Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. We come to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. This week's guest had a chance to
Speaker 1: sit down and talk to this guy when I was
Speaker 1: down in Australia. Jonah Oliver. He is Cam Smith's performance coach.
Speaker 1: But met him just in the locker room and got
Speaker 1: talking to him about, you know, his role with Cam
Speaker 1: and everything. But from the minute I started talking to Jonah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just he was definitely somebody I wanted
Speaker 1: to have on the podcast. Been doing this for a
Speaker 1: little of her about a year year and a half now,
Speaker 1: and I've got to say this was probably the podcast
Speaker 1: that I got the most out of. I could have
Speaker 1: talked to Jonah for a couple of hours. He talks
Speaker 1: about dealing with pressure or talks about performance, but just
Speaker 1: so many good takeaways that if you're a competitive golfer
Speaker 1: or a non competitive golfer, if you're just trying to
Speaker 1: improve your handicap. Definitely some stuff that I think that
Speaker 1: everybody that's trying to improve their game and trying to
Speaker 1: improve the way they perform on the golf course, this
Speaker 1: is a good one. You're gonna want to take notes,
Speaker 1: and like I said, definitely one that I enjoyed listening
Speaker 1: to and one that I got a lot out of.
Speaker 1: So take a listen to Jonah Oliver. I definitely think
Speaker 1: you will enjoy it. All right. So, Jonah, we got
Speaker 1: a chance to meet last last week in Australia, and
Speaker 1: you know, just in talking to you and the work
Speaker 1: that you've done with Cam Smith is his performance coach.
Speaker 1: I just thought it would be fascinating to kind of
Speaker 1: pick your brain. First of all, when when when everybody
Speaker 1: listening here is a performance coach to you? What does
Speaker 1: that mean? And how would you define that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. I'm a sports psychologist, so I define
Speaker 2: it firstly, so psychologist by training. And I say that
Speaker 2: just a clarification. There's a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: who are mental skills coaches, performance coaches, mindset coaches. I'm
Speaker 2: a psychologist. I went to university to a bunch of training,
Speaker 2: registered with a medical board, so you know, everything that
Speaker 2: I do is based in evidence.
Speaker 1: What would that be the difference between, you know, because
Speaker 1: obviously there are the golf has been you know, the
Speaker 1: main one in golf historically was a guy like Barbarrotella,
Speaker 1: you know, where breathing techniques and stuff like that, whereas
Speaker 1: your background is more a doctor background, a clinical background,
Speaker 1: And that's different than just someone saying, hey, work on
Speaker 1: your pre sharp routine, work on you know, focus, because
Speaker 1: it's much more involved in what you do with the
Speaker 1: training that you've got.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, I mean, firstly, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: people out there doing great work regardless of their background.
Speaker 2: You know, some people just have a natural intuition. What
Speaker 2: separates maybe a sports psychologist from others is that we're
Speaker 2: medically ethically bound by only evidence based interventions. So it's
Speaker 2: like going seeing a doctor. They're not going to say
Speaker 2: I think this is a good medicine I made up
Speaker 2: in my garage. This is based upon you know, science
Speaker 2: and evidence. So that's probably the biggest distinguishing factor is
Speaker 2: that whatever I do, I've come from a body of science.
Speaker 2: To your first question, though, what do I do for
Speaker 2: a living? I help people focus on the right thing
Speaker 2: at the right time. I can't make you more talented.
Speaker 2: I can't make you any more than what's you know,
Speaker 2: what God put in. But you know, most of the
Speaker 2: time clients come to me and they're like, Jonah, I
Speaker 2: can I can hit a ball, I can drive a
Speaker 2: racing car I can you know, I can train well
Speaker 2: when I'm in the in the octagon, sparring, whatever the
Speaker 2: sport is, but then they want to do it when
Speaker 2: it matters, and they might notice there's a change in
Speaker 2: their performance when pressure shows up or outcome shows up.
Speaker 2: So you know what do I do. I help people
Speaker 2: focus on the right thing at the right time.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I'm always talking to
Speaker 1: all of the players I work with, especially the ones
Speaker 1: trying to play, is this concept of technique versus execution,
Speaker 1: and I think regard and one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I wanted you to come on and talk. And I
Speaker 1: find it fascinated talk to people years your golf round
Speaker 1: isn't specifically golf, And we were talking before we started that,
Speaker 1: I think in the last fifteen years. And I think
Speaker 1: really when the guys at the Titleist Performance Institut Greg
Speaker 1: and Dave Rose, Greg Rose and Dave Philips, when they
Speaker 1: got together and said, Okay, we're going to bring in
Speaker 1: all of these people to try and talk about golf.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring in people from the medical side,
Speaker 1: from the physical side, and then from the golf side
Speaker 1: and get all of these people kind of talking and
Speaker 1: being on the same page. I think really since the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, I've spent more time talking to people
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily golf specific people or their background isn't
Speaker 1: one hundred percent golf, And so you mentioned other sports.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think that's changed and I'd
Speaker 1: love to get your input on this. Golf has changed
Speaker 1: and evolved to where I think it's getting out of
Speaker 1: the golf specific realm because when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: my dad was always a golf and you know, a
Speaker 1: coach gave lessons, but golf wasn't cool. It wasn't seen
Speaker 1: as a sport. It was just go out, Ben Hogan,
Speaker 1: find it in the dirt. You know, there's great stories
Speaker 1: about people that just think all of this is just nonsense.
Speaker 1: You know. I know some of the trainers at the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup at Glenn Eagles when Tom Watson was the captain,
Speaker 1: their players were trying to get credentials for their coaches,
Speaker 1: for their trainers and stuff. And Tom Watson, coming from
Speaker 1: an old school, you don't need any of that, right,
Speaker 1: you don't need any of that stuff. It's just golf
Speaker 1: and we dig it out of the dirt. How do
Speaker 1: you see golf has evolved over the last maybe fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty years. And where do you see that in
Speaker 1: the realm of other sports that you deal with, from
Speaker 1: racing drivers, from other you know, cricketers, from Ossie rules,
Speaker 1: and then the work that you do with Cam Smith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, great question. Well, interestingly enough, I think golf
Speaker 2: is relatively mature with examining the side of psychology because
Speaker 2: I think even before we had psychologists working with all
Speaker 2: tour players like I do, the average the average golfer
Speaker 2: out there certainly knew that their head at times got
Speaker 2: in their way. Okay, so I think there was quite
Speaker 2: a you know, I look at tennis, I look at
Speaker 2: for you know, motorsport, I look at golf. They're relatively
Speaker 2: mature in having people like myself around the athletes and
Speaker 2: the teams. But to your point, coming in as just
Speaker 2: a generalist, I work across all professional sports multiple I've
Speaker 2: gone multiple Olympics and worked in all different sectors of
Speaker 2: pro sport, is that golf does still have a tendency
Speaker 2: to drink from a pretty small fish tank, and sometimes
Speaker 2: that that water can get a bit dirty. Right, So
Speaker 2: what do people let myself bring in we bring in
Speaker 2: the naive question, the informed yet naive question. What I
Speaker 2: mean by that is why are you doing that?
Speaker 1: But why?
Speaker 2: What? Like give me or because you did it before,
Speaker 2: because somebody else did it, Like well have you thought
Speaker 2: about this or this is what we do in football,
Speaker 2: or this is what we do in motorsport, or this
Speaker 2: is what we do in the UFC, And all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you see people's brains being much more open
Speaker 2: and ah interesting. So I'm seeing a huge appetite now
Speaker 2: in golf at the pointy end for yeah, being more
Speaker 2: open to learning from other sports and realizing that just
Speaker 2: because we've done it this way doesn't mean we need
Speaker 2: to continue to do it that way.
Speaker 1: If you had to define what pressure is, what is pressure?
Speaker 1: Because we hear that so much. And I remember when Brooks,
Speaker 1: when I was working with Brooks and he was on
Speaker 1: his kind of historic major championship run, we were sitting
Speaker 1: at the house at Bethpage Black when he won his
Speaker 1: fourth major un I think it was like the fourth
Speaker 1: majorid one out of like eight or nine that he
Speaker 1: played in. And then people were like, Okay, he's cracked
Speaker 1: the code, right, He's figured out how we were sitting
Speaker 1: and we're having dinner. I think it was Saturday night
Speaker 1: and Brandall Chamblie was on Golf Channel and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's going to be under a lot of pressure,
Speaker 1: you know, tomorrow and everything, and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 1: Brooks just looked up at me and he goes, what
Speaker 1: these people don't realize is the only person or the
Speaker 1: only thing that can make me feel pressure is me. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not something that's real. You have to take it
Speaker 1: in and go, Okay, I'm going to be affected by it.
