he teed off. I mean, there was nobody more grounded
than Jack nick Class. And I also think he had a very quiet mind.
People say, oh, we had the toughest mind in golf, but
I don't think it was a tough mind. I think it was a quiet
mind, very quiet, and he had a pure intention. Pure and intention.
There's nothing to do with analytical thinking. It's somewhere it emerges from a
quiet inner state. So anyway, it was Jack. That's why I'm here.
You know, it's interesting when you talk about a tough mind versus a
quiet mind. I think on the quiet mind is on the internal side that
internally he had a very quiet mind. But the tough mind, the way
I can see it is as a competitor, he was viewed from the competition
as tough minded. Of course, So if you look internal and external view
of what the mind does. But if you looked at a samurai warrior with
a quiet mind, I mean, there's quiet and there's you know, quiet
can be scary. You know, people who go defintely quiet in an argument,
they're more frightening the people that yell and scream, you know. So
it's a I mean, he wrote a lot in golf and life. He
wrote about self mastery. The game is the game of golf is one of
self mastery, and it really is all about that. And that's that is
my approach. I mean when I've talked to people, and I've spoken to
hundreds of golfers at all different levels, from the pros right down to people
that just play at their club at the weekend, but everybody who has had
the experience of hitting the perfect shot, they all that the mind was quiet.
They felt relaxed, they had a clear intention. There was a clarity
of intention about what they wanted to do. And at the highest level of
golf. People also talk about a sense of knowing rather than thinking. They
know that this ball is going to be pure and true. It's very interesting,
but none of that, of course, can occur with the mainstream approach,
which is, let's think about how we're thinking, and let's think about
how we're going to move in a few moments time. You know, And
anybody who has had a flow state experience on the course, that'll all say
they were in the moment. Yeah, I've, uh, you know,
I've I've experienced that. And it's interesting that you brought up swimming and golf.
Swimming, I've I've definitely experienced a flow state once I was deep into
my swim, long into it. But it's constant motion, and it's a
it's such a repetitive motion that it's easy to stop thinking about it and just
go with it and stay with it. Which was the times that I felt
that had been wonderful. It's not as frequent, and I definitely golf much
more than I swim, but the times that I've felt disconnected from my actions
and just just was going. But it's hard to do because you have so
much time in between the action. Yes, it's it's a shame. I
know what you mean about swimming, because I'm a swimmer and I've had flow
state experiences when I'm swimming. When I was a lot younger, I used
to run, and similarly, in running, have had experiences where, you
know, coming around a bend, there's a huge hill and instead of going
oh god, oh you know, and worrying about it, you just stay
with that breath, stay with that step, and you're in the flow state
and nothing alters inside. But you see, golfers have an enormous opportunity in
those moments of stillness, but it's wasted because they're they're taught to think about
how they're thinking, think about how they're going to move. You know,
it's like searching for a swing or searching for your putting stroke. And if
we go back to the analogy of the samurai warrior before a fight or before
they draw the sword, that that's they're not coming to get you, are
they They're not coming for me? No way? All right, Well,
we're gonna take a break and let them. Yeah, let's take a break
and we'll let it pass and we'll be back right after this. I'm so
sorry to interrupt you. And it wasn't me that interrupted, it was all
that noise. But anyway, so what it. Let's let's talk about that
time that golfers have in between shots, especially in between parts, that can
help them avoid the distractions. That's right. I mean, golfers create a
lot of their own distractions, you know, because the mind is so busy,
and we're living in a bit of society now where people have less and
less attention. Somebody said the other day on a Who's interviewing me that attention
has become like a commodity, all the big corporations of buying for our attention.
So when you practice something like meditation or these performance practices that I'm teaching,
you actually begin to reclaim your attention instead of squandering it and wasting it.
So and also when we reclaim the attention, we're able to focus on
our breath and on our body and feeling the feet on the ground and really
centering ourselves. And when that happens, the body starts to move in a
different way. So so when we're when a golfer standing over apart and they're
anxious, you can bet your house on the fact that they are breathing up
here into the chest, probably breathing quite shallow, and that their shoulders are
tight as a result of that, and that makes the whole body tight.
They're probably gripping the potter too tightly. The mind is thinking and worrying about
old so and so's watching me, or everyone's come out from the clubhouse,
or what if I miss or what if I make birdie, And all this
stuff is going on, and there's no way the body can move in the
way that it should move freely, naturally, spontaneously in the moment when all
that stuff is going on. So golfers have a huge opportunity when they're standing
over the part to settle into themselves, to bring the attention inside the body.
