Embark on a transformative journey with us, Justin Tang and Jesse Perryman, as we unveil the secrets to a more holistic golf game that melds the physical finesse of swings with the subtle art of mental mastery. This year, we're digging into the core principles that make all the difference on the golf course, dissecting the dynamics of ball-then-divot contact, and celebrating the unique anatomy of each golfer. We're also peeling back the layers of the mental game, shining a light on internal narratives, and the profound impact of surrendering to the process.
We're not just talking about another year of typical golf instruction; we're ushering in an era of personalized coaching that gets to the heart of what makes you tick on the course. From discussing the ground-breaking insights of EA Tischler to Dr. David Wright's innovative approaches, we're tapping into a network of experts who've revolutionized the game. And it's not all swing mechanics; we're diving deep into the essential mental and emotional components, talking visualization, stories we spin in our heads, and the art of staying present amidst the drive to improve.
Finally, we celebrate the shared journey of learning and growth within our vibrant community of golf enthusiasts. We're not just flag hunters; we're wisdom gatherers, drawing from the expertise of greats like Butch Harmon and the inquisitive minds of tour players and listeners alike. This is a tribute to the joys of the game, the quest for mastery, and the personal evolution that happens when you dare to step outside your comfort zone and onto the fairway of progress. Join us for a year of breakthroughs and camaraderie on the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast.
Embark on a transformative journey with us, Justin Tang and Jesse Perryman, as we unveil the secrets to a more holistic golf game that melds the physical finesse of swings with the subtle art of mental mastery. This year, we're digging into the core principles that make all the difference on the golf course, dissecting the dynamics of ball-then-divot contact, and celebrating the unique anatomy of each golfer. We're also peeling back the layers of the mental game, shining a light on internal narratives, and the profound impact of surrendering to the process.
We're not just talking about another year of typical golf instruction; we're ushering in an era of personalized coaching that gets to the heart of what makes you tick on the course. From discussing the ground-breaking insights of EA Tischler to Dr. David Wright's innovative approaches, we're tapping into a network of experts who've revolutionized the game. And it's not all swing mechanics; we're diving deep into the essential mental and emotional components, talking visualization, stories we spin in our heads, and the art of staying present amidst the drive to improve.
Finally, we celebrate the shared journey of learning and growth within our vibrant community of golf enthusiasts. We're not just flag hunters; we're wisdom gatherers, drawing from the expertise of greats like Butch Harmon and the inquisitive minds of tour players and listeners alike. This is a tribute to the joys of the game, the quest for mastery, and the personal evolution that happens when you dare to step outside your comfort zone and onto the fairway of progress. Join us for a year of breakthroughs and camaraderie on the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast.
Hello folks, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, On behalf of myself and Justin Tang, my brother from another mother over in Singapore, the instructor extraordinaire at the Tan Ameri Golf Club. Welcome you to 2024. We are blessed to have had a fantastic 2023. I'm glad that we're putting some great information out there via great instructors and great professionals in their field that we're willing to give of their time to help enlighten all of us get better at this game. And 2024 is going to be much the same. Maybe we're going to go a little bit deeper. The intention is to uncover every rock and stone as it relates to golf improvement. So this very first episode of this year is just Justin and myself having a conversation that we always do when we speak offline. We talk about the myriad of ways to get better and the things that we think are helpful and the things that we think aren't helpful, and we both are in agreement that there are some paradigms that need to shift how we learn, how to play this game and how we view it and hence the enjoyment factor. At whatever level that you're currently at, it is absolutely our intention to help you to get better, to help you to grow, help you to expand your consciousness, your golf consciousness and, quite frankly, to help play the best golf that you can possibly play by doing what we're doing. So, leading into this year, I really felt that Justin and I just had to put what we normally talk about on tape, and we certainly did, and I guarantee you're not going to be disappointed with what Justin has to say. This is a very enlightened man when it comes to golf instruction, when it comes to the holistic approach that we both wholeheartedly agree in, and many others. Justin himself is one of the greatest students I've ever known and I've ever bore witness to His capacity and his willingness to learn quite frankly gives me so much hope and faith in the future of where this game is going, because I know that Justin and many others are going to be leading the way and passing the torch down to the next generation so that we can learn maybe a little bit better. Maybe the average handicap doesn't have to be X. So maybe there are people that are playing beneath what they can play due to lack of information, and we hope to at least change the paradigm with all of this and going into the mental, the emotional, the physical, the spiritual part of it, the subconscious part of it, is a big intention that we have for 2024 and beyond, because we believe that there are X factors that just all of the grades knew and even spoke about, quite frankly, and we aim to go down that rabbit hole and examine that, those particular phenomenon, with great enthusiasm.
Speaker 1:So, once again, best way to reach Justin and I, both on Instagram Justin is at Elite Golf Swing and I am at Flag Hunters Golf Pod. All one word for both Justin Tang and Jesse Perryman. And, as an aside to those who know, I am starting my own little consulting gig. I'm going to help you get out of any rabbit hole that you are in and I'm going to help to counsel and advise you to, based on a conversation, maybe I can prescribe at least an instructor or get you in contact with an instructor that will help you to get better. And I also come from my own area of expertise. It's a little bit different than Justin, but on the other hand, I know how to play the game and I know how to help advise somebody, take those steps to get them to play better as well. So that also is. You can reach me either way easiest at Flag Hunters Golf Pod and then on my email at JP5150VH at gmailcom. Once again, jp5150vh at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Cheers everybody, it's going to be a great 2024. On behalf of Justin and myself, we really appreciate and thank you for listening and supporting us. And once again, before I forget, which I always tend to do, please rate, review and subscribe on any of the directories. It is very helpful with our feedback and trying to grow the show and get the good word out and get the wisdom out. Cheers to you, cheers to 2024, and have a great rest of the week. Hello and welcome once again to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast with my brother from another mother co-host, one of the great teachers that is in Singapore where it's nice and warm, and I'm here in Northern California right now where it's kind of cold and rainy. We are in winter and we have a new, brand new year, 2024. Justin, happy new year to you, brother.
Speaker 2:Happy new year and to all of our loyal listeners and supporters.
Speaker 1:That's right, and we also want to give a special shout out to our sponsors, taylormade and Adidas. Shout out to them. Shout out to TaylorMade for sending me a stealth 2-3 wood. Thank you, it was great. I like it a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and looking forward to the new woods that's coming up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So here we are, pal. We got a brand new year upon us, lots to contemplate, lots to consider.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so typically a lot of fitness centers and gyms around the world. They make most of their profits in January and February, largely because of the guilt effect. A lot of people have been eating too much over the holiday season, beginning from Thanksgiving all the way to Christmas, and then they go, hey, I better sign up for a membership to lose all the weight that I've gained. But guess what, come February and March, the crowds in the gym they thin out and it's only the regulars there, and I think there's a lesson right there for us. So it's the whole point of sticking to our resolutions. It's about having a long-term outlook, a long-term plan, and you begin with the end in mind and you say, hey, if I project, if I'm in Thanksgiving and I project myself out to February, march, I don't want to have that kind of regret. What actions do I take to make me feel that way? So it actually starts from today.
Speaker 2:So the second gen, third gen, depending on where you are in the world, if I look forward in six months and say, hey, this is where I want my golf game to be, how do I feel about it? And then I start thinking about the actions that will make me feel that way, if that makes sense. So I say, hey, I want to shoot. Call it 80 or 70, break path. Take a look at my string, take a look at my game. Okay, these are the deficient areas. I've got to make these steps to get to where I want to be. Realistic ones, realistic plans in terms of schedule, in terms of access to coaches. Does my coach have the technical proficiency to know how to bring me to where I want to be? So that's my opening thoughts on the new year.
