Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Kurt Bonham from Atlanta, Georgia and I play at
Speaker 2: Eagles Landing. Welcome to Golf Smarter.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm joe Yorke from Panavitu Beach, Florida. I play golf
Speaker 2: at Marsh Landing Country Club and this is Golf Smarter
Speaker 2: number ten fourteen.
Speaker 1: So I talked about this in my book where in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the reason golf in general, but putting in
Speaker 1: particular is the hardest target sport in the world is
Speaker 1: because your eyes are not on it. In what other
Speaker 1: sport are you trying to be so accurate, Like it's
Speaker 1: a four and a half inch target, but you're not
Speaker 1: looking at it. That means that your brain needs space
Speaker 1: that when it looks back down at the ball after
Speaker 1: your last look at the hole or whatever your target is,
Speaker 1: it needs low frequency, it needs space, It needs less
Speaker 1: traffic to be able to remember where the ball is
Speaker 1: going to go because you're not looking at it. Wait
Speaker 1: times in golf is one of the largest untapped opportunity.
Speaker 1: Why are you looking at somebody else? It's of no
Speaker 1: value to you. But if you want a higher outcome,
Speaker 1: if you want a better motor output out of yourself,
Speaker 1: you've got to use your weight times as a countdown
Speaker 1: to your preshiat routine.
Speaker 2: Use the waittime during year round for the greatest opportunity
Speaker 2: for increased success with Doctor Izzy Justice. This is Golf Smarter,
Speaker 2: sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
Speaker 2: help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf
Speaker 2: Smarter podcast, Doctor Justice.
Speaker 1: Hey Fank, it's so nice to be back. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming back. I haven't talked to you
Speaker 2: since twenty twenty two when we talked about Jyra Golf.
Speaker 2: I think we should start with you telling us what
Speaker 2: it is that you do and how it relates to golf.
Speaker 2: Let's get the base understanding here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, I've said this on your show before,
Speaker 1: and I've said it on other shows. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is very forrest gumpy, and I'm kind of making
Speaker 1: it up as I go along, and strange things happen
Speaker 1: at sort of every turn, and you know, the discovery
Speaker 1: and the exploration of what is happening in the human
Speaker 1: brain is still relatively new. If you look at all
Speaker 1: of the things that just from a human experience perspective.
Speaker 1: We're trying to understand how we travel, our diets, you know,
Speaker 1: our sleep patterns, all these things, technology a lot of
Speaker 1: that allow us to work and function, communicate. I mean,
Speaker 1: all these things we've made significant advances on, but we're
Speaker 1: still fred believe it or not. I don't care what
Speaker 1: people believe in in terms of when life started. But
Speaker 1: we're still literally learn to understand what's happening in the brain.
Speaker 1: And just to close the thought there, you know, it's
Speaker 1: been very hard to study the brain, honestly because number one,
Speaker 1: there's electricity in the brain. So what like, what are
Speaker 1: you looking at when you look at the brain. It's
Speaker 1: not like the heart or the liver. W you know,
Speaker 1: you can see things coming in and see things going out,
Speaker 1: and how do you measure electricity and what you know,
Speaker 1: how do you interpret what it is that you're actually
Speaker 1: looking at. And then lastly, you know, I have unintentionally
Speaker 1: sort of drawn this, you know, gap between clinical view
Speaker 1: of the brain versus functional view and think of clinical
Speaker 1: as you know, probably ninety five percent of all the
Speaker 1: work that's done on the human brain and the human
Speaker 1: experience is on the clinical side. I have all Zheimer's,
Speaker 1: have dementia, I have epilepsy. Something's wrong, and therefore there's
Speaker 1: a reason for me to go look and find what's
Speaker 1: wrong and then find a cure for it. That's not
Speaker 1: what I do or what I've been doing. I've been
Speaker 1: on the functional side, which is we're just trying to
Speaker 1: make a putt. I'm just trying to make a free throw.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to respond to an email. Like what
Speaker 1: goes on in the human brain when we're just trying
Speaker 1: to be functional, when we're just trying to remember our
Speaker 1: best inventory of skills and past experiences and what we
Speaker 1: want to do. And so it's been an amazing discovery
Speaker 1: journey and I've just learned so much myself, and you know,
Speaker 1: I put it all together in this new book and
Speaker 1: or at least as far as as as I've learned
Speaker 1: thus far.
Speaker 2: What is your doctorate in? Are you a medical doctor?
Speaker 2: Are you an academic doctor? Let's understand that you started
Speaker 2: cutting up heads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, great question. No, I am not a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: never claimed to be one. I didn't even stay at
Speaker 1: a holiday in express last night.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: No, So you know my doctor has is in human performance,
Speaker 1: and I got it back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and it was still almost ten years before the technology
Speaker 1: was even invented. And I remember reading a paper. It
Speaker 1: was a soft peer review paper that I was reading,
Speaker 1: and this person talked about, you know, wirelessly looking at
Speaker 1: an epileptic patient to see, you know, are there any
Speaker 1: motor functions or patterns that lead up to a seizure.
