Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty two from June
twenty fourth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter. Mulligan's your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: What target are into golf is about is helping a
person establish that visualization of the target as they're executing
their action. So is that conscious mind is occupied with
the visualization of the target. That allows a non conscious
mind to swing a golf club, and it will do
so because you're giving it a clear statement of intention.
Your conscious mind has a clear picture of what it's
trying to achieve, and it allows a non conscious mind
to follow through. A non conscious mind cannot carry out
that action if you don't have a clear targeting mind.
And that's the reason why many people struggle with this
concept of target orientation. Because they look at their target
threads but they don't see it. And because they don't
see it when they look back at the ball, their
attentional focus shifts away from target onto the ball, onto
the takeaway, onto the water, onto the outer bounds, onto
whatever it chooses to jump in. It comes the focus
of your attention at that time, and the non conscious
mind responds accordingly.
Speaker 1: Target Oriented Golf with Colin Cromac. This is Golf Smarter.
Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Colin.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Fred. I'm delighted to be here a game.
Speaker 4: It has been a long time since the first time
you and I spoke, which was episode number one hundred
and thirty seven back in July of two.
Speaker 1: Thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: So in six years time, I hope that you've done
a lot of changing to your method of teaching, but
maybe updated, perhaps, but I've been quoting it for the
six years.
Speaker 3: Well, I thank you for that, bread and you'll be placed.
And you're pleased to know that my approach to golf
and my methods that I've developed haven't changed. They are
as consistent as today as they were six years ago.
But interestingly enough, I've developed a collaboration with a gentleman
in America called doctor Tony Paparo, and I would like
to take the opportunity to introduce his work as well
as mine Fred to give a refresher on target oriented
golf and hopefully give you the opportunity to maybe talk
to Dr Piparo with a follow up show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, spell his last name for me, please.
Speaker 3: Pip a R.
Speaker 4: Okay, and does he have a website as well?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's found out mine.
Speaker 4: My mind, mastery golf dot com. Okay, we will look
into that absolutely. And as we're giving u ur ls,
let's give yours too real quick to get get this started.
Speaker 3: Yep. My website is target oriented golf dot com.
Speaker 4: Target oriented goolf dot com. All right, Well, now people
can listen and decide if they're going to go there
or not. But let's let's talk about where do you
want to start? Let me start, okay, because you know,
again it's been a long time since we spoke. I've
been talking about the four levels of competence for years,
always trying to figure out every time I say it,
I'm like, wait a minute, is that the order?
Speaker 1: Did I get it? Is it you start with and
then to conscient and you got to move.
Speaker 4: So we're going to get into the details of that
so you can really allow me to repeat it smoothly
and not screw it up.
Speaker 1: But I got it.
Speaker 4: I got an email from a listener, John Pappas up
in Santa Rosa, California, and he says, Hey, Fred, please
bring back Colin Cromac.
Speaker 1: He is onto something.
Speaker 4: His insight, golfer a cycle between conscious competence and conscious incompetence.
You're constantly dragging yourself back down to conscious incompetence. You
never give yourself a chance to play golf intuitively. That
was a quote from you, he says. And now what
John says is this was a big light bulb moment
for me. I've been playing golf for thirty years. For
the first ten years, from ages to eleven to twenty two,
I played intuitively unconscious competence down to a four handicap.
Speaker 1: But for the last twenty years.
Speaker 4: I've been dragging myself back down into conscious incompetence. Now
I'm a fifteen handicap. What a drag, he says. Here's
a list of teaching methods that I've tried, And when
I say tried, I mean I committed to each method
for one year at least one Ledbetter, two Stack Intilt,
three Secret in the Mike May's right foot Inversion method four,
Sean Clement Wrecking Ball Method five, Martin Ayers Wound right
Arm six, John Erics and Bradley Hughes Advanced ball Striking,
Flat Entry into Pack seven Shoemaker Fred Shoemaker Extraordinary Golf.
Even when I stopped focusing on technique and started using
Shoemaker's mental approach, I still approach the mental side as
a technique versus just simply unconscious competence. This is, for example,
Shoemaker's club throwing exercise as.
Speaker 1: An eye opener.
Speaker 4: So I started thinking about my swing as a throw,
my conscious mind was still paying attention to my body actions.
Shoemaker is a great coach, but he is still having
students focus their conscious minds on body awareness too much.
Speaker 1: In my opinion. I know he wants us to focus
on the target or the club or the ball.
Speaker 4: Something external, but students like me will still focus their
conscious mind on a body technique. That's why I'm excited
to learn more about in Chromac's target oriented Golf. I'm
really really exhausted from cycling between conscious competence and conscious incompetence. Lastly,
Collins question does the target create anxiety is a very
powerful question for me. The answer for me is no,
I find calm in the target versus always finding anxiety
by putting my conscious mind on my body actions.
Speaker 1: Wow right, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3: I say that's not uncommon. I mean, at the end
of the day, John's gone through a process that many
other golfers have been through themselves, and it's his desire
to obviously improve in your golf. But the majority of
the time golfers spend their practice cycling between different methods
of learning how to swing off clubs. And now there
is a very different psychological skill set that's required to
learn how to play Goldfread, because learning how to swim
you having your attentional focus on something to do with
a body part of body movement, and some coaches are
trying to move the attention away from the body onto
the club, but it still takes the individual's conscious mind
onto a control of their motor skills. Now, we don't
perform anything in our lives successfully, Fred, whilst we're consciously
trying to control our physical actions. So the key thing
about learning goal and any other life skill is we
actually have to shift our conscious mind away from this
motor skill so that the motor cortex in our brain,
which ultimately has everything that we need to carry out
a motor skill. Once the skills have been developed, we
need to actually tap into that FRED. But we can't
tap into that because we spend all of our lives
being taught how to consciously try and control the motor skill.
So the individual or the golfer never gets that sense
of freedom in their golf game that they get in
other aspects of their life, from riding a bike through
to driving a car, where we free the conscious mind.
