Success Leaves Clues

[00:00:01] Speaker A: I'm so messed up mentally, I think that when I visualize it messes me up, man, because it gets me thinking. I can't hit a golf ball to save my life. And I may have just striped the last 25 balls that I hit. Now, I don't know what that is. We don't need to get into it today, but that's a struggle of mine, is that I play better in real life than I do in my head, and I don't know how to fix that. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Let me look. We're gonna go. Put your head on the pillow, lay down on the couch, and let's team diving this for a second. [00:00:23] Speaker A: I don't want to talk about my childhood. I don't want to talk about my fears. I'm just saying I just have a hard time hitting the ball well in my head. [00:00:31] Speaker B: We're going. We're going. We're going full tin cup now, right? With his girlfriend. [00:00:37] Speaker A: If you're not one of our current, you know, 12 followers and fans, welcome to the best podcast ever. I'm Garrett Lill with Mike Hendricks, TPI certified body expert. Tony Roselli, PGA super phenom instructor and teacher. So I do. I have a topic that I think might cover the entire episode, but I'm going to let you guys talk about it, too. So I have learned something since we last met. I guess the last time we talked was at the Mike's Gym. We did the TPI assessment. And I've learned something that, you know, after 30 years playing this game, I thought I had the basics kind of understood, right? I knew I didn't know everything, but I thought I had the fundamentals. But I've learned something this week that is, like, it's as. It's as revolutionary to my golf game as I imagine, like the invention of the wheel was to mankind. It's just. It's totally changing. [00:01:29] Speaker C: I can't wait to hear this. You have my attention, so I'll pose. [00:01:33] Speaker A: It as a question. First of all, so. So my understanding, I think, for 30 years, was that you maintain a more or less straight spine, or at least try to maintain a straight spine throughout the golf swing. You. You address the ball, you get into your golf posture, and you put the, you know, do the old drill where you put the golf club on the back of your. Your spine and put the butt at the. At your head and the club head at your butt bone, and you try to keep it, you know, pretty straight, and then you just rotate around that right. As you rotate to the right, you look like you're inside, bend to the. To the left because you're on an incline. And then when you rotate back the other way, it looks like you're kind of to the right, but you're just rotating around a straight spine on an incline. Is that. We'll pose it as a question, although I already better know the answer. Is that true or false? Either one of you? [00:02:24] Speaker B: Tony? Well, well. So, I mean, if you look at Jack Nicklaus, he had more of a rounded back, thoracic back, so lumbar, lower thoracic, T, top, right. And there's actually some new biomechanic stuff where we talk about the T spine and the L spine moving independently. So the T spine is very mobile. It can snake kind of like this. It can go this way, it can go this way. You know this. On the other side, the lumbar spine, we want to keep more stable. We don't run a lot of wiggling down there. It's just not meant for that. So in theory, right? Again, if you have good control of your biomechanics, you have good control of your proprioceptors, as we've talked about, right in the backswing, you should be able to move off the ball. And the downswing, you should be able to move forward to the ball slightly. That's where you get that sternum sway, stuff like that in your golf swing, that shift off. But most people, it all just moves together. One big thing, because they can't do this. It's easy to do in a chair. It's harder to do up in, in the real world without moving. But, yeah, it's the shoulder rocking, right? The. The old shoulder rocking, but it gives that fluidity to the spine. So I don't know if that answers your question or not, but there's a little more nuance to it. [00:03:41] Speaker A: It ties into the question for sure. So. And I really don't know how to even. I've been thinking all day about this, how to frame this whole conversation because it's. I don't. I don't even remember exactly where it started. It partially started when we did the assessment last week. And, you know, I really thought that my. A lot of my struggles in the game of golf were just that I'm fat and old and out of shape, and my body can't move the way it needs to to swing the golf club correctly. But then we go do the TPI assessment last week, and we basically, the way I walked away understanding it is that I'm basically a physical phenom. When it comes to golf, I'm built as athletically gifted as you can possibly be for the game of golf. Superior to Tony in every way, shape. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Or form drive you. So there's that. And yeah, my feet is higher. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's concerning. So it's clearly. So this was. That was the beginning, I think, of the epiphany. It's like, okay, it's not a body thing, as Mike said. Maybe it's a head thing. We knew that. But. But why am I struggling to get in the right positions here? So I've been working on my body movements around the house. My kids love it when I do C spine, S spine. That they loved it. It just freaks my older kids out to see me over there kind of basically dry humping the air. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Mm. [00:04:55] Speaker A: And I've been working on my balancing. And actually the other day, I was really proud of this. My. My daughter timed me on the very first try. 15 seconds on the right leg with eyes closed balance, 24 seconds on the left. Completely cold. Just put my shoes on, did it. So I've been working on these things a little bit. But there was a video. Part of this process for me, I guess, was when I did the video on where I tried to keep the ball under 50ft for YouTube. There was a point in that. I can't remember if I said it in the. In the YouTube video or not. I may have edited out, but there was a point where I just said, I'm just going to try to smother this ball or I'm going to try to suffocate this ball. And whatever that meant, I had no idea what that meant. It was just an internal feeling to me. But that feels pretty good to me when I do that. But I don't know what that means. So I started to kind of dig into what is that? And I started realizing basically that C spine, S spine thing. Am I. Am I correct in understanding that if anything, in the backswing, you would go more S spine, and in the downswing you would go more cease spine. Is that correct? [00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Okay. I'm the total opposite. Okay. So not only am I not doing that, I am maybe accidentally or not really realizing it, flexing my back, going into C spine in the backswing. But I am very intentionally trying to go s fine in the downswing and have been working on this for years. And I'm pretty damn good at it because I've been working at doing it wrong for 15 years probably. And there was a video that I watched on athletic Motion Golf months ago, where they talk about the. The movie you're talking about there, they call the cheerleader move, Tony. The. The swaying back and forth. And that video is more it. It's focusing more on side bend than anything else. So I don't think I thought too much about it, but I went and dug it back out. Have you seen the video I'm talking about where they get into the. The