038: Dr. Raymond Prior (Golf Beneath the Surface) and the Psychology of Practice

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Spin Axis podcast. I'm Eric Berzeski. - I'm Jason Nichol. - And I'm Tyson Deskins. - And my name is Raymond Pryor. - So today we've got the good doctor, Raymond Pryor, the author of golf beneath the surface with us today, talking all things mental side on the golf swing. Thanks for being on. - Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. - Yeah, we're going to talk about something that honestly isn't talked about a whole lot in mental game circles. A lot of people talk about how you play golf when you're talking about mental game. We're going to talk a little bit about the mental side of things when you're practicing. When you're taking lessons, when you're practicing, how do you practice by yourself mostly? What are you doing? How are you talking to yourself? I've seen people talk very badly to themselves and not necessarily get the results that they want and then they spiral and they start to think about 17 things and all kinds of stuff. I'm putting it on the spot, but what's the number one thing that you see that people get wrong about mentally when they're practicing? - Well, hard to say wrong. I would say ineffective in some ways. Also, there is a massive body of research on the psychology and neuroscience of practice. So it's not something that few people are talking about. It's a well-research and well-established field. - Few of us idiots out there teaching golf are talking about it. I haven't heard it on a lot of podcasts. - Yeah, let's see if we can improve it. What I would say, most people, let me just give a couple of things that might improve the quality of people's practice. Particularly if you're somebody who's short on time and you don't have endless golf balls and endless funds to be able to do so. Most people go to practice and they just hit balls and kind of rake. So this is nothing new. Everybody's kind of seeing this at a range. Well, there's reasons why people do that and it's not 'cause they're stupid. That's what we would call in my industry block practice, which is I'm just doing the same thing over again on rinse and repeat. The reason people do that is because in block practice, your performance is going to improve. The real problem with that though is your retention, which is the ability to learn behavior and repeat it at another time is very, very low. And what's even worse is what we would call transfer, which is your ability to take it from one setting, practice setting, to the actual golf course where you might be actually competing or working in conditions that are less than ideal relative to a driving range. So most people like the idea of practicing the same thing over and over again because they see better results and they feel better. So if I was going to kind of put a fine point on your question, most people are practicing to feel better but by doing that, they are not actually getting better. And then therefore there's a lot of frustration. There's a very, very difficult time taking that to the golf course. And then if you practiced in a way where you feel like you're getting better because you're just seeing better results by hitting the same club to the same flag over and over again. And then you go to the course and it's very different. You're probably going to say some things to yourself that are not so nice because you're not really sure what's going on. It's very confusing. And that's a very frustrating cycle to be in. Yeah, we've seen golf lessons from bad golf instructors where I would say the person got better during the lesson just because they've been hitting a seminar for an hour. Yeah, getting better and seeing better shots are not the same thing. Right. The analogy I use with juniors is imagine we're practicing math. And I say to you, what is 12 times 23? And you got to struggle, you got to do some math. Maybe you got to write it down. No calculators, no Google, whatever. And eventually you go, oh, it's 276. And they go, boom, congratulations. You just got better at math. Then I ask you, what's 12 times 23? 276, did you get better at math? No, you did not. You just regurgitated an answer from something you already get. That's block practice over and over again. The hence why the learning retention is low and the transfer is also very low. You're not actually learning the skill. You're just learning to repeat something that you have felt in your recent past that's not learning or transfer. Would you generally agree that there's mechanics practice or movement practice when you're learning a new move in the golf swing, you know, someone that's super steep is learning to not be super steep. And there's that kind of practice. And then there's what I would call skills practice where you're saying, I need to learn to hit wedges certain distances. And so you practice a lot of that. Would you say that there's two different kinds of practice? I would say there are even more types of practice than that. We can practice anything that relates to the golf game. Certainly we understand through a ton of science, whether it's visual science or force plates or whatever, that the motions that you are making, the sequence that you are making them in, based on the laws of physics, it matters very much for how consistently you deliver a club face and a low point. Having said that, just 'cause you can do that, doesn't mean that you can alter how high or how far a golf ball would go. Those are skills where we're not just learning to play between clubs, but play in the spaces between clubs or the spaces between yardages or green reading, for example, is a skill. Tempo is a skill. These are all things that we can practice and train, but I think we often get sucked into that if I just refine and repeat my motor skills, that will then quote unquote groove a golf swing and that quote unquote digging it out of the dirt is the way to do it. What neuroscience tells us is those are some of the least efficient ways to practice. And if