So I'd like to just briefly introduce a concept to
your FRED which it introduces different states of the mind.
And it's important to understand this because if we don't
know where in the mind we're trying to improve a skill,
then it's very difficult to target what it is that
we're trying to improve. So you're obviously familiar with people
talking about the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind FRED
is basically whereby we develop ourself image and our belief systems.
They are acquired over a lifetime through our experiences and
through people talking to us and telling us things, and
we start to develop a belief system about who we
are in life now the subconscious mind is different to
the non conscious mind. The non conscious mind is that
part of the brain which is responsible for your motor skills.
So when you're an infant, when you're a child, for instance,
before you learn language. It's very interesting, Fred, but we
learn to walk as infants without actually having learned any
language at that time. So the conscious mind or the
cognitive process in the prefrontal cortex hasn't developed all right,
So we can't think our way through learning how to walk.
We do that process by awareness, and there's often a
parent opposite to where we're trying to go, and we
stumble slowly towards that other parent, and through a series
of repetitious movements, we develop the motor skills for walking.
No conscious mind involved in this process, Fred, but we
learn to walk, and that skill of walking becomes adaptive.
We learn to then crawl and run and skip, and.
Speaker 4: Let's not forget Colin, that we also learned to fall,
which is actually incredibly important because you can't learn resiliency
if you haven't fallen over.
Speaker 3: And it's all done though, Fred, without any conscious mind involved.
What's through this process and this is really important to
understand in motor skills acquisition. We develop motor skills when
we keep the conscious mind out of the picture, because
the conscious mind, in essence, is something that we develop
through language and through thinking process, whereby we start to
actually give our selves a sense of direction through our
thinking process. But that thinking process isn't very adapt at
developing or controlling our body. It's not designed to control
the body. That's what the motor cortex is there for.
So what we have to do. You see, what happens
is when we start to become we learn language, we
start to learn a skill like riding a bike. Thread
Typically what happens is we've learned language at that time
and we start to sort of be very anxious when
we are learning to ride a bike, because we are
being taught how to control the pedals, and our focus
is on trying to control the bike at that time.
You see, But through a series of repetitious processes which
are constrained by the instrument the bike, our attention naturally
shifts to the road ahead. So what's actually happening is
our conscious mind is being allowed to navigate to an
external focus. And once that happens, fred the external focus
allows the non conscious mind to take over the control
of the vehicle. The balancing of the vehicle, and the
movement of the pedals is all done non consciously, and
you can take this process through any skill that you've
ever developed. When you learn to drive a car, initially
you're getting instruction, You're getting conscious instruction. You're trying to
consciously control the steering, changing the gear, changing the clutch,
and depressing the accelerator. You're really quite poor at this time,
but again you're constrained by the vehicle. And once you
start allowing your attentional focus to shift to the road ahead,
your non conscious mind starts to take over the vehicle,
the control of the vehicle. So every situation that occurs
in life, we are allowed naturally to go to an
external focus. Fred, Is this all good? So the external
focus is the key thing. It allows us to pass
over the motor skill to the non conscious mind.
Speaker 4: Is there a subtle difference between non conscious and unconscious
or is it a huge difference?
Speaker 3: Well, this is the important thing forred. The unconscious mind
is another thing altogether. The unconscious mind is when you're asleep,
and when you're asleep, you're aware of the environment, but
you're not paying attention to anything other than what's going
on in the dreams. But the dream itself is not
something that you're in control of. But the key thing
is Fred, is that the unconscious mind is very active.
It's very busy, and you're very aware of something that
you know in the room. Should should it, should it occur?
But typically you're not actively paying attention. It's only when
you wake up that the conscious mind sort of picks
into into action and you start thinking about the day ahead.
And so the conscious mind gives you the direction, it
gives you the intention for what you're going to spend
your life doing throughout the day. So you've got the
unconscious mind, which is obviously one aspect of your mind.
You've got the subconscious, which is where your belief systems
and your self image is developed. You've got the non conscious,
which is responsible for the motor skills, and you've finally
got the captain of the ship, which happens to be
the conscious mind. But the conscious mind gives the direction,
it doesn't carry out the action. It's not powerful enough,
it's not fast enough. So the reason why I'm explaining
these different states of mind, Fred, is that in research
in neuroscience that these minds they don't exist. They can
only research the brain, and so any mind is just
kind of an epi phenomenon of brain activity. They can't
describe the minds that I'm talking about. Now. There are
lots of people that work with the subconscious mind. They
try and help people improve golf, for instance, by using
things like hypnosis and NLP, trying to change self image
and belief systems, which work by you shutting down for
a moment of conscious mind. You park it to one
side whilst you go in and implant new memories into
the area for the subconscious mind. So what you're trying
to do, Fred is override what were dominant memories with
new memories. You know, we are purely memories. Everything we
you and I are that we experience are created from
experiences we've had and stored as memories. So if you've
got a bad memory that's preventing you from before meing,
it is possible to go in and replace that with
a much more empowering one. But it takes time, it
takes effort. But the point is Fred, changing subconscious patterns
doesn't change the motor skills, it doesn't change the non
unconscious skills that you're trying to develop. You see, the
non conscious mind in essence, Fred, once the motor skill
has been developed is perfect if we keep the conscious
mind away from it. Ahah.
Speaker 1: And that's the big question, right, how do you do that?
Speaker 3: You play target oriented golf? Well?
Speaker 1: Did walk into that one?
Speaker 3: Well? You know, this is the wayson why I've developed
the workfread. It takes time to understand the subject matter
and to go and a play in practice and in
your play. But people spend twenty years trying to learn
how to swing a golf club. Why don't they try
and learn how to trust themselves to swing a golf
club when they've developed other skills in their lives successfully
by getting the conscious mind out of the picture.