movement of the spine in the. In the golf swing? [00:06:51] Speaker B: Maybe. I don't know. I've seen a lot of their stuff. I haven't seen everything, obviously, but. [00:06:56] Speaker A: So this. This video, they use Rory specifically as an example. Usually they just talk about, like, tour averages, but they actually use Rory as a specific case study. So in Rory's backswing, he goes from, like, 23 degrees of flexion. So the spine moves, as y' all know, but for the viewers, listeners, the spine can rotate in this, you know, just around its axis. It can bend side to side, and it can flex front to back. So in Rory's swing, he goes from, like, 23 degrees of forward bend or flexion at address to, like, 30 degrees of extension at the top. But from the top of his backswing to, like, halfway down in his downswing, just that very little move from the top, he goes from 30 degrees of extension to, like, 43 degrees of flexion. So he moves, like, 70 degrees in flexion from the top to halfway down. And I remember I tried this at one point when I first saw that video. I was like, ah, this feels weird. I'm not doing this anymore. But when I started to dig into it a little bit more this week, what I'm doing is the opposite. I extend my back into impact. And every single. As I started to kind of experiment with what would this feel like if I tried to do this flexion thing that they're talking about in the downswing? Yeah, it fixes every. Every single. I'm not saying it fixes everything, but everything that I'm working on on my golf swing is tied to me doing the opposite of that. I have to try to work on getting really vertical in my arms because I'm getting flat with my body. I have to. And then on the way back down, I have to, you know, get more vertical on the way back down with my arms because I'm still flat with the body. So as I've tried to work on this, you know, extend back and then flex back down. Number one, it's helping to correct a lot of my swing issues. But number two, it's Unlocking a big power. Your back's one of your strongest muscles, and I've been using it against me. I've been flexing it when I should extend it and vice versa. So what's that? [00:08:56] Speaker B: Oh, he thinks he can catch me now. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Y. This morning, I hit. I've hit 170. [00:09:03] Speaker B: Teen it up. Let's see. Oh, 70. [00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm coming for you. Well, and not only that, but it's also giving me a better. It's hard. It's really hard to demonstrate this, but this is something we would. I want to do some video with you on this, Tony, but it's helping my attack angle and my angle of attack coming into the ball. It's helping me to maintain lag a little bit longer in the swing. There's a lot of other good side effects that are coming from it. But the bad thing is I'm spraying it all over the freaking planet because I'm not used to it. So I'm having to. You know, I always say like this, like, you got to learn how to do the right things, but then your hands have to reload. Learn how to find the golf ball from the correct positions, right? Because you're. They're used to kind of finding it from the wrong spot. So. But no, I've. I hit balls yesterday, two days ago, yesterday and today, and I've been in the 114, 116 range on the speed of the swing speed, and ball speed's been. Today my low ball out of like 15 with the driver was 165. So I was 165 to 170. So knocking the crap out of it. There's some other things we can kind of talk about a little bit later, too, about how that's kind of messing up my. My ball flight a little bit. [00:10:13] Speaker B: But. [00:10:13] Speaker A: But no, that was. I. I did not realize that that was. So I guess that's. Is that something that every good player does? Does every good player extend their back in the back swing and flex it in the downswing? Or is that unique to Rory and certain players and certain body types or. [00:10:28] Speaker C: It's. [00:10:28] Speaker A: This is mind blowing to me. This is. This is completely throwing me upside down. I. I don't know. [00:10:33] Speaker B: I didn't. [00:10:35] Speaker C: Well, hearing you talk. So I guess two things that come to mind is it's really cool that we went through the assessment, right? [00:10:42] Speaker A: And otherwise I wouldn't have known what a phenom I was. I've been. I mean, that was a big confidence booster. [00:10:48] Speaker C: So, yeah, if you. We did the assessment. And so what came out of it was that Garrett scored really well and he. There wasn't a lot of limitations with him physically. And so, you know, I made that offhanded comment that, well, I think then some of it might be above, you know, between the ears, but I had no. [00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:11] Speaker C: And the other thing was this is a great time of the year to start digging into this, right? Because we're getting into that quote, unquote, off season, and we talked about that a couple episodes ago. So to me, this is the perfect time. It was great time that we did it. And now. Now you can kind of play around with it because people don't want to struggle, right? Like when you. They don't necessarily want to do the lesson. They don't want to see themselves on film or they don't want to start moving better, but necessarily because it's going to affect how you strike the ball, right? You're going to. You're doing things different in your swing. That's affecting how you're striking the ball, which now, you know, the ball is going all over the place. But if you can trust the process and Tony can speak to that, is knowing that what you just said about your spine angle in the backswing, the extension and flexion, man, that is going to be huge for you. And I can just hear the excitement in your voice. You're so excited because that is a big thing, unlocking your pelvis. It's great for long, long term health, getting you in the right body position in the backswing, apology. So, anyway, I'm excited and to see where it goes from here. [00:12:42] Speaker A: Well, and on that, I mean, I had been playing around with a few different things this week, and today was the first day that I really committed to. Okay, I'm going to work on this and see what it looks like, because I've been just kind of just toying around with a few different things, but I got through this morning, and to the point that you just kind of made, Edgar at Sully's came over. He was talking to me as I was kind of getting my stuff out, and I. My very first swing, I said, I'll go ahead and tell you right now, I'm gonna knock the crap out of this first ball. And just in a little lob wedge, nothing crazy. I said, I'm not the crap out of this ball, and it's gonna go 75 yards left. I knew it because I knew everything that I've been doing in my golf swing has been working completely against this. And you can't try to. I could sit here and rattle off 25 side effects that this move has caused, but you can't think about all 25 of them the first time. You got to get the big thing right first. Right. So I had to make sure I, you know, work on the spine, but know that it's going to go. It's going to start, lift, and then hook. And I knew that. And I was dead on. The very first ball I hit with just a nice, smooth, just controlled lob wedge. Went 92 yards, and it went. It was a launch angle of like 25, which I'm usually fighting to keep it below 30. And it was about. No joke, about 25 yards left. I mean, it was just deadlift. So I said, okay, well, you know, that's. That's good to know that, you know, the. The hypothesis was correct. Now