The Art and Zen of a truly effective learning environment – Will Stubbs #360

Mind Cady. Hello everybody, thanks for joining me, Garnaml and Mind Cady. Great to be back with you for another week. I'm Cal Morris. I've been working as a performance coach for the past 25 years, so I'm working with players at every level of the game, just looking for a way to bridge that gap between potential and performance, reducing the interference. And on today's show, it's great to welcome Will Stubbs. Will is the CEO of Zen Green Stage. If you haven't seen the Zen technology, it's just phenomenal as a culture, as a player, and everybody gets the chance to use these greens and green stage practice facilities. It is just mind blowingly incredible technology. Take a look at their website, the links in the show notes, Zen Golf. And in particular, I wanted to spend some time with Will today together a much more in-depth understanding of his views on the effects of context and environment and how practicing in a sterile environment hitting balls off a flat mat, off a flat lie at a range, whilst obviously it has this part to play and it's got its place. What are the limitations with that? And how can we create environments in practice that more realistically support the challenges that the game gives us? And that premise, that initial idea developed into a really, really great, engaging conversation with Will is some great ideas, which I think run in parallel with an awful lot of what we've talked about on the mind, Caddy. Of no Nick Middleton, the founder of Zen Green Stage, for many, many years Nick is a great, great guy. We've had many tremendous conversations. I think it was a big influence on many of the thoughts that I had around putting in the Lost Art books written with Gary Nichols. So it was wonderful to sort of go deeper into some of these concepts with Will. And I know it's one of those sessions, I think it's well worth a notebook session where you sit down and you take some notes and ask yourself, how does this impact me? How does this impact my coaching? How does it potentially affect the way I look at performance and practice and more effective training? Also if you haven't yet joined us on the mind, Caddy, journey, some really exciting things coming up in the next few weeks, which I'll announce. But get on board with us, come and join us specifically at this time of year. There's some key programs in there that allow you to bridge that gap between training and performance. If you're getting out on the golf course and you've been working on your game and the performance isn't perhaps as it should be, some key elements in there to go to the mind, Caddy, you can start a free trial and get on board with us. So go to the app store or go to the website, mindcaddy.gov and come and join us on that particular journey. Mind, Caddy. But for now, let's spend some time in the company of Will Stubbs. Oh, thank you, Carl. Excited to be here. Excited to be part of the history of your show and excited to see where this goes. You caught in the word history. Makes me feel very old, before we even start. Well, not been around that long. Yeah, well, you and Zeng go back the long way. I know that you've got a long-term relationship with Nick Halfounder. Very excited to sort of extend that through. So yeah, we're. Yeah, as you say, I do know Nick Middleton. We go way back and should many a very interesting conversation with Nick and I think the impact that he's had on the game of golf is profound, obviously with Zeng Greenstays, that we will get into talking about that. But effective, to me, the most important sort of question is what is an effective learning environment? But perhaps for those who don't know you well, just maybe feeling a little bit of a background from your kind of golfing journey to this point. Oh, wow. So I got into golf when I was like two. There's a picture in my house with me with a little plastic club at the top of my stairs. But I used to just walk running around the house smashing golf balls about. It wasn't really until I was about 16 or so. I actually properly took it up and then my brother used to go and sneak on the local par free course and hit some balls from all different locations. And when the guy came out the hut, we used to run around and grab our balls and then disappear into the woods. So a bit of a rebel used to be a skateboarder before that. So come out golf and move a creative side if anything. Definitely aligned to the the sevis of this world. And try and make it make golf an exciting and different way, see things in a different way. That's sort of my perspective on it. Let me down the route of getting decent at a golf. Was thinking about turning pro and coaching the game, but I just felt like at that time I was just like, I really just want to learn how to be a coach. So I went to university and then from there, did my masters in sports science. Specializing in skill acquisition. Anyone who knows that, it's all about learning theories, motor theories, understanding the research side of things. And then really, and then went and got into a business in coaching kids. Football, rugby, hockey, netball. And we grew that business to, you know, over coaching over 5,000 kids a week just in chef field alone. So it was, it was busy. It was hectic. It was exciting. It was everything from the age of two through to 16. Everything from kids just coming in with motor control issues with dyspraxia and all the way through to elite performers who were getting picked up by, you know, the lights and man city, man United, chef, you know, as a United and gun and playing professional sports. So it was, it was a wild journey and it wasn't until I sort of came along to get back involved with Zen. And I actually started as a production assistant building green stages and then became the technology manager here as we started to bring technology and the why behind why you need a green stage together. Now I'm the MD as of