Relax the chest, relax the shoulders, bring the attention to the center
of gravity, which we call the danteen in yoga and in Zarzen meditation they
call it the horror center, and it's a body's center of gravity. And
when we relax the up body, suddenly we have more strength and stability in
the legs, we're better balanced, and the shoulders can move nice and freely.
So's I call it connected putting and connected golf. And really the whole
paradigm thread that I'm trying to change or alert people too, should they wish
to follow this path, is that it's not the golfer's job to try to
hit the perfect shot. It's a golfer's job to try to be connected mind
an attention in the breathing, in the body, in the center of gravity,
in the feed. And when that state is realized, is this inner
connection, then movement is connected. And back to what we were saying before,
every single person who's ever been in the flow state, nobody has said.
I was thinking all these technical thoughts. I was thinking how brilliant a
golfer I am. I was thinking everything that my mind coach had told me.
No, they don't say that. They say I was balanced. I
was relaxed. I was ready. I had a clarity of intention, and
my body moved. You know, it was effortless. You know. I
didn't listen to Connected Golf. The audio wasn't available yet, but I was
reading the script okay, and but that was fine. But I'm so excited
because I do want to listen to it. You do you do the reading
of this correct? I do? Yes? Yeah, Well, just your
rhythm and your presentation is so calming anyway, so I can't wait to listen
to it. But I did really absorb the ideas of breathing and centering during
the putting and was looking forward so much so to my next round of golf
where I can utilize that information. And I played golf and after the round
and I started reviewing because we were gonna have this conversation. I started reviewing
and realized I'd forgotten all of it. I didn't do it once because once
I'm on the putting green, yeah, I you know, I'm very focused
on my breathing when I'm about to hit a full swing shot. But when
I'm on the putting green, I just it didn't. Even though I was
trying to remind myself breathe, slow down, connect yourself to the ground,
do these things, didn't. I wasn't able to do it. Yeah,
it's very interesting that you say that, and it's very useful to bring that
up as a point, because most people think, oh, that breathing,
yeah, I can do that, you know, they take it as a
given, whereas in fact, when the biochemistry starts to change and the anxiety
and the stress response kicks in, we have to have a body of practice
under our belt. This is why I'm asking all the athletes I work with,
fifteen twenty minutes a day you sit quietly or stand in certain chigung tai
chi postures to train your body to be relaxed but ready. If you don't
do that, you haven't got really a hope in hell's chance of remembering when
you need to. Because the biochemistry has gone into stress mode, it creates
the breathing changes, the anxiety is around. You start to feel nervous,
and it takes a lot of discipline and a body of practice to overcome that.
When we have to see it, Oh, I'm so anxious, so
I'm really rushing and then okay, I need to breathe and I need to
slow down and really make that effort. And of course when you do your
practice, you know, every morning, day by day by day by day,
things change and it's not easy. It's not easy at all. So
it's not for everybody. It's only for people who are prepared to change their
daily habits because they want to get from here to you know, wherever they
are in golf, to being you know, a hundred times better to really
fulfilling their potential on the course and really enjoying it. But I was speaking
to a young guy recently who is a golfer and a surfer up in Scotland,
and he's practiced diligently day by day by day by day. And as
I said, we're talking fifteen or twenty minutes, that's all. And he
was talking to me an I'll our zoom lesson about the fact that in the
past he wasn't really playing golf. He was searching for a swing and just
feeling awkward, and his swing felt weird, and his putting felt weird,
and he was off and he was angry and he was frustrated and he couldn't
understand why. And he has more swing lessons and he reads all the psychology
books and nothing changes. So because he had this Kevin his name is because
he had this body of his own effort, his own discipline, his own
daily trying to be wyat and be in the breathing. So now when he
goes out he can manage that state of anxiety. He can change his own
biochemistry on the course by staying with the breath. And it's really important to
understand that. I'm afraid many many athletes who try to work with their breathing.