we start working it out. You know, I wouldn't want to do that in July. You know, you. You wouldn't want to try to take on a big. This is going to be potentially a big change. I don't think it's going to take me months to rebuild the entire swing, but I'm going to have to learn how to. How to adjust for this. But you wouldn't want to try to tackle that in. In season. When you're. When you're playing a lot. Now is a great time to try to get into it. But, yeah, I was. You talk about my excitement. Yeah, I'm pretty pumped about it because it's like. And it's also because it was. You know, we talked about effortless power and stuff, but the reason my golf swing felt so all out of whack was I was putting myself way out of position. Once you put yourself in the right positions, it's. It doesn't. I. My range of motion changes with this now because now since I'm moving my back the correct way, I don't have to lift my arms 6 inches, it feels like to be in the correct position at the top. My back's already getting it there, so it's making the movement much simpler. It's just now I've gotta turn off all the other bad crap that I was doing to. To fix it. So, yeah, I was pretty pumped about it. Y' all want to talk. I told y' all I could. I could go for 45 minutes about this, but it was just. I. I don't know. I just have always been almost intentionally doing it the wrong way. [00:15:22] Speaker C: Well, like Tony said, you know, when you're Working on something. When you know you're working on something, then that frees you up to not necessarily be results oriented, you know, because, yeah, I'm process oriented. And good, bad or indifferent, you want to hit the ball further right. That's just. And 99% of the people that play this game want to hit the ball further right. They like, they want to get it under control, but they want to hit it farther. So this is, this is exciting. I'm, I'm excited for you. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Well, and not just the, yeah, I want to hit it further. And I joke around all the time about that's the only thing that really matters to me. But the other side of that is, however, how far you're trying to hit it. Being able to do it with less effort is equally helpful in your game. Right. So being able to just kind of hop out of the car and grab a lob wedge and just kind of feel like I'm almost chipping it 90 yards down the, you know, down the fairway. You don't wear your body out as much. You can swing under control. You're not putting as much, just wasted movement into the golf swing. So it's not always necessarily about hitting it. I mean, when me and Tony are playing, yes, it is about who hits it the farthest and the hardest mainly, but it's also about being able to move efficiently in the golf swing. So Tony, I know you've got this time of year, you getting to play it all. I know you've been busy as crap here lately. Are you able to play, practice, do anything golf related? [00:16:50] Speaker B: I played on Saturday with a new group. I wasn't able to get into my normal Saturday group because they had early tee times and I was giving a lesson at the golf course at 9 and the last tee time was gonna be like 9:30. So I didn't have time to join with them. So I joined in with some other folks that I knew through pickleball and played with them. One money won money off everybody. So that was good. I got paired with a, I guess, 76 year old guy and we were best ball and I birded the first hole and had a few others and we had a good time, but no. Yeah. So this week I have a tested club. I haven't done anything. Been fighting a little nagging, getting older, stiff sleeping, funny injury, just those stupid things where you're like, I didn't do anything weird, I just hurt, you know, so. And then my, my lower back. I've been doing a lot of work outside on the lawn overseeding and mowing and working on my car. Yep. Working on my car in odd angles and stuff. So my back is tweaked. Um, but no. Yeah. So this time of year with, I was just, you know, right now I've got advising going on and then the regular semester stuff. So pretty much during the week and then daylight savings about to end. So I probably only get to play on the weekends or if I can sneak out on a Monday early one once or twice. [00:18:07] Speaker C: But. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah, but what I was going to say I could transition to talking into is, you know, we talk about process, we talk about practice. But I was talking with my sports psych class this morning about the power of visualization. And so like you, when you had hurt your wrist, right, you couldn't really hit golf balls there for a while because your wrist was hurt. Visualization is something that elite level competitors and athletes and anybody who does something at a high level, they really tap into and they use it when they're hurt too, because it allows them to continue to practice in their brain. Because the neural pathways are all the same. Whether you're physically doing it or you're mentally doing it in your head, it's still the brain is working. And at the end of the day, the brain is what tells our body what to do, right? Without your brain, you're just going to lay there. So with you, I mean, you're not doing anything, you're going to sleep, you don't move, right? And when you do twitch in the middle of the night because you're having a dream that's so vivid that your brain tells your body to do something. So. But anyway, I was going to say with you is even if you're not able to hit golf balls, I know you're still thinking about this move you're making. You're sitting there in the house doing stuff to try and figure it out, right? That's a very valuable form of practice that people overlook. You know, these things got to do, do, do. But Jack Nicklaus famous quote, right? He said, like, I never hit a shot until I have a very clear mental picture of exactly how I want it to go. Only once I have that clear image in my head do I actually step into the shot and actually hit the shot. I gave examples. If you haven't seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger three part documentary on Netflix and then there's a one part alone, it's good, right? But what does he talk about? What does he talk about? He talks about having a vision. And as soon as he could see something, he knew he could do it. Like he saw it. He saw the physique, Reg park and Hercules right back in the day. And that became his, his, his vision, what he wanted to accomplish for himself. And once you have the vision, you can develop the plan that gets you to the vision, gets you to the goal. You know, they call them concentration curls for a reason in the gym because they're literally concentrating on that peak and they're trying to see that peak of the bicep how they want it to look. Sly talked, Sylvester Sloan talked about the same thing. He said, once I had a vision in my head, I was able to go and I would just sit there and focus on my vision. What is my goal? What is my goal? What do I try to accomplish? What do I want to look like? What do I want to achieve? It's just fascinating how you, and you see this across all athletes. Wayne Rooney, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, they talk about the power of the brain to perform something. Once they can see it in their mind's eye, then their body has a plan of action. So don't sleep on the visualization, the mental practice for people as well. You don't have to always physically do something in order to get the benefit. And then as we get older, overuse injuries, our bodies get stiff. There are