Speaker 4: But you're not really serious about why do they question
themselves on their mechanics because it doesn't go well every
single time you swing the club, so you're always questioning yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's the problem from the very first golf
lesson when the club is put into your hand and
you have your attention taken to how to grip the
golf club, and you try and hit a golf ball
whilst your attention is internal and probably on the grip.
You hit a poor golf shot, you naturally attribute that
poor golf shot with something you're doing physically wrong. So
you spend a lot of time focusing on trying to
improve your grip whilst hitting golf balls. Once you've got
your grip feeling right, but you're still hitting poor golf balls,
you then switch your attention to your stance or your posture,
or your takeaway or any other number of body parts.
Speaker 4: And isn't that the point that there are so many
different things that can go wrong? How can you be
unconscious about it when you're trying to analyze and practice
awareness of where it is and what's going wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's the point, Freddie, is that if you
spend your life trying to develop the motor skill with
that conscious thought process of trying to control that skill,
you'll never go to experience a trust in it. Now.
The reason why I mentioned my partner, doctor Tony Baparo,
was because he spent his life in research dedicated to
understanding attentional focus in relation to motor skills acquisition. And
what he's done is developed a golf coaching program that
I believe every PGA coach and any golf coach out
there should understand because what he's advocating Fred is that
whilst an individual is learning how to develop the motor
skills to swing a golf club, they need to be
keeping the conscious mind busy and occupied whilst moving into
the specific positions that the individual is trying to move into.
Based on the coach is advice. So you know, you
might be aware of the concept of tim gorway and
in a game of golf where he advocates the concept
of back hit. The idea of this thread is that
by saying something whilst you're moving the body, you're keeping
the conscious mind engaged so that it allows the non
conscious mind to move the body. You can't be attending
to the body if you're engaging the mind with that command. Now,
what doctor Paparo has done has developed a very systematic
way of a golfer developing a golf swing without hitting
golf balls. First of all, because you need to develop
the motor skills for swinging a golf club before you
actually start trying to apply it to a golf ball.
Because what happens is whilst you've got the golf ball there,
thread and you're trying to not only develop the motor skill,
you're reacting every time to where the golf ball's going.
You're constantly doubting the fact that you're in the right position.
So your conscious mind is constantly switching to and from
different body parts and it's never there's never any control
over the attention. And that's what we're trying to explain
in our work, is that the attentional focus needs to
be controlled, not only out on the golf course when
you're trying to perform, but it needs to be controlled
whilst you're developing the motor skills for a golf swing,
because without being aware of your attentional focus, the mind
is doing whatever it chooses to do wherever the individual
chooses to think. And consequently, when it comes to playing golf,
if you spend your whole time I'm consciously practicing the
information that you're consciously being taught, you have no choice
but to consciously play, and therefore you never get to
that place where you're out there experiencing a trust in
the golf swing or the putting stroke that you would
do in any other life skill. Let me tell you
the importance of the target thread. If you and I
were to go out onto a park and we had
some balls in our hands, and we were simply I
was asking you to simply throw the ball at different targets.
You intuitively would know how hard to throw the ball
based on the target selection. Your attention would be always external,
your mind would typically be quiet, and your non conscious
mind would be allowed to throw the ball.
Speaker 1: All right, Can I stop you right there?
Speaker 3: Go ahead?
Speaker 4: All right, Let's take that analogy that you were bringing.
Let's put it into say shooting a basketball. All right,
go ahead, There's there's the basket. Throw the basket. Throw
the ball up to the basket, and unconsciously I would think, okay,
I just I just need to do that right, just
this motion here and it'll go in.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't go in.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, when I'm out on the driving ranger and you
and I are working out, and and we're just working
on practicing my swing, I'm on the range.
Speaker 1: When you're on the range, you there's nothing that can
go wrong.
Speaker 4: Really, it's like there's no let's say, there's no consequences
to something going wrong. But when you're about to take
a golf shot during a round of golf, that's I
guess when the doubt would would come in.
Speaker 1: That's when you'd have problems, because then you go, if
I don't get this right, there are consequences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're you're you're switching to a different aspect
of golf performance here, Fred, because you're starting to talk
about the concept of psychological performance, whereby, if an individal
jaw is having all of these thoughts that you're talking about,
then they haven't got a sense of control over what
it is that they're trying to achieve. And paying is
that those thoughts do occur because the individual hasn't developed
a very systematic way of guiding themselves through that period
of time that I specialize in, which is that time
between stepping in and executing the golf shot. You see
many people recognize that they try and break up the
golf shot into this concept of a play a think
think box, and a playbox, whereby you're doing all of
your strategizing and then you step behind the ball and
then you stop the thinking and you just move into play. Unfortunately, Fred,
you can't stop thinking. And that's the point is that
when you step into play your golf shot, the individual's
intentional focus if it's not being controlled, introduces all of
those other erroneous thoughts that you're talking about, and it's
that the fact that you're trying to stop thinking leaves
you so vulnerable because you actually need to be really
focusing your attention during that period of time between stepping
in and executing. That's when you really need to be concentrating,
not pretending that everybody's having a great time, because all
you're doing is leaving yourself vulnerable to a situational event
that comes in and destroys your ability to swing the
golf club. So, jumping back moment to that concept of
throwing a basketball. Thread when you're throwing the basketball, you
miss the shot, that's okay, you're not going to make
it ever a shot. But the point is that your
attention is naturally external. You're not thinking about how to
throw the ball. You're not thinking about how to throw
the ball. Your attention needs to be on the basket,
on the target. Yeah. Now, the concept in golf of
targeting is very important. It's something we need to talk
about because there are many theories of golf instruction that
suggests that you shouldn't have to pay attention to the
target once you've aligned yourself to it, Fred, because it
doesn't go anywhere at the end of the day. Once
you've aligned yourself to it, why do you need to
think about the target? Well, based on our discussion that
we've had so far, if you're not thinking about the
target when you're trying to execute your action, what are
you choosing to think about? You see the target? Primarily,
what target are into golf is about is helping a
person establish that visualization of the target thread as they're
executing their action. So if their conscious mind is occupied
with the visualization of the target, then it allows the
non conscious mind to swing the golf club do so
because you're giving it a clear statement of intention. Your
conscious mind has a clear picture of what it's trying
to achieve, and it allows an unconscious mind to follow through.
