Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hi there and welcome to today's proper golfing podcast. I'm Joe Cameron.
Speaker 1 00:00:04 And I'm Julie Miller.
Speaker 0 00:00:05 And we are co-creators of proper golfing and the timeless golf swing method. So today we are up to episode five in our podcast from our transformational Vault series. And the title of our podcast today is What One Golfer taught us about Rhythm.
Speaker 1 00:00:21 Very important. Rhythm
Speaker 0 00:00:22 Is really important, isn't it? Yeah. So it's Alan, and as we always say, this is real information, real data, real people. Because we record all the data of every single session that Julian does. So we are bringing to the actual evidence. Absolutely. Which is really cool. So basically, yeah, this is taken from our coaching vault, so it's real lived experience. And today we're talking about rhythm. So this is the story of a golfer who wasn't struggling with his strength. He was struggling with flexibility. Again, a common problem. Yep. And, and he wasn't struggling with knowledge either.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 He was overloaded with knowledge.
Speaker 0 00:00:59 That's what to say. Sometimes they say knowledge is power, sometimes it's just not, is it? But his swing kept breaking down because the timing had quietly disappeared. Yeah. So if you've ever felt rushed over the ball or out of sync or like your swing starts before you are bo you are ready in your body. This one will probably feel quite familiar to, won't it? So.
Speaker 1 00:01:18 Well, it's such a familiar problem or issue for so many golfers, not who just come here, but when, when we see them on the golf course, rhythm is a real issue. So tell
Speaker 0 00:01:28 Us about Alan then.
Speaker 1 00:01:29 So Alan, like we said, he was almost drowning in information. He could tell you a lot about the golf swing, and yet he felt that he couldn't apply the technique. But what he was missing was rhythm that brought the technique together, dare we say, the glue of his technique.
Speaker 0 00:01:46 So the thing we've all talk about is that he was one of these people that practiced regularly.
Speaker 1 00:01:52 So at, at his golf course. And I almost think this is an issue. They do an offer of a hundred balls a day for a month for a certain amount of money. And he felt he had to get value for money, which has hit a hundred balls as many times as possible a month. What does that do, Joe? What do you think hitting so many golf balls does to
Speaker 0 00:02:15 Rhythm? Well, firstly Yeah. Well, you get tired.
Speaker 1 00:02:18 You definitely get
Speaker 0 00:02:19 Tired. So you get tired, you get fatigue. And you know, if you, if you might not even know the data or the information or whether you're pr you know, you could be practicing incorrectly a hundred balls of getting it wrong,
Speaker 1 00:02:29 Mindlessly hitting golf balls mindlessly.
Speaker 0 00:02:31 Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:02:32 Yeah. So we, we dare we say we practice mindfulness practice. Yeah. As opposed to let's go and hit a hundred balls a day. Yeah. A mindful that
Speaker 0 00:02:42 Doesn't make you better. Yeah. I think it's so, yeah, like you say, when you're hitting that amount of balls, so some could be good, some could be absolutely completely rubbish and completely disconnected. 'cause we're talking about rhythm, remember? Yep. So what happened was the Mrs came when he sped up.
Speaker 1 00:02:58 Yep. So he was, he felt he was losing distance. So he started to try harder, started to swing faster. But what that does is creates a lack of coordination. And it's, the coordination matched with good rhythm is when the improvement starts to happen again. So when I wa I don't like to just jump in and go, okay, I see the problem, let's give you the fix. It's really important as a golf coach that you actually give yourself time to observe. Not just to give them more information. He didn't need more information. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the last thing you needed. So you need to be a little bit mindful when you are coaching, not to just give solutions straight away. So the first thing I got him to do was slow down.
Speaker 0 00:03:49 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:03:50 To, to break his natural rhythm, which was too quick. So, okay, let's hit some shots. Let's slow things down a little bit. It's an uncomfortable feeling if you've never really practiced it and you feel like I'm not getting anywhere. But what you're actually starting to do is synchronize the body and the club much better. And the only way to do that is to slow things down. So he had an urgency at the start of his down swing, which caused a fundamental issue with his golf swing, what we call over the top. But when he started to slow things down, the coordination became visible again.
Speaker 0 00:04:31 Yeah. And I, I love that about, you know, without rhythm, everything feels fragile.
Speaker 1 00:04:37 It's absolute fact, Joe.