middle of last year trying to bring this journey into a clearer vision, helping us put our business in a position where we're ready to scale up. And you know, bring our vision and our mission across the world really. More people playing better for longer. Which is a great vision and a great sentiment. From your own sort of background and you studies, well, and this is a huge question which I'll ask you to be still into not a massive answer. But what would you say in your experience? Word, word, do we tend to go wrong or where are we going wrong in terms of learning environments or environments where people are trying to develop golfing skills which will transfer onto the course? The best analogy is surfing. So at the moment, how we coach golf is we get down to the beach, you get your surfboard, put it on the sand and you lay on it and then you have a lesson, someone goes, right, pop up and you stand on your surfboard and you go, right now, lean on the surfboard and lean this way and lean that way and you're in the sand and it's not moving and then they go, right, brilliant high five, I'm all going, going, getting the same. And learn how to surf and then you're going to see then what's happening, you're falling all over the place. And you're having to learn in the live environment and learn, actually learn, not be taught and then you go back and you go, right, I'm kind of a, another lesson I was terrible. It was a nightmare, you know, these are the problems which I had. All right, no problem, get your surfboard, right, got it, right, here's the sand, put your surfboard back in the sand, right, and we're going to go and lean a little bit further forward on the surfboard, this time we're going to change where you feet are, make sure you put your hands in this position rather than that position, right, and then high five, we're back out into the sea, you know, and I'll see you next week. So if we relate that to golf, we're learning in a flight environment and then we're expecting everyone to transfer those skills into a real environment with slopes, change your wind, change your conditions, you know, change of lie, got an early environment. Exactly, it's dynamic and, you know, as human beings, that's what we are, but that's why we're so good, we're adaptable of all of human beings, you know, creatures which take information from the environment and we're making continuous decisions on that and that's what we need, we need adaptive environments to learn in and that's where we're failing at the moment. And, you know, the surfboard analogy, you know, to a sort of, a sort of marching coming down would sound ridiculous, wouldn't it, that you would even attempt to do that? But we've ended up with this situation which I think has a, as a strong economic model to it, doesn't it? It's an awful lot easier to dispense coaching in the fixed environment, you know, a number of lessons in a day and all the rest of it. And what do you then see, well, about the sort of technology, and we get on to Zen in a second, what do you see about the technology that is now available that can help people learn to solve problems better? I think for me, it's moving away from the reductionist because as engulf and technology the easiest thing to do is I'm going to put a number next to somebody. But what we need to do is just go right, let's switch it up, let's look at let's create a hole, let's go and play track man on the course, you know, and instead of just hitting balls into the range, let's go on the course, let's put the ball down in a position and if you got a swing stage, let's replicate the slope, which is on that software and let's let's finger at right now instead of it just being a flat shot 140 yards, tell me what you're going to do now, you know, and let's explore that. It means less balls being hit. So sorry Mr. Driving Range guy, who's dispensing them, but what you're getting is an embodied experience and the decision making which comes from that is so much better and that's where the synergy between a virtual world and a digital world and a physical world comes together to help someone learn in a better way and I think moving away from a reductionist approach is in trying to make everything down to one single number to then actually going, let's have a look at the abundancies which are here, how many different shots can you hit from this line, can you hit an eight, I and a seven, I can you hit a pitching wedge, you know, can you play with can you play with the slope and hit a fade or can you play against the slope and keep it straight with a draw, that's where artistry happens and that's where the best golfers in the world happen, that only comes through exploration and if we're not utilizing data to help us explore and getting feedback on that then we're always going to struggle when we go on to the course. Yeah, one of the things I've sort of had players explore or these past fees and it's to see the game of golf that you go out and you know obviously levels vary but you're going to have anything between 65 and 100 separate unique problems to solve and actually when when you give people the idea that golf is just a bunch of puzzles or problems to solve, there's a real engagement with that because people love puzzles and problems don't they? We you know, we seduco and crosswords and all the rest of it, we would never sit down and want to do the same crossword over and over again, we want the variety, we want the challenge for the brain to be to be engaged in that. I do you think we could strengthen that message well in terms of in terms of the way that you approach it. If I was going to really systematic the change things, I'd change it from school. At the moment we go in we go it's like exactly what you say it's a problem and we practice and we repeat that problem over and over again until we're good at it. If you want to learn how to handle that we write our name a thousand times you know we need to move away from that so