The non conscious mind cannot carry out that action if
you don't have a clear target in mind. And that's
the reason why many people struggle with this concept of
target orientation, because they look at their target threads but
they don't see it. And because they don't see it,
when they look back at the ball, their intentional focus
shifts away from target onto the ball, onto the takeaway
onto the water, onto the outer bounds, onto don't knuck
this up. Whatever chooses to jump in becomes the focus
of your attention at that time, and the non conscious
mind responds accordingly.
Speaker 1: Colin, I don't understand what you mean by they don't
see the target.
Speaker 3: If you and I, Fred, were standing on a tea
box and I was observing you looking down the fairway,
I wouldn't have a clue what the focus of your
attention was. All right now, if I was to then
say to you, Fred, can you see that red roof
in the distance. By giving you a description of that object,
I've brought your attention to that object. So you are
now seeing the object that I've brought your attention to
now when you're looking down the fairway. Typically what's happening
is that people are very aware of the water and
the outer bounds and the bunkers, and oftentimes are drawing
their attention to the very things that they don't want
to be hitting the ball out.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: So, the very important thing, Fred, is that in the brain,
the visual system is quite complex. There are many pathways
to taking information in Through the eye, it hits the
back of the brain and then it goes off in
many different directions. Majority of the information that we process
in our in our brain, we don't have to attend
to FRED visually. And what I mean by that is
we navigate through traffic in our car, processing lots of
information visually, but we're not paying attention to it. It's
the same when you're walking and doing anything. We're always
processing visual information, but we don't attend to everything. When
we want to attend to something FRED typically what there's
another process that happens in the brain in which you
compare the visual imagery that you're looking at with a
pre existing memory of what it is you're looking at,
and you use a label to bring a description to
that object. So when you read, for instance, a paper
or a book, do you ever hear that internal dialogue
the internal voice that goes on in your head when
you're reading a paragraph of information.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have four or five voices in my head
when I'm reading.
Speaker 3: Look into your schizophrenia. Right. The important thing is the
question I asked was why do you think, well, when
you're trying to read, why do you have to use
that internal dialogue? Because we're processing visual information. Where's the
internal dialogue coming? From Well. The key thing is Fred,
is that every single word that you're reading, you're actually
comparing with a pre existing memory of that visual information
and you're using it. You're using your internal dialogue to
bring the words to the focus of your attention. So
that's the seeing process. Difference between looking at the page
and seeing the information requires your attentional focus to be involved.
I'm with you now, good because it's really important. There's Fred,
that same process that you use when you're reading your
internal dialogue. How is that internal dialogue any different too?
Your thinking process when you're out on the golf course.
You know when the uroneous thoughts are coming in. It's
the same internal dialogue. It's just that it's not coming
off of a page. It's random information that you're pulling
out from your mind. Now, my point is this thread.
If you're looking down the fairway to describe your target,
you've got to see your target. You've got to describe
it to yourself. It's not enough just to look at it.
And it's the same thing applies when you're over your
golf ball. You've got yourself nice and settled over your
golf ball if all you do is look back out
down the fairway. It doesn't bring the target to your
focus of attention unless you describe it to yourself so
that when you feel like you're connected to your target,
you can bring your eyes back to the ball and
still feel connected to it in order to execute the
swing at it. So the concept of target orientation involved
looking at something but using your internal dialogue to reinforce
what it is that you're looking at. Fred. The reason
why this is important is that if you're using that
internal dialogue to keep your attention on the target, then
you cannot be thinking about your golf swing. In fact,
that's the whole point of this, is that you're trying
to keep your attention external in order to allow your
non conscious mind to swing the golf club. If I
was to ask you that I was going to put
a local theater production on, and I was to ask
you that I want you to be the lead in
the show, the lead actor. Now, what would be the
first thing that you'd ask for from me in order
to perform on stage?
Speaker 1: A script?
Speaker 3: This is important. Why would you need a script?
Speaker 4: Because if I'm going to be in a play and
memorizing my lines and performing my lines, I got to
know the out line, and I got to know the
direction that we're all headed in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Now, what would happen if you went on
the stage without having learned your lines?
Speaker 1: You don't want me to add Libya.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, Fred, this is what every golfer is doing on
the golf Why did you set me up? This is
the point of attentional focus, Fred, is that as an actor,
you go and perform because you know exactly what it
is you're going to deliver. And mentally you've learned your lines,
and we go out there and deliver them, and your
non conscious mind just goes and does whatever it is
that the conscious mind is directing it to do. Now,
the purpose of my work is to help a goal
for develop their own personal scripts that keep their attentional
focus systematically occupied with the same tasks every time they
prepare to play a golf shop. So that period of
time between stepping in and executing their swing thread, which
takes about twelve to fourteen seconds, is typically time where
the conscious mind is allowed to run free and they
are trying to go through a physical preshot routine. But
under the surface, the conscious mind is very variable, and
it's that variability in their conscious thought process, which creates
such variability in their outcomes. But the visualization thread that
need to happen at execution, which is target orientation, is
denied if the individual does not prepared themselves for that
moment successfully. And what I mean by that is if
there's no proper state management, if there's no proper breathing,
there's no proper awareness of the body before you get
to target orientation, then at any single erroneous thought that
comes in can elevate the person's anxiety level, the arousal level,
and that adrenaline flow stops the muscles from performing as
they would do if they were relaxed. And whatever it is, Fred,
that is choosing to create that arousal means that the
individual's attention must be on something other than target. And
that's the key thing about target. You see, there are
many theories that suggest the target creates anxiety in golfers. Fred,
what's your opinion.