Speaker 0 00:04:39 But before we talk about that, let's talk about the reason why, which this is the real person, real information, real data about why he felt like he needed to hit all the golf balls. So afterwards, you know, we just have a sitting reflection on the session and it all comes back to habits. We've done a lot of work on habits. This is not the podcast for it, but habits. So he actually said that, oh yeah, that golf ball thing hitting as many golf balls. It really goes back to, you know, when I was a child, you've gotta eat everything on your plate. That's just fascinating, isn't it? Isn't it? Unless you get time to become aware of that, then you can't change it. Yeah. So that's the habit that he'd just taken from, you've gotta eat everything on your plate to the golf balls. I've gotta hit all the golf balls. Yeah. Which was, it's fascinating. Another podcast, another time on habit. Yeah, definitely. So let's go back to him. So what do we, what do you do?
Speaker 1 00:05:30 So the first thing is slow. We, we slowed him down. Yeah. As a dare we say, as a, as a byproduct of slowing things down. He relaxed more. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:05:40 A hundred percent.
Speaker 1 00:05:40 Okay. Because he wasn't, there wasn't an urgency to hit far. And we made it really clear we, again, we create a safe space here where you can fail, but we can learn from the failure. It doesn't mean to say you're failing, it's just there's no consequence in here to hitting bad shots. Yeah. Yeah. It's just an opportunity to learn. The other thing that we can do here really well is we can get numbers from the simulator. Actual numbers, as I say to everybody, our simulator doesn't have an opinion. Yeah. It just says there a numbers, let's learn. You know, if you, if you really mindful learn from those numbers. Yeah. Hundred percent. So we slowed him down. He's tension reduced. When is tension reduced? What do you think happened to his
Speaker 0 00:06:23 Rhythm? Always rhythm. His rhythm gets better, doesn't it? Absolutely. You know what I, what I love is that you gave him a pace, not a swing.
Speaker 1 00:06:31 Absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:06:32 Sorry. Not a ion. A pace. Not a position. Yeah. Because this is why golf lessons fail most people and fail. Particularly people, you know, in their fifties, maturing golfers and stuff like that. Because you are taught positions. Yeah. It's tricky. It
Speaker 1 00:06:51 Is tricky, Joe. So
Speaker 0 00:06:52 In yoga, I said to you, in yoga you can teach positions 'cause you're stationary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not moving. You don't have to flow, you know. Exactly. It's a flow. So what you gave him, you gave the swing a pace, not a position. Absolutely. A hundred percent. I say less rushing, less tension. Play golf longer. Yeah. Yeah. That's a goal for longer.
Speaker 1 00:07:12 Yeah. I would say one of my jobs is not to change golf swings. Yeah. But to change habit.
Speaker 0 00:07:17 Yeah. A hundred percent.
Speaker 1 00:07:18 You know, anybody can hit a hundred balls. That's your habit. But that doesn't mean to say you're doing it. Well. Yeah. You need to think about your habit. Is it working for you or against you? Hitting a hundred balls was a bad habit.
Speaker 0 00:07:32 Habit. It wasn't mindful. Do you know? I've just gotta say what, what you actually did as well is that if you come for coaching here, we like to make it a nice environment. So you get a nice pyramid of balls. You,
Speaker 1 00:07:45 I pretty shocked, wasn't it?
Speaker 0 00:07:46 You took away the balls and how many balls did you get? Three. Not three. Three, yeah. Oh my days. So there's
Speaker 1 00:07:52 Normally 55 in, in the pyramid. There was three after. So there was a little bit of panic, wasn't
Speaker 0 00:07:58 It? He did, he said that was his first like shock, discomfort. Oh, oh my days. What's happened to all the golf balls? It was literally like that wasn't it?
Speaker 1 00:08:05 He didn't dare ask. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:07 But the thing is, I gonna say this is about changing a habit. Okay? So if you go somewhere and you've got a pile of balls and your habit is pile of balls, hit them all. 'cause you've gotta eat all the food on your plate. Yeah. If you change the trigger, the bloke that writes about habits, he's called doig. He's brilliant. Yeah. But if you change the trigger, then you can change the habit. So next time you go to the range, use less ball. Give yourself three balls. Okay, well last thing, you're gonna tell people what to do next. Give yourself time. Time.