anything, you actually create far more harm than they do good. - Yeah, well, and like you said there, when you're doing that block practice and you're hitting a big body of balls and you're doing that one after another after another, you feel good about grooving some shots that are close to your target, but the overall body of work, really you're not retaining much of that information when you hit one seven iron every 25 minutes on the golf course. - Correct, there's a different level. So again, the thing we see with randomized practice, which you're describing there is performance, outcome performance during practice declines, but your retention, your transfer increases, which is why it's less enjoyable perhaps to do, but it's better for you if you're actually trying to perform. So again, like a lot of the ways that we're practicing again. Now there's a time for block practice, particularly what we see in the research is that the younger you are and the lower you are on the learning curve, the more valuable block practice becomes. Because simply because if I cannot somewhat physically execute the skill, it's gonna be very hard for me to randomize that because I can't do it consistently enough without any randomization. But the better you get, and particularly for anyone over the age of 50 who's listening, block practice is essentially no gain for you. Randomize practice is the only place that you really get some gains. So like you said, going and hitting a bunch of things, I've grooved a swing, you actually really haven't. You've just been repeating something. That's not the same as learning something and being able to apply it in a different way or under a different context. - So one of my questions then about someone that's working to change the mechanics of how they move the club or move their body during a swing, they're gonna get a seven hour now or a six hour now or something like that and probably just hit that club. Is it considered random block practice kind of? I don't know what you'd call it, but if they alter the speed at which they do it, if they make a small mistake on the one side and a small mistake on the other side, like they're too steep, they're too shallow on one, 'cause then they make small corrections and adjustments. - Correct. - And someone would look at them and say, that guy's just hitting a seven hour and over and over again in that same direction the whole time, but that's not block practice or is it? - It might be with that might fall into the category of like a hybrid practice or what we might say is like variable practice, but you brought up a really good point about practices. Most of the time in practice, we're trying to repeat success, like a successful rep outcome wise. Our brain doesn't learn very well from the same thing over and over again. It needs end points, right? So if you're learning to ride a bike, you need to learn what is leaning too far left and what is leaning too far right, not just trying to stay upright the whole time. Like that's why training wheels don't actually teach you how to really ride a bike. Like if you want to really figure out what's going on. - We're talking about my daughter to ride a bike in five minutes by taking the pedals off and she just pushes herself in. - Yeah, they have these pedal bikes now for young kids and it's a much better way for them to learn because they can kind of pull off their feet and explore some spaces without necessarily eating it as often or as hard. To your point though, if I say I want to hit a draw, I also need to know what it's like to start a ball, way, way, way, way too far right on purpose and way, way, way, way too far left or a ball that turns way too far right or turns way too far, because these are data points for my brain to help me find what is in the middle that would be a straighter golf shot. So if I go to the golf course, only trying to hit a straight shot and with no deviation whatsoever, I'm limiting my ability to learn because I don't have enough failure for my brain to calibrate toward what I do to try to create quote unquote success. - Yeah, I often tell a story, this maybe three or four years ago before I had, maybe even longer than that, six years now, where I came out of the season, came out of the window with no practice, right? First round, we're off mats and my buddies just in front of me and I can't feel anything. So I push one into the fence on the right and then I hook one hard to the left and he's like, what are you doing, Nicole? I'm like, I can't feel anything. I need to find the most right and the most left and then I can find the middle from there. - The end ranges, exactly, right? So our brain wants like more data points is better for our brain and that includes the end ranges that in golf we don't really like. - Yeah. - Right, we typically label those as failure or mistakes or bad shots and again, there is something to be said about a functional golf shot when you're trying to score. But if I'm practicing, I need these end ranges if I really want my brain to retain, learn and for me to be able to transfer those skills later, but what that cost me in practice is I'm gonna see a bunch of shots that people would look at and be like, what is this guy doing? - Yeah, exactly and I often tell students, I said, you're not going to find that golf ball. Like someone else is going out there and they're gonna pick up that golf ball for you. Pits, hits some ridiculous shots. Hitballs it out into the right fence and then hook them into the left fence. Just do it and they're like, well, I don't want to hit a bad shot. I'm like, if you don't want to hit a bad shot here, we're like, this is the best spot to do it. - Yeah, well then you're getting into kind of also the crux of your question, Eric, which is a lot of people are practicing trying to avoid poor outcomes, not just in practice, but when I go play that, if I do this, this will eliminate things that I don't want and that what that puts us into is an avoidance-based mindset. A mindset is defined as a belief system that is filtering our