Speaker 1: And he said, if you choose not to be affected
Speaker 1: by it, the pressure doesn't bother you. So in your mind,
Speaker 1: we hear so much about what pressure in sports, but
Speaker 1: what to.
Speaker 2: You is that, Well, you've touched upon a lot of it.
Speaker 2: It's very much an interpretation of a threat, perceived or real.
Speaker 2: There is real threat. We can't deny hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of years of evolution. So if we see a deadly
Speaker 2: snake on the floor, our brain is going to have
Speaker 2: a reaction to it. Now, if I'm a professional snake catcher,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a different reaction than you or I.
Speaker 2: But interestingly enough, that professional snake catcher will still have
Speaker 2: an elevated heart rate, okay, and some thoughts of death,
Speaker 2: dying and staying alive. But they just don't give that
Speaker 2: much power because they're highly competent. They know what they're
Speaker 2: going to do, they've done it before. They can focus
Speaker 2: on catching that deadly snake, whereas you and I are
Speaker 2: running out the door, right or frozen or whatever. Right.
Speaker 2: But people misinterpret. They see that snakecatcher walking in competently
Speaker 2: grabbing the snake from behind the head, and they go, Wow,
Speaker 2: that guy was so calm and confident. He doesn't even
Speaker 2: get scared by scary, deadly snakes. The biggest mythology in
Speaker 2: sports psychology that great athletes don't feel pressure or nerves.
Speaker 2: So there is an element that we all will respond
Speaker 2: to an external and an intrinsic threat or pressure or context.
Speaker 2: It's just that our relationship to it is very individual.
Speaker 2: That's why I've got I've got football players who will
Speaker 2: play in front of a stadium of one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people and they're more nervous because their girlfriend
Speaker 2: is bringing their friends along and they don't want to
Speaker 2: play poorly to make her feel embarrassed. Sounds pretty weird.
Speaker 2: Big tough meaty ossie footballer who's actually worried about his
Speaker 2: girlfriend's impression management in front of her friend, and that's
Speaker 2: what is making him more nervous than one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people and winning and losing a footing match. Right,
Speaker 2: So it can be very very personal what pressure is.
Speaker 2: Plus we know that through exposure we can develop a
Speaker 2: different relationship to it. And that's almost what I spent
Speaker 2: my life doing is debunking the mythology of pressure.
Speaker 1: So how do you go about doing that? And is
Speaker 1: it individual for each specific player, because obviously I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: with the players that I work with. They run the
Speaker 1: gamut of personality yep. Right. Currently I work with Dustin Johnson,
Speaker 1: who is so laid back, so chilled out, but DJ
Speaker 1: nobody realizes he's probably the most positive person I know,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of the living embodiment of what everybody
Speaker 1: says you should do in sports, but specifically golf, one
Speaker 1: shot at a time. You can't control the past, you
Speaker 1: can't control the future. And then one of my favorite
Speaker 1: people to work with, who's probably the most negative human
Speaker 1: being I've ever met, Pat Perez, never thinks he's good enough,
Speaker 1: always thinks it's it's not permanent. He always thinks he's
Speaker 1: going to lose it. So how much of how players
Speaker 1: are affected by pressure come from their own background and
Speaker 1: their own way of dealing with everything that's happened in
Speaker 1: their life. Because I think the great ones, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: are they They're the compartmentalizers. They're the ones that can
Speaker 1: put all of these things in boxes at the right time.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it necessarily mean they're probably not dealing
Speaker 1: with it. They're just able to go, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: not gonna let it affect me at this time. But
Speaker 1: the background of individual athletes that we are as golfers,
Speaker 1: how much does that affect how they handle pressure situations?
Speaker 2: Yeah, complex question, A good one, and there's a few
Speaker 2: layers to that. So let's just slow down and walk
Speaker 2: through a few things at one point at a time.
Speaker 2: So genetics influences our temperament. So we used to think
Speaker 2: that temperament was how we grew up and you know,
Speaker 2: the social world we were exposed to. But we actually
Speaker 2: know that that temperament is actually genetically nature versus nurture, correct, Right,
Speaker 2: That's why you can have two children raised in the
Speaker 2: same family, and they're really different in terms of their temperament.
Speaker 2: So there's a bit of genetics. There's epigenetics, which is
Speaker 2: a whole other thing of people interested in your podcast
Speaker 2: google some epigenetics. We down a rabbit hole for a while,
Speaker 2: but you know, whether your grandfather was a smoker influences
Speaker 2: your genes right now, Like it's pretty amazing. So let's
Speaker 2: just yeah, So firstly we have different temperament. Then we
Speaker 2: have the world we are exposed to, so how we
Speaker 2: learn our relationship to pressure, And then we have personality
Speaker 2: as well, so they're all three intertwine. So the biggest
Speaker 2: thing that we can work with though, is our relationship
Speaker 2: with pressure. And you can be you know, a pervasive warrior,
Speaker 2: you can be perfectionistic, you can be highly strung, whatever
Speaker 2: terminalism you want to use, can be laxadaisical and as
Speaker 2: cool as a cucumber, as we say in Australian, you know,
Speaker 2: really chilled out, but you can still both of those
Speaker 2: can be major winners world number one and dominate for
Speaker 2: a very long time. Okay, So this idea that there's
Speaker 2: one personality or one temperament or one psychological makeup that
Speaker 2: defines a champion is absolute mythology.
Speaker 1: You don't see any correlation, You don't see any traits
Speaker 1: that are that you see on a regular basis with
Speaker 1: great champions and the way they deal with pressure.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do how they deal with it, so you
Speaker 2: can be a little bit more highly strung and just
Speaker 2: know that's part of who you are. And the techniques
Speaker 2: that I train my athletes in is very much that
Speaker 2: how do I make room for the noise that will
Speaker 2: inherently show up when pressure comes, and don't let it
Speaker 2: impact my performance. So it's not how worried we get,
Speaker 2: it's whether we can still play the shot in that moment.
Speaker 2: If I get caught up in my anxiety story and
Speaker 2: I start steering it de selling, leaving put short, then
Speaker 2: I'm getting affected by my interpretation of pressure. Whereas if
Speaker 2: I'm able to unhook from it. In psychology we call
Speaker 2: it diffused diffusion. It's I'm nervous, but I'm able to
Speaker 2: see it as just thoughts and feelings, and I'm able
Speaker 2: to pick a target and commit to my normal swing,
Speaker 2: and therefore I hit the shot whilst having nerves. Now
Speaker 2: the commentators on TV or say, look, how calm and
Speaker 2: confident he is now. What they're saying is, look how
Speaker 2: competent he is or her. So it's the ability to
Speaker 2: still play the right shot, irrespective of what story showing up.
Speaker 2: Some people, because of their experience, their background, their temperament,
Speaker 2: their personality, how important this is, whatever, will have a
Speaker 2: different volume or story in their brain about this shot. Okay,
Speaker 2: they'll have more negative thoughts or anxious thoughts, whatever labels
Speaker 2: we want to give them. I don't even give them
Speaker 2: Labels's call them thoughts, you know, because even positive thoughts
Speaker 2: can distract us. So my training is how to take
Speaker 2: an athlete who might get a bit of noise and
Speaker 2: learn to just make room for it so that then
Speaker 2: behaviorally they're consistent. And when you say, what is the
Speaker 2: overlapping Venn diagram between the extrovert, the introvert, the worry
Speaker 2: of the perfectionists, the stud who just loves the spotlight,
Speaker 2: it's all of those who seem to consistently perform well,
Speaker 2: don't give the noise in their brain too much power. Rather,
Speaker 2: they come back to the behavioral output that's required in
Speaker 2: this moment. So they're very behaviors. One thing psychologists have
Speaker 2: got wrong, and I read a lot of golf journals
Speaker 2: and see a lot of people writing articles on the
Speaker 2: psychology of golf, and they seem to be obsessed with
Speaker 2: athletes thoughts and feelings. If you actually look at the
Speaker 2: history of psychology, we're behaviorists. We studied rats eating pellets
Speaker 2: to touch buttons and pigeons in boxes. You know, Skinner
Speaker 2: and Pavlov with dogs, and we're behaviorists. And if you
Speaker 2: actually look at what is what does gold.
Speaker 1: Pleasure reflex to where if you give about something, they'll
Speaker 1: just keep hitting the pleasure.
Speaker 2: But literally, right, what is sport? I've never been to
Speaker 2: the Olympics where they've handed out a gold medal and said, hey,
Speaker 2: this is for you because you had the most positive
Speaker 2: self talk. Right, Hey, you're the most confident. Here's here's
Speaker 2: here's a green jacket, here's.
Speaker 1: The winner, like it's it's for what you do and golf.