Speaker 1:Very good, very good opening thoughts, justin. I agree, I think that's what helped me the most when I sought out Bradley Hughes and John Erickson, when I wanted to look forward to the time I was approaching playing senior golf and it was from the end how I wanted to come into being competitive. And it really provided and it has provided a lot of motivation for me, because I would like to have command over my golf ball. I would like to tighten the bolts, so to speak, and have my misses be narrower. It is a game of mistakes, so we want to minimize mistakes if we can to the best of our ability. And that's such a great thought what you just said. I mean that end of itself. Right, there is a great thing for folks to contemplate from the end what do you see? How do you want to see yourself, how do you want to see your game? And just as important, maybe not even more important, is how are you going to show up for yourself playing the game of golf? Are you going to show up from the ego? Are you going to show up from a spirit of competition, maybe a spirit of creativity?
Speaker 1:A lot of the guys and gals out there that play for a living are highly creative. Maybe that's something to think about going into 2024. How do you spark that creativity? It's just with what we were talking about earlier, before we started to record. A lot of people will prepare themselves by hitting ball after ball after ball after ball on the range with the same club, same lie, same one direction. If there's anyone at all, the lie is flat. For most ranges you've got a pretty flat lie. You're setting yourself up in a perfect lie every time. You're not going to be hitting out of divots even though I think that's probably really good practice but you're doing everything not to prepare for actually playing the game. You're just practicing practice.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, as what my coach, chuck Evans, used to say, they're not practicing, they're exercising. There is a difference and there is a lot to unpack in what you just said. In the last two, three minutes you mentioned command of the golf ball. Now, I think a lot of lesser players they don't understand that to have command of the golf ball, you need to have command of the tool that is going to impact the golf ball and you need command of the tool that is in command of the golf club. It's not simply a command of the ball. You need to understand your tool, the golf club of the starters. When you put the sole of the club and the ground, when we go to Roger Dunn's, for example, or to your local golf store, you put the sole of the club on the ground, you will see often 100 out of 100 times, not often times 100 out of 100 times you will see the shaft lean forward, even for a cutter. So that tells us very quickly that that is how the manufacturer wants us to use the club. That's the first thing. And if that's how the manufacturer wants us to use the golf club, if we use it the other way, which is having the shaft leaning away from the target, then it is no different from using a fork to drink soup the improper use of the tool. And then we need to understand how do we get the body to do what is necessary in order for us to use the club correctly. And that's where I think the golf instructor needs to have a very accurate understanding of the anatomy of the body. And more than just anatomy, what are the neurological cues that I have to give my students in order for the body to respond accordingly? It's not just so.
Speaker 2:So a lot of golf coaches are great at talking golf talk. What's golf talk? I'll have a neutral grip, a bar dendrit baseball grip. When you make your back string, your wrist has to cocks. It's got to be on this plane. Don't come over the top. I'll have a full finish. Don't swing too hard, swing in tempo, be rhythmic. All that's golf talk. But what's lacking is how the brain actually learns things, and we spoke about this earlier.
Speaker 2:A lot of golfers, when they go to the range, they get a bucket, 50 balls, 100 balls. They take their sandwich, they start hitting shots. Take a seven iron, they hit 20 shots with it. First five shots, not so great. Next 15,. They're striping it just like a mini 12 pro. So what's going on there is that in the short term they've established a movement pattern, a short term memory. That's why they can stripe it the way they do.
Speaker 2:But when you go on to the golf course, it is anything like that. It is anything but that. You take a driver, you hit your opening tee shot, then you've got Billy slow swing, slow player Then after that you've got Harry and then finally Tommy. Tommy is the worst of them all. So from your opening tee shot to your approach shot, you've got maybe four minutes In between. Guess what? You don't have enough repetition, enough time to establish that shorter memory that you could establish on the driving range. And it comes as no surprise to me if you play your chunk or even shank your approach shot. So one of the key skills that I would encourage our listeners to consider developing is the ability to play while spaced out. Don't spaced out in the high stance, but just go to the range, hit a driver, let two minutes pass, take a seven iron and see whether you can hit a flush shot. If you can't, then what that means is you don't really own your movement pattern. So you've got to practice, just like the field of play requires you to play.
Speaker 1:Well, that's well said, you know. And that leads me to a next question I have for you, justin. Let's just say, a young tour pro comes to you and in this, along this subject, a young tour pro hears you, likes what you have to say, wants to come see you and they say hey, justin, you know, I am a self taught guy. I really don't have a technically proficient swing. And you look at a swing and you go yeah, you know, there's some things there. How can this hypothetical tour player, mini tour player or aspiring professional or any anybody who wants to get better, how do they incorporate a golf swing that is sound, functionally for them in one sense, and then go out on the golf course and then trust it? So how can you build and then trust?
Speaker 2:So the first thing is first right. We don't want to just rely on what our eyes can see, what the video camera tells us. We want to see things that are unseen. So we have a saying that goes like this forces precede motion. So if I want to shift my body weight, it's not just the weight that's moving. Before that, something else needs to happen is transfer pressure forces.
Speaker 2:So with the set mini tour player, I'm going to put him through a battery of test. I'm going to check him out anatomically. Really basic stuff to see is the length of his limbs in relation to his height, which is going to have an impact on how he sets up his swing plane. Check out the length of his own bone, the surface, the humerus. Check things out like the thickness of his chest, flexibility stuff, and from kind of from there you get a very good idea of what his dominant ground forces are for a start, and just by looking at him swing I would have a fairly good guess at his kinematic sequence. Then after that, I'm going to put him on force play. It's going to put him on 3D motion analytics just to confirm if what I'm seeing is actually it, and then from there I would explain to him hey look, this is what optimum looks like Now. Your ground forces are not peaking in the correct sequence, which is lateral, rotational and then vertical, or his kinematic sequence. The spacing between the peaks of the various components are not optimum. But I'm not just for optimizing all these sequences, because there are players that I know who are not optimized in relation to their ground force sequence, like Matt Kutcher, for example. Most players have a majority of the weight on their left foot or the lead side. Matt Kutcher doesn't. But hey, you look at his career earnings. Who's to say that that's optimal or not? That there's something called matchups, synchronization, compensations, however you want to put it. That's how amazing the human mind is. That's how amazing the human anatomy is. It can compensate. The key thing is this as an instructor, you need to know all the different patterns that can exist which is in the middens, according to Homer Kelly and kind of understand its interaction. No-transcript systems. Think this is a systems thinking approach. Now, it's our good friend James Ragon. Is this if you own a dairy farm and you decide to change the theme that the cows are eating and you expect the same quality of milk, you are diluted. So it's the same thing, right set to approve.
Speaker 2:If I decide to say, hey, you know what? I don't think you're optimizing your vertical ground forces and not let's square up with your, your leap, so that you can peak earlier. You need to ensure that his script, his back swing, is compatible with that need put adjustment. And I also need to know is he able to take these moves out there and perform under pressure? There is something, what something I call your DNA swing, which is the main pattern that you revert to when you're under pressure. And how I coax that DNA pattern out is quite simple. So just roll a ball to my player and ask him to hit a moving ball, like it or not. You don't have much time to think, oh, I'm gonna keep my head down, I'm going to swing through, as the case maybe, and kind of manipulate a pattern. And then I work from that swing DNA and I will explain to this guy hey, look, if this is the route that you want to take, you want to optimize your ground force, your, your kinematic sequence, as the case maybe, this is what you're going to have to do.