then say like well let's look at like you say problem-based stuff so what's the context? So right I've gone and played around a golf, I've got my gum in watch on or I've gone I've got my up game or I've got my clipped and I've got all that data. So let's look at that day and let's put it into some context actually you know my puts, I struggle from puts which were 20 foot to you know between 20 and 15 feet or something like that. All right so let's think about how can I, is it about holding it from that distance? Always about the strategy to make sure it's not a three-foot, is it about leaving myself in a better position? And I think with it then it's looking at the entire context of what is that shot and what is that puzzle you know? Just like what you sort of mentioned there like instead of it was teaching you know Pyfago says firm in school why don't we say right here's some straws build the bridge make it as stable as possible and utilize the least amount of straw which you can and through that way then you've actually got embodied contextualized learning not only that it's practical and that child who learns in that way might go on to be someone who builds bridges rather than someone who goes out I sort of remember it's some Greek guy. Never use it. Yeah never really used it before. But I think what that leads into will is to me again is such an important distinction. I often talk to players about there's a huge difference between just working on your swing which people tend to do and just looking at the game as a series of skills to develop and I think when you start to see a series of skills to develop there's a real engagement with that you know you've just highlighted there how can I get better at the skill of pace control between 10 and 25 feet then we can start really homing in on that rather than this idea that if I you know if I stand on a carpet and I repeat the same stroke over and over again that also might be able to then transfer that skill into the into the real environment. Yeah I mean as you're entirely right actually what I did for my master's thesis is actually back when in 2012 when Green Stover was made out of wood and some car jacks when Nick made his first ever one I went on there with the science emotion putt lab and I did left 1% 1% right 1% 2% left to right 2% left and freeps saying distance putt and I just got you know 30 different people and what I found was that actually every single person had a different stroke for every different slope right but they were highly consistent at that so that body that human person was interacting with that environment and that task in their way. Just go into that world because I'm sorry to enter at a massive point just go into that into more detail so you're saying that that what was an individual stroke depending on the on the situation so what would you notice that path and face things like that were changing. Everything was different from so I went on there and I had six different pots I had seven because we had a flat pot as a baseline every single one of my strokes on those different slopes was different but they were so consistent so I hit 70 you know 15 pots on each slope and the rating which I got out of there the score rating was probably terrible but the consistency rating was extremely high so my stroke was my stroke for that slope and I think the problem which we've got is that we've created these you know environments on which we practice in which are learning environments quote unquote learning environments and there's nothing you can do in those environments apart from think about technique and when actually it's all about solving the problem then it's about right actually let my body go and do things and let go of the process and let the outcome happen and that's what I found from that research was that everyone's individualized based on how they stand where their eyes are what they're our dominant so where they grip the club the way in which that club will then pivot and move around their body based on whether they're and the weights and their heels are in their toes based on how they're interacting with that slope like but it's interesting for them so for me to stand there in a quote unquote Dave Pell's way and say you stroke needs to be square square on every single slope is incorrect what I need to know as a coach and as a practitioner is on what my any person who's learning needs to learn is that your stroke is your stroke in that environment so own your stroke own who you are and you know and this is where competence and confidence comes together you know is that you when you can let go of that and focus on the outcome focus on where you trying to you know put that ball to it it moves back to being natural again it moves back to being throwing a ball we've been throwing throwing balls and throwing clubs and throwing sticks at things and people all the way since we were it revolved with that skill came at the cave is you know and no one was teaching us back then and we're still here today so we were pretty good at it and so if we can sort of get back to that external focus and think about you know let the process take care of itself and embody our mind in that environment will be far better than if we were trying to put the environment into our mind you know it's so it's sort of fresh into here that I mean the book that Gary Nichol and myself wrote the lost start of putting it it basically revolves around two questions and those two questions are is it possible to hold this pot which you know unless you create a story it actually is and then the key question then was what does this ball have to do to go in the hole and you know it seems to be that you reinforce in that well that giving our brain that clear problem to solve what does the ball need to do to go in this hole and then I can begin to organise movement around the answer to that question I see I mean it's what we call self-organisation it's no one teaches it's just