still ways to prepare mentally, to practice mentally that don't overstress and over tax your body. When I played that four club championship and I won it, right, I never had a shot that I hadn't already practiced in my head because I was able to use the course imaging to plan out the round beforehand. I knew exactly which I was going to hit. And then I'd get to the tee box. And some people in my group like, ah, shoot, I didn't plan for this one. I don't have the right club or I don't know how to hit this shot. And I was like, I already got it. I know exactly what I'm doing. I've already practiced it in my mind, you know, so you're not surprised. [00:21:27] Speaker C: So expand into that. Talk a little bit more. That, yeah, back it up a little bit. Give me, dig into that a little. [00:21:34] Speaker B: Bit more with the course management and the preparation. [00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and maybe before you do that, let me, let me elaborate maybe on this, on what I would like to hear you dig into is when you say visualization, are you envisioning? Is it an out of body visualization or an in body visualization? Are you, are you envisioning? I'm looking at the golf ball and now this is what the shot's going to look like. Or are you imagining what you would look like from a third person? Third. From a what? [00:22:03] Speaker B: Third person, third person objective, third party perspective. Yeah. So there's both. There's. And that's called internal versus external imagery. Right. So internal is through your eyes, as you just said. External is as if someone's filming you and you're watching it. And we know both are valuable, right. Some people say, oh, I feel like, like my students all the time, they're like. I'm like, take a backswing to shoulder height. Yeah. And. And you're like, not even close. And they're like, what are you talking about? And then you show them a video and now they have something to look at and correlate. Oh, crap. I thought I was. I thought I was to here. Right? So that's a variable, very valuable form of it as well, is the external imagery. But then the internal imagery is also important. Right? So seeing something through your own eyes as if you had a GoPro on a hat and you're filming your daily life, you're filming the shots or whatever. They're both. They both have their place. I was talking with some of my students in class today. One of them is still a high level competitive hockey player. And he was talking about he's a goal saver. He's a. He's a goalie. And he was talking about how his coach, before every game would have the goalies literally sit there and they would just go into a room and meditate over the types of shots they were going to be fielding during a game. Right? What, what angles would this team try to come at them from? Do they have a weak side? Does this. Do we know that Sidney Crosby always comes and shoots from the left? 75% of the time he's coming. Right. So I might hedge my mental practice, I might hedge my visualization to that because I know my opponent or whatever. So all that to say. What I was saying was with the course strategy and preparation, that's another way of visualizing without actually having to hit a golf ball and actually having to practice physically. Anything to get better at the game of golf, right? Because again, I know my seven wood goes a certain distance when I hit it off the tee. Then I go and put my ball there on the golf course, and I figure how much yardage I have left into the green from there. Okay? Nine times out of 10, it was going to be close to this yardage. So I'm going to choose the eight iron because that at least gets me to the front of the green. And then again, when I get up to the net to the par three tee box and I got an eight iron, I've already mentally said and committed in practice. This is what I'm doing. I can't get it to the back of the green if it's a back flap. I've already committed to just getting into the front edge and two putting from there, right? So then the other part about it is once you, you develop these mental practice routines or this mental visualization, when you come into a situation, you're not, you're not underprepared. You've already expected this to happen. You've already trained your brain. How am I going to handle this? Right? Perfect example is when I was in the club championship a few weeks ago and I got that bad lie where my ball's in between tree roots, okay? My, my eyes saw a very small possibility of, well, if I just pick this just right, I might could get it 150 yards. There's Gary. Look at him. I knew that would, that would psych him up, right? But I have, I had thought about scenarios in my head. Like, no, if I get in this situation, I just need to take my medicine and punch out and not damage my clubs, damage my body. But had I not at least thought about it, my instinct might have said, hit it. You know, go for it. You know, just, just try it. But because I had already gone through that process in my head of, if you get into XYZ type of scenario, this is the path, this is the plan, right? You see what I'm saying? [00:25:17] Speaker C: So this, this is very difficult for people. Like, I, I've tried to meditate, use like a five minute app, meditation app, and it's so hard to like, oh, God, how much more time am I going to be box breathing? So I, when I'm hearing you talk, I'm like, people don't even like to warm up. So doing something that people like hate more than warm up is mental doing mental prep. So practically speaking, like, what does that look like? Is that something you're, you're in the car doing? Is that something that while your buddy is taking a shot, you're doing it? Like, practically speaking, what does that look like? When do you do it? How do you recommend when you're teaching your students that are like, like Garrett, who is on Adderall, to do mental preparation? [00:26:18] Speaker A: And you notice how quiet I got by the way, when he starts talking about Mental stuff. [00:26:23] Speaker C: First person and third person visualization. [00:26:28] Speaker B: Well, so here's the thing. Go ahead, Garrett. I'll touch on this in a minute. [00:26:32] Speaker A: See, I don't even know if I want to say what I'm thinking right now, because I actually answer it first. Because what I'm going to say might be its own thing. I may decide I want to say it. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, one again, we look at what the best of the best have done, and I guarantee you, you go and you start looking. Just do a basic Google search on elite athletes, elite performers, use of visualization. You will see nine times out of 10, they've been doing something Wayne Rudy talks about. He would lay in bed before games since he was a kid, visualizing the shots he was going to take, visualizing the ball going in the goal, visualizing what it felt like to win, right? Like, there's obviously like, success leaves clues, right? You look at, you know, people who've been successful in business, and like, I just saw myself at the top and I figured out a way to get there, but that was my focus, was what I was trying to accomplish. Now, big picture, holistically, our society, why is this getting harder and harder? It's the freaking cell phone, right? Because we're uncomfortable being bored. We're uncomfortable being in our thoughts. We're uncomfortable being in silence. You know, it's. It's like it's so easy just to be distracted or to find something else to do with work or to find something else to do with, you know, communication, connection, whatever. So I think a good daily