Are often taught by mental game coaches, so they have an idea about
how the athletes should be breathing. I mean, I saw one of our
skiers, an English skier. I won't say his name, because he did
quite well after this, but at the time when I was watching him at
the gates at the top of the slalom, he was literally and a lot
of athletes think, Okay, I'm breathing. I'm breathing because they're taught by
mind coaches or their technical coaches read something on mindfulness and this is how it's
presented to the athlete. But of course it doesn't help at all because you're
just exacerbating that stress response. Now, the Eastern way, the martial arts
way, is not to try to take a deep breath like that, but
to have the awareness in the danteenne so the naval area and slightly below and
keeping the attention there. This is why it's important to train day by day,
so when you have the attention there, everything slows down. The breath
slows down, the breath deepens in the body, and this is the only
thing that overcomes the stress response. No amount of thinking or analyzing or reviewing,
and your technique is going to help. Wow, my fred, I
go on and on. So I'm just so like passionate about this. You
know you are, and I love that. I love that. We're going
to take one more break and we'll be back right after this. You mentioned
earlier the authentic approach. Let's let's kind of work through that a minute.
What do you mean exactly by the authentic approach? I mean doing things as
they have always been done for hundreds of years, not making them more palatable
and easier for Western society and the pace of Western society, because it doesn't
help anybody. You know, listening to a mindfulness app for three minutes,
people will try and kid you that that's a actually going to help you in
some way, and it doesn't. There are thousands millions of people around the
world today in the Eastern in the Eastern World, if I can call it
that, China, Japan, in India as well, who sit in meditation
for twenty minutes, forty minutes. And you know, if you look at
all the martial arts clubs, let's look at all the karate clubs in America,
you can bet anything that the teachers, the senses who include meditation as
part of their curriculum with their students, those students will always do better in
a competition against another club. They're not going to do better if they listen
to a mindfulness app for three minutes a guided meditation, because all that stuff
does it's just more fodder for the mind, which is already overworked, too
busy, was it? Doctor is a justice who said that the mind of
teenagers now with their devices is like a schizophrenic mind from the nineteen fifties.
It's on a parallel isn't it. Yeah, And we're we're trying to solve
problems using the very thing that creates the problems in the first place. My
mind's too busy, So therefore should I listen to a mindfulness app on my
phone? I mean, in whose universe does that make any sense? Not
mine? If my mind is too busy, I need to I can work
at at bringing my attention to the breath and allowing the mind to calm down.
So when I say authentic, I mean doing things, doing it properly,
doing it as it as it should be done, you know, and
doing it in a way that actually has benefit. But also the thing that
is most beneficial is the effort that one makes to do the practice. When
you consistently make effort, and also when you struggle with yourself. You know,
I'm bored. This is awful, My god, you know, I
want to hang myself. I'd rather wash up or do anything than sit in
meditation. But then maybe after a few weeks, it's like, oh,
I had a better game of golf today, I wasn't so nervous walking out
to the first tea. And I go back to my practice the next day,
and actually I quite enjoy it. And maybe the following week I experience
a few moments of absolute quiet, total calm, and I carry on and
my golf gets better, and wow, my relationship gets better, and I
sleep better, and I enjoy the taste of my food more. And when
I'm out on the golf course, I actually hear the birds singing. You
know all this it's like an unfolding of one's natural abilities and the joy of
it. But without the effort, none of that arises. Does That makes
sense? Years makes sense as easy as it should be where you make it
sound, man, that's so sure about that? I want to ask you
about slow walking meditation. Sure still walking meditation. What do you want to
know about it? How to do? Yes? Yes, But it's integral
to you know Japanese za zen, which is the breath centered meditation that they
that they have done in Japan for hundreds of years. It actually comes from
Chan meditation, which is a Chinese word, but everybody knows it as zen,
and the monks alternate between sitting in meditation and doing a slow walking meditation.
If anybody wants to study those two things further, I would highly recommend
a book called Zen Mind. Beginner's Mind by Shunriya Suzuki was the epitome of
a zen master. And there's no philosophy, there's no preaching, there's no
spiritual connity, if religious connotations, if people are put off by that,
there's purely the breath, the most fundamental of all our activities and bringing the
awareness to that. So slow walking can help on the golf course in so
many ways. When we practice slow walking at home or in the garden or
in the park, we're trying to walk as slowly as possible, keeping the
same structural and postural points in the body that we do in our standing meditation.
And you can find out all about that on the Connected Putting audio and
in the book Connected Golf, and I have free worksheets and training reports if
you just want to message me, send you something. So when we're walking
slowly, we're trying to be again training the attention to stay with the body,
with the posture, with the center of gravity, with the breath,
and with that step. So it's a training that helps us to stay in
the moment rather than the mind rushing on ahead, thinking about how we're going
to play the next shot or how we're going to get out of the bunker.