Speaker 1: On that the anxiety produced by.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to figure out, is this like we create
this on ourselves, this anxiety, dude of and is this
are we trying to get away from that completely?
Speaker 3: Well, the point is, Fred, the anxiety doesn't happen to you.
Speaker 1: You create that.
Speaker 3: You create it by how you choose to think at
that moment. Now, if you're you're you're only having those
erroneous thoughts because you haven't developed a systematic process to
keep those erroneous thoughts at bay. You know, you can't
have these anxious, anxiety provoking thoughts if you're busy focused
on something else that's designed specifically to keep your state
correct in order to get target oriented.
Speaker 1: But there's so many things to be focused on.
Speaker 3: No, it's the point, Fred, Well, let me ask you
this question for can you pay attention to more than
one thing at a time?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately? Yes.
Speaker 3: Give me an example.
Speaker 4: I can be in a conversation with somebody and hear
a conversation going on behind me and following that as.
Speaker 3: Well, Okay, well, what's actually happening And you might not
necessarily notice it, but your attention is actually switching between
the two very fast. You cannot have your attention in
two places at once. You're aware of one whilst you're
attending to the other, but you're not really attending to
them both at the same time. And it's an important
distinction to understand here, because you in effect can't be
attending to two sources of information simultaneously. But you can
certainly be aware of sources of information simultaneously. So you
can certainly hear something whilst reading. You're aware of the noise,
but you're not necessarily paying attention to it. Your attention
might flick to it, but then come back. Or you
might be looking at something that's occupying your attention and
you might hear a noise, your attention flicks to that
and then comes back. It doesn't You're not in two
places at the same time right now.
Speaker 4: It definitely flicks. I would, yes, I would agree with
you that it flicks back and forth. But it flicks
back so fast that I can pick up and gather
the information from both sides simultaneous. It feels like I'm
doing this simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Is that I can get it here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, I got that part, I'll get this part,
and I've got and piecing both of them together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an illusion, Fred, but that's the nature of
the brain.
Speaker 1: Most of what we most of my life, Colin, is
an illusion. I just want you to know you're not alone.
Speaker 3: Now, everybody's life is the same. What we're doing within
the brain is often predicting what it is that we
expect to see, rather than actually seeing what is in
front of us. Because the majority of the time we
our brain is in a state of processing information, and
therefore it's doing it at the non conscious, subconscious, unconscious level.
We aren't consciously attending everything. We simply cannot. So a
lot of the information that arises into consciousness has already
been predicted by other aspects of your brain. And what
you see is a prediction from what from from from
from your from your brain, not what is actually out there.
And the way I demonstrate this, fred is is to
people is have you ever seen little paragraphs written in
which all of the words are spelt incorrectly except for
the first and last letters m H, and you're able
to read it as if it's written correctly. Yeah, well,
there's the predicative process happening. Fred. You're you're reading those
words and you're you're visually processing it. Now, if your
eyes were simply giving you the information to your brain,
then what you had been saying would sound like the
garbage that's actually written on the page. But it doesn't
because what you're doing is you're taking the visual information
comparing it to a memory. You're then using your internal
dialogue to say, well, that's what it was saying, that's
what it says, when it wasn't that at aol we see,
so your predictive nature of the brain confused or it
convinces us that we're seeing something that we're not. And
that's the reason why targeting is important in golf in
respect of we don't see the target unless we actually
support it with that internal dialogue process. In essence, what's happening, Fred,
is we might be looking down the fairway, but unless
we describe the target to ourselves, we don't get a
chance to see the target when we're looking at the ball.
Speaker 4: Can you give me a practical demonstration of how to
focus on get to find your target, focus on your target,
and only focus on your target through the completion of
your swing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the key thing is, Fred, we've got to
establish first of all, the difference between our desired, our
outcome and our target, because there is a lot of
people that suggest that the target creates anxiety. Now, what
creates anxiety in golfers often is the fact that they
are thinking about their desired outcome for the shot, which
it happens to be where the ball will be finishing. Now,
in golf, we cannot control that, and if you are
paying attention or trying to control where the ball will finish,
that happens to be a future event, which can create
an anxiety response because you're not in control of that.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a contradiction to the target though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the desired outcome is not the same as
the target more often than not, Fred, And that's the
reason why this discussion is important.
Speaker 1: That's what to me, that's a very thin line.
Speaker 3: Well, it might be. It might be a thin line,
but let me give you an example. Take let's take
chipping for example, thread where you're going to chip a
ball onto the green and your hole is obviously on
the other side of the green. Clear your desired outcome
for that shot is to get the ball in the hole.
But what would be your target?
Speaker 4: What would be my target on the chip? Yeah, is
to me, the target would be like a three four
foot circle around the hall. Try to get it in
that area.
Speaker 3: Okay, you see what I'm advocating is that with a chip,
you would typically chip the ball onto the green and
you would identify a landing spot, a.
Speaker 4: Landing spot, Okay, yeah, right, so my target would be
the landing spot, and then pick the landing spot and
try to guesstimate how much role I'm going to get
if it lands there and will it get me into
that circle? So yeah, I guess the target would be
the landing spot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's important for it because you've already differentiated. You
know what your desired outcome is, but you separated that
from your target, and ultimately your target selection to term,
means what club it is you're going to use to
play that shot, all right, So the target is very
different to your desired outcome and when you're trying to
play the shot and effectively, you are aligning yourself to
the target point, not to the desired outcome.
Speaker 1: Okay, because if.
Speaker 3: You've chosen the right target and you choose the right club, Fred,
you'll get the desired outcome. So psychological, can you see
that there's a difference between what your target is and
your desired outcome on that shot? On that shot, yes, yeah,
But that same principle can be extrapolated to every single
other golf shot. First of all, you've got to ask
yourself when you're stepping into a golf shot, what's my
desired outcome for this? But then you've got to say
what's my target for this golf shot? And very rarely
will they be the same. Your desired outcome and your
target won't be the same place because we don't hit
perfectly straight shots when we're playing golf, and so because
we cannot control where the ball finishes thread we can
only control where the ball starts. The idea of target
orientation is to establish what on that starting line you're
hitting the ball at that's going to allow you to
achieve your desired outcome. So you put yourself on a
T box, for instance, and you look down the fairway.
