Fight-or-flight and Golf Performance

Hitting the ball well in practice doesn’t ensure on-course success.? So, if you play poorly and then head to the range to fix your mechanical problems, you may find your mechanics still don’t produce the success you want.? The problem may not be mechanical but related to the differences between practice ranges and golf courses.?

One of the differences is the cost that consequences exert for your mis-hits.? On the range, you can just put down another ball and hit again.? Every mis-hit you experience when playing adds to your ever-escalating score.? Since our expectation is to score as low as possible, higher scores create frustration, anger, uncertainty, and fear of continued failure.?

These feelings represent threats to your expectations of how well you wanted to play.? All threats, whether to your life or your hopes and dreams for your golf performance trigger your fight-or-flight reflex.? That’s because the human nervous system has not evolved since mankind lived in caves so treats threats to your golf performance as if they were to your life and releases a cascade of hormones to ensure your survival.?

While the physiological changes cause by fight-or-flight may save your lifer if you are physically threatened, it wreaks havoc with your golf performance.? Here’s why.? First, the pupils in your eyes dilate and move wildly from side-to-side.? This is to help you locate the source of the danger quickly so you can respond appropriately and in time. That may help if you’re being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, but not so good if you want to keep your eyes from moving off the ball.?

Our breathing patterns change.? We start to breathe fast, shallow, and in irregular patterns, sometimes holding our breath.? That reduces the amount of oxygen in the body.? This lowers our brain’s capacity to control our thoughts and emotions, since less oxygen in the body means less oxygen available to the brain.?

Our nervous system also redirects the oxygen to our extremities to provide energy to our arms and legs to make us faster and stronger.? Sometimes this is felt as tension.? While this helps us when facing a physical danger, it makes our swing faster and shorter, jeopardizing the near perfect timing at impact necessary to hit the ball where we intended.?

In its infinite wisdom our nervous system also shuts down any memories not required for survival and suppresses our higher cognitive powers.? That’s because there’s no time to think when your life is threatened.? You either act now or you’re severely maimed or dead.? So, if it ever feels like you forgot how to swing the club, forget to take environmental changes in account about where to aim or what club to hit, or mistake a 9-iron for a 6-iron you have your nervous system to thank.?

The nervous system also shuts down your immune and digestive systems.? When the nervous system has to choose between these two internal actions and your survival, it always choses your survival.? Immune function and digestion require energy that may be required for your survival.? The long-term consequences of these two systems being suppressed exert a heavy toll on your physical and mental well-being.? These will be discussed in a future post.?

Falling apart under pressure or choking is not a character flaw, neither is it genetic in nature.? No one’s born with the capacity to handle pressure better or worse than others.? It’s a conditioned response experienced over time because of interactions with important people in our life from the time we’re born and probably while we’re still in the womb.?

Having access to the appropriate training tools, committed practice over time, everyone can develop the ability to not only reverse the physiological changes caused by fight-or-flight, but can easily and quickly learn to transform their nervous system from fight-or-flight to a state of peak efficiency so they can access a Zone Mindset whenever they want to.?

Some simple techniques for instantly transforming your nervous system to a state of peak performance will be explored in my next post.? If you would like to comment or ask questions, you can do so here or email me at [email protected] .