Speaker 1: And so that was the context of this technology where
Speaker 1: somebody could stand six twelve feet away look at a
Speaker 1: human brain while something is going on. And this ability
Speaker 1: to do it wirelessly is the game changer because we've
Speaker 1: been able to look at the brain, but typically it's
Speaker 1: using an MRI machine or and you have to stand
Speaker 1: very still, you have to be horizontal, you can't even move,
Speaker 1: so there's no functional work that you can really measure
Speaker 1: or track if you're you know, using traditional methods. So
Speaker 1: when I could expose to that technology, I quickly pivoted
Speaker 1: and said, all right, you know what is going on
Speaker 1: in the human brain for example, you know when someone
Speaker 1: makes a free throw or makes a pot is there
Speaker 1: a certain pattern What's going on in the brain when
Speaker 1: someone misses a free throw or a potter? And I'm
Speaker 1: just using two examples, is there a pattern there? And
Speaker 1: lo and behold, I discovered along with you know, other
Speaker 1: studies that were done long before I came along, that there,
Speaker 1: in fact, is a state in the human brain that
Speaker 1: you know from an electric perspective, because electricity is the
Speaker 1: language of the human brain. Electricity is the language of
Speaker 1: motor function and fred if you think about it, it
Speaker 1: has to be electricity. It cannot be anything else. It
Speaker 1: can't be light, it can't be gravity, because just think
Speaker 1: about it. What else is so fast that it can
Speaker 1: allow us to protect ourselves. If I am walking and
Speaker 1: I see a lion, do I not need that visual
Speaker 1: input of the line to go to my brain and
Speaker 1: within a half a second turn around and start running
Speaker 1: as fast as I can. So there has to be
Speaker 1: you know, a top of a gas a modality that
Speaker 1: can work very quickly. And in the human experience, electricity
Speaker 1: other than light, is like the fast the second fastest mode.
Speaker 1: So electricity really is the language of the brain. It
Speaker 1: really is the language of mode of function. And so
Speaker 1: studying it and saying, okay, how do you get the
Speaker 1: brain to a state when it can use that electricity
Speaker 1: at an optimal perspective? And by optimal. I mean two things, Fred.
Speaker 1: One is you can access your inventory. So if you
Speaker 1: tell me Fred, for example, oh, I've been putting for
Speaker 1: playing golf for twenty years. Great, and I will ask you, okay,
Speaker 1: all those shots you've hit, all the putts that you
Speaker 1: made in a tournament or non tournament, where's that inventory.
Speaker 1: It's not on a Google drive, but it's on some
Speaker 1: hard drive in your brain along with you know, dozens
Speaker 1: and thousands and millions of other data points about your life.
Speaker 1: So you need access to it when you're about to
Speaker 1: make up put you know, the factory setting of the
Speaker 1: brain is your brain to retrieve your last worst one
Speaker 1: because it wants to predict, It wants to protect you
Speaker 1: from making the same mistake. Now, if that's a factory
Speaker 1: setting of your brain to remind you of your worst
Speaker 1: pot when you're trying to make a pot, right, should
Speaker 1: you not have the ability to say, oh, let me
Speaker 1: change that factory setting and let me access that inventory.
Speaker 1: So when the frequency, when the electricity generally speaking in
Speaker 1: the brain is low, it's vibrating at a low frequency,
Speaker 1: how access goes up because it just isn't enough. There
Speaker 1: isn't a lot of traffic And the second magical thing,
Speaker 1: and both in sports as well as life, that happens
Speaker 1: when electricity is low in your brain is that it
Speaker 1: amplifies sensory input. As human beings, we don't have five
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty. We have five senses, right, that's not
Speaker 1: a lot. But you know, there is an airport in
Speaker 1: our brain where it's called the sensory cortex where all
Speaker 1: of that sensory input goes, and it's always there, even
Speaker 1: when we're sleeping. It's there. But a lot of times
Speaker 1: that input is not processed by the brain because there's
Speaker 1: just so much other noise. So, for example, Fred, if
Speaker 1: you had a really really crazy day at work, you know,
Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff going on. You get in
Speaker 1: your car and you're driving home at the end of
Speaker 1: your day at five o'clock or whatever time it is,
Speaker 1: and you put some music on. The odds are by
Speaker 1: the time that you get home whatever it is, thirty
Speaker 1: minutes later that you're able to recall the music that
Speaker 1: was playing is almost a zero. But it was playing.
Speaker 1: The auditory input was there, but there was so much
Speaker 1: other noise in your brain. So by bringing that frequency down,
Speaker 1: you know, it allows us to for example, feel the
Speaker 1: grip pressure, feel the weight of the putter head, see
Speaker 1: the target, see how you want the bar to roll
Speaker 1: or where the ball you want the ball to start,
Speaker 1: and where you want to finish it. So those two
Speaker 1: magical things access to your inventory and just an applification
Speaker 1: of sensory It would happen when that frequency is low
Speaker 1: around ten to fifteen herts in your brain. So that's
Speaker 1: why I call it chasing ten hurts because that magic number,
Speaker 1: chasing ten herts is in life. That's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're always doing something to allow us to get to
Speaker 1: a point where we can enjoy a moment or be
Speaker 1: the best version of ourself in each moment. And ironically
Speaker 1: it's not a secret, Like how many people have told you, oh,
Speaker 1: I was the best version of myself when I was
Speaker 1: angry and agitated, Yet everybody says, oh, when it's calm
Speaker 1: and relaxed and focused and slow. Well, those are all,
Speaker 1: you know, lay labels that we're using to describe that stage.
Speaker 1: So we're beginning to de mystify how this brain works.
Speaker 1: And for a golfer, you don't have to be in
Speaker 1: that magical ten hurts for five hours. It's just fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the amount of time in totality that
Speaker 1: you're hitting a golf shot. So it's a reasonable ask
Speaker 1: to say, hey, can you be in that state for
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, non contiguously over five hours, that's doable.