Speaker 1: If it was a stale competition, in a technique competition
Speaker 1: which everyone thinks it is, Adam Scott, Scotty and Nellie
Speaker 1: Corter would win. They'd be the judge's favorite because they
Speaker 1: have the best looking technical golfwey.
Speaker 2: Correct correct, So we're going to remember that our job.
Speaker 2: All of us coaches psychologists. You know, ever is just
Speaker 2: to help that animal or humans, but that animal behave
Speaker 2: in a certain way. My job is to help them
Speaker 2: behave consistently because normally what I see in training is
Speaker 2: pretty damn good. It's can we now then transfer that
Speaker 2: into tournament play and not how much you don't change.
Speaker 1: The famous quote, and I think it was Roger Federill
Speaker 1: a pressure pressure is a privallege.
Speaker 2: Now do you believe that? Yeah? I do so. Funnily enough,
Speaker 2: I'm doing a few talks around the world at the
Speaker 2: moment with people from the military, people in the medical sectors,
Speaker 2: and the people often hire us and bring us in
Speaker 2: and I actually challenge my fellows on the stage. I say,
Speaker 2: I think we're gonna be very careful here if I'm
Speaker 2: in the and I do a lot of work just
Speaker 2: so you know, with surgeons, so how do they perform
Speaker 2: well and focus when there's sirens going off and the
Speaker 2: clients bleeding out of what have you? And for them,
Speaker 2: when there's pressure, it normally means something's wrong.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've never thought about that. In the medical world,
Speaker 1: a pilot would be the scenes pilently feel pressure when
Speaker 1: something is going wrong.
Speaker 2: The same as in the military. We've planned this assault
Speaker 2: down a valley doing what have you? And then okay,
Speaker 2: naturally and.
Speaker 1: Because it's surgeons pilot's military, because everything is so systematically
Speaker 1: planned out, it should go according to plan. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when it doesn't, that's when the pressure comes.
Speaker 2: Correct, correct, I mean, the military are very good at
Speaker 2: preparing for the unexpected. They do a good job of that.
Speaker 2: But yes, the point I was trying to make was this,
Speaker 2: this this tokenistic line of pressure is a privilege I
Speaker 2: actually think really only holds up in sport. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes pressure in sport is challenging because you're on the
Speaker 2: cut line or your swing's broken down a little bit.
Speaker 2: So you might say, yeah, look I had a fair
Speaker 2: bit of pressure and it was due to adversity. But
Speaker 2: traditionally it's I've made the Olympic final, I'm in the
Speaker 2: lead group, I've got my chance to win my first major,
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, I do believe that often the
Speaker 2: better we do in sport, we feel the pressure and
Speaker 2: we think it's a negative thing. We don't like it.
Speaker 2: We want to we want to, you know, we want
Speaker 2: to have it both ways. And I always say it's
Speaker 2: the price of entry, it's the price of entry. You
Speaker 2: want to win that green jacket? Yes, I dude. Then
Speaker 2: you're not going to sleep well tonight, and you're gonna
Speaker 2: wake up and not want to eat your breakfast, and
Speaker 2: you're going to have a few extra trips to the toilet,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna have a bit of noise in the brain.
Speaker 2: We know enough about neuroscience to know you're going to
Speaker 2: have some anticipatory anxiety because you know why, you worry
Speaker 2: about things you care about, and you've got this wonderful
Speaker 2: opportunity to go out there and get after something you
Speaker 2: care about. But you know what, there might be some
Speaker 2: you know, pressure that shows up with that. So instead
Speaker 2: of viewing it as this aversive thing that I wish
Speaker 2: or hope it doesn't come, it's rather, let's dance. The
Speaker 2: better I do, the louder you get. My relationship to
Speaker 2: you is you know you like my shadow. You're gonna
Speaker 2: follow me round, so you might as well come for
Speaker 2: the journey. Let's go.
Speaker 1: You work with Cam Smith? How did you come on
Speaker 1: Cam's team? Why do you think you're on Cam's team?
Speaker 1: And what fact do you think that you've helped him with? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, so I joined Cam's team about five years ago.
Speaker 2: He was about sixty five in the world at the time.
Speaker 2: I was working previously with Grant Field, you know, Cam's coach,
Speaker 2: and you know he knew of some of the work
Speaker 2: I've done with some of the other players and had
Speaker 2: some good outcomes there, So he'd probably planted the seed
Speaker 2: in the background. And then we met it at Port
Speaker 2: Rush actually had our first went out for dinner. I
Speaker 2: got to know each other and then we started working
Speaker 2: not long after that, and then it's been a good
Speaker 2: little journey. He's the coolest kid.
Speaker 1: Right right. I mean, he's so much fun to be around.
Speaker 1: And I don't claim to know him. Well, I'm a
Speaker 1: work friend. I see him, I talk to him, but
Speaker 1: he seems to be very much in the DJ mode.
Speaker 1: I've just laid back, chilled out. Is he like that
Speaker 1: on the golf course? Does his my appoint being? Does
Speaker 1: his personality off the golf course match his personality on
Speaker 1: the golf course and the way that he deals with
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that goes with trying to win
Speaker 1: big tournaments and winning major championships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a question I get often. I think people need
Speaker 2: to not mistake.
Speaker 1: Having a mullet and laid back cool.
Speaker 2: Look, yeah, jove your personality and perspective, right, Like, the
Speaker 2: one thing Cam does so well is he's so quick
Speaker 2: to refresh, meaning if he's not played well, he'll be
Speaker 2: annoyed for a little bit, hit the range, fix up
Speaker 2: whatever he's working on, and then we're not talking golf,
Speaker 2: we're talking fishing in cars and he can switch off. Right.
Speaker 2: It's because, you know why, because he doesn't define himself
Speaker 2: as a golfer. He's Cam And as a psychologist, I
Speaker 2: take that really deeply and personally that my job is
Speaker 2: to help the human and a lot of that is
Speaker 2: reminding them that they're a whole human that happens to
Speaker 2: have a job called golf. And when you're at work,
Speaker 2: you take it seriously, you do it damn well. But
Speaker 2: when it's done, you're allowed to go and nurture the
Speaker 2: other domains of your life. He's still a son, a brother,
Speaker 2: you know, he's engaged, he's a mate, he's a smart ass,
Speaker 2: he's you know, that's Cam, and he's allowed to reconnect
Speaker 2: to those other areas of his life even in the
Speaker 2: middle of a tournament, because he'll pick it up tomorrow
Speaker 2: morning when we get to the range again. But what
Speaker 2: people misinterpret is they see that somewhat Ossie Larican sort
Speaker 2: of kid and think that that's just how he goes
Speaker 2: about his golf. He is one of the most dilled in, serious,
Speaker 2: switched on, engaged athletes I work with, and I'm fortunate
Speaker 2: enough to work with a lot around the world in
Speaker 2: all different contexts, and he's literally some of the best
Speaker 2: I've ever seen in terms of his application and focus
Speaker 2: because he sort of has a bit that white line fever.
Speaker 2: When he steps over the white line, it's you know,
Speaker 2: he switches it on. I think he's very good at
Speaker 2: what I call simple brilliance. Simple brilliance which means what
Speaker 2: it means he doesn't suffer fool so he only values
Speaker 2: things that he sees genuine. He makes an impact on
Speaker 2: his game. He doesn't go chasing shadows and just searching
Speaker 2: for things. If the swing's not quite where it is,
Speaker 2: or he knows the things that work, he knows the
Speaker 2: things he needs to do to improve that. You know,
Speaker 2: the team around him is very small. It's literally a
Speaker 2: very small team, and that serves him well. I call
Speaker 2: it the margari to pizza. You know three ingredients, right,
Speaker 2: I'll drive across New York to go find an awesome
Speaker 2: wood fired pizza and pay it good money than the
Speaker 2: five dollar pizza that's got all the ingredients. And the
Speaker 2: meat lovers right, well, I see a lot of golfers
Speaker 2: out there with meat lover's pizzas. They're just throwing too
Speaker 2: many ingredients on and drowning it in sweet barbecue sauce
Speaker 2: and convincing themselves it's tasty, Whereas it's actually hard to
Speaker 2: cook a three ingredient pizza that it tastes good because
Speaker 2: you've got to cook it just right and have the
Speaker 2: best ingredients. And that's sort of the philosophy I use
Speaker 2: with him, what Grant uses with him. We only add
Speaker 2: minimal input that makes an impact.
Speaker 1: I always see the players trying to be a three
Speaker 1: Michelin star cheft and you don't really know how to cook.