like if you look at it it's about experiencing environments you know when everyone goes ice-gating for the first time arms go straight out no one tells you to put your arms out no one tells you to put your legs really wide out your body reacts to that environment it's taken its sensory input from what's happening and where it's moving and when you start to become engaged with that environment and understand how you interact with it your confidence comes and through that your competence comes it's about expanding your ability to work within that motor and perceptual motor perceptual motor space you know it's that environment and the connection with you in that and Izakal that you say the more you can keep your focus on that extra externally and think about that what journey is that ball going to take for it to go into where it needs to go you know it it builds back from the hot it's from the whole back to you isn't it really it's like this hole which is in the background here there's a part of part five and I grew up on that golf course and I know that the sick hole at Abedale I don't get my second shot I'm not going at the green I'm going left of the green because I know that it bounces around I know that I'm utilising the environment to help me and as well as there's a bunk on the right and so and so if I'm hit a little fade off the slope and it's in that trap. So let's use the environment. And the environment is then detating the shot. But it also will. To me, this is again heading into some really important territory, which we've talked a lot about on this podcast, that how does the environment call golf course occur to your brain? Is it occurring as a threatening environment where it's all about avoiding mistakes? Or is it occurring as an opportunity to express some capabilities and some skills? And there's a very very different physiological reaction to those two brain states. What you're talking about here is again, is seeing the environment as helping you create the port, helping you create the shot, giving you the clues of what to do. Yeah, it's exactly it. And you know, there's this term which we talk about, which is, you know, psychological safety, you know, and it's a term which is coming into like organizational cultures and understanding that. And you know, if we want ourselves to be resilient in a performance environment and a golfing environment, we need an environment which replicates that. We need the variability which you experience on the golf course in the training environment. So you can experience it because you, I think there's this like dualism between competence and confidence. Like if I become competent at something, I will then become confident at something. Yeah. And actually, realistically, you stand in there and repeating your best man's speech in the mirror to yourself is competence. But as soon as you go out, standing there and there's 200 people and you can have a pin drop, that's where confidence is. And realistically, what we should be doing is doing a gradual increase of the variability, the difficulty. So we need to actually go out, instead of this looking at Israel, we're going to get you really competent at hitting your seven iron and then we'll move your pitching wedge and then we'll move to your nine iron and then you're eight and seven. No, no, no, let's actually look at the variability in the in the environment and ramp that up. So let's start with just doing a speech with you and your friends at the pub. And then let's do a speech with all your family and your friends. And then let's do a speech with some some people, you know, some a broad thing. So everything has to be coupled together. You can't have this, let's develop competence and then let's develop confidence. And like ultimately, that's what we're doing with golf at the moment is we're breaking it apart into different segments rather than actually looking at what you talk about, bringing it as a skill. And within that, bringing the opportunities of what that skill presents itself in now, is it, is it, is it just a 150-year chart or and because it's a 150-year chart, is that you're nine iron or is it? It's on a little bit of a downslope, it's got a little bit of a fade slow. Should I use that fade slow and actually let's go and play an eight iron and let's let's get myself engaged in that. Let me sense myself in that environment. Let me, you know, like the guys, you know, guys who do eight in point, at least they're like engaging physically both for me, you know, a body sensory but also a perceptual perspective. You know, I know that, you know, Matt Fitzpatrick's even aim-pointing in his, his old full shots as well now, but at least, you know, is engaged with the environment. He's engaging with it and I think, I think that's a really important thing. So I think that, you know, that resilience and that psychological safety comes from exposure. You can't, I'm going to get good at one thing when it's not actually relevant to where you actually have to do it. And that sort of leads to another fundamental question, doesn't it, that does the swing create the shot? Or does the shot create the swing? And 100%. You know, and we've been, we've been led to believe that the swing creates the shot. If I can just perfect this movement, I'll be able to then transfer it on, but then when we get on the golf course, then this dynamic ever changing environment. But when you do buy into the idea or explore the idea of the shot creating the swing, the golf swing then becomes, as Mike Eberron said years ago, a portable and flexible apparatus that you can interact with the environment with then. Yeah, 100%. I am so aligned with what you're talking about there is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it would be cool would be like, if you took off the numbers off your golf clubs, I'm just looking at the golf clubs. And it's just, they're just lofts, you know, it's just tools. And with that, it's, yeah, it's just