And on the golf course, it's very useful because when you have that
training behind you, then it's much easier to stay present rather than you know,
getting yourself into a frenzy in your mind thinking, oh if I just
birdy this, you know, the I'm the club champion. So again it's
authentic, traditional formal training to stay in the moment, and the moment is
always it's always an absense of thinking. And this is why, you know,
I'm continually surprised with even the greatest golfers they talk about, you know,
thinking about the present moment, which again for me, is it shows
they've been taught by a mind coach rather than being taught by somebody who has
an experience of meditation. Because the present moment, one's experience of the present
moment is the absence of thinking. It's not the mind's job to try to
be present. The mind is for planning, thinking, organizing, it's for
recalling the past, working out problems, projecting into the future, and in
meditation, all of that is it just quietens down because we're not giving we're
not feeding that, we're not giving it energy, we're not encouraging it.
We're not on that treadmill. We've taken our taken back our mental attention,
taken all of it back and put it in the body, in the breath.
So it's a long answer to your question, but they're all very very
helpful practices to stay, stay where you are, be where you are.
Yeah, yeah, listen, let's do one more time out here and see
what's happening this week on Golf Smarter Mulligan's, and we'll be back more with
Jane's story on connected putting. After this this week on Golf Smarter Mulligan's,
we go back to twenty twelve and part two of our conversation with Jim Waldron.
In this episode, we cover consistency, distance, accuracy, and golf
schools. Anybody who promises instant, permanent swing like a pro results, it's
just not going to happen. It may happen on some shots in the golf
school, and that does happen for most of our students in our golf schools.
But we also tell people, look, this is a process that you're
starting. If you think you're going to come to the school and we're going
to teach you in three days how to swing like a pro, and that's
going to be your swing that you'll take to the golf course for even most
of your rounds of golf, you're kidding yourself if you can't be done.
If anybody's promising that level of I'm talking permanent improvement in three days, obviously
avoid those people like to play because they're liars. What you want to expect
is to get information that you can use for the rest of your life to
get better at golf. And you want to learn how to learn it,
and you have to learn from the golf school how to practice effectively, both
home practice, which is the most effective way to practice, and what you
do at the range. That's episode two hundred twenty eight, part two of
our conversation featuring Jim Waldron of Balance Point Golf com on our sister podcast,
Golf Smarter Mulligans, and it's being released this Friday morning. Originally published as
a member's only episode in February twenty twelve, means that this insightful conversation has
never been shared with the public before. So if you're a fan of Golf
Smarter's content, then don't miss your chance to get two episodes every week.
That's Golf Smarter, golf's longest running podcast, and Golf Smarter Mulligan's episodes from
our archives that revisit the best of the Golf Smarter podcast. They're both available
for free from wherever you're listening right now. There was one aspect of your
audio presentation that I was reading that really caught my attention, and I need
to know if I got this right or if this was just the brain fog
from lingering with COVID talking about if you see if I can interpret this properly,
if you're sitting in a chair and you take a golf club and you
put it on over your shoulders, behind your neck and you rotate your body
with the golf club. You rotate from the waist, not the shoulders.
But when you're putting, and it seems like you're trying to rotate from the
upper body the top your shoulders, you're rotating there. And it made me
realize, wait a minute, am I putting all arms and not using my
body in a way that when I went out and started practice putting with that
in mind and was keeping my body from my waist up as one, I
was able to get a better role on the ball, a better strow,
more consistent line instead of trying to force it with just my arms. Am
I overthinking this? Or did I come on? That's beautiful? That's beautiful.
And that is the way that people part when they're when they're relaxed and
when they're in the zone. Going back to Jack Nicklass and the correlation between
his approach to golf and tai chi, all movements, jutting stroke, all
movement, including the putting stroke comes from the ground upwards. It's anchored in
the feet and then moves through the waist. And I was always taught when
I had teachers long ago in Thai Chi that the upper body must respond to
the lower body. It should not initiate movement. And here's the problem with
putting from the shoulders. When my attention is on my shoulders, then I
become very tight in the upper body and my breath is centered in the chest.