experiences before, during and after in a biased way. So if I go practice and I go bad outcomes, quote unquote, are unacceptable, I'm in an avoidance-based mindset telling my brain that you know what, you need to help me not screw up. So guess what, that triggers for our brain anxiety. And I'm also depriving myself of the failure I need to actually learn in a way that would help me to be more successful later. Oh, and by the way, if I practice through anxiety, guess what is more likely for me to take to my performance? Also anxiety. - Bad golfers, or I should say bad golfers, I should say amateur golfers. They're so afraid of bad golf shots. - Yeah. - And you know, bad golf shots are just. - Pros are kind of afraid of bad golf shots too. I don't want to just single out amateur golfers. Most golfers experience some anxiety about poor shots for better and for worse, mostly for worse in cases. But it's a really challenging thing for us. Our default response as humans is to resist the things that we don't want. The challenge for that is that then becomes the priority instead of actually pursuing what we want in performance and doing what is necessary to learn how so that we can actually get better over time. So the challenge with block practices, you know, if you're a golfer and you've been like throwing all kinds of money at instruction and just beating balls, chances are the quality of your practice is really, really low and the mindset behind it doesn't allow you to fail enough to actually get better. - So let me ask you this, Raymond. How can we. I'm in Ohio, Jason's in Canada, Eric's in PA, we're pretty much done with outside golf. I have an academy here where I'll be having kids, you know, four days a week. What do we do inside, you know, to help these kids mentally prepare? Aside from just the randomness of practice and those things, what do we do inside to help them with the mental side of things? - Yeah, I think. - And that's just kid. - Sure, anybody in the winter. So there's a variety of different things we can train when the weather is not great for. I live in Chicago and, you know, quite frankly, if you told me that we're gonna play golf, I'd be like, does the first number and the thermometer start with a six 'cause if it does it, I'll see you later. But in terms of our psychology, like reading a good book and by good book, I mean a well-informed book about any psychological topic can help change our perspectives, like listening to podcasts like this, where you hear people talk about golf and performance and practice and stuff in ways is really good. Learning how to do some mindfulness practice, mindfulness practice is awareness practice. It's basically strength training for our awareness in the same way that you might spend some extra time in the winter and the gym, trying to get stronger or more flexible or faster. All these things, like learning how to pay attention in certain ways is really important. Paying attention to how we talk to ourselves. So we don't really think positive thoughts or negative thoughts, that's a subjective valence that we put on our own thoughts and words. But the language of anxiety and anger and avoidance is have to need to must, must not, should, shouldn't, if then and what if. And learning to listen for these words in our own vocabularies and those of others, not in a judgmental way, but in an awareness way helps us to pay attention because when I am thinking and talking like this, essentially that tells me I am asking my brain to avoid first and pursue second, which it can't do either very well, which usually is what keeps people from performing well. If you're gonna boil it down to kind of like the bare bones of human motivation. It's avoidance and pursue and our brain defaults to avoidance all the time. Well, why would it default to avoidance? I'm either unaware that I'm in that state. I'm talking myself into that state or thinking myself into it. Or I have something from my past that I have decided I must avoid in my future. Or my best strategy for trying to avoid is to perfect my technique while I'm on the golf course and now I'm giving myself a golf lesson and, quote unquote, overthinking and all of these types of things that we would say are very well intentioned strategies, but not very productive and not very helpful. These are all things that we can start to explore and train in the off season that can set you up among things like flexibility training, tempo training, all these type of speed training, whatever it is in the off season where okay, maybe I'm not on the range hitting golf balls, but I can train in a way that prepares me for that. I also recommend to people in the off season, get your sleep right. A lot of golfers are getting up for that early tea time and their work schedule is this and they're making time to play golf and their sleep schedule just goes to trash. Getting that back on point goes a long way for people. - We'd like to thank Dr. Raymond Pryor for coming on this podcast and encourage you to buy his book, Golf Beneath the Surface, as well as listen and subscribe to his podcast of the same name. Thank you for joining us this week, Dr. Pryor, and we now return to the podcast. - Yeah, so what can people say to themselves before and during a practice session? Because as you said, they have a lot of anxiety. They feel like they're not getting anything out of a practice session. They feel like they're not getting better. What can they say before to themselves to prepare themselves for the practice session? And then during the practice session, what can they say to kind of keep themselves on track? What's their main goal in practicing? - So I think it's less about what we say, or so our inner dialogue is a symptom, not a cause. It's a reflection of our core belief system underneath or our motivations or values or objectives. So instead of saying, "Why are you talking to yourself that way?" It's like, "Hold on, what would cause you to talk to yourself in that way?" So if I'm gonna go practice, I need to pay attention. Well, what is my