Speaker 2:And then we look at a risk reward analysis. If I change these patterns, what's going to come out of it. What's what's the upside versus the downside? And clearly, as in investments, right, if you're downside is too great for a little upside. Hey, let's look at something else in your golf game. So, actually, your bunker saves are horrible. Do you actually know how to play a certain bunker shot? You're short game. You're always short sided. You understand strategy. Oh, in the third and fourth round of every tournament you're losing gas. Like can I? Can I ask you what's your diet? If it's always Taco Bells, we have a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what I'm saying is this it's not a one size fits all approach. If you are a 12 year old scratch golfer and you say, hey, I need to be optimized, sure, you have a longer runway to be optimized and the movement patterns are not so ingrained that it becomes difficult to change it. We've seen so many times and we've had so many discussions about this you show me one golfer, one professional golfer, one 12 golfer who has all his numbers, just spot on and say, hey, I've won the last 20 majors. You'll never see that, because golf string technique is but one component of a successful professional golf career. And even if you could make this hypothetical mini 12 golfers patterns optimized, there is no guarantee that he can pull it off under pressure.
Speaker 2:Because of this concept of the path of least resistance, your body is always going to default to the pattern that is most familiar with. You. Hear a gunshot right now. It's fight or flight. Yeah, can we recondition ourselves to say, hey, let's just firecrackers? It is possible, but it's very difficult and given the kinds of professional golf seasons that we have these days, I'm not sure there is enough time to make these kinds of changes and to make it perform under pressure.
Speaker 2:And we've seen a lot of combat. We spoke about Steve Stricker, we spoke about our friend Ricky Fowler. When they came back, when they made successful combat, they always say, hey, I reverted to what I was familiar with as a kid. I learned to enjoy the game for what it was, for what it is. Hardly do you hear them say, hey, look at my track man foresight report, look at my 3D motion analysis report. I've got four months. I'm not saying that those things are not important, those are merely diagnostic tool.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, it misconducted this. As Bert Charmin says, we are not teaching golfers, we are teaching human beings, and a lot of other factors in their life would come into play. I don't have time to practice. If a guy doesn't have time to practice, can he still improve? 100% is just identifying the low hanging troops, the levels that we can pull, and that's that's what we have been on about, jesse, for the entire 2022, 2023.
Speaker 2:Holistic coaching. Everything has its place, everything needs to be in their place, otherwise we're going to be putting the card before the hall. This research important 100%. As an instructor, do you need to know? Do you need to be at the cutting edge? Do you need to know as many string methods, string techniques there that are out there? 100%. I know stack and tilt. I know the right sided swing. I know Kelvin here here's mine driven swing. I know all the different modalities, but the trick is this the art form is this who needs what? Everything is correct, but is it correct for you? So it's really translating information for the human being that's in front of you that will help you yield the best result.
Speaker 1:What a great answer. Long winded, but I hope we get the message across. Well, I'm glad that we're recording this and we're not just talking casually, saying, hey, what did I say yesterday? I can't know, we both forget.
Speaker 2:I try, I try to live what I teach. Of course you do. I like to think that I can always. I can do all these interviews on the fly because I wholeheartedly believe in this systems approach and I've been golfing since 1998. I've been teaching since 2005, studying how to teach for the better part of 20 years, since 2000 with the golfing machine and all the related systems, the offshoots, and I've come to realize that it's not technique. I've had Jim Petrelio say I'm more on plane than ever, but I'm losing distance, and that got me thinking. Man, that really got me thinking. Here is a top coach, great player, saying that, like then, that that must not be the answer.
Speaker 2:People talk about fundamentals. The meaning of the word fundamentals means that it applies to everyone. It's it. What's the? What's the fundamental for living? Well, you need water, like it or not, whether you're in Ethiopia, whether you're in Tasmania, whether you're in Singapore and anywhere in between, you need water to survive. You can do without food for 3040 days, but you cannot do with water. So water is a fundamental of life. So what's the fundamental of the golf swing? It's not the grip, it's not the address, it's not your stun, it's not certainly not your posture. We've seen great players win major tournament with the weak grips, strong grips and anything in between. Address Jack Nicholas was hunched at. Address Adam Scott a very straight spine stance. Trevino was aiming left, arnold Palmer was aiming to the right to accommodate his score. Yeah. So what's the fundamental, and I can, I've done enough research, slash analysis. It's not impact. Everyone is fond of saying all the pros look the same at impact. It's not. All of them look different. If you, if you know what you're looking for.
Speaker 2:Louis Haysen doesn't have a flat left wrist at impact. Dustin Johnson has a broad left wrist at impact. And then on tour you've got a lot of guys who are kind of in between. Dustin Johnson's torso hips very open at impact. Get a guy like Brian gave one many times on tour, not so open. And of course you've got a lot of guys who are in between. Some guys have more extended knees Zach Blair, brian Gay, matt, every come to mind. Then you've got guys for a bit more squat Ellen Doyle, the great champions, twirl player, kenny Perry won a lot of tournaments, a lot of money and of course, guys who are in between.
Speaker 2:So you can't say that all of them look the same. That's a fundamental. But what's fundamental that all these guys do that we cannot dispute is this they are clubs generally land at a spot just in front of the ball. It's always ball, then divot, ball and then divot. How they do that is different, but where the club makes contact with the ground is the same for all of them. You won't have a guy who has a divot five inches ahead of the ball. He would have missed the ball. And you won't have a guy who has a divot behind the ball. He hit it that. So that to me, is the fundamental. How they do it.
Speaker 2:Everyone has their signature move that is in some part limited to their anatomy. If you've got short arms one arm is longer than the other you're going to look different doing it. How? An ecological explanation, the kind of golf courses that they grew up playing. That's why Lee Trevino has a swing that looks like what it does. Tom Watson's swing looks going to be different. Shane Lowry's swing is going to be different because of the environment that they grew up in.
Speaker 2:But that is the one fundamental. And you can land the club in front of the ball with standing on one foot, swinging the golf club with one arm. And I always tell my golfers this if you can control where the club lands on the ground, you have a chance. You can have the best setup, the best grip, the best backswing, and if you cannot control where this bad boy lands, you've got no future in this game. Good golf requires ground contact. You will never play good golf if you don't have ground contact. Every good player has a divot, creates a divot when they hit the ball. You will never see a guy on tour make his golf swing, make his golf shot without taking a divot? I've not seen it, at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's well said, Really really well said. Yeah, the fundamentals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the only fundamental. And then the next thing is this right, you land the club in front of the ball, now this golf club. When you land, there's a direction of where you're landing the club. And generally I say generally because the golf club moves on an arc If you want to hit a straight shot, you kind of want to land the club somewhere towards the target. You want to hit a draw shot, you kind of want to land the club to the right of the target, and for a fade it's somewhat left of the target. And then I educate the guy and face the path relationship. You want to hit a fade, you swing slightly left with a phase straight. If you want to hit a draw, you swing slightly to the right with a phase straight. You create a fade, you create a draw shot.