Speaker 2: When you talk about electricity, my lay brain goes to
Speaker 2: charging my phone, goes to turning on a light, thinking Edison,
Speaker 2: thinking Tesla, And I don't mean the car. I mean
Speaker 2: Nikolay Tesla, the real inventor of right of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Are we talking about the same electricity here when you
Speaker 2: keep talking about that with our brain.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is literally the same electricity, real electricity. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we even measure it using the same units of hurts,
Speaker 1: and absolutely it's the same electricity. And again, if you
Speaker 1: think of electricity on your phone or any type of
Speaker 1: a device or coming into a house, sure you know
Speaker 1: the power of it is that it does have this
Speaker 1: this this charge to it that allows you to transfer
Speaker 1: energy if you would, And we need that, We need
Speaker 1: that same energy for us to you know, function, especially
Speaker 1: motor function. I mean our ability as living creatures to
Speaker 1: move is central to our survival. That movement has to
Speaker 1: happen at an accelerated pace. I must be able to
Speaker 1: see something and say, oh, there's a big gully here,
Speaker 1: I'm about to step into it, let me stop walking.
Speaker 1: Or there's a snake walking by, let me jump over it.
Speaker 1: You know. So, for example, let's say that right now,
Speaker 1: as you're speaking, something over your right shoulder is itching you,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you feel like it's biting you. Well, very quickly, yeah,
Speaker 1: well very prickly. You'll take your left hand, you'll go
Speaker 1: to that spot. You'll you'll itch it, you'll scratch it,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll shoot it away. But just think about that moment.
Speaker 1: How did your hand know where to go? How did
Speaker 1: you find that exact spot to scratch? How did it
Speaker 1: know when to stop scratching?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the question is why does my brain
Speaker 2: distract me away from what's going on that I need
Speaker 2: to like focus on a little dot my on my shoulder,
Speaker 2: because you know, you and I are looking at each
Speaker 2: other right now while were doing this recording, and the
Speaker 2: thing that's just made me hate doing is watching back.
Speaker 2: It's like all these things ticks and movements and scratches
Speaker 2: and things that I have while I'm having a conversation
Speaker 2: with someone. So it's you know, is that part of
Speaker 2: the electricity that distracts me away from it as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So look, the average human being, a male, you know,
Speaker 1: like five eight, one hundred and fifty five pounds, has
Speaker 1: anywhere between I don't know, thirty to thirty five miles
Speaker 1: miles of nerves in their body. Every part of your
Speaker 1: physical body, your anatomy is in constant communication with your brain.
Speaker 1: You need to know if something' is itching you, if
Speaker 1: it's getting too cold or too hot, or or uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or all those kinds of things. And so part of
Speaker 1: our distraction is that when we you know, when all
Speaker 1: this information is going to the brain, we lose focus
Speaker 1: of what's happening now. I don't know if that's the
Speaker 1: bigger distraction. I think the bigger distraction is the world
Speaker 1: that we found ourselves in, where our devices now are
Speaker 1: giving us so much stimuli. Our brains are not designed.
Speaker 1: We talked about this three years ago, but our brains
Speaker 1: are not designed to consume this much volume of stimulation.
Speaker 1: So if I see even a ten second video, for example,
Speaker 1: I mean my brain has to interpret that, and it's
Speaker 1: interpreting that using lots of parts of our brain and
Speaker 1: so you know, our hippocampus, for example, is our memory.
Speaker 1: It gives context to what's going on. It alerts us
Speaker 1: that's nice, that's not nice, I'm angry, that's that's that
Speaker 1: makes me feel good. It you know, produces all of
Speaker 1: these you know, neurotransmitters and homones and and chemicals that
Speaker 1: are going on in the brain. So it's becoming I've
Speaker 1: said this, it's we're living a time reread now where
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever been easier to be physically healthy.
Speaker 1: Like we can track so many buyer markers, our nutrition.
Speaker 1: There's so much high quality information of what we need
Speaker 1: to do to be physically healthy. Yet I don't believe
Speaker 1: in the history of our existence that it's ever been
Speaker 1: harder to be mentally healthy, just because there's so much garbage.
Speaker 1: There's so much stimulation in our brains that it's, you know,
Speaker 1: all of our good you know, values like empathy and
Speaker 1: compassion and kindness and listening skills, they're all getting compromised,
Speaker 1: not because we've suddenly become bad people or but because
Speaker 1: our brain is competing. It's competing between being present and
Speaker 1: noticing a frown on someone's face and say, oh, you okay,
Speaker 1: versus replaying the ten things that you have to do
Speaker 1: as soon as you get done with the conversation or
Speaker 1: before or after or tomorrow or yesterday. So in non
Speaker 1: reactionary sports like golf, oh my goodness, it's even a
Speaker 1: bigger challenge, rightow.
Speaker 2: So is your expertise and your thesis for your PhD
Speaker 2: was the brain in athletics in sports?
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no no. So all that
Speaker 1: came just in the last ten years you so think of.
Speaker 1: So around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen is when I started
Speaker 1: to look into the brain, right, So this was almost
Speaker 1: ten years after I'd already got my doctorate. So this
Speaker 1: was new technology. The reason I did not get my
Speaker 1: doctorate in neuroscience is because almost all of the programs,
Speaker 1: matter of fact, even today, are clinically based. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at serotonin levels to reduce stress or you know, to
Speaker 1: you know, almost every malaise about the brain is a
Speaker 1: target for a drug, right, And so a lot of
Speaker 1: these doctoral programs are funded by pharmaceutical companies and research
Speaker 1: and grants. They're designed to come up with some cure.
Speaker 1: And that's good, that's not a bad thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: judging that. But again, where is the money to be
Speaker 1: made by teaching someone how to get to ten herts
Speaker 1: without using anything? Like if I just taught you a neurohak,
Speaker 1: you know, like what we did last time. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, we can do one right now. So let's
Speaker 1: just do one right now. I want you to count.
Speaker 1: Don't start until I say go right. I want you
Speaker 1: to count from one to ten as fast as you can,
Speaker 1: and then do a pop and then go from ten
Speaker 1: to nine as slow as you can.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, one to three, four, five, six, seventy nine, ten, ten,
Speaker 2: nine eight seven six five four three two one.
