The YIPS as a Survival Mechanism. Download the eBook here

IS YOUR GOLF PLAGUED BY THE YIPS? OR FIRST TEE ANXIETY?
DO YOU PLAY WELL IN PRACTICE AND FALL APART IN COMPETITION? OR UNDER PRESSURE?

ADRENALINE is the cause !

It tightens the muscles making the swing tense, not smooth.

More importantly, it is a memory enhancer, fixing everything you did as a reflex which triggers automatically, the next time you encounter a similiar situation.

If you are under pressure and you snatch at a putt, there is a very good chance that the same thing will happen, without any conscious control, the next time you are in a similiar situation.

BERNHARD LANGER described the yips in the following way: “My hands belonged to someone else and this person hated me.”.
(Golf Australia April 1997 page 9).

JOHNNY MILLER said “basically it’s the inability to make your hands obey the commands your mind gives them. You can stand over a 10 foot putt and no matter how hard you try, you can’t take the putter away from the ball. Everything freezes. You lose all sense of how hard to hit the putt, no rhythm, no nothing.

Finally the putter bolts away from the ball and then forward with an uncontrollable jerk. Your mind leaves your body, as though you’re in a movie watching somebody hold the putter for you”.
(Golf Australia April 1998 page 11).

In addition, RAY FLOYD in his book “From Sixty Yards In”, states that SAM SNEAD developed putting problems after he missed a 39 inch putt for the 1947 U.S Open. After that he tried croquet style and then side saddle putting during tournaments. Floyd states that on the practice green Sam Snead could still putt conventionally without any problems at all.

One aspect of how the brain responds to stress and pressure is vitally important to poor performance in golf, and that is the concept of State Dependent Memory or Imprinting. Essentially this is a mechanism which enables the brain to learn rapidly from surviving life threatening experiences.

If we survive such an experience, whatever we did, and experienced, to survive that particular situation becomes established as a reflex action which then triggers automatically whenever we encounter that situation again. This is because the adrenaline that helps us to survive life threatening experiences by helping us to run or fight for our lives, is also a memory enhancing hormone. So it helps to save us and then imprints a memory to ensure that we do the same thing again, the next time we are in a similar situation.

One lady came to me after she had been involved in a car crash. She survived the crash but had been stuck in the car for some time. There was a strong smell of petrol present until she was freed.
After that whenever she got back into her car she could smell petrol. She had the car checked for petrol leaks EIGHT times. There was no petrol leak but every time she got into her car the survival mechanism was triggered and she smelled petrol again.
The memory of the survival situation includes everything that happened to allow us to survive the threatening situation. This includes what we did, felt, heard and smelled etc.
The brain does not analyse what factors might logically have contributed to the survival. It simply locks in everything that happened, to be repeated automatically if we ever encounter that situation again. The fact that the petrol made survival LESS likely rather than more likely is not analysed at a logical level. The brain presumes that everything must have helped survival and locked it in as a reflex.

Suppose that you have a high pressure three foot putt. You start to freeze over the ball. Your mind starts to go blank. You can’t think properly. The muscle tension makes you yank at the ball and it doesn’t even hit the hole.

You get annoyed and say some unflattering things to yourself which emphasises to the survival part of the brain what a tense situation you had been in. This survival part of the brain senses that you were in danger because you feel so bad and starts to lock in the whole response as an Imprint.

The next time you have a three foot putt under pressure, the whole response appears again as a reflex, and is very hard to unlearn.

That is why POSITIVE THINKING AND VISUALISATION
is relatively INEFFECTIVE when we encounter PRESSURE SITUATIONS IN GOLF. These techniques are excellent when we are relaxed and under no pressure, but at times of intense pressure, the pressure makes it hard to think clearly and drives us into previously established automatic reflex patterns.

To read more about the yips and what you can do to cure them, Click on the text to download The Mind Game of Golf eBook