You see where you want the ball to finish on
the fairway, But that landing spot on the fairway isn't
where your target will be your target because because there's
nothing there, often that gives you a clearness of for
the visualization process. So you're typically what you do is
you find a line on that either on that line
where you're wanting the desired outcome, or you might even
move left or right of that desired outcome and establish
a target that's on your target line. So it might
be something that's off the golf course. It might be
a roof on a house, or it might be an
electricity part on it might be a tree trunk. But
it's always something Fred that gives you a clear visual
connection with where you're going to start that ball, Because
it's that target that you're trying to commit the swing towards,
knowing full well you'll get your desired outcome. You've got
to let go of that outcome and just trust that
the club you've chosen and a target you're selecting will
help you achieve that desired outcome.
Speaker 4: When I'm standing behind the ball looking down the fairway,
you know, setting my visualizing where I want the ball to,
where my target is, but I also look at the
end target the ball, and then a point just beyond
the ball as where I want to start the line.
Speaker 1: Is that my target?
Speaker 3: No, no, it's not, Fred. You're only using that point
behind the ball as your alignment. It's helping your alignment
to your chosen target. But once you've aligned yourself to
your chosen target, Fred, you can you forget about that
spot in front of the ball because that was only
used to help for alignment purposes. But the key thing
is that once you've established that you're going to hit
the ball towards a pre determined target that is visually
attractive to you. You know, like you're always looking for
something that's easy to see, because that's the whole purpose
of target orientation. You're trying to give yourself. You're trying
to make it easy for yourself by giving yourself a
clear target. If all you do is try and establish
when you want the ball to finish on the fairway,
you end up with just a big load of fairway
and not an awful lot of focus. You don't give
yourself a clear focal point to get in your ball
to wards. And again you're psychologically stepping into a place
which can be creating the anxiety response because you're trying
to control where the ball finishes and you simply cannot
do that and therefore being a future event, you create
the anxiety response due to the lack of control that
you perceive over it. So you know, if I was
to stand in front of you, fred hands out, you
get you throw the ball to me, the target and
the desired outcome would be the same my hands and
as I move away from you, you still recognize that
the target and the hands are the same place, but
you've got absolute freedom in your actions because you've got
that clear target to throw the ball at. If I
put my hand just as you're about to throw the
ball and I put my hands behind my back, two
things typically happen. I make you think where's my target?
And I stop your flower of action. Well, that's exactly
what happens when you look back at the bull thread
and you haven't got a clear statement of intention in
your mind, because your attention then shifts to something else,
and that creates the funky swings that people experience. More
often than not, it's the lack of clear intension with
aligned attention that creates the poor golf swing. So this
concept of putting targeting is important as well in putting
because unless you've got a straight put to a hole,
the target and the target and your desired outcome are
also different. You know, if you've got an uphill put
thread to a hole that's a straight uphill part, your
typical target point will move behind the hole because you're
having to put more force onto the ball to allow
it to go uphill. So you're putting through the hole
basically to ensure that you've given the ball enough energy,
and if it's a downhill put you clearly don't want
to be putting out to act the hole. You put
a spot in front of the hole and that becomes
your focal point for your part. So you're establishing how
much energy you have to impart on the golf ball
based on your target selection point. And as soon as
you start to introduce break left and right, your target
point starts to shift left and right of the whole
as well. So you've always got Fred the desired outcome
of getting the ball in the hole. But if you
actually attempt to part always with your attention on the
whole when you step into and an align yourself to
your chosen line, but then switch your attention back to
the hole, what actually happens, Fredd, is you end up
pushing or pulling the ball off of the target line
because you're thinking about the desired outcome rather than a
target point on that line that you've chosen. There's a
system out there called am point which is excellent for
green reading. It teaches you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked about it and we've had them on
the show.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, look the idea of it, Fred is the
fact that it establishes what your line is. It gives
you great confidence to know that's the line that you're
going to put on. Where different, where I differ from
that system is that they advocate that the target or
the aim point is always perpendicular effectively to the whole,
So it's, you know, perpendicular to where the hole is.
I don't agree with that because clearly there's many times
where the ball goes nowhere near perpendicular to the whole.
You only have to put it a few inches and
it will roll off and break and do all sorts
of things. So your target point is on that aim line,
but it's not the ain point that they are advocating,
because again it's a great system for green reading. But
once you've got your line, the advocate is then suggesting
that what you need to do and is establish how
hard or how how much you need to control the putter.
You know, what speed do you need to put on
the putt. But that's bringing your attention back to the
conscious control of the putter head, and that again destroys
the putting stroke because you're consciously trying to control that
stroke again thread So the idea of targeting is to
keep your attention external and allows the non conscious to
put the ball. And that's the reason why I love
the Green reading system. I just disagree with where the
individual's attention is taken when they then have to put,
because again, there is nothing that we perform by consciously
controlling our action, and therefore by staying external, by staying target,
iron did on target instead of outcome, you start to
separate the difference psychologically. But also all you're recognizing with
a put thread is you can't do anything with the
putter other than put the ball on a straight line.
It is designed to do nothing other than hit a
ball on a straight line. So you've got to establish
the line that you're going to send it on and
how far down that line your target point will be
to allow that ball to break off towards your desired outcome,
which is the whole you follow. So you don't always
hit the target. Fred. The point of target orientation is
not to hit the target. In fact, it's only on
chipping where you actually hit you have an opportunity to
hit the target that you've chosen. But every other shot
with target orientation, what you're doing is giving yourself a
sense of commitment to something in the distance that will
allow the non conscious self to react to that target,
and if you've chosen the right target, you get your
desired outcome. And that applies to every golf shot. So,
as I said, when the idea of this work of
developed thread is the individual allows them to step into
every golf shot regardless of where I'm not on a
tea box or on a putting green. They can apply
the same mental process to preparing to play for the shot.
