Hello to all golfers!
How many times has our mind complicated the round and downgrade our game…?
Don’t worry, since today I am going to give you some useful tips to manage this pretty mental game which is golf.
And I am not alone, but the sports psychologist Walter Bolumar Cobo (www.walterbolumar.es) will accompany me.
Walter began his career looking after tennis players, and quickly realized that golfers needed the same mental tools and consequent help from a professional in order to improve their performance on the course.
He has been dedicating himself to the world of golf for the last 4 years, working with the guys from UGPM (golf program for university students), and working with different players, both professional and amateur. As an amateur, he has been practicing for about 15 years and enjoying this sport every day, helped by his knowledge.
How to plan a training?
Walter: It must be said that each training session is personalized, studying all the details and objectives, that is, we must adapt to the player, and not the other way around.
That said, if it is true that a good training session should consist of a time to practice technique and another time to practice performance, in which the player will measure himself in order to get to know himself and to have parameters that will serve as a guide improvement in training and competition.
Today, planning is 20% technical and 80% performance.
In the performance part I use percentages, goals, moments of pressure to take the player to the closest point of the competition. A training session will never carry the mental load of a competition, but you can create training sessions that bring the player closer to feeling and learning how to manage those crucial moments.
What kind of statistics does it analyze and how to help the player?
Walter: This is a pretty big world, in which everything a player needs can be delved into. The key is to find which numbers will make the player upgrade their golf.
I always start from a base; a player improves whenever his average number of shots improves, and I believe that we all have it quite clear. The main thing is to know what numbers you must improve to boost that average number of shots. For instance, from the tee, what is more significant? Taking lanes, having more distance, or not having penalties…?
This will depend on each player and how they develop their game during the competition, but even more essential is the transfer of those numbers to training so that they have a positive impact on future competitions.
What I have so clear is that statistics are key tools to achieve any improvement.
How to develop attention to training and what are the main techniques?
Walter: The key to producing satisfactory workouts is having a goal. The player must know that what he is doing is generating a result, as well as when he plays in a competition.
Each ball that he hits needs to have a meaning, it has to be worth enough… or is it that in a competition not all of them are worth? Besides, another crucial point is that the player has to be involved in training, he should be part of that planning; this way he will consider the training a choice but not an obligation.
Every forced workout is a missed workout.
As for the strategy during the game, the basis for generating it efficiently is self-knowledge. A player must know what he is capable of, how many meters wide he needs to put a driver in play, what dispersion he has at each distance…
Strategy is made of numbers, repetition, and optimization of the same. A vicious circle.
All right golfers, you already know many things to raise your training to a more conscious and measurable level.
A positive match is not by chance; it’s planning, taking notice and conscious training.
“Feel better, play better”
¡Good golf!