Speaker 1: I see so many players, Jonah, they're trying to get
Speaker 1: good at everything. Yeah, and you know, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of this comes from I think one of
Speaker 1: the negative effects of the Tiger era and what Tiger
Speaker 1: did is this idea that you can be Tiger Woods,
Speaker 1: that you can have all the shots. Hank Haney famous,
Speaker 1: You've got to have all nine ball flights. And I
Speaker 1: see so many players going, no, I'm trying to work
Speaker 1: it both ways, trying, and they're spending so much time
Speaker 1: and effort to try and get good at everything, but
Speaker 1: they're really average to mediocre and sometimes poor at all
Speaker 1: of it. They're not really great at anything. So I
Speaker 1: always say, listen, just make great omelets. Great omelets have
Speaker 1: a couple of ingredients. Doesn't have make a great cheeseburger,
Speaker 1: just a couple of ingredients. And if you can make
Speaker 1: a thousand of those, and every time someone eats them
Speaker 1: and says, man, that's a really good omelet, can you
Speaker 1: make me another one? Yeah, I can make you another armelet.
Speaker 1: And then if you're the omelet maker in the restaurant,
Speaker 1: eventually they're gonna ask you to do something else because
Speaker 1: you're so good at making omelets. But if you can't
Speaker 1: make a three. And I find it really fascinating that
Speaker 1: a lot of golfers that are trying to play, when
Speaker 1: you actually talk to them about what they're trying to do,
Speaker 1: Like you said, they're just trying to throw as many
Speaker 1: ingredients into the mix as possible, and they don't know
Speaker 1: why they're doing that. They don't know what from a chef.
Speaker 1: I always use Chefinale's. They don't know what flavors actually
Speaker 1: work together. They throw all this stuff on and you're like,
Speaker 1: and that just tastes awful. Yeah, there's nothing cohesive about it.
Speaker 1: One of the things I thought that was really interesting
Speaker 1: that you said about Cam is his ability to reset
Speaker 1: talk me through that. And is that something you've helped
Speaker 1: him with or is that something that comes from him
Speaker 1: and comes from within.
Speaker 2: Yeah, answers both. Firstly, he was already very good when
Speaker 2: I joined the team, and he has a lot of
Speaker 2: the right yeah make up. He's a gritty kid. He's
Speaker 2: grown up on a really challenging sort of you know,
Speaker 2: not a perfect golf course. It was tough conditions.
Speaker 1: I talked to Grant about that. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the fact that it wasn't perfect. So many players.
Speaker 1: You know, we live in Jupiter, Florida, which is like
Speaker 1: ground zero for golfers, And there was a kid just
Speaker 1: graduated from college, went to Division one college, big program,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't really have a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: he was like saying, hey, you know, the only club
Speaker 1: that I can get in and afford to join, they
Speaker 1: don't have pro v one exes on the range, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get any better unless i can
Speaker 1: be at a club where I've got prov one excess.
Speaker 1: And I'm like the fact that you're thinking like that
Speaker 1: is so far removed from what you actually need to
Speaker 1: do to actually make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's an expression that I've used fair bit.
Speaker 2: It's not mine, but I love it. It's called you know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to survive in the jungle if you're trained
Speaker 2: in the zoo. That's you know, he.
Speaker 1: Said that, and that's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring you on to talk because that is
Speaker 1: so appropriate. For so many players they think that the
Speaker 1: only way they can make it is in the zoo.
Speaker 2: Well, we do it as professionals, right, So I just think,
Speaker 2: for a mode if I say that again for the listeners,
Speaker 2: it's hard to survive in the jungle if you're trained
Speaker 2: in the zoo. So why do a lot of Aussies
Speaker 2: make it in world sport? We bad above our weight
Speaker 2: where a tiny country twenty million people will get. We
Speaker 2: seem to do okay a lot of sports, right.
Speaker 1: And as we've all found out, it takes a long
Speaker 1: way from everywhere else in the world to get around
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now why is that? Well, I think one of
Speaker 2: the reasons is that we didn't necessarily have great resources.
Speaker 2: You know, our golf courses were you know, bumpy greens
Speaker 2: and you'd hardly call them a fairway. You know, in cricket,
Speaker 2: you know, the conditions were tough. In football, we don't
Speaker 2: wear pads, you know, and so naturally, growing up in
Speaker 2: Australia you have to. It's a little bit like the jungle.
Speaker 2: So then when we go out onto the world stage,
Speaker 2: it's actually it's almost easier in some degrees. Right, We're
Speaker 2: getting a bit away from it. That's a whole other
Speaker 2: podcasts about how I think in Australia we're now becoming
Speaker 2: almost too professional and creating these lovely training environments that
Speaker 2: I see. But yeah, when I do travel the world
Speaker 2: and I see these youth academies and coaches being so
Speaker 2: well intentioned, they're trying to do the best thing for
Speaker 2: their athletes. They're trying to give them these beautiful facilities
Speaker 2: and beautiful training you know, environments, but they're removing the
Speaker 2: very competitive edge of being a ferocious, hungry line. I mean,
Speaker 2: what does a line look like in the jungle, skinny,
Speaker 2: covered in scars and hungry. So when that caribou walks past.
Speaker 1: It's bam right and will do anything.
Speaker 2: Literally to eat literally. Whereas we know the ones in
Speaker 2: the zoo that have had their main or shampooed and
Speaker 2: condition and they line they're sort of lazy and fat
Speaker 2: because another carcass gets thrown over the fence. So we've
Speaker 2: got to be really intentional with what we expose our
Speaker 2: athletes too, to the thinking about the ferociousness of that
Speaker 2: hungry lion. To extend the metaphor, it's not how hard
Speaker 2: something is, it's how important something is. You know. It's
Speaker 2: not how hard something is, it's how important something is.
Speaker 2: I use a lot of metaphor in my therapy because
Speaker 2: that's how brains learn, and I always use this one.
Speaker 2: I say, if I'm playing basketball in the street with
Speaker 2: my kids and a ball rolls onto the road and
Speaker 2: a car comes, I'll stand back and let the car
Speaker 2: hit the ball. I'll apologize and we'll get on playing basketball.
Speaker 2: But if my daughter runs out to get that ball
Speaker 2: as that car is coming, I'm out there right. I
Speaker 2: don't care how painful, how many bones, I don't care
Speaker 2: if that car kills me because of how important my
Speaker 2: daughter is. So we've got to understand that if you
Speaker 2: want athletes to do hard things, you can't motivate them.
Speaker 2: It's their own journey, but you can help them connect
Speaker 2: to their importance what it means to them. And when
Speaker 2: I help my clients connect to the meaning behind their
Speaker 2: career or whatever they're pursuing, they'll endure a great hardship,
Speaker 2: which might mean taking on the water on the eighteenth,
Speaker 2: you know, hitting this shot, doing the training even though
Speaker 2: it's boring and monotonous, whatever like. It just doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what the challenge is. It's if there's something of importance
Speaker 2: at play, we're much more willing to make room for
Speaker 2: the discomfort, which is right back to what we spoke
Speaker 2: about earlier in terms of our relationship to pressure. You know,
Speaker 2: pressure can cause pain, psychological pain, discomfort. Well, if I
Speaker 2: know my affort is really connected to their why, then
Speaker 2: they're willing to feel immense amount of discomfort. Cam was
Speaker 2: so nervous on those final seven holes at the open
Speaker 2: he couldn't even swallow water.
Speaker 1: And it looked outwardly right, you know, the old duck
Speaker 1: under the water and stuff like that right.
Speaker 2: But he was connected to what he wanted to do.
Speaker 2: We knew he wasn't ever going to compromise on his
Speaker 2: course management because that's so important to how we go
Speaker 2: about a business. You know, I'm willing to lose a tournament,
Speaker 2: but I'm not going to compromise on being the best
Speaker 2: version of myself how I play this golf course and
Speaker 2: staying true to that. But calm, confident, free of nerves
Speaker 2: and anxiety like no, he was. You know, he was human,
Speaker 2: He was normal. He was nervous as heck, but it
Speaker 2: didn't impact the way he went about his place.
Speaker 1: You know, Brooks had a chance to win the Masters,
Speaker 1: and in talking to him, I mean he was devastated.
Speaker 1: He really was, and I don't think he shows a
Speaker 1: lot of that hour. He Brooks seems like he's an alpha.