Speaker 1: There you go. That is a neurohak. If I were
Speaker 1: to ask you how you felt going from one to ten,
Speaker 1: you'd say something like very fast, very agitated. But how
Speaker 1: did you feel like going from ten to nine slowly?
Speaker 2: Well, you made it easier. I'm looking right into your eyes.
Speaker 2: It was it definitely. I felt as I got lower,
Speaker 2: I definitely felt calmer.
Speaker 1: There you go. So that label that you just gave calmer,
Speaker 1: you are describing a low frequency. Now did you need
Speaker 1: any medication for that? You buy any drugs?
Speaker 2: No, not in the last minutes or so. But I'm
Speaker 2: highly medicated.
Speaker 1: That's okay, no, But my point is that studying the
Speaker 1: brain and coming up with these non evasive techniques, and
Speaker 1: you know, our answers used to do something like that,
Speaker 1: breathing techniques and those kinds of things. But technology now
Speaker 1: allows us to look into the brain and say, okay,
Speaker 1: how can you get somebody to that magical ten hurts
Speaker 1: using other forms? And you can by trial and error,
Speaker 1: like that technique that I just did with you, that
Speaker 1: ten fast and ten slow, that wasn't random. We did
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of these scans to see, okay, which
Speaker 1: ones allow most people to get to that ten hertz
Speaker 1: and you'll be in that calm state, not permanently for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day, but at least for the
Speaker 1: next few minutes. And again in that calm state, two
Speaker 1: magical things are going to happen. Number One, your ability
Speaker 1: to access your own inventory brain functionality. Remember an article
Speaker 1: that you read, a video that you saw, a conversation
Speaker 1: that you had. Make your conversation richer, make you human
Speaker 1: experience richer by you know, inventoring what's in your brain.
Speaker 1: And the second thing, like I said, is just amplification
Speaker 1: of your senses. After you did that slow, countdown, and
Speaker 1: you ate something, I guarantee you taste more of it
Speaker 1: because that traffic is gone. So this model, I think
Speaker 1: is a model that I am advocating, is that all
Speaker 1: the traditional wellness techniques like yoga and meditation and mindfulness
Speaker 1: and working out and cooking and going for a walk
Speaker 1: and listening to music. These are wonderful things to do
Speaker 1: and people should do them and I do them every day,
Speaker 1: but they're not things that you can do on the go.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's our mental wellness is based
Speaker 1: on how can we fix things as they're happening. So
Speaker 1: I call it when the brain spikes. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if I started yelling at you right now, if I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Fred, you're one of the worst people
Speaker 1: I've ever met. This is horrible blah blah blah, And
Speaker 1: obviously I'm joking here, But if I meant that and
Speaker 1: you were like, oh my god, this is going awful
Speaker 1: in that moment, in that unpredicted moment of stress, you
Speaker 1: could do that count up and countdown and your response
Speaker 1: to my unfair characterization of what's happening would be better.
Speaker 1: You would have a response before, but you would say, ah,
Speaker 1: let me say this, let me say that, let me
Speaker 1: do it in this way. So this sort of fix
Speaker 1: it as you go model is what we as human
Speaker 1: beings need, but in golf it's also something that we
Speaker 1: can do. I don't have to be perfect three minutes
Speaker 1: before I make a putt, but if I'm ten seconds
Speaker 1: before making a putt and I can feel my brain saying,
Speaker 1: don't leave it short, don't need it too hard. Oh
Speaker 1: I just missed the last one I got to make this.
Speaker 1: That's a clue that Oh my gosh, now my frequency
Speaker 1: is higher. So in that moment, what options do you have?
Speaker 1: What options does the golf I have? Ye? I mean
Speaker 1: you could say, start your routine again, but how many
Speaker 1: times are you going to do that? Right? So these
Speaker 1: neural hacks, these techniques of getting that frequency down, not permanently,
Speaker 1: but long enough to execute the next thirty sixty ninety
Speaker 1: three four minutes to the best of your ability, is
Speaker 1: really the key, both on the golf course for athletic performance,
Speaker 1: but also in life.
Speaker 2: Playing golf gives us a great opportunity between shots to
Speaker 2: utilize these neural hacks. Is that a way to focus
Speaker 2: on this, is that a way to take advantage.
Speaker 1: Of this absolutely. So let me dig into something that
Speaker 1: I talked about quite a good bit in this new book.
Speaker 1: So as you know I have. This book came out
Speaker 1: back in May. The name of the book is Your Brains.
Speaker 1: Your Brain Swings Every Club. But I have a whole
Speaker 1: chapter on wait times. So for example, if you're on
Speaker 1: the putting green and you're playing with a foursome or
Speaker 1: a twosome, you know, and you're waiting for your turn
Speaker 1: to put, the overwhelming majority of golfers are going to
Speaker 1: watch the other player putt. And I will tell you
Speaker 1: that that is garbage input for your brain. Of what
Speaker 1: value is that information to you? You know, you're watching
Speaker 1: someone go through their routine. You're you're judging them, you're
Speaker 1: analyzing them. You know. Now, unless that put is identical
Speaker 1: to your line, you know, we're just, without even thinking
Speaker 1: about it, looking at somebody else that time. If you
Speaker 1: repurposed it and did not look at the at your
Speaker 1: fellow competitor, and use these nerraks so that by the
Speaker 1: time that you started your routine, that electricity was as
Speaker 1: low as possible, right, give you a chance. So I
Speaker 1: talked about this in my Burke where in my opinion.