tools, isn't it? It's just like a paintbrush. It's, if you push it down hard, you get a thicker line. If you put it in lightly, then you get, you get a really thin line. It allows you to do different things. It affords you to do different things. And that's where real art, well, artistry, but also where real creativity comes from. And with that, you know, that's a hard part of when people talk about flow states and stuff like that, that's, they're letting go on. They're letting go of a procedure and moving towards, right, how can I let myself engage this environment and let things just happen? You know, expression, then, isn't it? Yeah, of course it is. It's expression, it's opportunity. And that's what I love about the open. And that's what I love about the masters is that some, people, people like, if you listen to like Jordan's beef about the masters, why he's always being pretty prolific though is because he likes to see the outside line. He likes to see the big shapes. And when you play on a course which is so sloped, you have to sort of see that outside line. And it just plays into how he perceives the game. And that comes from how he used to play in how he grew up. That's his form of life. Like he used to just sit on a little practice ground and he used to just play with those of different crazy shots. And he had this ridiculously hard green which he had to shape onto. And with that, he had to learn how to spin the ball ridiculously fast. So it would actually stay on this little practice ground. Because he's learned how to spin the ball, he's learned how to shape the ball. And because he's learned how to shape the ball, his perception is so much wider than what everyone else would have been if they just, you know, if he just sat on a drive and made. Yeah. Yeah. Mind caddy. Mind caddy. An exclusive app created by Karl Morris, which focuses on enhancing your mental game to achieve lower scores on the course. Join thousands of golfers including six major champions and download Mind caddy from the App Store today. Mind caddy. With Karl Morris. So within that, what would your opinion be on the way that we currently sort of using quotes, test people as in test the putting stroke on an indoor studio on a flat environment? How valid is that really? I think we need to get rid of this idea of a baseline. I think there's no such thing as baseline. I think there's that old, there's the old proverb, you know, the man who steps into the river, the river is not the same and the man, you know, and the idea of a baseline, I'm a different person than I was before we started talking. And the world around us is a different world because we're talking. And hopefully is a consequence of this conversation and what people listen to and it might change the way in which other people play this game or learn, you know, to approach it. And I think if we can move away from the idea of a baseline to being an idea of how functionally variable you can be, you know, how successful you can be. It's about me walking on to the green stage and going random, put random, put random, put random, put how well can I solve those problems, you know? And then if we want to ramp it up like where I want to take the green stage and our products is to go right, let's take your sleep, let's take your course data, let's take all the different things which are affecting you from a day to day bit and the stress thing. And, you know, let's utilize AI in a very positive way and go, you know, what will you slept terribly last night? Because you've got a three month year alter with born in December, he's just had his second set of jobs, you know? And he's grizzling, he's all over the place and he's waking up in the night and you're like, you're looking over him, you're just like, I love you to death, but please can you sleep? And you know, you put him into a high pressure, high performance environment and expect him to do the same today as what I would have done yesterday. It's the fallacy. So let's use day in a good way, let's use it in a way which helps us become more aware as a human being, what affects me, what affects other people, how I can affect myself, how I can affect other people, how other people affect me. As going to a green stage environment, let's recreate that, you know, it might be that actually today we're just going to do 1% you know, random puts or we're going to do something which is more fun and engaging, it's going to be maybe a around the clock challenge where we're going, you know, pivoting the green stage around the central point of the hole. It might be we're going to recreate some famous puts and have some fun because ultimately it's just another problem to solve and if we solve them problems we'll earn it. And I think if we looked at that from a full swing perspective, I think we can use things like, you know, four splits, like swing catalyst, four splits, that's embedding them into a swing stage. And instead of you just going like let's go and hit five shots on the flat, let's get your baseline for what your vertical forces, your rotational forces and your horizontal forces are. Now let's put you on a downhill slope, let's put your uphill slope, let's put you on a ball below and a ball above or diagonal slopes as well because we can go in all different directions. And let's actually find out where right now you're creating your best force, you know, and go out actually, you know, You're actually create a better force profile off an uphill slope compared to a dangle stuff. Let's explore that and how can we understand that? Over a year we were late now with the guys there and you've got Scotland and you've got Daniel Gray and they're working with Greg Charm as he's on the Champions Tour out there. He went on and he's been struggling with it, he's left-handed, he's been struggling with this pully draw and they just put him onto a fade slope and everything just corrected. Not only that did that, no one told him, no one said right, what