practice, Mike, as you said, was not necessarily meditating, but just getting used to being bored. Just getting used to sitting there without a phone or any device and just being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable getting used to it. There was a study done where they put people in a room with nothing. There's nothing. No magazines, no nothing. And they told them, you need to be in this room for 15 minutes with nothing to do. And there's a button in the room that if you push it, will give you a very painful electric shock. You know what the sad thing is? A crap ton of people would rather push that button and shock themselves than be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes, you know, mean. So I think it's indicative of a bigger issue we have in society with technology and just not being okay in our thoughts. But look at all the creative people in the past. The da Vinci, you know, the. The great artisans of old. They didn't have technology distracting them. They were in their heads. And that's where creativity comes is when you are still and silent and have the ability to think. That's where ideas come from. [00:28:50] Speaker A: I don't know. I can't remember if I was talking to one of y' all about this or talking. I was talking to somebody about that. A few months ago, one of my kids was complaining about being bored. And, you know, it's like I was the worst dad in the history of forever because they had to be bored for five minutes or something, right? And I just got on one of my, like, back in my day kind of soapboxes where it's like, you know what? Being bored is not a bad thing. Being bored is something that you. Honestly, honest to goodness, I love going to my parents. And my. Every time I go to my parents, sometimes my. My son, he loves to go up there, too. But he came out one day, I was sitting on the porch, and he's like, I'm kind of bored. I said, me too. That's my favorite thing about Nendon's house. I love coming up here because I can be B.O. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Bored. [00:29:29] Speaker A: And there's something about being bored. It lets your brain think about stuff that you don't have time to think about when you're busy. [00:29:36] Speaker B: That's right. [00:29:37] Speaker A: And when I. And you. You talk about society, and this is not a society podcast. But, yeah, I mean, we're not. We're never bored anymore because we always find something to do to keep us from being bored. And I think it makes us stupid. I mean, it really does. It locks up or restricts what we can do. Now on the visualization thing, though, I hate to admit this, probably, although it's probably very revealing, I can remember specifically one time when I was probably 12, 13 years old, and I was going to a golf tournament. You know, mom's driving the car, and I'm sitting in the car, and I was doing this. I'm envisioning everything I'm going to do for that day. And I'm going to tell you, I got the biggest case of the hooks in that vision. And I was a fader of the golf ball, but for whatever reason, I've been kind of drawing the ball. And as I'm visualizing it, I mean, I could not make a part of saving my life in my own head on the way to this golf tournament, like. And. And so for me personally, I find it. I'm so messed up mentally, I think that when I visualize it messes me up, man, because it gets me thinking. I can't hit a golf ball. To save my life. And I may have just striped the last 25 balls that I hit, but in my head, I, I can't, I, I, and it's not just that one time when I was 12 years old, I can sit here, you know, riding to Riverwood to meet you to play. I can, I can be riding up to Eagle Ridge, whatever, and in my mind, I mean, yeah, I, I know that I've just hit 100 balls at Soly's the day before and barely miss, hit a single shot and, you know, but on the first hole, all I can see is snap, hooking it out of bounds or topping it or whatever. Now, I don't know what that is. We don't need to get into it today, but that's a struggle of mine, is that I play better in real life than I do in my head. And I don't know how to fix that. [00:31:19] Speaker B: That's interesting. [00:31:20] Speaker A: That's interesting. Problem. It's a hell of a conundrum to be in. But it's hard for me to hit good shots when I'm imagining them. [00:31:26] Speaker B: So let me, let me ask you this. Let me. We're gonna go. Put your head on the pillow, lay down for a second. [00:31:33] Speaker A: I don't talk about my childhood. I don't want to talk about my fear. I'm just saying I just have a hard time hitting the ball well in my head. [00:31:40] Speaker B: We're going, we're going, we're going. Full tin cup now, right, with his girlfriend. But like kids do this, right? How many of us, when we were kids, we envisioned three, two, one in your bedroom and you're shooting the game winning three pointer or you're, you know, draining the 15 footer to, to win the Masters. Like again, all of the elite athletes do this, whether they intend to or it's subconscious. They see success in their head. They don't see failure, right? They see themselves performing the way they want to perform. They see themselves doing well. And to a point of this, you know, there's studies out there that will show you'll take a control group where you do no practice, you have a physical only practice, shooting free throws or something like that. And then you have like a mental only focus where all you see is swish, swish, swish, swish, swish. You go through your routine, your pre shot, spin, dribble, dribble, spin, deep breath, whoosh, swish. And all you see is successful, right? And then they compare the groups afterwards and majority of the time there's little to no difference between the physical only practice and the mental only practice. Because again, in your head you have the opportunity to control the outcome. You have the opportunity to control what you see, what your body experiences. Right. So obviously Garrett's got some situations going on and said we got to figure out, but it's, it's a fascinating field of study. It's a fascinating field of exploration and study. As far as, like, potential. Right. What do we have the potential to do? And we've talked about some podcasts before where like, for whatever reason, sometimes you see that 10 foot putt and you just know it's going in. Something in your brain visualizes and sees everything just right. And it's like predestined at that point. You just know it's going in. And I wish we could figure out a way to tap into, I think visualization is a part of it. Practicing the visualization. Remember Jason day before, he'd go and hit a shot for like five straight years. He's sitting there, he's just like closing his eyes and he's visualizing so deeply, so vividly you can see his eyelids fluttering. You remember that? And it wasn't until he could taste the shot that he walked into it. Right. And I think why this is so important is because it's like directions. If you don't have a vision or an idea of where you're trying to go, you're just driving aimlessly. Okay. I played golf when I was back in college with one of the ladies who was on the Texas AM University women's golf team. And so, Mike, you asked, what does this look like in real, real example or whatever. [00:34:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:04] Speaker B: So she'd be back there behind, you know, the tee box, and she's looking at a par three. And I can see her like she's, she's just going through ahead of how this ball's gonna fly, where it's gonna start. And then her body starts to flow and mimic the