In golf, the yips is a movement disorder known to interfere with putting. The term yips is said to have been popularized by Tommy Armour—a golf champion and later golf teacher—to explain the difficulties that led him to abandon tournament play. In describing the yips, golfers have used terms such as twitches, staggers, jitters and jerks. The yips affects between one-quarter and one-half of all mature golfers. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that 33 per cent to 48 per cent of all serious golfers have experienced the yips. Golfers who have played for more than 25 years appear to be most prone to the condition.
Also known as the jitters, the jerks, the staggers, and “balky putter,” the condition has affected some of the greatest names in the sport including Bernhard Langer, Ben Hogan, Harry Vardon and Sam Snead. More than one quarter of all mature golfers are thought to experience it at some point and are left bewildered as involuntary twitches lead to easy 3ft putts sailing by the hole. The so-called “golfer’s curse” has led many of them to give up completely out of frustration and embarrassment at the state of their short game.
Changing the brain
Scientist, Pascal Leone was looking into the brains ability to grow neural pathways, found that after a week of practice – whether it’s a sport or musical – the stretch of motor cortex devoted to movements took over surrounding areas. Mental practice resulted in a similar reorganization of the brain, so mentally practicing a golf swing or a forward pass or a swimming turn can lead to mastery with less physical practice. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.
Before a fight, World Heavy Weight boxer, Muhammad Ali would focus intensely on visualising how he would take on his opponent in the ring move by move, round by round. When Ali was clear how he would defeat his opponent, he would call a press conference and confidently announce in which round and how he would win the fight. Ali’s predictions were no empty boasts as they invariably came true. Ali was not engaging in idle talk but was really sharing his vision of his desire outcome with the press. Also the fact that in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Russian team took 11 hypnotists to develop mental clarity and help the athletes with visualisation.
Dr Jeffrey M Schwartz – expert in anxiety disorders such as OCD – said of self directed neuroplasticity, using the power of focused attention, along with the ability to apply commitment, hard work and dedication to direct your choices and actions, thereby rewiring your brain to work for you and with your true self. This means that when groups of nerve cells (or brain regions) are repeatedly activated at the same time, they form a circuit and are essentially “locked in” together.
An experiment by cognitive neuroscientist Sara Bengtsson manipulated positive and negative expectations of students by priming some with words such as “smart, intelligent and clever” and others with “stupid and ignorant”. Unsurprisingly the study showed students performed better after being primed with an affirmation message. However the brain imaging data also showed that the students brains responded differently to any mistakes made.
When a mistake was made following a positive word there was enhanced activity in the anterior medial part of the pre-frontal cortex (a region involved in self-reflection and recollection) there was no heightened activity in this area in the students who had been primed with a negative expectation. A brain that doesn’t expect good results lacks a signal telling it when it does make a mistake and these brains will fail to learn from their mistakes and are less likely to improve over time. Expectations become self-fulfilling by altering out performance and actions, which ultimately affects what happens in the future. This really ‘hammers home’ the importance of positive thought and imagining things how we want them to be.
When I see a client for sports hypnosis, one of the first things I do is to explain about neuroplasticity and ask the client to write out exactly what they need. Next week I am setting up a visualisation for a 14 year old show jumper, so she is at this moment planning what she will encounter and I will weave it all into the visualisation. The same goes for dressage, tennis, golf, whatever the sport, it can improve through sports hypnosis.