Speaker 1: The reason golf in general, but putting in particular is
Speaker 1: the hardest, the hardest target sport in the world is
Speaker 1: because your eyes are not on it. Like in what
Speaker 1: other sport are you trying to be so accurate? Like
Speaker 1: it's a four and a half inch target, but you're
Speaker 1: not looking at it. That means that your brain needs
Speaker 1: space that when it looks back down at the ball
Speaker 1: after your last look at the hole or whatever your
Speaker 1: target is, it needs low frequency, it needs space, It
Speaker 1: needs less traffic to be able to remember where the
Speaker 1: ball is going to go because you're not looking at it.
Speaker 1: So wait times in golf is one of the largest
Speaker 1: untapped opportunities. You know, is why you're looking at somebody
Speaker 1: else swing a club. It's of no value to you
Speaker 1: now if you're playing casually and you're making fun of
Speaker 1: somebody else with your buddies and drinking, you know by
Speaker 1: all means. But if you want a higher outcome, if
Speaker 1: you want a better motor output out of yourself, you've
Speaker 1: got to use your way times as a countdown to
Speaker 1: your preshot routine and get that electricity down. Get it
Speaker 1: down by using techniques like the one that I just
Speaker 1: showed you.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is really remarkable stuff. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go on to a different because I've been listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast lately and I'm just absolutely curious about this.
Speaker 2: If this has crossed your path with the electricity in
Speaker 2: the brain telepathy, Yeah, I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 2: about this podcast called the Telepathy Tapes or if you
Speaker 2: listen to it.
Speaker 1: I have not, but I have a general sense of it.
Speaker 2: No, check into it. It's absolutely fascinating. It's a woman
Speaker 2: who's a documentary filmmaker and she has kind of discovered
Speaker 2: and getting confirmation over and over and over again and
Speaker 2: surprising everyone that did it that nonverbal autistic people communicate
Speaker 2: through telepathy not only to each other, but to people
Speaker 2: that are close to them like their parents, and the
Speaker 2: parents were all, you know, they wouldn't admit it to anybody.
Speaker 2: It's like, I, you know, I can't tell anyone that
Speaker 2: this is going on, but I really think my child
Speaker 2: is reading my mind and then they're hearing other people
Speaker 2: going through the same thing. And I'm just curious where
Speaker 2: the electricity might be. If you know anything, I'm way
Speaker 2: off on this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is a topic that is a little
Speaker 1: bit outside of my area.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. No, no, no, no no, but I highly recommend
Speaker 2: to everyone check out the telepathy tape.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah no. But what I will tell you
Speaker 1: is that you know, well over ninety percent of how
Speaker 1: our brain interprets communication from another human being is nonverbal.
Speaker 1: To begin with, it's not verbal. Our eyes are constantly
Speaker 1: scanning literally every feature in somebody else's face, especially chest
Speaker 1: and above, but the whole body. Our auditory input is
Speaker 1: constantly scanning your tone, your volume, your enunciation, all those
Speaker 1: kinds of things, because it wants to give meaning and
Speaker 1: context whether it's something is a threat or not. So
Speaker 1: our sensory cortex in the human brain is literally right
Speaker 1: next to the hippocampus, which is our hard drive. In
Speaker 1: other words, the input that we're getting, you know, the
Speaker 1: nonverbal input, is right next to the place where the
Speaker 1: inventory is there for us to make sense of it.
Speaker 1: So if you want to understand something and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: let me go google this, So you got to Google
Speaker 1: and you type it in, well, Google's got to go
Speaker 1: and search all the web to do give you a
Speaker 1: good answer as to what it is. This means our
Speaker 1: brain does something very similar only Obviously we don't go
Speaker 1: to the Internet, and we don't go to Google, but
Speaker 1: we're going to our hard drive, right, So I think
Speaker 1: they're phenomenon out there that we don't understand, so we
Speaker 1: give it a label that we use. But electricity needs
Speaker 1: a electricity. I mean, my first undergraduate degree is in physics.
Speaker 1: I understand how electricity enforced works, but it needs a
Speaker 1: medium to travel. Electricity cannot travel sort of wirelessly. You know,
Speaker 1: it's got to be some type of a medium. And
Speaker 1: so what we interpret as oh, I can I know
Speaker 1: what they're thinking. But the reason that thought comes into
Speaker 1: our head is because you know, we've taken all of
Speaker 1: these nonverbal cues. We've made sense of it because of
Speaker 1: patterns and those kinds of things. My mother, for example,
Speaker 1: in my own house. She passed away few years ago,
Speaker 1: but my mother was ninety percent deaf. She was completely
Speaker 1: deaf in one ear and she was almost almost almost
Speaker 1: completely deaf on the other ear, and so she couldn't
Speaker 1: hear us. And back then, hearing aids we're not that
Speaker 1: good either. So and she wasn't born deaf, she became
Speaker 1: deaf as an adult. But her ability to look at
Speaker 1: us and you know, without hearing, communicating completely understand how
Speaker 1: we felt, how we thought we were, you know, was stunning,
Speaker 1: Like it was amazing how she would she was so accurate.
Speaker 1: But that's because as a mom, that inventory that she
Speaker 1: had for each one of her seven kids was so high.
Speaker 1: I mean, she basically has been looking at us since
Speaker 1: our first breath. Right, So that's what I mean is that,
Speaker 1: you know, someone could call that, oh, well, she has telepathy.
Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know. I don't think it's that.
Speaker 1: I think it's more that these kinds of people, all
Speaker 1: their sensory input is so high. They're observing every inch
Speaker 1: of a non verbal input into their brain and they
Speaker 1: can ascribe a good inventory to it and make sense
Speaker 1: of it. And so it feels like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I know what they're saying, I know how they're feeling.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, well, yeah, I don't want to go down
Speaker 2: that path because I'm through your curveball that you weren't
Speaker 2: here to discuss, and so I apologize about that. But
Speaker 2: so you've written nine books now, three of them are
Speaker 2: about golf. Why the passion that we all share and
Speaker 2: the fascination of golf For your work.