objective here today? It's to get better, not feel better, which then allows me to lean into the failure of block practice after perhaps I'm established some, I'm sorry, lean into the random practice after I've perhaps established a little bit of block practice to tune in and calibrate some fundamentals. It might also be that I bring more of a growth mindset to it. A growth mindset is the belief that I am a work in progress and that with effort over time, I can get better instead of a fixed mindset that either I am or I am not a good golfer, which then by the way, your practice session is gonna tell you whether you are or are not a good golfer, even though it doesn't. That comes with a certain inner dialogue. That's gonna lend it sort of toward block practice because I need to see good outcomes to feel good about myself as a golfer. These would be the things I would pay attention to more. So what are you trying to do at practice? Not just with the golf ball or the golf club in your larger arc of golfer. You're trying to get better or feel better, be it two broad categories. What is the practice structure you're gonna do? The ball count on this, the reps on that, so on and so forth. What are the limits of the range of limits that you're gonna explore? If it's something like I'm practicing center contact, that means I wanna hit some off the toe and I wanna hit some off the heel. I wanna hit some fat. I wanna hit something. Those types of things where again, I am intentionally trying to explore these limits. Then what I'm saying to myself starts to fall in line much more than that. For those who do have the habit of that really harsh critical inner dialogue, that is a bit of a habit in my third section of my book I addressed habits, including that one. That's a defense mechanism for us that if I crush myself for failure, it softens the blow if I actually experience it. The challenge is that it keeps you from actually doing it freely because what you're really doing is pursuing what you want at an arm's length to avoid the heartbreak of potential this practice was terrible or my round wind sideways or whatever, or I got judged by other people as not a good golfer, which I said, it just really diminishes the enjoyment of what we're doing and makes it way harder to focus on stuff. So it's not that it's a negative inner dialogue. It's avoidance based. It's really judgmental. And it's trying to protect us from something that we cannot really be protected from. And when we do that, we are, again, we're suffocating ourselves from the things we need to do to play well and actually get better over time. - We're protecting our ego. - Right, our ego gets hit hard in this sport and that's a difficult-- - It can be ego for sure. Ego, by the way, definition is your sense of self. So if I label myself as a good golfer and I hit a poor shot, that by definition is a threat to my ego. It could be my identity. It could be my investment with my golf that is at stake. There's a variety of different things that we do. And also, let's just say like trying and failing like it doesn't necessarily feel good. There's a certain level of dissatisfaction with that. But at the same time, that doesn't necessarily mean it's something we have to protect ourselves from. But again, it doesn't feel good in our brain's default responses. I don't like to feel bad. So I'll just push those away. The challenge is that comes at sacrifice of what it is that we're really trying to do. Provided we are clear about what that is. - Yeah, love that. So we need to be aware, have a clear intention and then be objective, not subjective. So we're a little longer than we typically go, but I have another question I'd love to ask you, Raymond, while we have you here. - Sure. - Again, I teach a lot of junior golfers and as all of us know, junior golf continues to get better every year. It's crazy how good these kids are getting. And one of the things that I've said a lot this year is this game does some things to some of these kids that almost isn't healthy. So the question that I have for you is, what do you see junior golfers and their parents get wrong from a mindset perspective in your perspective? - Well, I wouldn't give my perspective. I can tell you what the research tells us. - Love that. - So there's a couple of red flags for parents to pay attention to in themselves and perhaps maybe coaches can help them be wise. Again, I'm not gonna say it's wrong or bad, but we know that there's some stuff where there is some serious, deleterious effects to your child. What I would say first and foremost is if your child is interacting with something and you are more invested in the outcomes than they are, big red flag. - Love that. - Yeah. - Number two, you trying to figure out whether your kid is or isn't good enough to play division one golf or professional golf before they are actually their massive red flag. And then the last one would be is if you are parenting or coaching, by the way, in a way where people, including children, do not have permission to take the risk to try and yes, perhaps fail, you are teaching them anxiety because what's at stake is not just this golf shot, not just this round, not just this tournament, but the way my parent shows up and parents me in a conditional way that is based on outcomes. I get a little bit of preachy about this, but because we have so many adults who are dealing with the anxiety they learned from their parents who thought, this is the way for me to push you toward success, except what that shapes is a fixed mindset, a conditional relationship with outcomes, and an avoidant relationship with failure. So if we go all the way back to your question about practice, if my relationship with failure, however I define that, is avoidant, meaning it is not acceptable, that becomes the priority behind my practice, my performance, and my interaction with adults, that's so much anxiety for a young child. We ramp up the stakes for kids way too soon. Like the high stakes environments that kids are golfing in right now is insane. If