Speaker 1: Those of us that know him privately know that he
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily an alpha, but it's advantageous in sports to
Speaker 1: have other people think you're an alpha. But he said
Speaker 1: that he felt very strange in that final round on Sunday,
Speaker 1: that he felt something that he had never really felt before,
Speaker 1: and he sure surely didn't the first three days. Is
Speaker 1: He said that he felt for the first time on
Speaker 1: the golf course that he was trying to not hit
Speaker 1: a bad shot, and I said, and he said, I
Speaker 1: just I And he was really really upset and taken
Speaker 1: aback by that, And I said, you know what that
Speaker 1: shows is it shows that you care. It shows that
Speaker 1: you want to win a green jacket and want to
Speaker 1: win a Master's and be able to go upstairs in
Speaker 1: the champions. But that tournament, I think, more than any
Speaker 1: for golfers is the holy grail because of everything that
Speaker 1: goes with it. And I think outwardly Brooks and his
Speaker 1: persona is I don't practice nothing bothers me, I don't care.
Speaker 1: And I said, the great thing is after everything that
Speaker 1: you've gone through to where you had this meteoric rise.
Speaker 1: You got to be number one in the world, you
Speaker 1: won all these majors, then you had the perfect storm
Speaker 1: of injury, whatever, and now you're rebuilding kind of Brooks
Speaker 1: two point zero. It should show you that you care
Speaker 1: and that should be the catalyst that is the second
Speaker 1: phase of your career to start from there, because I
Speaker 1: look at what he went through as yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I I'd give anything to go back and be sitting
Speaker 1: there and watching him put on a green jacket. But
Speaker 1: I think the fact that he had to go through
Speaker 1: that having had so much success is actually important for
Speaker 1: the next stage of his career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's interesting. I love hearing that. You know, firstly,
Speaker 2: you can be super alpha male and still be nervous.
Speaker 2: You can be super alpha male and still worry. You
Speaker 2: can be super alpha male and still have you know,
Speaker 2: tournament nerves about closing out. So that's fine. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: just showed me that he worries about things you care about,
Speaker 2: cares about which you identified. Our brain will always orientate
Speaker 2: to a threat before a positive stimulus. That's normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, you stand on a tea box, You'll see
Speaker 2: the water before you see landing spot in the fairway.
Speaker 2: You'll our brains. If I put a thousand dollars cash
Speaker 2: on this table and a deadly spider, you know your
Speaker 2: eyes will always do a rapid seccatic movement to the
Speaker 2: spider first before you look at the money. Our brains
Speaker 2: have evolved. Always evaluate threat first. Now we always have
Speaker 2: a healthy tension between hatred of losing and love of winning.
Speaker 2: They danced every single day in pro sport, right, and
Speaker 2: most really really good athletes have a high hatred of losing,
Speaker 2: if we're going to be truly.
Speaker 1: Honest, four more than they're actually literally, right, Tiger is
Speaker 1: the living.
Speaker 2: Literally and some days though, that just hijacks our focus,
Speaker 2: now attention more than it, you know, than the desired behavior.
Speaker 2: So it's all of a sudden where we're focusing on
Speaker 2: the hazards, We're focusing on the you know, the spots
Speaker 2: we don't want to have the ball, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden we start maybe desailling, steering, clubbing down, whatever
Speaker 2: it is. You know, we get to that avoidance type
Speaker 2: play versus just playing our brand of golf. And that's
Speaker 2: that's ultimately the work I try to do. And when
Speaker 2: you said, you know, what have I done with Cam,
Speaker 2: I would say change his relationship to nerves and anxiety
Speaker 2: and pressure, where he learned that's okay to feel that way.
Speaker 2: And when just that alone meant that when those tournament
Speaker 2: nerves show up, he doesn't see it as an aversive
Speaker 2: thing or a problem. If I don't see it as
Speaker 2: a problem, then I don't need to turn to it
Speaker 2: and do something with it, right, which then allows me
Speaker 2: to just keep playing my brand of golf, which means
Speaker 2: I don't change. So what does Cam do better than
Speaker 2: most people in the world not change? He stays consistent
Speaker 2: no matter the context. We know, I could turn on
Speaker 2: the television not see the score, you know the score,
Speaker 2: and I'd be able to see the same course management,
Speaker 2: same shot, same approach, whether it's a practice round or
Speaker 2: at the final round of them of the open, right,
Speaker 2: and so hearing that story you know of Brooks, and
Speaker 2: it's about, yeah, how much did the course management change
Speaker 2: or the target selection change, or even just the swing
Speaker 2: mechanics change based upon his relationship with what's happening internally.
Speaker 2: You know, there's one term I will introduce feel list
Speaker 2: is called meta cognitive worry. Okay, you don't need to
Speaker 2: remember it, but it's interesting, right, metacognition. A cognition is
Speaker 2: a thought and what we attend to. So it's you know,
Speaker 2: a metacognition is the judgment of that. I'll make it
Speaker 2: really simple. There's anxiety or worry, and then there's the
Speaker 2: worry that I'm worried. Right, So you a bit nervous
Speaker 2: before your first T shirt or something, and then you're
Speaker 2: walking up to the tee going oh no, oh, come on,
Speaker 2: come down. Don't you come on, don't be nervous, Come
Speaker 2: on that chatter. There is metacognition. It's the worry that
Speaker 2: you're nervous, which means if you have somehow bored into
Speaker 2: a story that being nervous is a problem, and you're
Speaker 2: now trying to get rid of those nerves, which you'll
Speaker 2: fail at, you've just set your metacognitions on fire. So
Speaker 2: that's what panic is in sport or you know, losing
Speaker 2: focus or choking or whatever. It's not actually being nervous.
Speaker 2: It's trying to get rid of your nerves and failing
Speaker 2: and then freaking out that you're failing at doing something
Speaker 2: you deeply believe. You need to change or you can't
Speaker 2: play golf. So for anybody listening today, it's learn this.
Speaker 2: You can play your best golf whilst being so nervous
Speaker 2: if you don't worry that you're nervous. Just let it
Speaker 2: be there. And if I just let it be there,
Speaker 2: it's like music in the background. Just let it be
Speaker 2: there and bring my attention back to the shot, the target,
Speaker 2: and commit to that swing. Then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: you change your story or your relationship to your nerves.
Speaker 2: A lot of my clients after time say oh, Jonah,
Speaker 2: well this works great. I don't get nervous anymore. I said, really,
Speaker 2: you still do tell me about that? So how was
Speaker 2: your breakfast this morning? Oh yeah, I didn't really want
Speaker 2: to eat my breakfast and you sleep, Oh yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a bit light. And how many times you get
Speaker 2: the toilet this morning? Yep? A few extra times. And
Speaker 2: you know, all of a sudden, they're like, oh, what
Speaker 2: I mean is I don't care that I get nervous anymore?
Speaker 2: I say, ah, isn't that freeing?
Speaker 1: Can you turn your brain off? We always say, I mean,
Speaker 1: I do that, and I'm sure it's all bullshit because
Speaker 1: I'm saying a player, I'll say that sometimes. But you'll
Speaker 1: have players that I work with or we all work with,
Speaker 1: that you know that they're so in their own head,
Speaker 1: and I'll always say, listen, just try and turn your
Speaker 1: brain off today and just focus on hitting golf shots.
Speaker 1: Is it possible on the golf course and in sport
Speaker 1: to turn that constant chatter part of your brain off
Speaker 1: and perform and do great athletes and performers actually do that?
Speaker 1: Or is that just a made up bullshit phrase that
Speaker 1: you throw out.
Speaker 2: It's the second part of your advice, that's actually what
Speaker 2: is the most important. You said, turn your brain off, bracket.
Speaker 2: You can't do that, that's neu scientifically impossible. But you said,
Speaker 2: and focus on your golf shot. So what we want
Speaker 2: to do is we want to shift our attention if
Speaker 2: I'm focusing on my thinking. So let's first start. Why
Speaker 2: do we overthink in life and particularly in fine motor
Speaker 2: controls sports like golf, where you've got lots of time
Speaker 2: between shots, right? Is that the benefit of having this
Speaker 2: evolved frontal lobe is we're really good at thinking, planning,
Speaker 2: you know, time traveling to what's next in the future,
Speaker 2: and it's serving us. So well, we're building rockets and
Speaker 2: sending them to Mars like this. You know, we're eating
Speaker 2: lots of protein. Our frontal lobe is growing, we're getting
Speaker 2: smarter and smarter, but we're also getting really good at
Speaker 2: worrying and thinking and analyzing and ruminating and all this stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: So what we have to learn to do is be
Speaker 2: really intentional with our thinking and focus. So it's about
Speaker 2: shifting to something of importance. Now, if I can learn
Speaker 2: that I can't actually think this golf ball into the air,
Speaker 2: I can't. I can't think a low golf score, right,
Speaker 2: It's by what I do with my hands and my
Speaker 2: feet and this club face. So therefore, let go of
Speaker 2: my attempts to think the golf course, you know, Rather,
Speaker 2: what do I need to do here? Back to those behaviors? Right?