Speaker 1: Oh what a great question. Oh what a delightful question.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Fred. You know, if you I work with
Speaker 1: athletes and coaches in many sports, and almost to a person,
Speaker 1: the coach or the athlete will say their sport is
Speaker 1: a perfect for life. And I think golf is probably
Speaker 1: one of the more accurate metaphors of life. You know,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's a five hour round of golf,
Speaker 1: so it's an endurance sport, kind of like life is.
Speaker 1: It's a long time to be out there, and you
Speaker 1: have highs and lows in golf, and you know, you
Speaker 1: have time in between, and just like life's events and experiences.
Speaker 1: But it's the ultimate battle between you and you, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, no one's playing defense against you, which is
Speaker 1: also life, you know, like it's really a battle of
Speaker 1: what's happening in my life and how can I navigate
Speaker 1: this challenge or this situation to the best of my ability.
Speaker 1: And because golf is a stationary sport, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm standing over a putt, over a drive, over a wedge,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot easier to study it. I've
Speaker 1: studied basketball players, lacrosse players, soccer players. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of movement going on over there. So they're more difficult
Speaker 1: to study. You know, I have a son that plays
Speaker 1: junior golf and as a dad, he's in college now.
Speaker 1: But as a dad, as you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're a dad, Fred, but you know, we are
Speaker 1: the worst coach that kids are not going to listen
Speaker 1: to us, you know. So I had to figure out
Speaker 1: a lot of backdoor ways to understand my son, to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to help him. And you know, I
Speaker 1: am fascinated that in golf. You know, nobody seems to
Speaker 1: be talking about the fact that what really makes golf
Speaker 1: hard at the end of the day, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is that it is a target sport where your eyes
Speaker 1: are not on the target. That means the role of
Speaker 1: the brain is off the charts. Your brain has to
Speaker 1: have space to recall the target. It has to take
Speaker 1: very good targets that cannot be lost. There's a big
Speaker 1: difference when you say, oh, it's a left cup pot
Speaker 1: versus Oh, it's going to go over that little white
Speaker 1: blade of grass right over there. Those are two targets,
Speaker 1: but in the brain they could not be more different.
Speaker 1: I've measured them both. One is going to play much
Speaker 1: longer in your brain, you know, the one way you
Speaker 1: describe the blade of grass and it's going to go
Speaker 1: over where the other is much more of a technical
Speaker 1: It's a six thirty pot or a left cup pot.
Speaker 1: They're both targets, but one is significantly better than the other.
Speaker 1: And my definition of better is your brain can remember
Speaker 1: it while not looking at it.
Speaker 2: A lot of people think, a lot of golfers think
Speaker 2: that the more I practice, the better I'm going to perform.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious what your research suggests about the quality
Speaker 2: of practice versus the quantity of it, especially from the neuroperspective.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, what a great question. And this has
Speaker 1: been one of the surprises for me really. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it pains me to say this because it is
Speaker 1: such it goes against almost everything that we have been taught,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, practice makes perfect, The more practice,
Speaker 1: the better I get. And you know, especially since two
Speaker 1: thousands since COVID fred, honestly, the number of calls and
Speaker 1: text messages that I've gotten in coaches and athletes from
Speaker 1: every sport that are telling me explicitly, you know, hey, doc,
Speaker 1: like you know, it used to be when we had
Speaker 1: a good practice, we had a good game, not all
Speaker 1: the time, but most of the time, there doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be any correlation at this point between the amount
Speaker 1: of time that you're practicing versus the outcome. Even at
Speaker 1: the tour level. You know, people will be at home
Speaker 1: one week and say, oh, I had played really good,
Speaker 1: I had good practices in They go next week to
Speaker 1: the tournament and they're missing the cut. And so what's
Speaker 1: really happening is what I talked about earlier, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, there's a there's something called coating. Encoding,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is or should be the most important
Speaker 1: part about practice. So just give me a minute here,
Speaker 1: let me walk you through this logic. Sure, let's say
Speaker 1: that you hit one hundred balls right now. I will
Speaker 1: tell you where is that inventory all those balls that
Speaker 1: you just hit, the puts that you made, or the
Speaker 1: chips that you made. And I'll tell you that all
Speaker 1: of that inventory, the value of hitting one hundred balls
Speaker 1: is going to one place, and only one place in
Speaker 1: the entire universe, and that's your brain. It's not going
Speaker 1: to your muscles, because muscles have no memory. It's going
Speaker 1: to your brain. So if I had a great practice,
Speaker 1: right and let's say from ten o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: until twelve noon, I have two wonderful hours of practice.
Speaker 1: If I don't go through a process after that practice
Speaker 1: called encoding to make sure that that inventory is number
Speaker 1: one stored in my brain in such a manner that
Speaker 1: I can retrieve it. In my opinion, the purpose of
Speaker 1: practice should be I'm creating an inventory that I can
Speaker 1: access in competition. What else would you practice?
Speaker 2: Right? So how do we do that?
Speaker 1: Right? So that's called encoding. And so immediately after practice,
Speaker 1: you know, because if at twelve o'clock I'm done, I
Speaker 1: will tell you that whether or not those two hours
Speaker 1: of practice gets stored in your brain or not is
Speaker 1: highly dependent on what happens to you between twelve o'clock
Speaker 1: and the time that you go to bed. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if at two o'clock you get a text message from
Speaker 1: your girlfriend or your boyfriend that says I want to
Speaker 1: break up, all of that inventory is gone. Right. So,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately we live now at a point where the
Speaker 1: only time that the brain is processing the inventory of
Speaker 1: the day is when it's sleeping. So I tell people,
Speaker 1: when you get done with practice, your practice is not over.
