Do you stand over EVERY shot running down a mental checklist of the 24 basic swing components and their variations? I promise you that tour players don’t, which is why they are able to look and swing so confidently.

Regardless of your skill level, here is the key to lower scores. Know how to train your golf swing, and then know how to trust it.

The concept of training vs. trusting is not a new one. It’s the basis sports psychology and motor learning concepts (how your mind and body learns, develops and refines a complex motor pattern of movement). Sports psychologists have known for a long time that at the top levels of professional golf, it’s not as much a golfer’s physical abilities as his or her mental skills that separate the best of the best. Unfortunately, most golfers NEVER leave the stage of training on the golf course. That means that they will never free up their bodies to accomplish the swings that their bodies are truly capable of!

The Training Mentality

The Training Mentality is a hypersensitive level of awareness dedicated to a particular facet of your present stroke pattern that is incorrect or faulty. It could be caused by a lesson from a teaching professional, a fellow golfer’s comment about your swing or maybe even your own internal feelings of what is causing your swing to do weird things. Therefore, you will now enter into the training mode where you are very cognizant of what you feel and sense in your golf swing. Staying in the Training Mode means only one thing — every time you step up to the ball either on the range or on the course your thoughts are zoned in on your mechanics. You are paralyzed by over-analysis!

As things progress further you continue to focus more heavily on this aspect of your swing. You practice on the range longer, and stand over every shot consumed with 400 swing thoughts — not a very nice way to spend the day! Now, I am NOT telling you to overlook what you feel and hear, but you must know when to turn those thoughts off and on. When you are in a lesson or practicing a particular swing mechanic, you must be very focused and over-sensitive about the move you are trying to change. After all, it is the training mode.

After a lesson, my students are highly focused on changing their faulty move(s) when I show them how it will improve their game. But I prescribe a different approach than most teachers to help my students improve at the quickest pace thanks to my knowledge of the training vs. trusting mindset. I like to have them leave the Training Mode on the range and here’s how!

1. You MUST change visual perceptions into physical feelings through mirror work. Use a mirror to compare your old move to the new one. What do you feel? This is what you are looking for on the range. If you hit 10,000 balls right after your lesson without gaining this feeling of old versus new, how many repetitions are going to be correct? What mirror work does is establish a new “feeling” so on the range you can make a high number of CORRECT repetitions, not just a bunch of swings.
2. After you establish the correct feelings of how the new move is to affect you sensations, then start with SMALL swings and work your way up. Take it from me, you cannot fix swing flaws effectively with a driver in your hand right at first. Use your wedge and partial swings. When and ONLY when you can do it every time with a wedge should you move up to a less lofted club. Don’t beat your head into the ground. Start slow and do it right, because one more ball you hit incorrectly is just one more you will have to hit correctly to rid yourself of your old habit!
3. Now that you have worked yourself up to full swings, it is time to go to the course. For all those people who must think about something over the ball (we’ll get to that trusting mentality shortly) this will help you. Take two practice swings per shot on the course thinking about all the mechanical thoughts you need to on the first one. On the second one, think of only the feeling and visualization of where you want the ball to end up (not where you don’t want to go). On the third swing, stand over the ball prepared to hit it with a free mind and TRUST it and let it happen!

These are the stages that I tell all my students to go through from the best professionals on Tour to the beginner golfer. It never varies. How can you trust your swing when it causes you to hit shots all over the place, you might ask? Well, that is an interesting point, but let’s discuss it in our Trusting Mentality section.

The Trusting Mentality

After training and focusing extra hard on changing a swing flaw, there comes a time when you have to trust what you have done on the range and in front of the mirror! You must allow your body to react in the new manner naturally. That is why you practice and pay attention to the new feelings your swing gives you. You take these conscious feelings and manipulations of new swing motions and through lessons and proper practice (described above) you MUST move them into your subconscious. Then you can play the game as it was meant to be played (without 4,000 swing thoughts).

Unfortunately, most people never achieve this trusting mindset because of their over-analytical state. When people ask me to describe this sensation to them I usually cite two impacting examples:

1. If I put a 10-foot 2-by-6 flat on the floor and told you to walk across it, you would have no trouble at all. If I placed it 50 feet in the air, all of a sudden after years and years of walking you would suddenly forget how to put one foot in front of the other! Why does this happen? People lose the Trusting Mentality necessary to walk across that plank. By thinking about how to walk, people interfere with their bodies’ natural homeostatic mechanisms that they use for balance. Guess what happens next? Another one bites the dust. It is the same on the golf course — after working on a new motion in the Training Mode, allow yourself to slip back to the Trusting Mode when you are on the course. You do this in stages by using small partial swings with a high percentage of successful repetitions, building your way slowly up to full swings. My theory is that if you cannot hit small shots the proper way, then it will be impossible to move hit larger shots the proper way. Start small until you are successful in implementing the new move! If the ball goes sideways, it only tells you that you need more practice on the range and in your mirror. You cannot expect to have any shot consistency if your mental checklist includes several hundred things!
2. My final example of trusting comes from everyone’s experience of hitting balls or putting while talking with one of your friends. It’s then that something weird can happen. Every shot is effortless and pure. Why does this happen? For a brief time, you are allowing your body to do what is natural for it to do, propelling the ball at your target without allowing your mind to tell you how to do it! Your body knows how to swing if you will let it work thought-free. It’s just your mind intercepting the muscles’ natural motions on the big shots (you know, trying to kill the ball for no reasons whatsoever), the stigma of trying to hit long irons in the air off a tight lie, trying not to chunk the ball into the pond on No. 8, and so on. This trust must be gained slowly and in stages; if not you will never reach the level of shot purity that you can. That is a promise from me!

You don’t have to “be the ball,” but freeing your mind of swing thoughts after working on a new swing motion can result in the same level of golf nirvana.  

If you don’t believe in this idea, I will give you one test. Hit 50 balls with your 5-iron and consciously think during the swings about your mechanics and how to make your swing correct during that full shot. I bet you hit 80 percent of those balls horribly unsolid and offline.

Now, wear your iPod and playing soothing slow music and hit the same number of balls allowing your mind to only do one thing be free of any thoughts. I’ll bet you hit a far greater percentage of those shots better and tension free! Any teaching professional will tell you that they do not want you to focus on too many things on the course. That is what the range is for. The practice facility is a conscious place for thought and swing mechanic experiments. The course is for getting the ball into the hole however it takes regardless if it’s pretty or not!

I teach my students to identify their problems and solve them objectively though mirror work, follow-up lessons and proper efficient practice. My goal is not tie my students’ minds up in knots on the golf course, because if you do, it is you own fault. I firmly advocate keeping the mind free and thinking simple on the golf course. Leave mechanics on the practice facility and for your mirror!