Speaker 2:And then after that I'm going to teach the guy how to hit a higher shot, how to hit a lower shot, and before you know it, we're going to assemble your stance, your address, to kind of make the movement, the act of landing the club, easier. And then we want to talk about landing the club faster. So we need the body to accommodate that intent. So it goes back to these three alphabets. Intentions create forces on the club, express in the motion of the swing. If your idea, if your concept of the golf club is that it's a spatula used to lift the ball up in the air, you likely are going to swing with your weight bias on the trail foot in an upward manner because you're trying to hoist the ball up in the air and you would have executed your concept correctly. Unfortunately, it's the wrong concept, so we need to get the concept right and then we need to execute the concept correctly. That these are the two ingredients for a successful golf lesson, sure.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2:And then when you accept this approach, you go actually golf is not that complicated. So it's really about distilling, like what my long time golf coach and mentor said to me, Calvin may appear. He said teaching golf must be complexity simplified. You can't just say, hey, just think easy. Don't know anything about kinematic sequences and just say, hey, just think easy, keep your head down. That's not the approach to take. Neither can you say, hey, this is the kinematic sequence is how your body moves. I need you to have more ulnar deviation at impact.
Speaker 2:I don't think that approach is going to stick with the vast majority of golfers. That's going to show up in your lesson team. Sure, you kind of want to approach it in this way where you're changing the kinematics, you're changing the ground force patterns, without saying all those things. But if your students says, hey, coach, can you explain ground force peak sequencing to me? You should be able to do it. You should be so in tune with your craft, the technical side of it You're going to say, hey, this is the technical side of things, so you need both right? We always talk about golf instructors being either black or white. You can't. Each and all of this is messy because you're dealing with humans. It's more like 50 shades of gray. You're going to know everything.
Speaker 1:That's very, very well said. Very great explanation too in regards to the hypothetical or aspiring touring professional. And there's, I've got a little bit of a bone to pick with today's modern instruction, because they do miss the mark. As far as what? Exactly what you've explained? That one size does not fit all. You can't. You know, I'm 6'2", 212 pounds. You cannot teach me the same way that somebody would teach you. You can't do it.
Speaker 2:I like your mention of 6'2", right. So imagine I was trained by Ian Woosnam, who is not 6'2", and say, hey, I'm the chief instructor of Ian Woosnam's Power Golf School. And then, jesse, you come to me and say, hey, justin, I like a lesson. Okay, let's do the Ian Woosnam pattern. I don't think you'll break 100. So, thankfully, the vast majority of golf instruction has moved on from that kind of teaching where you've got the nameplate golf school. You do what Jack Nicklaus does, hey. But you know, I'm 5' tall, I don't have a 30 inch thigh. I don't think I can make an upright swing like Jack Nicklaus and hit a one iron like him. There's no way, yeah.
Speaker 2:So thanks to the efforts of coaches like our friend EA Tishler, dr David Wright, mike Adams and Terry Rawls for advancing golf instruction to wear it yesterday and kindness like Calvin Mayer here, who was the first instructor to overlay the anatomy over the golf swing and he this was in 2008 when Casio came up with the first consumer price friendly high speed camera he started going around touring just videoing people and say, hey, what are the commonalities? And he kind of mapped out the what, what an optimal swing look like back then and how the body moved. And then you've got guys like Adam Young who went one rung above the ladder and said, hey, when these guys are making these moves, what kind of intentional cues do they have? We've been using this terms of the last two years. It needs to be holistic coaching, am.
Speaker 2:I an expert in the neuroscience of things? No, I'm not, but I know enough.
Speaker 1:You've got to know enough.
Speaker 2:Sure, so that you can apply it to your chosen field of expertise, which is golf coaching. I do have specialists that I can reach out to anytime if I'm not sure about the neuroscience of things, fitness side of things, the nutritional side of things.
Speaker 2:And also, if I'm unsure about 3D motion analysis. I've got some questions. There are guys around the world that I can pick up the phone and ask questions and that's how awesome technology has made golf coaching, especially for coaches like myself. You kind of have a global network of expertise, global network of mentors that you can touch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and we've got a few, we've got more than a few, which is a blessing, and I would think that anybody that would come to you for a lesson, justin, they would be in the right place at the right time, because I think that in coaching today and I'm coming from a student's perspective always I would want a coach that would be able to have the one-stop shop yourself. Of course, john and Brad John I heard some Brad Hughes and a guy like EA Tischler and some of the other guys that you mentioned that are going to look at the whole pie chart versus just one piece, and I guess it's not so much modern instruction that I have a bone to pick with, it's just the troubleshooting, especially with good players, the troubleshooting of going through bad rounds or going through periods in their game where maybe they've lost some, some speed, maybe they're struggling out there on the golf course, and the number one thing they always go back to is their golf swing, and you and I have talked about this many, many, many times and I think it bears repeating that once you achieve a certain level of proficiency playing golf, it's pretty much not going to be your golf swing. Maybe there's something that you can tighten up, sure, but that's where I think the paradigm really needs to shift. Thankfully, we've got guys like you and others that we've mentioned, and there's probably a lot of men and women out there that teach the same way that it's not always the golf swing. I've got friends I'm a member at a private club that'll come up to me and they'll take a look at my swing.
Speaker 1:What am I doing wrong? And I might ask him and say well, what was your internal conditions prior to pulling the trigger? Well, usually starts with a don't. Well, if you say don't, your nervous system doesn't understand do or don't, yes or no, it's just going to understand the last command out of bounds left, okay, or trouble right. Water short, water long, whatever. Our minds can play tricks with us, but they typically try to outwork the mind via the golf swing, via pounding balls on the range, via working on perfecting their technical craft. And what can we do to help enlighten folks to a different possibility? Because a lot of times I don't think it's their golf swing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we need to start understanding why this happens and attribution bias, because when we look at, say, a mini 12 player, even yourself, you go what's the thing that we can see about this thing of Jesse's golf game? It's really only your swing, besides your equipment and your string. Quite easy to ascertain that. There's no problem with the equipment if it's fitted to you. But I can find fault with anyone's golf swing, trust me, anyone, even the world number one. So it's easy to make the golf swing the fall guy, because that's all we can see. But what's underneath the hood? What are the stories you're telling yourself Now that we cannot see?
Speaker 2:So I was telling you earlier about the mini 12 player that I was talking to. So he said he said this and I caught him real quick. I said hey, look, you said that you're a great driver, but you didn't say the same thing about your short game. I said so is the stories we tell? Also, I'm certainly not advocating lying and saying hey, I'm the best button butter in the world, because your brain won't believe it If there is no concrete actions and no time spent owning the button skills that's required to call yourself a great button. You can't fool the brain that way, and we'll talk a little bit of visualization. Visualization is great if you've done the work, if you already have the Moto patterns. But 24, 36 handicappers out there please take this to heart. Visualization is not for you because you do not have the Moto patterns in brain. You can stand on the dog leg, left or right, powerful, and visualize a draw and say it as the case. Maybe it's not coming up. On the other hand, a lot of elite players. They don't visualize correctly. They keep thinking about your golf swing on the first tee, second tee box, and then what happens is the neural signal from the brain to the muscles get corrupted and then you experience a sense of the lack of time. So what are the stories that you're telling yourself? What are the things that you're thinking of that preventing all these hard fought, ingrained movement patterns from coming out freely? We all know that we can do anything. These 12 pros can do anything they want on the range where they're calf free, there are no consequences. And then, when it comes to oh gosh, I need to get the ball in the hole to make the cut. Suddenly that calf free feeling that they had on the putting green is not there anymore. But because they've not practiced being in this state of mind, they cannot quickly revert to that calf free state of mind. They cannot go from anxiety duress to a calf free state of mind and putt like a kid. Essentially they start thinking of consequences. So these things need to be accounted for when we assess a player's performance vis-a-vis their potential.
