Jim Andrews PhD - Power Your Golf Game with Mental Skills for Golf: Jim Andrews, PhD--Sports Psychology Coach

ISBN: 9781483510460

Copyright 1990, 2013 Jim Andrews, PhD

Dr. Jim Andrews Clinics are available worldwide.

www.MentalSkillsForGolf.com

For booking, contact Steve Celuch at

or +1 (256) 653-5400.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who want to perform to their best in any endeavor, whether it is sports, business, or personal effectiveness; and to those of you who want effective tools to rebound quickly from adversity, whether from a bad golf shot and more importantly, from what life throws at you.

Note to Readers

Making a difference to individuals is important to me. Whether it has been in career counseling, clinical psychology, sports performance, business performance or personal effectiveness, my passion is to help people develop and improve. Doing clinical work has helped individuals get from limiting symptoms and beliefs to a more personally effective way of seeing and experiencing themselves. Career counseling has helped individuals who were out-placed, moving up in a career, or lost, find a direction that brought them happiness and fulfillment. Executive coaching and sports psychology has helped individuals improve their performance and create empowering beliefs, realistic optimism and satisfaction to improve in business, sports or personal effectiveness. So, why a book on Golf? Well, Golf has always been a large part of my life. I came to understand that the game was a metaphor for life; because not only is the game challenging technically, but also very challenging cognitively and emotionally. One receives immediate feedback from their stroke, and there is always adversity around the corner. So one has to maintain a focus on ones goal, have a strategy and plan to stay self-confident, remain realistically optimistic and manage ones thoughts, emotions, stress, and impulses. Whether you play golf or not, the tools you learn here, using golf as the vehicle, can be applied to personal, professional, and athletic performance, effectiveness and fulfillment.

Jim Andrews, PhD

Jim Andrews, PhD

Dr. Jim Andrews has designed a performance psychology program for golf that is based on his performance psychology work of more than 10 years with the University of San Francisco Golf team.

Andrews also worked with golf professionals at Stanford University and Arizona to implement sports psychology clinics for Executive Women golfers. In addition, he trained executives in Type-A Behavior change and coronary artery disease prevention at the Meyer Friedman Institute in San Francisco.

This work in stress management and executive performance led Andrews to develop peak performance training for executives, using golf as the vehicle. He taught at the University of San Francisco, the University of Tennessee, Dominican University, and the HAAS Business School at the University of California and he is a Club Champion at the Presidio Golf Course in San Francisco. After receiving his PhD in Psychology from the University of Tennessee, Andrews became Staff Psychologist at the Naval Regional Medical Center (Oakland, CA) as a Lieutenant Commander. He currently works at NASA.

Performance Psychology for Sports and Corporate Application

Performance Psychology studies the behavioral factors that influence and enhance performance in the sports and business competitive environment. It targets learning the skills and abilities for a player to achieve optimal performance, personal development, and well-being throughout his or her lifespan. Performance enhancement helps the coach, the team, or the organization and its leaders, managers, and teams. The Performance Psychology approach tailors assessment, skill training, implementation, and evaluation to individuals or teams specific needs. Implementation targets two main areas:

Performance Management

The skills to optimize ones own and others performance in the competitive environment include:

• Self-Confidence
• Goal Setting
• Motivation
• Pressure Inoculation
• Mental Rehearsal

Self-Regulation

The skills to regulate oneself, or to teach self-regulation to others, in a demanding environment. These skills include:

• Self-Awareness
• Stress Management
• Thought Control
• Attention/Concentration Control
• Attitude Regulation
• Anger Management

Benefits

Learn mental skills and strategies that refine, improve and enhance performance. Learn the mental skills and abilities to achieve optimal performance, personal development, and well-being throughout ones lifespan

Samples of Individual Clinics

Clinic One: Self-Confidence, Goal Setting and Motivation, and Designing Self-Confidence

When self-confidence is lacking, everything is an effort. You doubt yourself; you hesitate, get frustrated, and get angry. Wouldnt it be nice to design self-confidence rather than let it be elusive?

Clinic Two: Tension Management and Pressure Management

There are optimal levels of tension necessary for peak performance: Too little tension creates a loss of focus; too much tension creates a narrowness of focus and both types of tension are harmful to performance. Tension can be managed to produce the optimal level for peak performance.

Clinic Three: Mental Rehearsal and Strategies

Visualization has many forms and several uses. The best way to think about visualization? Use your imagination to Mentally Rehearse. Mental rehearsal is the process where you imagine your shot in whatever way you can: an image, a feeling, or a thought. If you can use all three in the correct sequence (a Ritual Strategy), it is most powerful. Use it to practice your swing in your head, pre- shot shaping, and desensitization to pressure situations. Practicing in your head requires a subjective mental rehearsal of your successful stroke and is 80% as effective as real practice.

Clinic Four: Thought Control, Attention, and Concentration Control

Imagine being on the first tee and saying to yourself, Dont hit it in the water. The mind doesnt hear the negative (dont); instead, the mind hears only the outcome or the object. Therefore, you have to keep positive outcomes in mind, not only in your visualizations but also in your use of thoughts and especially language. This clinic teaches the use of positive outcomes in thoughts, language, and visualizations.

Clinic Five: Surge and Recover through Self Coaching

Self-coaching teaches you how to surge when you are in the zone and how to recover quickly when you are heading downward. It is the ability to catch the cues of moving into less-effective performance and to quickly recover to the optimal performance zone. What are the cues? They can be variations in muscle tension and breathing, thought and language usage, or changes in ritual strategies, visualization, and focus. You need to recover quickly when you catch the cues.

Dr. Jim Andrews Clinics are available worldwide. For booking, contact Steve Celuch at or +1 (256) 653-5400

www.MentalSkillsForGolf.com

Table of Contents

Has golf lost its fun? Do you get angry and frustrated when you play golf? Are you having trouble keeping your swing consistent from the practice range to the golf course? Does the pressure bother you? Do you lose your touch or get the yips? Even though you practice and have the skills, do the wheels fall off? Do you take an I dont care attitude when you really