And as we've spoken about on this in this conversation, when that all
that's going on, it creates anxiety. And couple that with the way that
golf is taught. You know, in the mainstream, there's always some kind
of stress already embedded into the golfer because they're trying to get it right,
rather than like Hogan and Nick Class would they try to actually feel, well,
what's going on in my body? You know? So, as I
said before, this is about reclaiming your power, reclaim your attention from YouTube
and Instagram and all this, you know, all this stuff. Reclaim it
and reclaim ownership of your own body. Inhabit your own body. So when
you stand over the part, and I love how you described the way that
you interpreted connected putting, Fred that you when you're moving your whole upper body
as a unit, and that's perfectly right, that the movement is actually initiated
from the duntienne, which is the center of gravity, and it will make
the stroke feel more pure and more true, because there are no straight lines
in nature, and the putting stroke really isn't a straight line. Is it's
it's it's got to be as slight. There's a straight line, but it's
a straight line within a curve, if you know what I mean. And
the duntienne is imagine like a ball, imagine a golf ball inside the torso,
which is the center of it's your point of centrifugal force or centrifugal force
for American audience, thank you. And it's like the hub of a wheel.
It's the hub of a wheel around which your upper body can rotate quite
naturally. And people know this. Everybody knows this. And when you've felt
this, when you've hit the ball, struck the ball suite and you've struck
it beautifully. What I find really interesting with the women that I work with
is that they seem to intuitively know this stuff. Anyway, if you look
at the way the women move their bodies on the pros, how they move,
they have this beautiful separation where their legs are very firm, the hips,
the hip bones only move a fraction. But then there's this beautiful operation
where the waist and the upper body that also actually carries on that rotation.
So you guys need to watch the girls how they partner, you know,
how they swing, because that's tai chi. It's rooted in the feet,
moves through the waist, and then it's just expressed in the hands. But
as I say, everybody who's had a beautiful shot, or enjoyed swimming or
walking in the park, or being on a skateboard or a snowboard, yeah,
or figure skating skateboard, that is my age away. We used to
play on skateboards and when we were kids. But anyone who's been in the
flow state knows this. But of course it's not taught in mainstream sport.
It's psychology, mind game technique, that's what's taught. So this stuff,
this work that I bringing it can underpin that because I'm no way am I
saying don't have any more technical lessons or don't bother with psychology. That's not
what I'm saying. It's all very useful. It's extremely useful to set goals
and to try to talk to yourself more positively and encourage yourself and reframe negative
thoughts. That's valuables. It must be done, and we must learn about
technique for our sport. But what I'm saying is when you're playing your sport,
when you're playing golf, you must play golf, not think about how
are you going to how are you going to hit the shot? I mean
the girls, the English Lionesses we've just won the semi final against Australia in
the football, and Serena Viigman, the Dutch the coach of the Lionesses.
What I find remarkable about her and the squad is that she talks about the
team play football. They play football. It seems so simple, but they
play football. They're not thinking about playing football or thinking about technique or hesitating
before they make a pass or overthinking a penalty shot. They're playing football.
So golfers, I think, can you would benefit from understanding that? Reading
a book on psychology, reading about technique, having a swing lesson That's like
me. I'm trying to learn the guitar, so I'm trying to learn flamenco
and blues guitar, and when I practice technique, I'm practicing technique. But
that's not music, is it. It's not music. It's me going up
and down the fret board, practicing technique and where fingers are landing and how
to pluck the strings. So in golf, technical, psychological, it's all,
it's all part of what makes you a great golfer. But it doesn't
help you play play on the golf course. It doesn't help you release the
complexity of the golf swing in a way that's effortless and natural in the moment
on the course. You need this other other work to underpin that. Wow,
like doing flamenco and blues guitar is kind of like played learning how to
play golf and walk on a balance beam. I mean, there's so radically
I mean the technical aspects of both are so radically different. I mean,
why don't you just do one at a time. You might be overthinking the
guitar there. That's a lot. It's it's it's in conjunction with my teacher.
I have personal lessons and online lessons with somebody here. But it's the
fact that it's like gypsy music. It's music that has songs, it's music
that's come from the people you know, grown up from the streets. So
actually there is a similarity between them, and one day I may go to
one or the other. But I mean, my you know, do you
know Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell let me she had this amazing comeback recently.
One of my favorite singer songwriters. But she's a painter. So she always
said how the painting feeds the music. The music feeds the painting. So
I can play blues all weekend, and then I don't want to do that
anymore, and I don't want to do a bit of flamenco. But it's
like athletes. A golfer, you know, Martina, I've had a lover
the greatest tennis player, one of the greatest tennis players of all time,
is a brilliant golfer, you know, So I like multiplay. You've talked
about your you're you're not obsession, but your study of Jack Nicholas seems to
be quite deep. Are there women golfers that you also seem to really focus
on and learn from? Well? I liked Mickey Wright. She passed away,
I think a few years ago, but she was a golfer of whom
Ben Hogan said that she had the best swing. And again, it's it's
just so so beautiful language free, so natural, and she if you look
back at some of her interviews, she talks about just being in the moment.