we're going to do is we're going to do this and what I'm expecting you is to do and hold the finish off so you can play it against the slope. No, he just went on there and he body adapted itself and organized and it was a revolutionary moment for him. I'm from there, he went on and he's at the end of having a really good end of his season. Isn't that incredible? I'm could have smiling inside thinking if John Jacobs up in the sky happens to be listening which he clearly is up in heaven that if he happened to listen to this podcast he would smile, it would be a big smile on his face that John in the 1950s and 60s was using different lies down the uphill side, to tell people, fix different elements of the golf swing and what you're talking about will to me resonates so strongly is that we've constantly been sold this idea of consistency and repeatability. Flying in the face of everybody's actual experience which is, as you say, how do we ever feel, we're never feeling the same today as we did yesterday and we're not going to feel the same tomorrow. But actually when you were 100% understand that and buy into that, then the holy grail becomes one of adaptability and you become far more comfortable with the variation in feelings in your swing and thoughts and sensations and emotions and you just become okay with not trying to enter this perfect state all the time which I think is so important in terms of performance. 100% the big word is acceptance, accepting that you're a human being, you're in a constantly evolving, changing world, everyone knows the butterfly effect and that's your own part of that, your part of one of those ripples and with that it's go out there and understand who you are today and I think like Tiger always talks about these nine boxes or these nine windows which he hit through like high fade low fades and stuff like that and ultimately what he'd do is he'd go out on the range and stuff on that day and he'd he'd experiment and try and hit all nine of them and he'll just go well you know what I've actually only got four and that's what I'm going to play with today. And I come and saw one saying that they watched him go around TPC sawgrass at the players and he said he had this low holbo hawk, he had this like leaky fade, he shot six under. And he just played who he was in that day and I think if we can move people to go away from what is your base, my baseline today is I can do this, you know I need to accept that, let's go and embrace that and then when I stand into those environments what's going to work in this environment, what is it telling me to do and how am I am I going to just let go of the whole process and just let the outcome happen. Yeah, it's again I'm smiling because you know I've often said to players and it's really quite liberating when you buy into this that every day you go and hit balls, you won't necessarily feel like you've got your swing but you'll always have shots. You'll always have, as you've just said, you'll always have some shots that you can play. It may not be pretty on a given day, maybe a little bit, you know functional but there'll always be some shots that you can actually hit and get it, get it round the golf course. And I think then to go out there and as you said with you know Tiger being the extreme example on those days when you've only got X or Y shot where you make decisions based off that in the environment and you get it round in a decent number, it might not win the tournament but I think then that's a, there's an immense pride that can come from that isn't that you've showed yourself to be adaptable on that day. Massively and I think if people sort of went, instead of going to the driving range and I've been lucky enough to sort of stand on driving mangers and see tall players hit golf balls and people will probably think that they just hit lasers and yes they can hit an absolute laser and it is perfectly straight but what you find is they've just hit in love hearts. It's just a big fade or a big draw or a little fade and little draw and it's a little bit high and it goes a bit high and it comes down low and they're experimenting all the time and instead of us going on to the range and going right, you need to get better with my driver, you know and you've probably got this first person who'll just go bam smash a ball big fade, bam smash a ball less of a big fade and it'll just get to that point. So it looks like the same thing we do with putting, we'll go on to the putting green and we'll get three balls out because it's coming asleep of free, hit the first one right, hit the second one left, hit the third one in the middle we go perfect that's me done off to the first day. If we can move to the point of right actually let's find a slope or let's on the putting green I want to try and play the fastest, the fastest breaking, I want to play the slowest breaking and I want to play in between that fast and slow puts, I want to try and play like how big can I make the hole, how small can I make the hole based on what pace I'm choosing and the pace actually chooses to line for you and the same on the driving range like if you've hit a fade and you don't know why you've hit a fade go and try and hit a bigger fade. Yeah, you know, right I've hit a big hook, make a bigger hook because by doing that you'll understand a greater resonance of that movement and you know if we look at how we can utilize you know just like I say the green stage or the swing stage is like let's come put it on a massive draw slope, let's come put it on a massive fade slow. How can you hit the biggest hook you can, how can you hit the biggest fade you can, how can you keep it as straight as you can off this slope, how can you keep it low on, low on an up slow pull, hit it high on a down slope, we're trying to explore the out of boundaries and because if we if we've got this bandwidth for variability which we can play in and we can be comfortable in you know because we played in