visualization. So she sits there with her left hand and she's like. And then she starts leaning this way and she's like this. And I, I, I saw this about four or five tee shots in a row. I was like, what are you doing? And she was like, oh, I'm visualizing the shot. And then my body is forming around the picture I see. And I was like, that's pretty dang cool, right? And sure enough, she hit it and I draw. Whatever. But if without that visual intention, that visual picture, how do you recreate it? When a painter is painting a canvas, they are Visualizing what it is they're trying to paint. And then they paint over it. You know, the, the sculptors of old, they had a stone tablet or a piece of wood. All they're doing is seeing in front of them and they're carving away the extra that doesn't need to meet, right? So again, this is a very powerful thing that I think the best of the best have the ability to tap into. Shadow boxing. What is shadow boxing? They are physically seeing an opponent across from them and they're saving their body from getting punched in the freaking head over and over with a sparring partner. But they're still. Right, they're just, they're seeing it and then they're reacting to it. It's, it's, it's a, it's a thing as old as time because it's imagination, right? It's. It's a visual representation of what we need to accomplish in our, in our mind's eye. The people talk about mind's eye, right? That. What do you see in your mind'? I don't know. Anyway, I know it got real professory in science. I just wanted to share because it's something that I think especially as we get older, we should, we should do a better job of saving our bodies from the repetitive stress and figure out other ways to. To get better at the game. [00:35:47] Speaker C: Love it. [00:35:48] Speaker B: I think Garrett's kids. [00:35:49] Speaker C: Garrett's processing. [00:35:52] Speaker B: Garrett's in dad mode right now. [00:35:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I am having a. I'm processing a lot here. So two, Two things. So you mentioned shadow boxing or. It's not two things. One thing. Sorry, not Adderall. Shadow boxing. If I, if I have to sit on my couch and just close my eyes and envision me hitting a good golf shot, I suck. I can't break a hundred. If I close my eyes and just have to envision a golf shot. If I can get up off my couch and go stand in the middle of my living room floor, put my hands. It's funny, when I do this, I have to interlock my grip. I actually have an overlap grip. But when I do this, I interlock for some reason. And I am ashamed to say, at 40 years old, how many times a week I still do that. I still, I mean, I hit. I have to close my blinds. Seriously, no joke. I close my blinds, my living room, so my neighbors don't see me swing a golf club in my living room with no club. I'm take make believe swings by myself all the time. Have never miss hit one that way. So if I can actually physically move as part of my visualization. That's different. But if I have to just focus entirely in the brain, I can't hit a golf shot and save my life. But once I can can swing it even without a club, then I'm fine. Yeah, I even know so far, this is the most embarrassing. Maybe. I don't know if I really want to publish this episode, honestly, but I'll even go so bad I make a whack sound when I hit. When I at the impact, I always make that, that sound. I struggle to make the sound, but I can make the iron sound fantastic. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Well, like, have you ever seen like behind the scenes footage of like a band, your favorite band, and before they come out to the tunnel to go out to stage, you see the drummer and he's sitting there with his sticks and he's just, you know, he's going through the motions and the guitar player's sitting there and they're doing their chords or whatever, their, their solo. That's visualization, right? All the visualization is, is the process of mentally rehearsing performing something without physically having to do it. That's all it is. And again, I promise you, the more you watch, the more you study this, the more you look into it. The best of the best, they have a very clear mental picture of what they're trying to accomplish. You know? You know, it's, it's, it's just one of those things like you'll play golf sometimes and you're like, you just see the shot, you just, you see the tee shot, you know exactly where you want to hit it. It's easy, it's flowing, bang, you do it. And there's some days where you're like, I'm just cloudy. I can't see what it is I'm trying to do. I can't see the shot. I can't feel it. You'll hear the pros talking about that. I don't know what it was today. I just couldn't see it. Something was clouding. Something was, was overtaking the Matrix or clouding the Matrix, right. They couldn't just see it. So it's really fascinating. But there's also tech now that we can use to hack the system a little bit. Right. If you struggle with the VR. So I used to tell people, remember the old PGA or Tiger Woods PGA Tour games where they had the putt line, that you could see the putt preview, right? So some people struggle with seeing that in real life. So what I do for myself, because I Struggle. Seeing is like, I've told y' all before. I take my fingers back from the hole, and I curve, I trace the path, and then I walk in that picture. I mean, Tiger Woods. What did he say? He said he putted to a picture. That's how important visualization was to him. He's sitting there looking at the putt, reading and everything. And then when he goes back to the ball, he's got the picture in his head, and he's just putting to the picture. You've got all kinds of tech now, wearable with Oculus and all kinds of things. Putt View has goggles where you can see the line of the putt. Google on YouTube, look up Peter Finch using Put View, and he shows you. I got to experience. He's the PGA show one time. But that's a way to help speed up the process. For people who struggle with visualization. There's modern technology, things of that nature. But yeah, I mean, if you don't rehearse, how does a. How does a band get better if they don't rehearse? That's physical practice. What do you do when you can't. Yeah, what do you do when you can't rehearse physically? This is the untapped domain right here. [00:39:48] Speaker C: That's what Garrett's doing. He's rehearsing in the living room. So it's cool that you. It's just coming up with different names. Some people may not like visualization. The term visualization or meditation. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Mental practice. [00:40:02] Speaker C: But it's just fun. Yeah. Just finding another word for it and you. And it'd just be interesting. I think we all do it. We just don't know we're doing it. So that could be a nice little challenge for the listener. Is like, am I visualizing? Catching yourself visualizing when you're not even know you're doing it. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's time to know, like. And especially as we go into the winter months a little bit. Yeah. As we go into the winter months where you can't physically practice because the daylight ends if you don't have a cellulose, you don't have a simulator in a garage or whatever. What else are you gonna do? You're just gonna waste that time. No, you can practice. You can go through the motions, you can rehearse, you can train, you can. Whatever you wanna call it. Mental training, whatever you wanna call it. Right. To get out of the mindset of I can't do this, whatever you gotta do. There's. There's benefits to It, Yeah, yeah. [00:40:52] Speaker A: And it's also, I mean it, it's a good time to rehearse your pre shot routine. It's a good time to rehearse. You know, when I'm standing there trying to hit shots in the living room or whatever, I joke about not every single one of them is a full speed driver. Sometimes it's a three quarter seven iron with a ten yard cut, or it might be a stinger with a 10 yard draw or you know, little flop shots, whatever. But there's that. That's why I was asking the question, does that count as visualization? Does it have to be totally in your head? Because I do that all the time. I love doing that. I don't know how many green jackets I've won in my living room. I've won a bunch of them. But yeah. [00:41:28] Speaker B: No, to me visualization is just practicing in the absence of the physical space. Right. So it's practicing if you're not actually hitting a golf ball. It's anything that you do to work on getting better at something. Right. So you know, when you're sitting there like people with no golf club, if they're sitting there and they're working on a halfway back, halfway through, they're working on proprioception, they still have to visualize an action. They still have to visualize something so the brain can process and commit to something. That's visualization. You, you are. Whether you are imagining I'm looking at myself from a third party perspective, how big of a swing I'm making, or. Or you imagine after I do this, how the ball is going to fly, how the putt's going to roll. It's all that all counts. And everybody has different ways of doing it. Some ways work best for some, some ways work best for others. But the whole point is how do we get better when we can't physically do something? It's not wasted time, you know. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Switching gears to a physical question because I think I'm mentally taxed now. I'm. That's enough Freudian stuff today. You're gonna see my information overload kick in here pretty soon. But another physical question there. So as I've going back to the spine thing, what I've found with that is it's kind of unlocked my range of motion a lot. I've kind of been using my spine that it's been restricting my movement a lot. Now that I'm doing that correctly, a three quarterback swing to me is past parallel. Like in my mind, I feel like I'm Past parallel with, you know, with even barely moving the club. And I'm not seriously, you know, joke about me being a physical phenom from the TPI assessment or whatever, but when you look at the. Your range of motion, if you have the range, if you're making a correct golf swing. Does anybody on the planet have the range of motion to make a good golf swing that goes past parallel? Or are the best players and the more flexible players, they have the ability to go past parallel? They just stop it there? Or, you know, John Daly swing. Was John Daly just that flexible, or did he just make a. Did he have a swing flaw that caused him to go so far past parallel or whatever? You know what I mean? [00:43:32] Speaker B: Like John Bailey, Fred Couples. Yeah, there's. There's a few examples for sure. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Nicholson goes a little past parallel, or used to, at least he was kind of long. And. And I don't feel like I'm swinging. You know, my backswing right now is a touch pass parallel pretty comfortably, and I'm. I don't feel out of control. I'm fine hitting it that way. But if I stop it at parallel, am I even. I mean, to me, I don't necessarily hit it any shorter when I stop at parallel. So I'm sitting there thinking, okay, that extra motion from top of the backswing to where it should be is just an added motion that I don't necessarily need. The fact that it's comfortable to me and I have the range of motion to get it there doesn't change the fact that it's still longer than it should be or, you know, this is kind of hard to demonstrate. We're sitting here talking. I mean, there's plenty of things that I could do to shorten the backswing that aren't keeping my right arm straighter. That's going to make the golf swing appear shorter or, you know, stop it short of parallel or at parallel, but it's increasing my arc. So, you know, are there players out there that are. Why do we stop at parallel? Might be the qu. Like, do we stop at parallel because that's as far as we can go? Or that's where somebody said that you should stop it. Is there any geometric reason to stop at parallel? And that's just where we run out of room. And do you necessarily need to stretch the rubber band as tight as you possibly can in to get the most out of it? I have a history. I have a record for the longest questions in the history of ever. That's the end of my question. You can answer now? [00:45:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you look at mechanical systems, right, the more degrees of freedom you have, the less accurate it's going to be overall less consistent. So I think, you know, you start off with the shortest possible motion, a one foot putt. There's a reason why that goes in the hole 99.99 of the time, right. It's a very small motion, very small degree of error. The farther you go again, all things being equal, the more time a small error has to become a big error, right? I start a ball 1 degree offline. In 10ft, it only goes so far offline, but in a thousand feet, it's super far offline. So I think, you know, you need it. It's. It's that balance of I need enough motion to get power and distance out of the shot, but not so much that I start to sacrifice that accuracy. Does that make sense? [00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. But for me, power and efficiency, it's not just all about how far you're hitting it. But to me, there seems to be like a law of diminishing returns. At some point, they're like, I have to get the club back to at least arm parallel back to get any power. If I'm just hitting a little chip shot, it's not gonna go anywhere. Once I get it to about shoulder height on the way back, that's probably three quarters of the backswing and 95% of my power. Once I get to the, you know, Club parallel, that's 95% of my flexibility and 99.99% of my power. Right. So there just becomes this diminishing return that you get, but almost. Maybe a different way to phrase. The question is, does there come a tipping point where now you've gone past the optimal. You can't get it any. You're not even getting any more distance past this point. It's actually hurting you because. [00:46:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, because, yeah, your efficiency of strike is not going to be as good. You're going to miss the center more often. But if you look, and I can be totally wrong about this, but if you look at, for example, John Daly and Fred Couples, both of them, if I remember, in my mind's eye, had flying right elbows. So that's where that was coming from. Yeah, that's, that's. That extra range of motion in this very fluid ball and socket joint was where the extra range of motion is coming from. Not from more shoulder turn, not for whatever we stop here. And then it kept going. Yeah, you could do this as far as you want, but Then it's got to connect and then it's got to go back around. So yeah, when you do that, you. [00:47:22] Speaker A: Might gain a tiny little bit of power, but it's, to me, the flying elbow, it's. It makes the golf swing appear to be longer, but all you're really doing is adding an unnecessary and inefficient movement to the swing. It's not even necessarily adding that much speed, is it? It's just giving your body something