Speaker 1 00:08:35 That's the important thing. Give yourself time for things to, to, to feel things. Yeah. Okay. So if you, if you are, if you're rushed, you hit a bad shot, you hit another one really quickly. Well that's, that's ingrained in that habit. You've gotta break that habit. So let's think about what you can do. Yeah. Hundred percent. Practically when you go to the range next time. Can
Speaker 0 00:08:59 I, can I just say one thing first? Yes, of course. What you can do practically Oh yeah. Is go onto our website. Yeah. Proper golfing.com and on the top there, there is get access to your free 30 day personalized improvement plan. He actually writes it. Yeah. And it's based on get this real data, real people, real solutions. But words that we have collected over a year. How many words?
Speaker 1 00:09:26 Just over 4 million,
Speaker 0 00:09:28 4 million words in our transformation vault. So you're getting actually what works. Yeah. So anyway, if you wanna download your 30 day improvement plan, you click on proper golfing.com and you'll find it there. Yeah. So that's one thing you can do. Yeah, definitely. But in terms of rhythm, what you're suggesting then, Jillian.
Speaker 1 00:09:45 So first thing to slow it down, hit some sh full shots slower than you would do normally. Now what that will do is it'll help you coordinate the movement in the backswing. They'll come to a natural, what you call a natural stop at the top of the backswing. Some people call it a pause. What it actually is, is a change of direction. So you, you, you're going back and then there's a change of direction on the way down that will become less urgent. Okay. So when, when a lot of people, what we call come over the top, they use their body incorrectly. That's an urgency to get back to the golf ball. And that came from, I've lost my distance. I've got to swing harder. Yeah. I've got to swing faster. But it was throwing his coordination out and nothing was matching up. So slowing things down hit some shots for you. I would like it to feel like half speed. Half speed. The reality is, let's say you swing the club at 60 miles an hour, the reality is it'll probably be 55 or 56, but it will feel slow to you. So this is, remember this is internal, it's not external. You know, we can, we can get factual swing speeds in here. But for you it's a different feeling. Now what that tends to do is it stops you overthinking technique and starts to help you bring back your rhythm.
Speaker 0 00:11:17 Your rhythm, bring back
Speaker 1 00:11:19 That rhythm. It will reduce tension. And ironically your swing speed will actually go up. Yeah. You see it all the time. All the
Speaker 0 00:11:27 Time. A hundred percent. So it is about rhythm today. And we're not judging the strike, are we? No. Or trying to fix things mid round.
Speaker 1 00:11:36 Yeah. Don't, or
Speaker 0 00:11:37 Oh, this is the other one I like. Not reacting emotionally to the result.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 I mean, what a skill that is as a golfer if you don't react to the shot, but actually stick to the, the process. So when next time you're on the range on the golf course, don't think about technique. Don't think about where the ball needs to go. Think about your rhythm. Just slow things down a little bit. Sometimes slow your talking down or slow your walk down. You know, if you are rushing, if you're rushing to the next shot, you're already gonna have a fast rhythm. Now some people naturally have a fast rhythm, but definitely in golf swings we see it speed up way too much. When your body's not coordinated, you don't strike it consistently. Yeah. When you start striking it solid, your distance will shoot back up. You'll find in the middle of the club much more often. But the other thing is, you really start to enjoy your golf stream again. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Now with good rhythm, I want you to focus on one more thing. Hold that finish.
Speaker 0 00:12:36 Yes, yes, yes. The signature six second proper golfing finish. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1 00:12:41 Just hold your finish until the ball lands. Yeah. Yeah. You, you'll find it really difficult to do that if you're rushing.
Speaker 0 00:12:48 And why, why do we do that again? I know we talk about the six second finish all the time. 'cause it is important. Why is
Speaker 1 00:12:52 That? Yeah. It's the only opportunity in the golf swing to actually check where you are properly. So if you've transferred your weight well how's your balance? Where are you facing? Where's the club finish? Where does the knee point? Where does the sole of the, the back foot point? So there's loads of opportunities to see where you are in the gold swing. And that doesn't happen in the setup. Really. Definitely doesn't happen in the back swing. They start the downswing. It's the finish is super important. Yeah. Most people, when I ask them to score the importance of the finish out a 10, most people will say it's a one or a two. For us it's a 10 and it'll always be a 10. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:13:30 And just talking management theory. 'cause you know, I like my management theory. There is a very famous guy called Stephen Covey Covey. You might know him, but he always talks about start with the end in mind. Yeah. I love that. Start with the end in mind. At least you know where you're going then, don't you? But
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Absolutely. Yeah. But really think about the pace of your golf swing
Speaker 0 00:13:47 Pace. Yeah. Pace of life as well. Wouldn't you rather just live a rhythmical glide life rather than something that's like staccato stress rushed.