Speaker 2:We spoke about this before. Your training builds ability. Then you've got capacity. So how you understand that is this. So maybe just say you're capable of 300 pound bench press, but you're only an ability of 200. So how do we get your ability up? The capacity? That's one that's where traditional golf instruction is focused on. And then we've got expectation on the golf course.
Speaker 2:Wow, I shot even par yesterday. I should do the same today. Then we've got outcome. What actually happened? Well, I shot a two over part.
Speaker 2:Are there consequences, mr Cutts? So these are things that you've got to account for when you're performing. And this is not something I just teach my golf students, corporate clients. I tell them the same thing, traitors, same thing. These principles look the same, but it's in golf, doctor, baseball, finance as the case. Maybe it's all about performance and the one clue that kind of holds all these things together.
Speaker 2:Is this the term I call surrender? You need to divorce yourself from the outcome. You need to divorce yourself from what you think the consequences are going to bring you. So, yes, I miss my cut. Sure, there will be consequences, but we've got to let the consequences play out, because they're going to play out whether you choose to think about it or not. You miss the cut often enough. You're not going to retain your cut. That's going to take care of itself without you consciously thinking about it, mulling about it. It's difficult, but it's a practice, and the sooner you start recognizing these things, the better able you are at controlling your state of mind. When the situation calls for it, when you're under pressure, you really need to make a cut, the chances of you pulling off what you need to do will be that much higher.
Speaker 2:It's not an overnight thing. It's just like losing. How do you lose 100 pounds? Well, you do it one pound at a time, and I think, in this day and age that we live in, with iPhone, everyone's so used to instant results, what the great sociologist Anthony Giddens called the McDonaldization of Society. Let's put my golf swing in a metal box, set it to 90 seconds, ding, I'm going to get the results.
Speaker 2:Movement pattern takes about four to six weeks to change, and that's if you do it properly. Most people do it improperly. And then the body always reverse the brain, sorry, reverse to the path of least resistance because it takes up cognitive effort to change a movement pattern, just like it takes physical effort to put on muscles. Remember your brain doesn't care about your golf swing, your golf game or the muscles you have. It's a load on your body and your body and your mind. It's always geared towards survival.
Speaker 2:I want to expand the least amount of energy to maintain the status quo, to maintain the equilibrium. That's why when we go to the gym, we really need to hammer the muscles, cause tissue breakdown which causes doms, delayed onset, muscle soreness and then when your brain goes at home that was a very traumatic event Under heavy bar don't know what the heck was going on. My quads are all shredded, micro tears in the muscle. Look, I don't want this to happen to our system again. Let's rebuild bigger and stronger and then you go through the tearing down process. So it's the same with acquiring or changing, modifying your movement patterns. You need to know how the brain reacts to certain things, to certain stimuli, in order to elicit the response that you want.
Speaker 2:A lot of golfers we've spoke about this earlier when the coach is in front of them, suddenly they are inside out hitting a draw shot. Two weeks later it's back to the outside in golf swing. It's not nothing to do with muscle memory. There is no such thing as muscle memory. I get what people are saying, but if I want to call you Jesse, I don't. I don't snap my left biceps and say, hey, quick, give me the number, jesse's number. It doesn't work that way, because your muscles don't have cognitive ability. Cognition lies in the brain, not the muscle. So this is why I advocate all my students and the really serious ones we actually go through on iCloud notes what cues they need to do to practice for the next four weeks between lessons.
Speaker 2:If you don't do that, I say hey, you've got no chance. And as you recall, as they start to recall oh okay, I've got to make this move you start to myelinate the neuromuscular pathways. That strengthens the new movement patterns that you're trying to overlay over the old habits. There is a truth to the saying old habits die hard because your habits are always with them. You are just trying to overlay it with new habits to the point where the signal from the old habit is not strong enough to trigger a movement pattern. Yeah, that's right and that needs to be understood. You need to put the work in. Simply, you need to put the work in correctly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that makes the most sense, and I think that's where a lot of folks fall short. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day about learning how to play guitar. It takes a while to play guitar. It takes effort, it takes practice, which is going to lead me to something that we talked about earlier, that I think that we need to touch on as we enter into 2024. And we want to give people some great contemplative thoughts.
Speaker 1:Here in the US, unfortunately, in our learning system, failure has been demonized, absolutely demonized. Failure is not an option. So I get that in a life or death situation. If you want to live, if you're trying to land a plane, a compromised plane, sure, failure is not an option. But in this case, we're talking about learning and playing a game better than we've ever played it before that we love. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how important failure is, how important it is to be objective about failure. And if you're working with a coach, say somebody's, you're working with Justin or whoever, it's an important piece to talk about because that's absolutely a part of the learning, the natural learning process. Let's talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to me it's not black and white. You can take this concept of failure as feedback to the extreme ditch. So there are guys who keep telling me hey, I didn't fail, I learned from it. You should have learned from it. You've been repeating it 10, 12 times. So there is a limit to that. It's feedback only if you learn from it.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of people how they frame failure is a terminal event. It's not a terminal event if you can learn from it. So, for example, if you play in a windy course, shoot 85, and then you go hey, I don't have the tools to play this golf course the way it was meant to be. I'm going to work on wind shots, I'm going to work on club selection. I'm going to work on where to land the ball, because these greens, the fairways, are hard as rock. I can't fire my ball in the pin. I need to aim something like 30 yards short and let it run out. So if you take that feedback, that objective feedback, and go away from it and say, hey, I got to work on these skills, then there is a chance that you become a better golfer for it.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people don't let their ego get in the way and in trying to defend themselves, they go oh I'm a good player Like the shit course, shit conditions. But hey, hang on. 100 other guys shot 10 strokes lower than you, so clearly it isn't that way. I understand what the ego is for, but if you want to be always learning, you need to be vulnerable, but at the same time there needs to be talents. You can't be like I'm going to learn from everyone. Some guys got nothing to teach you and you need wisdom. Wisdom is the dividing line between yay or nay.
Speaker 2:So is this feedback? Is failure feedback in this case? No, it may not be. Should I learn from this guy? Sometimes it's yes, sometimes no. It really takes experience and wisdom to carefully to deignate these things. And for myself, I've studied learning, studied golfing anatomy for more than 20 years. Can I learn from certain people, 100%, some guys, the stuff that they want to teach me? Well, I've really learned that 10 years ago twice. So it's not from a position of I know it all to say that I've got nothing to learn from them, but that's where I am right now, learning for a budding instructor. That may not be the case and again, it takes wisdom and experience to rightly divide the concept of this failure feedback. Can I learn?
Speaker 1:Yeah that's.
Speaker 2:That's great. There's this great book by Dr Carol Dweck Mindset. I recommend every instructor to read that. It basically talks about why people succeed. Those guys who succeed have a growth mindset. Those who don't succeed have a fixed mindset. To me, everything is possible and as an instructor, I'm always open to the fact or the idea that my system could be proven wrong and I'm willing to switch to change tack. If someone shows me hey, this is how you've been doing it, this is a better way, and you show me results, I will gladly abandon whatever I've studied in the last 20 years, what has happened to me, not the whole system, but bits and bobs of it. I don't take that as a slight on me personally, because if my ethos is improving myself so that I can give my customers a better experience, then that's what I'm going to do. I don't view it as an insult criticism. If you can show me what I'm doing is wrong with evidence, I'm going to change. I don't take it personally. I take it as feedback.