So you don't actually see driving, chipping, pitching, putting as
different disciplines. They are all just different golf clubs, but
you apply the same mental discipline to them. That simplifies
the game thread because you're ultimately just following the same
script every time you step in to play a golf shot.
The only difference you have is identifying what your chosen
target is, which will determine what club you're going to
use to play that shot and the real challenges. So
again what I'm saying is that target orientation is trying
to help golfers be in control of events. So the
target is something that you are in control of, You've
chosen it yourself, and you're ultimately hitting the ball towards it.
You're not trying to control wear the ball finishes. In
this instance that you cannot control weather ball finishes. But
the game, if you've chosen the right target and chosen
the right club, then you've just got to trust the
fact that based on your chosen you know your selections,
that you'll get your desired outcome. But golf is not
a game of perfect as we know. It's a game
of identifying how do you achieve the best outcomes based
on the fact that you've got the opportunity to choose
what it is your targets are. It is interesting, Fred,
when it comes to putting, it's a little bit more
difficult because in effect, we don't really get a choice
of targets. You know, if we've read the green and
established the line, then we need to find that target
point on that line. But if we choose a different line,
then we've got to choose a different target point. It's
you know, there's nothing concrete there for you to say
that's definitely my target. It comes down to you being
intuitive as to how much energy you have to impart
on that golf ball to allow gravity to pull it
towards your whole, and all of this stuff is again
it's beyond your control. All you can do is assess
the shot, choose your target, and hit your ball towards
the chosen target. Now, to get to that place of
target orientation, Fred, you've got to prepare yourself mentally as
you step in in order to give yourself a chance
to visualize that target that you've chosen. Otherwise than the
reason why target orientation hasn't worked for probably people that
have tried it is that as you step in, the
erroneous thoughts that come along can elevate arousal. When you're
looking down the fairway, you're seeing all of the hazards
and when you look back at the ball you're thinking
about swing for target is nowhere to be seen. And
you know it's natural then to believe that the poor
golf shark was caused by your poor swing, as if
the swing itself was the problem, not the fact that
it wasn't getting any clear statement of intention as to
what to do. And that comes back to you can't
become target oriented on the golf course, Fred, unless you
practice target orientation on the range. Because this has to
become predominant mentality in order for you to take it
out to the golf course.
Speaker 1: And do you find that more people on the range
that they're focused on just striking the ball over and
over as opposed to using a target.
Speaker 3: Well, they might have a target thread, but they're not
actually paying attention to you, you see, the whole purpose
of my work is to help people understand how to
effectively manage their state in order to get to this
state of target orientation. You can't get your state right
if you don't have control over your self talk, and
you can't then get your attention in the right place
if you're or on target if your self talk is
out of control. You see, So it's an interaction, Fred,
You've got to get your state right to open up
your ability to focus. But you can't focus until you
get your state right. So you have to have proper
breathing strategies and techniques as you're preparing to execute in
order to really open up your ability to get to
that target orientation. The whole purpose of this work, Fred,
as i said, is to get to that place where
you ultimately experience your freedom in your physical actions, just
as you would do hitting a baseball or using a hammer.
It's just a tool that you're using to carry out
a task. You're not thinking about how to use the tool.
Speaker 4: We've been into this conversation for fifty nine minutes now, Colin,
and I want to I know, I know, I can't.
I looked up at like you're kidding fifty nine minutes so,
but what I really wanted to get into. I think
we've gotten the point and the understanding of target orientation
as you've been talking about. I really wanted to talk
about the stage of skills if I if I've got
this correct, from unconscious and competence all the way through
unconscious competence, can we cover that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, Fred. The key thing is is that these
stages of learning that are often presented to people, the
idea of these stages is that we move from a
process of unconscious incompetence, which is where we don't really
know the skills that we need to learn before we
start to develop the skills. But once we underst acquiring understanding,
we start to become what's called unconscious competent, whereby we
sorry conscious.
Speaker 4: Aha, it's not just me, okay, all right, we started
unconscious incompetence, yeah, and the next stage would be conscious incompetence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we go through a series of repetitions in
which we are focusing on the skill. And this conscious
incompetence is where most golfers are trying to develop their swing.
And many people, through repetition start to show some skill
and they develop what is conscious competence. You see, they're
still thinking about the swinging of the golf clubs at
this point, but they are becoming better than those people
who have just started. And once you've started to develop
that proficiency in normal life skills, we shift our We
shift those motor skills to a state of unconscious competence,
so we stop consciously trying to control the motor skill
so that state of unconscious competence thread does not happen
through repetition. Which is the biggest mistake people make is
that they believe if they keep practicing the same way,
they will get to a place of trust in that skill.
The only plan you get to a place of trust
in the skill is when you actually stop paying attention
to it, and the way you achieve that in golf
is by switching your attention away from it and onto
the target. That shift thread happens naturally in most other
life skills because we naturally want to be int in
where we're going.
Speaker 1: But you have to have some confidence in your golf
swing to get there, so you can let go of it, don't.