Speaker 1 00:13:58 So if lack, Joe, if I, if I ask you, I know you don't play a lot of golf, but you've seen a lot of golf swings. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:03 Yeah. A hundred percent.
Speaker 1 00:14:04 If you saw a really nice golf swing, can you give me an odd word to describe that? Well
Speaker 0 00:14:11 It is, it's rhythmical, isn't it? It rhythmical. Nice flowing motion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:14:15 Hard, easy.
Speaker 0 00:14:16 Oh, it's just easy. Nice and easy.
Speaker 1 00:14:18 Graceful.
Speaker 0 00:14:19 Yeah. A hundred percent. How
Speaker 1 00:14:20 About if you saw a swing you don't like?
Speaker 0 00:14:22 Yeah, it's just staccato, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:14:25 Any other word? Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:14:26 Hard. You know, just tense hard. Yeah. Fast tense and Yeah. Yeah. Forced.
Speaker 1 00:14:31 Yeah. Which one do you wanna be? And I,
Speaker 0 00:14:32 And I know exactly 'cause I haven't played for a while. 'cause I'm still fixing my si joint. I know exactly when I, when that made it worse. When I try to whack the ball, I've got no warming or padar and I'm, and I'm doing the timeless goal swing. Yeah. It was a while ago. I'm still fixing joint. But yeah, a hundred percent. As soon as you go in with the mindset, you're gonna whack something. In fact, our daughter was here hitting balls. Yeah. I haven't told you. But the other night we were just out walking, right. She was hitting golf balls here the other day and she said, oh, I've got a headache. And daughters are daughters that don't listen, do they? Because she was trying to, well it, trying to whack it. So no, let's just get rid of that. I love that word. Well it well it, well it in the uk. Very English.
Speaker 1 00:15:09 Very English. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:10 Wt. But I was like, well you've got a headache because you're trying to hit it too hard. So as somebody said the other day, it's about emotion, not a, not a hit is about emotion. Yeah. Just relax. It's, enjoy your golf. Go with your rhythm. So yes,
Speaker 1 00:15:23 Just imagine, here's a little challenge for you. Next time you practice or play, score the enjoyment of your golf swing out of 10. Yeah. 10. You love it. One, you don't like it. See what happens. Do it over three or four sessions. Don't just do it once. Do it over a round of golf. Imagine if you played a round of golf and you enjoyed most of your golf swings. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:45 You're gonna play, if you're struggling with that, you just need to ask yourself, okay, if I'm not enjoying it, just ask yourself. Imagine if I was enjoying my golf swing. Great question. Imagine if I was enjoying my golf swing. How would it feel? What would it look like? Imagine if, and then you have to spend some time changing a different habit. You know, you can't just rush into your golf and do that. Yeah. You know, on the way there, while you're sitting having a coffee, imagine if I've got a really nice golf swing. How would that feel? At least as a
Speaker 1 00:16:12 Start. And video it. Yeah, please video your golf. Don't
Speaker 0 00:16:15 Be, don't be too. So we hope you've enjoyed listening to our podcast today. As I say, I'm Joe Cameron. I'm
Speaker 1 00:16:21 Julian Mall.
Speaker 0 00:16:21 We are co-creators of proper golfing and the registered trademark of Timeless Golf Swing. And the next podcast, the next week is taken from our transformation vault again. And it's the transformation vault case that surprised us most this month. Yeah, absolutely. So fascinating. Join us next week to learn from the 4 million words, over 4 million words. What's that word again? Telemetry.
Speaker 1 00:16:48 Telemetry.
Speaker 0 00:16:49 Telemetry. The proper golfing telemetry.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 We take a lot of data.
Speaker 0 00:16:52 Yeah. Go onto proper golfing.com. Download your 30 day plan. Why wouldn't you do that? And hopefully you'll join us next time. And if you've got any questions, queries, comment, you can contact us both on team@propergolfing.com. That's team@propergolfing.com. So we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 00:17:07 Yep. Take care. Take
Speaker 0 00:17:08 Care. Bye. Bye.