Speaker 1:That's such a great point. You know why, justin? In your opinion? Why do we golfers take it personally when we hit poor shots?
Speaker 2:Why don't we take it personally? We have this very unrealistic idea that because the ball is not moving, I can do whatever the hell I want to it. That doesn't happen in tennis, that does not happen in soccer or football. You've got the ball someone's, you've got two 300 pound guys running at you. There is no time to think. You don't have this idea that I can do whatever I want because, again, of your environment. So the environmental aspect of golf leads us to think that I can do whatever I want to the golf ball and that creates a lot of unrealistic expectations. Now, when your expectations are set high and the outcome is very different from that, then you're going to start calling yourself names.
Speaker 2:You're not going to give yourself accurate feedback. So failure's feedback feedback needs to be accurate. What's accurate feedback? When you slice your ball into the lid, you don't go. That's a shit shot. That doesn't mean anything to the brain. But if you go, hey, that shot started 10 yards to the left of my intended start line and then it curve 30 yards to the right of my actual target. Your brain can work with that kind of information. So it's a space to pass relationship, or maybe it's in at some levels. It's also a visual issue. So, like when you line up with your driver, generally your target is going to look a bit more to the right than you think?
Speaker 2:it is, and then when it's a shorter club it's going to look a bit more less. So these things you need to train for it. So if you go to the range, you're just aiming anywhere you want. Your brain doesn't? Your eyes are actually not being trained correctly. Subsequently, when you go to the golf course, you go oh, I'm supposed to aim there. And when you settle over the ball it looks too far to the right of where you're in. You don't understand face to pass relationship. Your brain says let's steer the ball left. But you're steering with an open face. So guess what Club pass 10 degrees to the left? Face is aiming to the right of your club pass. Great recipe for a post line. Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Guess what you were saying about it's got to be feet back, needs to be objective.
Speaker 2:So some instructors I go I get really mused when they go like, oh, you're swinging too fast. Like is there a meter that I can shine on you? Or on a device that says yeah, jesse, you're swinging too fast on this? Because this device says so look at the matrix that it's coming out with. We don't know that. There is no such thing. Sure, you can video a guy and say, hey, you lifted your head. But what caused the head to lift? It's certainly not just an involuntary movement. It's to do with, maybe, how you move your body on the back swing, how you move your hand, and then it's got no choice. The momentum of the club will change, create a direction that sends the club down too close to the ground. Your brain says, hey, the club is going to bottom out two feet behind the ball. You better stand up to create some room. That's what's creating the head lift.
Speaker 2:Another one that really gets me. Jesse, you got to swing easy. How do I know if you're swinging easy? How do I know? Is there a device that says, okay, jesse, you're swinging six to ten on a scale of six to ten. That's easy. I don't know. And this thing about oh you know what, you shouldn't grip too hard. Do you have a diameter on the grip? We don't know. So there's all these inaccurate cliches that are very subjective. Sure, like I know, you've got it, you keep a cat. So objective means the cat is black or white or ginger. What is subjective? Is the cat cute or not? I don't know. I may think it's the cutest thing since Garth healed. You may think otherwise. But if we use it's not using objective language, we can come to a common place where we can have an educated discussion for change.
Speaker 1:That's right. You know, when you say being objective, and those of us who practice meditation, we talk about awakening the observer. So we've got some degrees of separation between an emotional charge and really what is. And it goes in line with you hear oh, let's get in the present moment, let's be in the present moment. But yet there's not too much talk about in instruction today, about how to train that so that it's a twofold thing.
Speaker 1:I'm a meditator. The people that I follow in my life away from Garth, have the observer, quite frankly, at the forefront of their consciousness, so they're less prone to have an emotional charge if something happens, whatever the perception is. And we hear this a lot on golf telecasts. You hear players talk about being in the present moment and things like that. And when we talk to Dr Justice about it, dr Izzy Justice about it, I think that this now starts to really complete the sublime circle of the pie. We got golf swing here, we've got short game, we've got fitness, we've got nutrition, what we're putting into our body. But the most important component of this thing is the mind. And how can we train the mind to be adaptable, to be more objective, less emotionally charged, so that we can have the, as you say, the divorce away from the results. See things as they are, objectively versus subjectively. I love that. Your metaphor of a tour player playing in Scotland in shitty weather and shoots 80, but KM Smith shoots 67. It's an escape, it's a way out for the ego. So whatever, but for those of us who love and play this game and want to get better, I think that this is a very, very important piece that needs to be discussed as much as all of the unquantifiable hours that we've put into research and development of the golf swing, the measure bowls, that technology is produced, which are all fantastic, they're great tools, but we got to learn how to drive the thing. So I come to you, we go through the battery of tests. You say, okay, jesse, we're going to get you, we see what we can do. I'm in agreement with it. We have a plan, all right, great. How to incorporate a highly functional golf swing that is catered for me personally, my own signature. Now we've got to build the mind, drive this beautiful machine. And that's really the biggest bone that I have to pick, because it's really, really overlooked, but yet all the great champions talk about without a doubt, you hear it on Sundays all the time. Hey, what was the difference between you shooting 72 on Thursday and then shooting 62 on Sunday? Well, you always hear it. I just was in the moment I was able to be present. I just got out of my own way.
Speaker 1:I think that's really the paradigm shift that needs to happen when it comes to getting better playing the game. You do have to build a motor pattern, that's without a doubt. I mean, you and I can go take the dolly llama out for golf and if he's never touched a club in his life, he's not going to break 200. He's going to have a great time playing, he's going to laugh a lot. But even somebody as enlightened as he is needs to learn basic motor patterns, absolutely.
Speaker 1:But this is getting the mind behind it. How do we cultivate that? How do we cultivate that presence, that objective muscle that we have to build so that we can get out of our own way to get the proper objective feedback, so that we're not attaching who we are as people to failure. Our identity is no longer attached to a specific outcome. On the same, jesse, whether I shoot 80 or 70, you're the same, justin, whether you shoot 80 or 70, you know, but unfortunately it's.
Speaker 1:We wear it. You know a lot of golfers we wear what we shoot and our ego is attached to it. We're riding high. If we break par, if we don't break 80, we're the you know losers. Oh, I suck man. I hear it. Somebody hits a bad shot. I mean I think it's comical when I hear a tour Pope say I suck after they hit a bad shot. I mean I don't. You know, that's the furthest thing. You just hit a bad shot. Get on with it. Go get the ball up and down. Make par, let's go. You know, that's where I see the next paradigm shift in golf instruction. I hope that's my personal wish for it. Thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to understand mindfulness, presence, awareness, they're all the same thing. We need to recognize one thing first it was far easier to be present, mindful, aware, call it, in the early 1900s, because there was no technology the way we know it. I think lighting wasn't widespread back then. Yeah, if you go live in the rural areas with no light, trust me, it's very easy to be mindful. Sure, so it was sundown, what? Six o'clock. There's nothing else you can do, it's just you and the nature.
Speaker 2:But these days, well, personally, I've got like four devices on my own. Some people have two, but mostly people are going to have at least one. And it's so easy to get distracted Standing in front of you. Emails, I've got messages. Coach, can you do a lesson today? I can't come today because I've got a tummy ache, got COVID, so we've got a lot of distractions coming at us every day.
Speaker 2:We need to understand this first. Then we know what we're dealing with, because if you ignore that aspect of daily living, then your game plan is not going to be that effective. So we say, hey, instagram, facebook, youtube, all these are distractions. I need to detox myself from that for two hours. I recommend my players not play with the weak of the tournament until after their actual rounds, because it's a distraction, right If you're a good player. Oh, x, y, z shot 72. Well, the rest of the field were shooting 66, 65. Bad day. That's going to affect your ego, like it or not.