There's one story where I can't remember where she was in the States,
but she's coming down the eighteenth Fairway and you know she's expected to win on
her home course and her parents are there watching her, and you know you
can't. She said, you can't let all that stuff get you. You
just have to be focused on on what you're doing, what you can control,
you know. And I sort of put that into a mantra, which
is one breath at a time, one shot at a time, one whole
at a time. But I was at the Women's Open last week and I
have a client who was playing in that and it was great to follow her
around and but also to see the difference between how how she prepares for her
shots and how the other girls prepare. I could really see with my client
how she was breathing and she was in the body, and a lot of
the other girls they relying purely on technique. Yeah, but we can learn
from any athlete and and from our own practice. Let's figure out and share
with everybody how to obtain your audio program of connected putting okay. So I
have a website. It's Chi Dash Performance, so g is spelt Hi Dash
Performance dot com. G is the Chinese word for the energy or the breath.
And there's a menu bar there. One of the links is products and
you can go to the shop page. You'll see my books there, but
you'd have to get those from Amazon, I think. But the audio connected
putting is right there. If you send me a personal message, my email
addresses there, or you can use the contact form on the website. Tell
me you've heard me talking to Fred, and I'll send you some bonus material
and that would be a quick start guide to your performance practice. So how
to do this training? And I have some drills, some range drills and
putting drills, and I also put together a training report on chipping. So
they're not available on the website, but if you message me, I'll send
it to you. Yeah, So message Jane and just mentioned Golf's art and
you'll get those bonus items as well. So, Jane, thank you very
much for joining us today. It was great to talk to you again.
Invest of luck with the audio presentation. You're probably aware that usually the theme
music ends when they say goodbye. But twice during this recording, Jane's signal
fell out and we lost her and didn't realize it. So one there's an
edit. You probably didn't know where it was, but the ending was clearly
not real anyway. Get a great line from a listener who shared this with
me on Instagram. It says, when I was young, I sucked at
golf, but after years of dedication, practice and coaching, I'm no longer
young. Frequently I'm asked, both from listeners and from guests about the lessons
that I take, And if you haven't figured it out from listening, I
don't take lessons. Actually, okay, I've had four lessons in starting to
play in nineteen ninety seven, three with a coach named Doug Acton, a
wonderful coach here in Marine County, and two of which of those lessons is
when I just started playing. Surprising to me is that he's never really been
interested in being on the podcast, so he isn't. I've also had a
lesson from Ken Doherty, the head golf professional at Marine Country Club right next
to my house. Now. The last time Ken was on the show was
twenty seventeen. The reason I bring it up is because I'm committed to getting
the best instruction I can on Golf Smarter, and I wanted to show you
that you can improve your game and lower your scores from the lessons that we
get here. I've mentioned before that when I started publishing the show in two
thousand and five, I don't think I had a handicap, but a good
round was in the high nineties. But as of today's recording, I do
have an ongoing and honest handicap, and I'm a nine point five. Now
my point is that I'm not discouraging you from taking lessons, but I am
here to testify that I've become a single digit handicap golfer primarily from the construction
that we get here on Golf Smarter. I know you can too. I
do want to welcome this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador, Jeff Watson of Santa Anna,
California. Now, as you heard, Jeff chose to record his episode
introduction on his own phone and then send me the file. You can do
that too, especially if you're the outside the United States, where sometimes the
phone number that I provide doesn't always work. But if you'd like to just
call our toll free golf Smarter listen, line and be on the podcast and
receive a free gift for participating. You're encouraged to do so. Gifts include
Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental, a box of Odin X one balls
with a Golf Smarter logo, or a glove and glove storage compartment from Red
Rooster golf dot com. I'll leave a link in the show notes and today's
blog posts so you can learn more about each of these places. So what
about you. We'd all like to hear where you live, play, and
listen to golf Smarter. Send me an email and you two can receive a
free gift of your choice just for participating. To me and I'll get back
to you with some instructions of what to do and what to say. Send
your request to Golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com, or click on the
Hey Fred button when you visit golfsmarter dot com