these environments which replicated all of course because it's helping us create this represented learning environment which transfers our skills through so we go on the course and I'm not worried about oh I've hit a big fade we go well I know why I've hit a big fade so I can actually think about correcting it yeah rather than rather than go in there trying to hit you know straight shots all the time it makes of course half the size anyway because you know if you end up hitting a phase you're trying to hit a straight shot down the middle of the fairway a little fade ends up in the right off a little draw ends up in the left rough so if you're trying to hit a draw you're in the right side and you've got twice the size of fairway to hit really haven't yeah yeah so let's let's embrace let's embrace shape rather than let's let's focus on the you know reduce the assault to the no or one or a shot yeah yeah yeah so in terms of there's in green stage well for those who perhaps haven't heard about it but just just fill in a little bit more detail about how could people potentially take the first steps to experience in it and you know you've talked already about how it can be used in the ways it can be used but what would what would be some entry points for people to look at so we're one of our we've got an issue in if you're in the north there's a few goal centres around which we can which we've been pointed towards one of them specific is a really good one which is the American golf which is at Trafford Centre we've got 20 by 8 green stage there and with it you can go into that environment and you can go and try all the different ports different challenges you know maybe actually and probably say this is a good challenge is you know if you've had a bad round of golf go to Trafford Centre and say right guys right I'm here today because not because maybe I want to buy a new putter you might end up buying a new putter sorry but go then say right you know I'll play a totally weekend and these are the puts I wish I struggled with can we explore that a bit with this moving floor which you've guys have got and I think that's a great entry point into it you know down south we've got quite a few places which have both got green stages and swing stages which are used with different technologies and you know where we where we really want to move to is you know starting to actually build out what you know what are two of our core principles or accessibility and realism you know and we want to create you know you know environments where people can go and participate whether it's at driving ranges whether it's in bars in indoor golf centres and we're working with people we're working with the RNA and within the golf and trying to build out the accessibility of this product into these markets through initiative which we call you know the first touch you know because we want to understand how people actually do in this game and if we can use say the green stage as part of the walk on to there see how people solve the problems and see whether they want to come back rather than it just being like grip it here stand here for the ball here so what we're going to be doing working over the next year or so with those guys is you know trying to put these mobile great mobile stages into place of like metal all the trapezoid into the you know Westfield centres and you know trying try and open up the accessibility to this for an accessibility to this technology as well so I mean that would be probably a good place to start and if you if you can't find one you can't get to one kishu somewhere a little bit more remote you know go make your own grease I just let you say Let's go to the drive-amnesia at the end of it, let's hop down onto the grass, and let's go find a bit of a slope, and let's see what happens with that slope. Going to a towel under the mat, let's just, you know, several of them to play a golf on a beach, didn't they? And it was an infinite problem solving that they had with that three iron on the beach, but go to a range where there's some slopes, find some, you know, on a normal practice ground down your lies, up your lies, side hill lies. And I think it's just this spirit of exploration, really, to me, which is so exciting and so engaging. What would you say to kind of summarise? Well, what would be some gold, I know I've covered it, but what would be the things that you want people to leave this conversation with in terms of learning and developing that supreme skill of adaptability? Become more human, you know. Forget what you learnt in school, throw the books away, the swing came before the book, you know, go out there, swing your own swing, and think about how big you can make this golf course, you know, how much shape you can put on your shots when you're hitting, when you're going out there and practicing, think about it, making it as representative as possible, you know. Let's go and say, right, I've only got one drive, you know, let's go into the drive range and hit a drive and then go out, where's it gone? Right now I've got a 160 yard, seven iron into the par four because it's my local course and I'm trying to build the golf course into my mind on the driving range. Let's think about how we can make our environments more representative in terms of slopes. Let's experiment with those slopes. If you've got a driving, or you've got a practice ground at your local golf club, which has got those slopes, go and practice on those slopes. If you've got the opportunity and you're looking at that, you can do a little bit of practice in the evenings on the golf course, go and try different things out. Go 140 yards out and hit three different golf clubs with three different trajectories, you know. Go and embrace that, embrace the opportunities. I think that's probably the best thing. And see the opportunities as all of them are different challenges for you to be able to solve and different puzzles like what you said. The idea of