Speaker 2:I think if you're playing competitive golf, you've got no business on social media the week of any event, which is most sweet. If you want to do that thing, hire someone else to do it. You're a sportsman. You're not a social influencer. Well, you are, but not in that sense. So I think you need to understand that the world we live in is very, very different. You cannot expect to get to a level of mindfulness that a guy in the 1900s would be able to attain. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2:How do we cultivate objectiveness? It's not just. You can't just like say, hey, you know what, I'm going to be patient in this area of my life and not have it affect other areas. It doesn't work that way. So same thing with objectivity. You can't just be objective in golf and say, hey, coach, I still want to be subjective in other areas of life. Something will give. So I would recommend all listeners to adopt the habit of using objective words instead of subjective words in daily living. So when push comes to shove on a golf course, that's one. Because your objective vocabulary is so rich, it's difficult for you to be subjective.
Speaker 2:If that makes them you learn to say what you want. So, for example, chinese agree that this hey, justin, you want to eat some more pizza, although I really want to. This is Chinese way of doing things. Don't ask me why, but Chinese are fond of doing this. They go like, oh, actually I don't want. And then you go okay, you really don't want it, I'm going to keep it. And then inside I go damn, didn't. Just see Steve, I was hungry. He really took the pizza away. So that's the Chinese way of being polite, not being greedy, I guess. So players should learn to say what they want.
Speaker 2:I think the habit of learning to say no is going to be very empowering for a lot of our listeners. If you really don't want to go out for that drink, just say so. Don't project yourself and say hey, barry asked me to go for beers after work. This is the second time in two months. I'm afraid if I say no, he's going to think otherwise of me and that might affect the way we work together. No, if Barry is a reasonable person, he'll realize that you've got a young kid and that it's just a bad time. That's being objective. Say hey, and you're learning to just state that, and just with the practice of objectivity in daily living, it will steep into your golf swing, because I can't see a person with impatience on the golf course. The patient in the workplace it just does not work that way. Words create deeds, deeds create habits, creates a character, and a character is your destiny. And what creates words? Your thoughts. So you're going to listen to this episode thoughtfully. Create the right thoughts.
Speaker 2:You need to say, hey, okay, let's try what this guy is saying. Give me a shot. Guys, try it and then see does it work? And it may not be a three month thing. If it actually works, you should notice a difference within a week. It's just like hair tonic. I'm at the age where I've got a reseeding hairline and sometimes you see advertisements for all these solutions. So I go by them and then they say, hey, try this for three months. You don't need to wait three months to see if the product is working After a month. If nothing's happening, guess what? Nothing's going to happen in the next two months. So it should be the same thing with concept. You look at it, you try it out, wholeheartedly, sincerely. If it doesn't work after two or three weeks, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:It's what I call a very surface level of psychology. You need to get to the underlying layer. So that's what I would recommend in terms of objectivity. And how do we stay objective? On the golf course, I teach my players. You always ask yourself one question what does this current shot require of me? If you start to really ponder that on the golf course, you're not going to be thinking about the slides that got you in this situation. You go OK, I've got a fairly decent line. There's a tree out in front of me, about 30 yards, some overhanging branches. What does the situation require of me? Oh, I'm about 175 yards from the hole. I think I need to use my three hybrid put the ball back in the stance a little bit, kind of a half swing, have the face a little bit open so that I can hit a low fade. I hear the trees. That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2:If you are really immersed in the decision making process, your emotions are unlikely to get in the way Right, and there's something to say about emotions. Are you an emotion or do you have an emotion? Are you angry or are you feeling angry? A lot of people confuse the two of them and that's why they remain in a state of anger, without learning, without being able to get out of it. If you go, hey, I'm feeling angry, you embrace it. Yes, I'm feeling angry, it will pass. But if you don't understand that your brain amplifies certain signals and say, hey, it didn't get the message. We are in danger, amplify that message. Subsequently, you're going to feel more anxious than you were before.
Speaker 2:A lot of people try to reject their emotion. I teach my players to embrace them, hug it, hug it. See, what is it that you're feeling? And then they go actually, I'm not feeling angry, I'm not feeling nervous, I'm actually excited. So one player actually told me actually, coach, the more I think about it, the feeling that I get on the first team, the jitters, it's actually a feeling of excitement. It's what I felt when I was a kid, taking my first plane ride. That's what I felt A sense of excitement, a sense of what is this going to bring me, what kind of journey am I going to be on? There's a huge difference, because if you think your anxious, you start acting anxious, that's right. But if you feel excited, your physiological expression changes.
Speaker 1:That's so well said, and it really parallels with what our friend Shoemaker said a few weeks ago about thinking about the possibilities too. That's a very great parallel, you know what?
Speaker 2:possibilities. Yeah, like what the Dr Carol Dweck said, that you have a possibility mindset or a fixed mindset. You know, as we age I've seen senior citizens say, oh, you can't teach an old dog new trick. That's not true. That is not true at all. If the old dog is willing to learn, it can learn new tricks. That's right. But if you put a ceiling over yourself and say, hey, I can't do it Now I get it right From a physical perspective, I'm not going to be lifting 500 pounds. There are physical limitations, but your mind doesn't have that kind of limitations. That's right. If you don't make excuses, this is what I tell people. If you really want to do it, decide that you're going to do it and then get it done. Find the way to accomplish it. So if I really want to learn Japanese, that you will find a way. You know kids, for all the complicated video games that they play, if they want to complete the game like for me. I used to do that for Grand Theft Auto, my favorite game I would find the way. Trust me, it doesn't matter how difficult it is to complete the mission. You will find the way and, as human beings in our chosen fields of expertise. Have that mindset, you will find the way.
Speaker 2:Learn to identify what are success and failure factors. So in golf success factor is very simple. At the professional level, you're driving. That's a success factor. The further you can drive the ball and have an unimpeded approach, that's a success factor. Certainly you don't want to be driving the ball 400 yards in the woods where your approach is impeded. You can chip outside ways. You can drive the ball 330 in the rough. You're going to have a better chance at making birdie than the guy who's 260 in the fairway. You're using a shorter club and shorter clubs generally. You're going to be able to have a higher trajectory in the green. You stop the ball with your trajectory versus spin. Then the next success factor hitting the ball close to the flat. That need not be repeated. Then, if you missed the target, then another success factor strategy do I have a lot of green to work with A lot of people who and are about short game magic, are savvy and tired, but what they don't realize is this they leave themselves a lot of green to work with when they miss the green.
Speaker 2:So consequently their safe percentage is much higher than a lot of people because chip and run seven times, no brainer. And then occasionally they pull off those magical shots. But imagine, right, if they miss, call it, five wins around and all are short sided to a pin that's on the downhill. Look, I don't think they'd be saving paths all the time, that's right, it's just too difficult. And then, when are you going to win? That's when it's like poker. We call it tilt probabilities are tilted towards you. So when it comes to eight foot parts, the tour average is 50%. So on those weeks that you're going to win, you're going to have a conversion rate that's higher than the tour average. Call it 60%. That's when you win and enjoy it when it comes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and someone mentioned to me that he wasn't surprised to learn of Jordan speed slump after he won his third major. I go why. He said he was just a golf pro. He said he was studying his parting conversion probabilities. He said it was above tour average. And he said this and old pro thing, it was 30, 40 years experience. He said you can't be parting like that forever. The first guy who told me I wasn't surprised when he started so-called slumping Interesting.