you look at the wreckage of people who have won the US Junior, both boys and girls, and what that has done to people in the long arc, it's not good. It establishes a set of expectations that people start to interact with you of seeing you as an outcome-based machine, big red flag. So for parents, that would be really important to pay attention to. One of the ways you'll know that is you will listen to the language. Have to, need to, must, should, can't, don't. If then, what if you better, all of these things where we're trying to jam these kids into success so far and so soon by trying to just, just basically shepherd them away from failure, and that is just, you're essentially cutting them off of learning, pairing their identity to their performance and pairing your conditional parenting relationship to them. There's a lot of downside to that. - Real quick, Raymond. Talk really quick about what should they do in the car ride home? - Nothing would be better. So if people, if you're listening, you might be referring to the number one reason children quit you sport is because of the car ride home. Literally trapped with parents, I cannot get out on getting the riot act from them. They don't quit because it's too hard. They don't quit because other kids are mean to them. They don't quit because they don't necessarily like it. Like kids are kind of into sports for the most part. One or another or many. And they're into hanging out with other kids. And by the way, they do want to learn and be coached. We know this for sure. They do not want to be judged and put on trial on the car ride home. So for parents, car ride home is just a car ride home. What I usually recommend is if you're gonna talk about your kids performance with them, which you should, make sure it's on their terms. So you get home like, hey, I'd love to hear about your round of golf. Let me know when you're ready to talk about it. Or even put some parameters on it. I'd love to hear about it by the end of the day, whenever that might be. So at least they have some choice in the matter about how they, how and when they engage with it. And then as parents, listen, ask, pro, they learn by again, playing things over, being able to feel like, oh, man, you really hit a crappy shot there. Tell me about it. Yeah, this and this. So instead of what were you doing, you can't be hitting those shots. It's like, yeah, I could see what that happens. And then you just might ask, what might you do differently next time? Well, what other options were available to you in that? And by the way, maybe it was just, I tried my best, it was right, I just screwed it up. All right, great, let's go try again next time. Those types of things are communicating. Failure is okay as long as you're trying and trying freely. And when you fail, we're gonna learn from it. And when you succeed, we're gonna learn from it. And I'm gonna show up for you in the same way every time. What a gift parents can give to their children being that. What do you think of the, I've heard ask them to name when they come to you and they talk to you, ask them to name three things they did well. And then three things that they could improve on the next time. And it's all them. You don't have to structure it that way. You could if you wanted to, you know, you might like, hey, tell me about your favorite shots of the round. And then tell me about one that you'd like to do over again, right? And again, the tone matters here. So if I go, it's tell me about three ones you really like. And then what about that awful one you hit on whatever? Again, kids will pick up on that. That is like, it is so clear that children do not experience love and affection and care from us as adults in our words. It is in, they sense it. And they will sense the difference between, tell me about those ones. And I can't believe you did that. They will sense that. So does it have to be that structured? No. It's not a matter of equipment pairs. Be curious, not judgmental about your kids performance. Allow them to explore it and play it out. And if they get it totally wrong in a way where you're like, that is not at all what happened. Fine, fine. Help them connect those dots, but just hammering them with judgment and trying to force them to do different things and just quote unquote, be better. What we see is like, it has a tremendous cost on the kids. And if they can't avoid that by avoiding you, the, to your point, Tyson, they will quit the sport. Because, well, how do I, how do I get rid of the riot act from parents? Yeah. Don't play golf. That's right. It's a, it's not a, I told you this, this and this comes with this thing that even a dummy would be like, well, I guess I just won't do that thing. That's right. I'm just going to avoid it all together. I will just avoid the fastest way to avoid the car ride from parents is well, we don't have anything to car ride home from. Love that. [MUSIC PLAYING] Again, Doc, thanks so much for joining us. That was a great episode. Thanks for everybody tuning in. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes and share this with your buddies. Doc, where I couldn't people find more about your, that where I couldn't people find your book. Golf beneath the surface again. Golf beneath the surface. The book, both in hard copy and audio version or wherever books are sold, there's a digital copy out there so you can get a Kindle, whatever it is. Anywhere books are sold, you can find me on my website, which is btsmineset.com beneath the surface mindset.com. I'll also co-host a podcast by the same name. Golf beneath the surface with my friend, Chase Cooper. You can get that wherever podcasts are sold. And you can catch me at most golf events on both tours or bunch tours that sometimes people say hi, so that's cool too. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for being on. And you can find us on social medias at the Spin Access. And you can all find all the episodes on the website at thespinaccess.com. Thanks, Doc. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. [MUSIC PLAYING]