Speaker 1: You should not consider your practice over until you have
Speaker 1: recorded what it is that you've done, use a selfie video,
Speaker 1: write it down, and then bring it back up in
Speaker 1: the last thirty minutes before you go to bed. Take
Speaker 1: that inventory and move it back up on the very
Speaker 1: top of the list that you want your brain to
Speaker 1: store at night. Let me go back to the definition
Speaker 1: of practice. The purpose of practice should be that when
Speaker 1: I'm in competition, I can recall what I did. If
Speaker 1: you have a great practice, no matter how many balls
Speaker 1: you hit, and you go to competition and you don't
Speaker 1: remember what you did yesterday or last week, what was
Speaker 1: the value of that practice?
Speaker 2: None?
Speaker 1: So encoding, which I talk about at length. There's a
Speaker 1: whole chapter about this, is that practice without encoding is. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's just one of the things where you say, oh,
Speaker 1: I practiced for the sake of saying I practice, but
Speaker 1: not for the value.
Speaker 2: And so the teachers that talk about muscle memory pounding
Speaker 2: it into you fallacy.
Speaker 1: No such thing. Unfortunately. Now, I think that their intentions
Speaker 1: are good. The more you practice, you're actually building up
Speaker 1: a lot of inventory. But it's a very very inefficient
Speaker 1: way to build the kind of inventory that you want
Speaker 1: to retrieve in competition. So I think coaches say those things, Hey,
Speaker 1: practice practice practice because you know, it's more of a
Speaker 1: work ethic type of a thing. So practice practice practice
Speaker 1: because teams right now are practicing better than they ever have,
Speaker 1: but they're still underperforming. I don't know if, like I said,
Speaker 1: in the last five years, the variance between someone's good
Speaker 1: and someone's bad is getting bigger, it's not getting smaller.
Speaker 1: On any given day, a golfer can shoot a seventy
Speaker 1: two and you know an eighty two. You know, and
Speaker 1: that's because you know when they go play, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on what's happened to them. Because our brains are
Speaker 1: very fluid, we're human beings. We are processing so many
Speaker 1: things about life. If I didn't sleep very well, if
Speaker 1: I didn't eat very well, if I have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a scratch, I'm not pinky finger on my back,
Speaker 1: my brain is going to be distracted in those moments.
Speaker 1: I'm going to need access to all the things that
Speaker 1: I've done in my practice. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: they're these coaches that say practice practice, practice and muscle memory.
Speaker 1: I don't think their intentions are bad. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think the intentions are very good, sure, but they're missing
Speaker 1: the point that you know, the memory is not created
Speaker 1: in the muscles. And think of a quadriplegic, right, a
Speaker 1: quad polegic. Their brain works fine and their body works fine,
Speaker 1: but there's a spinal injury, so there's no transfer of
Speaker 1: that electricity, so they can't move anything. Otherwise, the muscles
Speaker 1: would just move themselves. They wouldn't need the brain to say, oh,
Speaker 1: grab that cup of coffee or move or walk right right.
Speaker 1: So muscles are at the mercy of the brain. The
Speaker 1: brain is the quarterback of life. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think that so much practice could be so much
Speaker 1: more efficient if coaches and athletes learned how to encode
Speaker 1: and build these angrams and grams are these wonderful memories
Speaker 1: that you can easily access.
Speaker 2: So muscle memory is a myth. Are are there other
Speaker 2: myths that you need to debunk for the recreational golfer
Speaker 2: to get out of their minds so they don't a
Speaker 2: big block. One of my favorites is people like, oh,
Speaker 2: I had a great warm up session on the range
Speaker 2: and then I played terrible golf. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: one doesn't have to with the other.
Speaker 1: Right. I will tell you the biggest myth that I
Speaker 1: am trying very hard to debunk, and that is small
Speaker 1: target small myths. That is a myth. And so the
Speaker 1: way that the brain works, it doesn't matter whether the
Speaker 1: target is small or big. It matters whether the target
Speaker 1: is rememberable. Is does the target stand out enough? In
Speaker 1: my head? Is say enough of a contrast? So you know,
Speaker 1: small target, small mess has a nice little cadence to it.
Speaker 1: It sounds good, but you know, small targets are also
Speaker 1: easier to forget, especially if they're far away. Right. So
Speaker 1: what I tell teach people is that a target that
Speaker 1: stands out is the best target because your brain will
Speaker 1: remember it more. If it's a color contrast or a
Speaker 1: shape contrast, or something about it is odd. Those are
Speaker 1: the best targets. Now, there's no rhyme to it. Odd target,
Speaker 1: small mess, like it doesn't rhyme as well as a
Speaker 1: small mess. Sure, I find people looking looking and finding
Speaker 1: something small on a tree leaf and then they look
Speaker 1: back down at the ball. You can't remember that.
Speaker 2: So this is when you're addressing the ball. This is
Speaker 2: when you're at the ball. You look out to the fairway,
Speaker 2: the green, whatever you're looking at. You know, it's like doctor,
Speaker 2: doctor Joe parent recently told us that, you know, the
Speaker 2: idea of aim to a spot, shoot to an area.
Speaker 2: I think I got that right from him. So you
Speaker 2: know he's getting away from the small target small miss concept.
Speaker 2: But you know it's like find a small target, but
Speaker 2: you be happy with an area, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I would I would phrase that differently. I
Speaker 1: would say, look, golf has played over six hundred acres
Speaker 1: or however many acres. It's not like basketball. It's just
Speaker 1: on one court or a soccer field or a baseball field.