Speaker 2: So for me, yep, I'm getting caught up in overthinking
Speaker 2: and trying to solve the future through why because I'm
Speaker 2: anxious and I don't want to fail and I want
Speaker 2: to succeed. Make room for that and come back to
Speaker 2: the here and now about my behavior executions, you know.
Speaker 2: So I always say it's three things. It's not about
Speaker 2: reducing stress and pressure. It's about building capacity to embrace more.
Speaker 2: Physical trainers got this a long time ago, right, physiotherapists
Speaker 2: and sports trainers got this way before psychology. What happened
Speaker 2: when with a football player when they tear a calf,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty five years ago, certainly in Australia, you'd
Speaker 2: come off the field, they'd put an ice pack on.
Speaker 1: It, rub some dirt on it and get back out.
Speaker 2: Well they'd restue, Right, let's just rest you for a
Speaker 2: few weeks and you'd get better and you'd run back
Speaker 2: out there and a few weeks later you'd tear it again.
Speaker 2: They say, we didn't restue long enough, so they'd make
Speaker 2: your rest for six weeks, and then you'd go out
Speaker 2: and tear your calf again, and you'd have a terrible
Speaker 2: season and ripen. More recently, thankfully, due to good sports science,
Speaker 2: they went, the reason you're tearing your calf is your
Speaker 2: calves aren't strong enough. So within two weeks of doing
Speaker 2: a calf tair, you're in the gym now doing weights
Speaker 2: because they're saying, if you want to be a football player,
Speaker 2: your calf needs to be needs to be able to
Speaker 2: handle the load of football, and right now your calves
Speaker 2: can't handle the load of football. Well, psychologically it's the same.
Speaker 2: We need to build our athletes up so they can
Speaker 2: handle the load of professional golf. Not calm down, deep breathe,
Speaker 2: go to a happy place, be more calm and confident.
Speaker 2: What they're playing for millions and dollars in front of
Speaker 2: the world, doing something that's really hard against a bunch
Speaker 2: of other guys who are really good. You've got to
Speaker 2: actually build your capacity for embracing more so, I always
Speaker 2: using a metaphor of like a cup and a jug,
Speaker 2: and I say, if this cup's you, and the water
Speaker 2: as I'm pouring into the cup is your stress. And
Speaker 2: as it's going up, you know you're on the cut line.
Speaker 2: Oh you made it. You then shot really low. You're
Speaker 2: in the final group. Oh they're doing COVID swabs. You
Speaker 2: might get ruled out with COVID. Your dog just died,
Speaker 2: you know. Jonah, I'm about to overflow. I need to
Speaker 2: calm down. I'm stressed out. I say, have it. Don't
Speaker 2: be the cup, habit you be the picture, be the jug,
Speaker 2: pour the water back in the jug. And look, there's
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of room for more. Humans can do
Speaker 2: so much more than we give credit. It's just we
Speaker 2: get so focused on wanting to reduce our stress and pressure.
Speaker 2: So we've got to build our capacity to embrace more.
Speaker 2: Second one, it's not about positive thinking. It's about taking
Speaker 2: positive action no matter what you think. We're obsessed with
Speaker 2: positive thinking. The ball doesn't give a shit what you're thinking,
Speaker 2: doesn't know. So it's not about reducing stress and pressure.
Speaker 2: It's about embracing the capacity for more. It's not about
Speaker 2: positive thinking. It's about taking positive action no matter what
Speaker 2: you feel. And It's not how hard something is, it's
Speaker 2: how important something is. And so when I work with athletes,
Speaker 2: it's okay, Jonah, I'm hiring you because I'm getting too nervous,
Speaker 2: I get too negative, I get too angry, I get
Speaker 2: too stressed out. I say, well, you've come to the
Speaker 2: wrong guy. I'm not going to get rid of any
Speaker 2: of that because you're human, because you can't. I'm going
Speaker 2: to increase your ability for sitting with that and not
Speaker 2: changing club head speed or dcelling or you know, leaving
Speaker 2: punch short. Let's make sure we're behaviorally consistent.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think people struggle with is
Speaker 1: the time part of golf. There's so much time. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it's seventy two. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you shoot even par, we really need you to be
Speaker 1: focusing for very short bursts of time, right, because it's not.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I wanted to bring this up
Speaker 1: is I thought we were talking about your work with
Speaker 1: race car drivers and stuff, and I found it fascinating
Speaker 1: that you said that there are points during Formula one
Speaker 1: as an example, there's so much that goes into every corner.
Speaker 1: They're constantly having to change the core there's the forces
Speaker 1: on their body, there's the engineers in their ears. And
Speaker 1: you said that in the long straits, where the car
Speaker 1: is going the fastest is where you have the reset
Speaker 1: for the driver slash athlete, and you say to the engineers,
Speaker 1: that's his time, whether that's five, ten, fifteen seconds, whatever
Speaker 1: is that's the reset. You told me that you've got
Speaker 1: drivers doing relaxing their shoulders, taking a drip of water,
Speaker 1: stretching the neck out, when the car is going the fastest,
Speaker 1: when it is arguably the most dangerous, that's the reset.
Speaker 1: That resonated with me because I'm thinking golfers have so
Speaker 1: much time in the course of a competitive round of
Speaker 1: golf in between shots. What are some tools. Obviously they're
Speaker 1: generalization and generic, but what are some things that golfers
Speaker 1: can be doing, specifically competitive golfers in between shots to
Speaker 1: help them. I remember Brooks when he won his first
Speaker 1: US Open. He had a shot at Aaron Hills, was
Speaker 1: on the back nine. It was a really difficult shot.
Speaker 1: He was right in the mix. I think he was
Speaker 1: like tied for the lead. It was a back right
Speaker 1: pin and the announcers were saying, this is really really
Speaker 1: dangerous because he missed it this way and he hit
Speaker 1: a really really great shot and he and Ricky walking
Speaker 1: up to it were in a pretty big conversation and
Speaker 1: we flew When we were flying up later that night,
Speaker 1: I said, where were you guys talking about? And he
Speaker 1: was like, we were actually talking about where we were
Speaker 1: going to stay in Thailand and we were planning a
Speaker 1: trip to go to Thailand. I'm thinking, where the hell's
Speaker 1: that coming from?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: But to me, that's an example of taking pressure off
Speaker 1: by taking yourself out of the situation you're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, so love that you recognize that. You know,
Speaker 2: the worst thing golfers do is they try to stay
Speaker 2: switched on for the round of golf. And then that
Speaker 2: was run out of petrol, right, run out of field.
Speaker 1: Because mentally it just gets.
Speaker 2: Literally and I see that, you know in early careers
Speaker 2: where people will hit a shot tracking it, they're watching it,
Speaker 2: they see where it lands, and they're just thinking about
Speaker 2: either the next shot or whatever it is, or the
Speaker 2: previous shot, the swing mechanics, the ball flight, that they're
Speaker 2: just not giving their brain a chance to just decompress
Speaker 2: and switch off. So yeah, definitely, one trick is to
Speaker 2: know that once you've hit that shot and you've seen
Speaker 2: where you know where it lands. It's let's solve that
Speaker 2: puzzle when we get to it.
Speaker 1: And it's a new puzzle, right, Every shot that you
Speaker 1: have is not part of a puzzle. No, every part
Speaker 1: of every shot you're going to have is another puzzle
Speaker 1: that you've got to solve. Because I do that when
Speaker 1: I play. You know, I have so much thoughts in
Speaker 1: my head. I have so much information that I go
Speaker 1: up and I play golf and if one thing doesn't work,
Speaker 1: I'm trying another technique. So every shot you hit is
Speaker 1: its own individual puzzle that you're trying to solve.
Speaker 2: So I always say I like, you know, depending on
Speaker 2: the distance of the hole, but it's like, Okay, you're
Speaker 2: going to think about that T shot because you've just
Speaker 2: hit it. So tune into that T shot if there's
Speaker 2: something of meaning to actually learn from it, So hit
Speaker 2: the T shot you might take, give yourself, you know,
Speaker 2: thirty yards to actually think a bit about what you're
Speaker 2: doing and was that relevant to what you and your
Speaker 2: coach have been working on. You're allowed to have some
Speaker 2: swing thoughts and review what you just did. Then it's
Speaker 2: literally glove off when that glove comes off metaphorically or physically.
Speaker 2: It's now, let's talk about the trip to Thailand, the restaurant,
Speaker 2: the you know, the latest video, you movie, you've seen whatever, right,
Speaker 2: So you know, be courageous enough now use that word
Speaker 2: courageous enough to switch off. Our anxious brain doesn't want
Speaker 2: to stop thinking. Think back to when you're in high
Speaker 2: school or college and you hadn't studied for that exam.
