Golf and Visualization with Eric Jones

Here's a couple of videos from Eric Jones discussing visualization in the golf swing.  I've found that quality visualization has a far larger reaching impact on your performance than consciously thinking about swing mechanics.





It's not that swing mechanics are unimportant, but being able to sense and feel those swing mechanics BEFORE you make your swing is something that I have found enables me to execute those mechanics and perform better than when I consciously think about swing mechanics.

A long time ago I had read an article about Fred Couples.  In the article they asked Fred how he hits a draw.  He says he visualizes a draw in his pre-shot routine and he hits the draw.  The same with a fade.

For years...I thought Couples was either goofing on the interviewer or was some surreal talent (well, he is that) that could make that work, but no ordinary human could reproduce that type of magic.

After understanding visualization better, I started to be able to do the same thing.  Instead of thinking about mechanics to hit a draw on command, I would visualize the shot and sense the swing I needed to make to produce that shot BEFORE I swung the club and I started producing that shot on command.

What I have seen thus far is when I can really visualize the ball's flight trajectory and then visualize myself making the swing I want to make, that's when I hit pay dirt and golf becomes really easy for me.  It's almost like an out-of-body experience of not only visualizing, but actually feeling the muscles, the balance of your body, etc. hitting the shot despite the fact that I'm standing behind the ball in my pre-shot routine.

Hall of Famer and arguably the greatest left hand pitcher of all time, Steve Carlton, was known to visualize himself getting into 'the zone' before a game and obviously it worked quite well for him.  I hope to have more blog posts on this to come.




3JACK