Speaker 1: So the ability to look out there in nature and
Speaker 1: find good targets is a wonderful task, and we have
Speaker 1: to do that. In the fallargets are going to be
Speaker 1: different than the spring. You know, if it's cloudy, your
Speaker 1: target's going to be different because certain things you know
Speaker 1: from the sun's reflection. So I try to teach people
Speaker 1: like enjoy the process of looking from a tea box
Speaker 1: to the fairway or the fairway to the green or
Speaker 1: on the green, of searching, lose your eyes and say, okay,
Speaker 1: what can I find over here? Because your ability to
Speaker 1: find good, holdable targets is really the key. And I
Speaker 1: don't know whether I care whether it's a big or small,
Speaker 1: or you know, a general area. Just find something that
Speaker 1: is contrasting enough that your brain can remember. I will
Speaker 1: say this again. I'll say this again. Forgive me, Fred,
Speaker 1: Please forgive me.
Speaker 2: Not a problem.
Speaker 1: What makes goff the most difficult target sport of all
Speaker 1: is that your eyes are not on the target. They're
Speaker 1: down at the ball, right, So we have to give
Speaker 1: the brain something out there that it can recall. And
Speaker 1: when people have a good target playing in their brain,
Speaker 1: I find something magical happens. I find that suddenly they
Speaker 1: have the most amazing tempo. They may not hit perfect shots,
Speaker 1: but their dispersion becomes a lot smaller.
Speaker 2: Well, they may not get the best results exactly, but
Speaker 2: you're swinging the feel of it. That what you're trying
Speaker 2: to accomplish in the contact of the ball, But afterwards.
Speaker 1: It's that's the power of these targets. There's a chapter
Speaker 1: in the book where I talk about grid neurons, the
Speaker 1: person that discovered it won a Nobel Prize for it,
Speaker 1: and what she essentially discovered. And we can do this
Speaker 1: very quickly. Right, So let me ask you a question. Okay, ready,
Speaker 1: how far how far are you from? Go ahead.
Speaker 2: From? And now I have to ask you from what?
Speaker 1: Okay? All right, now let me ask you another question. Okay,
Speaker 1: how far are you from New York City?
Speaker 2: Thousands of miles?
Speaker 1: Okay? And where are you right now?
Speaker 2: Northern California?
Speaker 1: Okay? Perfect? Now, think of the difference between those two questions.
Speaker 1: The first one, I said, how far are you from?
Speaker 1: And I didn't give you a destination? And you're like,
Speaker 1: what's it talking about? Where do I go? Up? Down?
Speaker 1: But as soon as I said new York City, did
Speaker 1: you not draw a line kind of going east and
Speaker 1: kind of doing that?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Exactly. Those are great neurons. Great neurons were activated. Great
Speaker 1: is a destination. It creates a scale in your brain,
Speaker 1: and scale is what creates sequencing because the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of motor sequencing is to create force. The reason I
Speaker 1: go back is so that I can generate amount of
Speaker 1: force to apply it to a ball to send it
Speaker 1: to a destination. So this is why targets are so
Speaker 1: important involved because number one, you're not looking at it.
Speaker 1: Whereas if I'm Steph Curry and I'm shooting a basket,
Speaker 1: the basket is right there, I see it. You know,
Speaker 1: if I have a soccer ball in front of me,
Speaker 1: I see the ball. I can quickly in my peripheral
Speaker 1: vision see generally where the ball is going to go.
Speaker 1: Not so in golf. This is why the role of
Speaker 1: the brain is so important in golf is because we've
Speaker 1: got to create the state where there's space in the
Speaker 1: brain to recall that grit neuron, that target, which then
Speaker 1: is the glue to your motor sequencing.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. This has been so interesting and really helpful, Doctor Justice.
Speaker 2: Please tell us the name of the new book and
Speaker 2: the other golf books that you have.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, Thank you again for having me.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: The name of the book is called Your Brain Swings
Speaker 1: Every Club. It's available on Amazon. There's an ebook. There's
Speaker 1: also an audiobook, so however you like to consume information.
Speaker 1: There have been lots of people that I collaborate with.
Speaker 1: I have chapters where other coaches have participated in. Now
Speaker 1: Brad Faxon was kind enough to write the forward to
Speaker 1: the book. I have so much respect for him and
Speaker 1: so many other people. So it's a collaborative work and
Speaker 1: it was a privilege to sort of write it with
Speaker 1: all of these people. The other two golf books are
Speaker 1: Golf EQ and and Jerra Gough this book is relatively short,
Speaker 1: and that was intentional. I didn't want to put a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, uh stuff out there. I want
Speaker 1: to kind of get to the point very quickly, and
Speaker 1: really my goal was to give people a language to
Speaker 1: understand the electricity in the brain and the role that
Speaker 1: it plays in motor function and life.
Speaker 2: And websites. How do we find you online to learn more?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Jira goof at g y r a golf
Speaker 1: dot com is the website. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: just gurgle me my social media handles, I have a
Speaker 1: guy that does that for me. I'm too old, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but you know at easy Justice or doctor Easy Justice.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of good content out there, but
Speaker 1: so please follow me. I was trying to put something good,
Speaker 1: good out there.
Speaker 2: Great and it's eyes easy why easy Justice, like you
Speaker 2: would think j U s t I ce Doctor Justice.
Speaker 2: This has been fascinating. I loved it. Really glad that
Speaker 2: you shared this with us and with other podcasters. I'm
Speaker 2: not so happy about that, but I'm not going to
Speaker 2: ask for an exclusive.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Fred. You've been awesome. You're awesome the last time.
Speaker 1: You're awesome. Now. Congratulations by the way, on passing a
Speaker 1: thousand episodes, and thank you for all that you do
Speaker 1: to bring all these wonderful people together and share information
Speaker 1: and knowledge for your fans.