Speaker 1:Very interesting.
Speaker 2:Identifying success and failure factor, not just in golf, but in every aspect of life. How do I have more friends? Well, for starters, you got to be clean. If you're dirty, you, you recurve body order. It's not going to lead you to your objective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I like what you said If you want to get better at something, you will find a way. You will find a way and I think that that's a that's a really, really important point and I want to let her I want our listeners excuse me to really contemplate that how much, how, how, how much do you want to get better? Are you just saying it? I hear a lot of that. I mean I'm, you know, I've got some, some great friends that play this game that are, you know, 15, 20 handicaps and they love it and they're always saying you know, I really would like to get better and you know I. I just let it kind of go in one ear and out the other. But when I started thinking about that, like you, you really need to put in the work, you have to be objective in that work so that you can get good feedback, because you're going to just you're going to cut off any what is truly happening if you're attaching good or bad to it or if you're subjective, like that's really really important, really, really important. But I just love what you said If you want to get better, you'll find a way. So, as we kind of close out this conversation here. I want to challenge all of our listeners. You know, as we got a saying in the US here, how badly do you want it? But I don't want to frame it that way. I want to want to frame, you know, what would. What would it be like Just saying what Justin said earlier in the conversation.
Speaker 1:If you look at yourself a year from now, two years from now, six months from now, four months from now, you know, and you see yourself playing better golf. You see yourself hitting golf shots, you see yourself making putts, you see yourself smiling, you see yourself not having such an emotional charge or attachment to hitting a poor shot. You know you're not as attached to a score. You know all of these things are possible. These are all possibilities, and the only reason why you, the listener, are hearing this right now is because Justin and I have been through it and there's multitudes of people, men and women, that have gone through the process and come out the other side bigger, better, stronger, faster than ever.
Speaker 1:And you'll find that as you start this journey, this process, that you know something I said to you earlier, justin, that I did in October that I've never done in my life, and when I look back at it, it wasn't the scores that I shot, it was the freedom that I had and that, in and of itself, provided me the most joy that I've ever had on the golf course is that level of freedom.
Speaker 1:But it takes work to get there. But the underlying thing for me and I hope that this is an inspirational thing that you know, I'm not playing golf for a living. I want to play a high level of amateur golf. So I'm going to go home to my wife and kids, you know pretty secure in that you know from, and I don't want to take away from the men and women out there that and I know that there's a few of them that listen to us and and I have the highest amount of respect for them I don't want to take anything away from them because their stakes are a little bit higher, they're significantly higher their livelihood depends on. But the same rules apply for all of us when it comes to learning this great game, when it comes to expressing the best parts of our personality and learning from the worst parts of our personality and going forward each day with the intention of man six months from now, I would like to be, you know, hitting these particular golf shots.
Speaker 1:Or maybe a paradigm shift in my thinking. A year from now, hey, I would like to play in some usj events. Those are all possible. Those are all possible. We need it. I meet them every single day in the advanced ball striking community guys and girls that start off eight, nine, 10, 12, 15 handicappers that are regularly, routinely breaking 80, breaking 75, playing well in tournaments. But they're all coming back to the same thing. It's the process provides the most joy, you know, and it really really does, and it just you know, it bears repeating.
Speaker 1:Listen to any guy, any great player out there, man or woman, what they say on Sundays. I don't care what tour it is, if it's the Asian tour, if it's live tour, the regular tour, the Canadian tour, the LPGA tour, the Symmetra tour, the LET tour, doesn't matter. They're always saying man, I had a great time. Were you thinking about your golf swing? Nope, nope. What were you thinking about? I was just having, I was in the moment, I was out of my own way.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to challenge all of you that listen in 2024. As you ascend in this game, ask yourself what can I do to get out of my own way to express the work that I've done with Justin, to express the work that I've done with any great instructor out there, any instructor who's passionate about helping people? What can I do to have that come through? That's a really important question. Is you got to get out of your own way, and when you continue to set that intention, good things are going to start coming your way. I promise that is a promise. I'll promise for you too, justin, because I see you smiling on the other end of that screen there, brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for your closing thoughts. All I want to say is this right, I have a really really quick way for people to get out of their own way on the golf course. It's simple, but I'm not going to reveal it. So, if our listeners want that, dm us myself on Instagram at elite golf swing. Send your feedback to like hundreds, podcast with Jesse, and we'll get that tip over to you. There you go. Really simple, guys, it's really really simple. All of you have done it at one point or other in your life and I'm pretty sure for adults, you do it every day. You just are not aware of it. So if I shine a light on that move, you're going to go.
Speaker 1:I should have seen that that bears repeating because I'm going to be hitting Justin up for that as soon as I stop recording. But the DM, justin, you know, as we close here, we're eternally grateful for you, the listener. We are absolutely thrilled with your feedback, the great questions that you give both Justin and myself, and boy 2024, we've got I'm not going to spill too many people that we've got lined up coming on the podcast, but experts in every field, some people that you know, some people that you don't. We're really excited about the guy that we're going to be recording on Friday. We can go ahead and tell the listeners who we got coming on, who's one of the great short game teachers in the world, former tour player, tour winner, which is a really, really cool thing. His name is Parker McLaughlin. You know him as the short game chef. He's going to be coming on and we're going to be enlightened by his great wisdom, his years on the tour and boy. He's teaching a lot of people out there and he's got some simple methodologies and a way to understand wedge play to help you improve your wedge play, because that in and of itself, is a superpower. We haven't even gone down Well, we've gone down that rabbit hole before, but we're about to go into a deeper one and I did want to. Apart from Justin, so shortly thereafter we've got Roger Cleveland coming on. Roger Cleveland himself and Brad Smith of Flight Sleeve of a FYT, who really, that little device helped Victor Hovland revolutionize his short game, along with Victor's coach as well. So we've got some exciting people coming on Once again.
Speaker 1:2023 was great. We appreciate your support. 2024 is going to be even better. I promise you that as Justin and I progress with this podcast and in our own unique genres here in the game, you know we promise to bring the very best that we could possibly bring to you and you know it bears repeating, but I think that we both do what we say as well, so we know from experience.
Speaker 1:But, justin, I'm grateful to you, my friend, for partnering up with me and really enlightening folks what you know. There's not too many people, in my opinion, that have decided to learn multi methods and multi disciplines to help bring to your students and extrapolate on the fly, on the lesson T, on the golf course, and it's certainly showing by the level of interest from tour players that are reaching out to you and people just in general. And once again, you can find Justin easiest on Instagram at elite golf swing. One word DM him, don't DM me, I get too many DMs. No, I'm kidding, you can also reach out to me as well. All one word Flag hunters, golf pod and look forward to next week with Parker and beyond, and I'm just eternally grateful to you, my friend.
Speaker 2:Likewise. Thank you, jesse, for your partnership, and to our loyal supporters, our listeners and our sponsors Adidas and TaylorMade, Thank you once again.
Speaker 1:Big shout out to TaylorMade and Adidas and thank you all for listening and it's going to be a great 2024. Listen to this podcast more than once If you have to. There's a lot of boy, a lot of pearls of wisdom in there to steal online from butch butch harm, and a lot of pearls and a lot of contemplative thoughts, and we certainly are going to have the experts on to support all of this and support you and answer any questions that you have. And you know, once again, this podcast is powered by powered by curiosity, and we're equally curious and we're equally learning, as well as as well as you. So we're all on this journey together.