golf, golf in life is just one continuous evolving puzzle puzzle system. And you know, how vibrant that picture is is down to what you want to make it. You know, it can be black and white, you know, and it can be P1, P2, P3, P4, P. I don't know how many P's of all these days are worth 14. Or it can be just me and it's about understanding me on this day and understanding how well I can solve these problems. And I think that what you said before talking about just sort of sometimes you just got to find your way around the course. And I think you should actually be pretty happy with sometimes you know, one of the things my dad always said to me, you never know when your next shot, how good your next best shot is going to be. And I think if you can approach the goal, you're going to go for that, but also where you are. You've got that savvy mentality that if you're in the trees, you've got an opportunity to hit something ridiculous, which everyone turns around and goes, wow, that was mega. Or even if you've got a five foot pot, you've got an opportunity to roll it in in infinite different ways, you know. Is it possible this next shot could be a good one? And unless you decide otherwise, the possibility is there for you to explore, isn't it? Exactly. And that's confidence and confidence coming together, you know. You're in charge of that. So own it, you know. For just for those who want to maybe look at Zen a bit deeper and you know, some people I know would probably be interested in in having their own, their own Zen green stage things like that. Working people getting touched will just give me some details on websites and things like that. Yeah, yeah. So our website is Zen, www.Zen.Golf. We've got Instagram, Facebook, Fred's, TikTok, YouTube and they're under Zen green stage. So if you just, you know, Instagram Zen green stage, it'll pop up all the information there. But you'll see lots of different things from, so, you know, advice as well as, you know, how the product works, but also sort of, would you like to think for us now? Is it's not about what we, we say you should do with it. You know, you've got the lights, you fill Kenyans, you've got your lights. You know, Liam will close a direct education at Canada and you've got Paul Herry and at Quintik and they've all got their own different ways of doing it and they might have a better resonance to them than I would do. So let's let the people who use it on a day to day basis, you know, show you, show you some ideas and show you how you can approach the game as well. Yeah. Well, thanks very much for that. We had a puzzle to see where this conversation went and I think we solved it really, really well. Thanks a lot for watching, I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation and some excellent learning I think for everybody listening. Yeah, thank you, Selma. Thanks, Will. What a fascinating conversation. What did you take for that, from that in particular, for me, one of the standouts there was, as Will, shared with us from his own research that when he measured putting strokes, different terrain right to left, left to right, uphill downhill, that the stroke changed. And yet we measure our putting strokes, looking for this so-called baseline in sterile flat environments and you sort of think, my goodness, what are we looking for with this and how can we better understand and better engaged with the environment, the context and how that impacts and impacts on our brain, sets us different puzzles to solve. And I just found so many of Will's ideas and thoughts, there's so much running in parallel with what we talk about on the show, what we've talked about, on the mind, caddy, an understanding how you need to develop these particular skills and seeing golf as a round of golf as an individual series of puzzles. When you go out to play, you can probably go out between 60 and 85, 90, 100 separate puzzles to solve and can you apply yourself to what the golf course is asking of you in that moment to demonstrate skill to produce a pitch, hit a port from right to left, left to right, hit a drive out of a certain part of the club. All these fascinating things that get us much more engaged with that interaction between golf course, you and your ability to actually produce shots. So take a look at Zen Green Stage and the Zen Stage. Have a look at the website, the links in the show notes. It is absolutely incredible. Technology, as I said at the beginning, if you're a coach, I strongly recommend you, if you can, getting touch with those guys, they have some great, great, great programmes and they have some great potential environments that you can look at to develop your own coaching skills. So, mind-cadi, the app, have you got on board with us yet? If you haven't, take this opportunity, come and jump in, do the free trial, you'll be glad you did when you see in the next couple of weeks what's coming up, it really is. In all the time that we've been doing mind-cadi, probably the most exciting time, terms of a couple of key developments which will really take the app and the use of the app and the personalisation of the app to another level, but get on board with us on that. Go to the link in the show notes or go to the app store, go to the website and come and join us on the mind-cadi journey. But for now, thanks for joining me on today's show. If you get the chance to do a review, I'd really appreciate it, help us spread the word about this different way of thinking, different way of approaching the game. If you know some friends that you think might be struggling a little bit with the game and maybe want a different view and a different approach, very much appreciate. If you pass on the emails we get after the show are always very, very warmly received and appreciated. So thanks for joining me on today's show and I look forward to seeing you very next time. Mind-cadi. Karl Morris, proud ambassador of Fenix clothing in Apparel. For more, go to FenixExcel.com.