Speaker 2: If you you know, like a lot of people, and
Speaker 2: you're doing that cram session, right, you're sitting out the
Speaker 2: front of the lecture hall about to go in, and
Speaker 2: what you're doing is just looping it in your head.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not properssed, right, and so you don't
Speaker 2: want to forget it. So you're having to keep looping,
Speaker 2: keep looping, keep looping through your anxiety. So that's what
Speaker 2: we do when we're on the golf course. If we're anxious,
Speaker 2: we think that if I switch off, I'm gonna disconnect
Speaker 2: from my golf swing. I'm gonna you know, and it's
Speaker 2: just a lie. It's just anxiety talking, right, It's trying
Speaker 2: to trap you. So it takes courage to actually say
Speaker 2: walk off the tea box glove off, and now let's
Speaker 2: talk a bit about the Netflix series I've been watching
Speaker 2: or what have you, and allow myself to disconnect from whatever.
Speaker 2: And then okay, now we're forty yards out. Hey, let's
Speaker 2: talk a bit about the wind. Let's talk a bit
Speaker 2: about what is switching back on as you're getting into
Speaker 2: the ball and solving the puzzle. So now the other
Speaker 2: one is learning to reset and connect to something in
Speaker 2: the present, which is what I loved.
Speaker 1: You said that you should feel like Cam does.
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, well he just does whatever. Yeah he does,
Speaker 2: he does do it. Well. Now there's some simple, low
Speaker 2: hanging fruit, right Like, it's mindfulness. It's about bringing your
Speaker 2: attention into the present and being connected to whatever that is.
Speaker 2: So it's not about calming down, it's about being in
Speaker 2: the present. There's a big difference people think calming down,
Speaker 2: breathe in, breathe out, calm down, get rid of the nerves.
Speaker 2: If I'm breathing in and trying to get rid of
Speaker 2: my nerves, what am I then saying about nerves. I'm
Speaker 2: saying they're bad. I'm saying I need to get rid
Speaker 2: of them, which will work as I walk off the
Speaker 2: t box. But then when there's three holes to play,
Speaker 2: and I'm doing that breath work and I can't get
Speaker 2: rid of the nerves. What now happens to my focus?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get rid of them. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get rid of them. I'm trying to get rid of them.
Speaker 2: Now I'm having that metacognitive worry. I've lost my focus. So, really,
Speaker 2: big little hack for golfers out there, don't try to
Speaker 2: breathe away your nerves because you're feeding a story that
Speaker 2: nerves are bad. Rather breathe to pay attention. So you
Speaker 2: might breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven seconds,
Speaker 2: breathe out for eight. It's really hard breath to do
Speaker 2: as you're walking into three four, hold for seven, out
Speaker 2: for eight. So why do I give somebody a really
Speaker 2: hard breath cycle to do?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Hijacks their attention.
Speaker 1: It's horrid, it's hard. It's a task.
Speaker 2: They don't have to succeed. Yeah, they can be God, Yeah, Jonah,
Speaker 2: that was d I couldn't go hey, so what were
Speaker 2: you doing for three or four breath cycles? I was
Speaker 2: just getting annoyed at you because I was. And then
Speaker 2: I was focusing on the breath even more because I
Speaker 2: really wanted to do it, and okay, what weren't you
Speaker 2: thinking about? Ah, the fact that I pushed that shot
Speaker 2: a little bit right. Okay, so you know, have a
Speaker 2: sip of your drink bottle, but don't just drink water,
Speaker 2: feel the cold water go down your throat until you
Speaker 2: lose where it's gone. To have another sip and see
Speaker 2: if you can track it a bit further. They're just
Speaker 2: little simple hacks of bringing your attention to something else, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: my drivers will do that in a race car. It's
Speaker 2: more like one point four seconds as altho they got
Speaker 2: down the back straight when they're doing three nd and
Speaker 2: seventy columbs it out, it seems like, but you know
Speaker 2: that is their time is to disconnect and just being
Speaker 2: to the present before they go into APEX one. But
Speaker 2: you know, golf gives you plenty of time for that.
Speaker 2: So instead of going, oh, golf so hard, because you
Speaker 2: can get really caught up in overthinking, well only if
Speaker 2: you choose to. You can also choose to have some
Speaker 2: really great conversations with your caddy or your golf partners
Speaker 2: and well daydream and fantasize about something cool that you're
Speaker 2: interested in it, right, Like you can be choiceful where
Speaker 2: you bring your attention to it.
Speaker 1: We saw my dad was working with the Greg Norman
Speaker 1: when he had the epic collapse at the at the Masters,
Speaker 1: and Greg was always big into visualization, and I think
Speaker 1: that was something that was a massive strength for Greg.
Speaker 1: You would track his eyes the way you would see it,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. He always said that he didn't. He
Speaker 1: didn't pull the trigger until he had visualized the shot.
Speaker 1: And you talking about that on Sunday that day when
Speaker 1: everything was unraveling, he was taking massive amount of time
Speaker 1: and afterwards he told my dad, I couldn't see the shot.
Speaker 1: I kept going to visualizing what the shot was, which
Speaker 1: had served him well so long and so many times
Speaker 1: in his career, and he just was standing there kind
Speaker 1: of hitting control all reset delete. He couldn't see a shot.
Speaker 1: And that goes to what you said, you're trying to
Speaker 1: breathe it away and you're actually making it worse.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, So we know that visualization is very good
Speaker 2: for modal learning. It's not good for recreating performance states
Speaker 2: because it never matches reality. So you know, lots of
Speaker 2: countries have tried it. You know, the Chinese try to
Speaker 2: the Olympics and others have tried to recreate. What we
Speaker 2: learn is if we do visualization to make it really,
Speaker 2: really sensory and real, it never matches reality. And then
Speaker 2: you have that juxtaposition of oh, hang on, this isn't
Speaker 2: what I've prepared for. Whereas if you're just doing a
Speaker 2: swing thought and visualizing it, that is really good for
Speaker 2: motor development. So visualization is great for connecting to swing
Speaker 2: patterns and embedding modor learning. It's not good for recreating
Speaker 2: what it's like to walk down the final fair way
Speaker 2: at the Masters or something, because you won't ever and
Speaker 2: you don't need to. You don't need to recreate that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, if I'm getting tangled in my nerves and
Speaker 2: I don't like them, and I'm trying to get rid
Speaker 2: of them and I'm failing at getting rid of them,
Speaker 2: then you won't be able to visualize because your prefrontal
Speaker 2: frontal cortex is completely hijacked by all that metacognitive worrying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lastly, one of the metaphors and one of the cliches
Speaker 1: of golf is the longest walk in golf is from
Speaker 1: the driving range to the first t What do you
Speaker 1: see is the disconnect between what players are doing in
Speaker 1: practice which they can perform in practice, and then the
Speaker 1: shift and the change because I have so many players say, listen,
Speaker 1: my range sessions are great, I hit it great on
Speaker 1: the range, and then when I go play it feels
Speaker 1: like something. I have my own thoughts and but I'd
Speaker 1: love to get your input on what you think is
Speaker 1: the difference in how players can access what they do
Speaker 1: in practice on the golf course when the game has
Speaker 1: been played.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure. Two things to that question. One is we
Speaker 2: know that that term the warp from the driving range
Speaker 2: to the first t that's more about anticipatory anxiety. So
Speaker 2: we know that the spiciest or the most challenging anxiety,
Speaker 2: he is the anticipatory anxiety, and once you actually start playing,
Speaker 2: it normally abates a little bit, right. So that's just
Speaker 2: that you know, the build up of uncertainty of how
Speaker 2: we're going to play. But to your question, really around
Speaker 2: the transfer and it's I see.
Speaker 1: I had never heard that term, by the way, until
Speaker 1: doctor Gregor Is from TPI. We were talking about a
Speaker 1: player that was great on the range stuff, and he's like,
Speaker 1: it's not a technique issue, it's a transfer problem. You're
Speaker 1: trying to transfer what there was a girl I taught
Speaker 1: a junior. She played a practice round a big tournament
Speaker 1: down in Florida, you know, decent player, and she shot
Speaker 1: you know, one two over in the practice round, and
Speaker 1: then in the tournament shot almost ninety and the parent
Speaker 1: said she needs more practice. I'm like, if she needed
Speaker 1: more practice, she shoot ninety in the practice correct?