else to undo on the way down. Or is that. Yeah, well, is that a power. [00:47:42] Speaker B: But again, all things considered, right. The farther the club has away from the ball, the more time it has to generate speed. That's why a guy who's 6 foot 7, if he takes it back to parallel, he's going to be faster, all things considered, if he did nothing but use gravity, than a guy who's five foot three. Right. It's just time. Right. Longer levers. Yeah. So I think there's definitely something. But yeah, the whole point of diminishing returns. I think there's a reason why swings have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter over the years. More compact, more efficient, less margin of error, less things to have time to go offline. But yeah, no, physically, there's only so far, unless you're a freak of nature, that you can rotate. Yeah, absolutely. And then the rest comes from the fluid joints, the ball and sockets. [00:48:27] Speaker A: Because on the other side of that spectrum, you've got John Rom. Right. Knocks the total hell out of the ball and he's nowhere close to parallel. So does he not go to parallel because he doesn't have the range of motion to get there? Or does he not go to parallel because he's found that's as far as he needs to go to max out his. [00:48:44] Speaker B: His power versus his ankle. That club foot thing, he is restricted physically. But two. Yeah, the boy's just thick. He's got them thick forearms and thick legs. He can hit the ball a mile from wayside, awayside. You know just how he's going to be able to do it. He's just a big old boy, just has the ability to generate speed and power from anywhere. He's got mass on his side. [00:49:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:09] Speaker B: You know, you could hit something really hard with a really small object moving really fast or you could hit something really hard with a big object moving really slow. They're both going to cause damage. [00:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So Mike gotta get back in the gym. I want to make that a regular thing. I want to get into the gym once I don't know, a couple. Couple times a month. Whatever we got time to do. And now. Now we've identified I need to work on my ankle mobility and my balance, and. Well, other than that, I'm pretty much perfect. But then you show me how to do that and actually stay on top of it. So ground up. We'll work from the ground up. [00:49:44] Speaker C: That's good stuff. [00:49:45] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. The balancing thing was. That was. That's been a fun little game to play with my daughter. My daughter has got incredible balance and incredible flexibility. So, you know, I am struggling and fighting as hard as I can to go 15 seconds. She literally could read a book with and stand on one leg for a weekend if she had to. It's. [00:50:05] Speaker C: It's about being young. [00:50:08] Speaker A: Yeah. No joke. Well, I don't know how we are on time. We've. I think we're around an hour. Y' all have anything else y' all want to talk about while we're here? I feel like I kind of. I didn't. I didn't quite derail the whole conversation as bad as I thought I would with the back thing. I. I plugged myself after about 15 minutes, but y' all got anything going on? [00:50:25] Speaker C: You know, it's funny where you guys were saying. I think we were talking about being bored is what you're saying, Garrett. I was camping over the weekend, and I was like, I'm gonna unplug. I'm not gonna pay attention to my phone. And then I get to the campsite, and I just hear all this outside noise from other campers, and I'm like, I need some music. I just need something. But, no, it's great. I was bored this weekend. I just, like, camping is putting up a tent, making shell, you know, making shelter, making fire. Sat in a boat a little bit and sat in the hammock. And that was my weekend, just being bored and loving it. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Guys. [00:51:11] Speaker A: We were the kids. [00:51:12] Speaker B: And I was gonna think. I was thinking about this too. I was like, how many great games, sports activities, you know, backyard games do we have? Because some college kids got bored one day, right? Like, and then they were just like, hey, let's do find something fun to do, you know? And it's like, sparks of genius happen out of boredom. It's pretty cool. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I really do. I mean, it's like, I don't know, like, anything in life. Yes, you need to work out, but then you also have to have recovery time from it also. Right. Your brain's kind of the same way. It needs some Time to unplug a little bit too, to recharge itself. And, you know, it's. I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm old and busy or whatever, but, dude, I love being bored. Being bored, one of the best blessings in life. I love it when you get a chance to do that. And I think it's an important part of, you know, whether it's whatever you're doing, meditation, visualization, watching tv, anything. Sometimes you got to do that. So agree with that. 100. Well, I think that's all we got for this one. If you have made it through this far, consider liking the video. That would definitely help to feed the YouTube powers that be to put us out there to more people subscribe to the channel. Follow us if you're listening. Follow whatever it's called on your platform. Send us comments. I enjoy the comments. I do prefer if you only send positive feedback. I don't need negative. You can if you'd like, but, you know, I'll just give you like a thumbs up response or something. But yeah, let us know what we should talk about. So we're not just going to hear. Winging it sometimes will maybe make a special podcast episode for you if you'll tell us what to talk about. And I'm going to get back to perfecting my new found power move in my back. [00:52:51] Speaker B: I think we need a demonstration. I was ready to go. I think you just stand up and demonstrate before you go. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Are we. Are we going to try to do. [00:52:59] Speaker B: At least two of the cattle. Cows or the S spine. C spine. [00:53:04] Speaker A: We've already got that on video. We already did that one on video. We're not doing that anymore. I really do. I have a good time with that with the kids because I'm like, I'm like, watch this new thing. I've been working my golf swing and they watch me and their eyes get like this big. They're like, no, stop doing that. Stop doing that. Y. I was like, what's wrong? It's just. It's just S spine. C spine. I'm just. It's just hip mobility, pelvic mobility. What are you talking about? But anyway, love to. Love to torture them. Think that's all we got. So thank y' all for your time. Always. And if you listen to us, thanks for watching. See y' all later. [00:53:34] Speaker C: All right, boys. [00:53:35] Speaker A: Think that's it. See y'. All. [00:53:40] Speaker B: We might have just saved a lot of relationships with the S spine. C spine. Some reignited some passion in the bedroom. You never know that will not make the podcast. [00:53:50] Speaker A: I'm ready to proclaim right now that there's better than a 50% chance that I'll be on the PGA Tour at this time next year. [00:53:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:55] Speaker C: I'm telling you, buddy, when does the Adderall actually start kicking in? [00:53:59] Speaker A: Mine is actually worn off by now, so I'm not. [00:54:02] Speaker C: You don't say. [00:54:05] Speaker A: A little bit or nothing at all.