Speaker 3: You, Yeah, clearly, Fred, And this comes this comes back
to how how you acquire the skill, And hopefully you'll
have an opportunity to talk in detail with my with
my partner who spent his life helping people understand that
the skills acquisition process, you cannot have confidence in a
skill that's not obviously been developed, but how that skill
is developed, Fred, it requires you having to allow yourself
to shift your attention away from that skill. You will
stop yourself from ever getting to that place of trusting
in it whilst you constantly only focus on it. So
purpose of the work that I'm doing for is to
give people an alternative way of practicing at the range
called a trusting mode. So if you imagine there's a
training mode and a trusting mode. Training mode is where
an individual always gone to the range to work on
a skill, a technical skill, when they've spent maybe half
an hour doing that, and how that's being done can
be significantly improved. Which but I'm not going to get
involved in that discussion. That's where I'd like you to
talk to my partner. But once you put aside the
training mentality Fred, by switching into trust mode, what actually
happens is you stop the analysis of your swing. You
simply allow that swing to be what it is as
it is developed. And so by developing a way of
trust in that swing, by practicing breathing, state management, target orientation,
you start to allow your attention and to shift external
and your motor skill spread automatically start to move up
into that state of unconscious competence because you're not consciously
inhibiting them. It's the conscious inhibitor inhibiting of the motor
skill because you're consciously always trying to control it. That
stops that from happening, you know, and that comes into again.
It's very important to understand that whilst you're trying to
develop a motor skill, you should also be training your
attention at the same time, but that isn't happening today.
So by using doctor Pipero's methods, you're able to keep
the conscious mind engaged with a specific command whilst you're
allowing the non conscious mind to move the golf club
into the appropriate positions you need for a golf swing.
The idea FRED is that we don't have Well, there
are systems out there that do keep people within a framework,
i e. You know, when we're sitting in a car learning,
we're constrained by the vehicle. When we ride a bike,
we're constrained by the vehicle. When we try and swing
a golf club, there's nothing constraining us, is there. And
yet there are systems out there, like the caves and
others that allow you to be effectively training your body
by but whilst being told whether or not you're in
the correct positions through verbal feedback biofeedback. But at that time, fread,
the conscious mind is still being left to its own
devices and it's typically involved in the swing. We need
to get the conscious mind out of the swing in
order for that skills to move to that place of
unconscious confidence that we're trying to achieve. And so yes,
it does require golf does require an element of time
where you do develop the skill. But if you're trying
to develop the motor skill whilst hitting golf balls, your
attention is simply so disparate. It's on so many different
things that you really don't have an opportunity to ever
develop the single pointed concentration that I'm talking about through
target orientation. So what we're trying to advocate is that
when a person learns is working on their technique, taking
the advice that's being given to them by their coach,
it's not enough for them to be hitting golf balls
and reacting to the outcome and trying to consciously change
their motor skill, because you never develop a consistent motor
pattern for swinging that golf club because you're always consciously
trying to change it. It's like having a piece of
jelly fred you never let set. You constantly shake it around,
and you're ending up developing competing memory, which you never
really know which ones you're going to draw on to
swing that golf club. And so you're trying to ultimately
allow the conscious mind to be parked for a time,
to allow the non conscious self to move the body
to the appropriate positions, and you start to through repetition
of these exercises, you start to develop a proficient golf swing.
And in fact, if there's no ball in place, you know,
you ever notice how great people's practice swings are when
on the golf course, and yet when they step up
to the golf ball, that swing kind of disappears. Absolutely, Yeah,
that's what's happening. Fred. The intentional focus is very different
when you're trying to hit the golf ball because you swing,
you're no longer just swinging the club through to your target.
You're actually trying to hit the golf ball or trying
to control the swing, and that destroys the swing. So
what we're advocating is that you develop a proficiency in
your golf swing. Start off development the swing. Put a
tea down on the ground, starting that without evaluating where
the tea's going, just start feeling your golf swing is
starting to be consistent. And when you start to introduce
the ball, you'll notice that the individual your attention starts
to go to the ball. And it's that in itself,
which is is a problem because you end up trying
to just hit the ball rather than swing through it
to the target. So this whole process thread involves in
slowly introducing these concepts so that people can transition through
a skilled acquisition's phase relatively quick compared to what they're
doing today. You know, years and years and years and
years and years of repetition and practice doesn't manifest as
trust on the golf course. Something is wrong. You would
think that people could learn to trust their golf swings,
but they never do well. That's because of how they
are practicing, learning and playing the game. And what we're
trying to do through our program is to just introduce
a new set of skills that will make the most
of the great PGA instruction that they're being given. But
they need to learn how to shift their attention away
from that in order to experience what it's like to
play golf, not just swing golf clubs.
Speaker 4: Excellent, all right, Well listen, Colin, I think we need
to wrap this up. We're seventy minutes into the conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, Frank, we told total die.
Speaker 4: I'm sure obviously obviously we can, but I to well
respect to the audience, and actually I'd like to ask
the audience a favor.
Speaker 1: Does this resonate with you?
Speaker 4: I know we've talked about putting, We've talked about you know,
aim point, We've talked about various mechanics and thing and
mental game things like that, but this specifically, how does
this resonate with you? Does this work for you or
you get this at all, And if I would love
just click on a Hey Fred button and send email
tell me what you thought of this conversation with Colin.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you got to hear the entire thing.
Speaker 4: And again it give how people get in touch with
you where you are and how to work with you
if they want more.
Speaker 3: My website is Target Oriented Golf. That's that's Target oriented
which is r I E N TED golf dot com.
I provide remote services. I ultimately help golfers. They go away,
they video their pre shot routines and through a series
of training manuals and videos, we help change their practice
and methods so that they develop a new mental pre
shot procedure, not a routine. The idea of it is.
A routine is something you do without thought. That's the
last thing that we need in order to get our
focus in the right place and the same place every time.
So what I do is help them develop a mental
procedure which will give them a very disciplined, stmatic approach
to every golf shot and it simplifies their golf. But
it takes time to practice and learn them Afraid, it's
no quick fix here, Fred.
Speaker 1: No, there never is they're never is in golf, Well
there is the Golf Smarter podcast is Colin.
Speaker 4: It's been like I said, it's been eight years, it's
been six years. It's been a great talking to you again.
I'm so glad that you're still focused on your target
and that you're keeping us focused on our target.
Speaker 1: It's really been great to have you back on the show.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure, Fred and I can't thank you
enough for giving me the opportunity