Speaker 2: Correct? So what do I see as a you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, as an external person. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: worked in pro golf eighteen years, but I'm still not
Speaker 2: a golf person. I'm a sports psychologist generalist. There is
Speaker 2: that when a lot of my clients early on are
Speaker 2: on the range, I see them very internally focused, and
Speaker 2: even their coach might even be promoting that inadvertently. So
Speaker 2: swing thoughts and queueing and using aids and all those
Speaker 2: things which are very good at the right time, but
Speaker 2: they're they're still taking your client to an intrinsic place
Speaker 2: of focus. And then they walk onto the golf course
Speaker 2: and where do they focus out there? They're seeing a
Speaker 2: narrow target, they're seeing a flight of shape, they're they're
Speaker 2: seeing all the problems, and they're seeing threat threat, threat, threat,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're not you know, where they were
Speaker 2: on the range. So do I think we need to well,
Speaker 2: you need to align it. Some people are going to
Speaker 2: be more intrinsic golfers. We know that some people are
Speaker 2: very extrinsic, and that's and both can be very very good.
Speaker 2: So there's no real right or wrong per se. But
Speaker 2: typically in the game of golf, you're still got to
Speaker 2: be out there solving that problem. So I think it's
Speaker 2: more about actually how we do train on the rain
Speaker 2: and making sure it's matching golf. Otherwise I see quite
Speaker 2: a difference between the two. Like when I see a
Speaker 2: bucket of balls, I say, no, there's sixty shots in there.
Speaker 2: Don't see that as sixty balls. There's sixty shots, and
Speaker 2: let's make sure every single, every single one of those
Speaker 2: balls is a shot. Therefore it must have a target,
Speaker 2: must have a flop, you know, must have intent on
Speaker 2: what you're to correct, and therefore my swing thought needs
Speaker 2: to reflect hitting that shot, which then means when I
Speaker 2: then walk on to the first tee, I'm replicating the
Speaker 2: same cognitive sort of systems and processes in terms of
Speaker 2: what am I focusing on and what am I thinking of?
Speaker 2: So that's the word cognition. And cognition means what am
Speaker 2: I focusing on and what am I thinking? And my
Speaker 2: job is to make sure that it's relatively aligned. Now
Speaker 2: there's a time and a place to go really intrinsic
Speaker 2: and get some technical work done. But then it's like,
Speaker 2: now let's bring the golfer back out into normality of
Speaker 2: what they have to do on the golf course.
Speaker 1: And I always say to players, I think so much
Speaker 1: of golf. People think they can prayctice away all the issues.
Speaker 1: And I always say to players, listen, it's a game.
Speaker 1: That's why they give you a scorecard and they tell
Speaker 1: you what the rules of the game are. It's not gymnastics,
Speaker 1: not figure skating. It's not dressage to where there is
Speaker 1: a sequence of motions and you get extra points for
Speaker 1: trying something. You know, figure skating, it's all subjective. Golf
Speaker 1: isn't subjective, right, And I think we practice it as
Speaker 1: if it's set in stone that it is repetition. And
Speaker 1: golf is one hundred percent random, right, The entire sport
Speaker 1: is random, but people practice it in a way I
Speaker 1: think that is it's almost backwards.
Speaker 2: It kills me, It kills me, which is back to
Speaker 2: that metaphor, you know, how can you survive in the
Speaker 2: jungle if you trained in the zoo. And I look
Speaker 2: and I see a whole bunch of people sitting on
Speaker 2: firstly flat around ye perfect tea box grass wanting perfect.
Speaker 1: And prux grass.
Speaker 2: And then I look at the statistics and I say,
Speaker 2: I wonder how many shots today cam is going to
Speaker 2: have where the ball is in a neutral position, you know,
Speaker 2: on a flat fairway with perfect grain in like that
Speaker 2: I mean, and I mean that seriously, like, actually, reverse engineer,
Speaker 2: how many shots of golf is the ball and you
Speaker 2: on flat level ground? Firstly, like, I don't know the
Speaker 2: golf exp not me, but I assume there wouldn't be many,
Speaker 2: Like I don't, like, it's only a handful, right, Normally
Speaker 2: there's some slope side slope, down slope, up slope, you know,
Speaker 2: fairways and red even if they're really good, they're still
Speaker 2: going to have a fair few out rough like And
Speaker 2: yet I look at the how many reps reflect that? Now,
Speaker 2: as an outside looking at that sport, I go, Every
Speaker 2: other sport in the world generally trains for the reality
Speaker 2: of tournament play. Golf does it pretty poorly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I always think as instructors. Historically, we
Speaker 1: teach potting backwards. We teach technique first, right, and it's
Speaker 1: all technique from three to five feet, and you do
Speaker 1: kind of some cursor y long putts to get the
Speaker 1: speed of the greens, all those bullshit cliches. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the last one get the speed of the greens. Most
Speaker 1: people will go out and have thirty three potts, they'll
Speaker 1: put poorly, they'll three put a lot from long distance.
Speaker 1: And what do they do? They immediately go back to
Speaker 1: stroke mechanics from three feet, whereas they don't. I've actually
Speaker 1: started with beginning golfers and not super great putters. Hey,
Speaker 1: let's put thirty footers, wait, twenty five footers, forty footers,
Speaker 1: and work backwards. Start there, then work the mechanics. And
Speaker 1: if you're missing the ball from thirty feet and the
Speaker 1: ball's going you're aiming at a target and you're slicing
Speaker 1: it with a putter because you have no face control
Speaker 1: or no ability to control the strike. Yeah, then we
Speaker 1: get over and we work on some basic stroke mechanics
Speaker 1: of putting.
Speaker 2: Work cam and I focus intimately on speed, only on
Speaker 2: speed basically.
Speaker 1: And told me once if your pots always have the
Speaker 1: right speed, how far away from the hall or is
Speaker 1: the ball ever really going to be?
Speaker 2: And I love what you said. I'm huge on waking
Speaker 2: the brain up with long lag puts. Give it long
Speaker 2: distance and be wrong. That's okay, that's waking your brain
Speaker 2: up to the speed of the green. But if you're
Speaker 2: hitting a three footer, two things go wrong. One is
Speaker 2: if you're putting out a hole. What happens with most
Speaker 2: of those three foot puts They go in right, but
Speaker 2: you can hit that with easily a thirty to forty
Speaker 2: percent variants in speed, but your brain isn't picking up
Speaker 2: on that. It's just seeing it go in for a
Speaker 2: short distance. So you think you're putting well, and I'm
Speaker 2: watching going, oh, my goodness, you're putting horrendously because you
Speaker 2: haven't woken up your speed yet. And then they go
Speaker 2: come off around and go, oh, my speed was really
Speaker 2: off to date, And I'm like, I saw your warm
Speaker 2: up putting routine and you didn't actually register speed. So yeah,
Speaker 2: elongate long parts, lag parts duel that get your speed
Speaker 2: tuned in. Then if path needs sorting all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and then do your shorter stuff, because then you should
Speaker 2: be seeing it going actually like discs and things because
Speaker 2: it tells you, you know, you blast it through that
Speaker 2: disc on the grain and you oh wow, I had
Speaker 2: I have it that too far. So I'm very cautious
Speaker 2: of golfers using short parts apt holes early on in
Speaker 2: their warm up because I think you can trick your
Speaker 2: brain doing.
Speaker 1: A fantastic I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts,
Speaker 1: you know, over the last two years, and I've got
Speaker 1: to say that this is probably one that I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: the most, just getting to pick your brain. And you know,
Speaker 1: I had a Grant on the podcast recently and you
Speaker 1: can see the way that he thinks about the work
Speaker 1: that you guys do with Cam is very similar to
Speaker 1: the way you talk. So hopefully we're going to be back.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know we are next year, are going
Speaker 1: to be back down in the Australia and I have
Speaker 1: one will get you back on. Thank you so so
Speaker 1: much for talking to me.
Speaker 2: Thanks your tom mate, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So that was Joana Oliver and he is definitely someone
Speaker 1: whose brain I'm going to pick every chance I get
Speaker 1: an opportunity, because I got a lot out of that
Speaker 1: and hopefully you did as well, because he has some
Speaker 1: fantastic stuff and I don't think it's a shock as
Speaker 1: to why the working in grant Field have done with
Speaker 1: cam Smith have turned him into one of the best
Speaker 1: players in the game of golf today. It is Major
Speaker 1: championship week the PGA Okill Country Club. It's a cool
Speaker 1: place for me to come back to you every year.
Speaker 1: My uncle was the head pro, my uncle Craig, he
Speaker 1: was the head pro here for over forty years. And
Speaker 1: I think the first time I came here, I want
Speaker 1: to say it was the eighty nine US Open that
Speaker 1: Curtis Strange won. He won back to back US Opens
Speaker 1: in eighty eight he won at the country Club and
Speaker 1: then came to Okill and won his second. US Open.
Speaker 1: Is a big, big boy golf course. It is a
Speaker 1: hard golf course. It's a major championship golf course. The
Speaker 1: rough is up. They've done a redesign of the golf course,
Speaker 1: but there are just you cannot fake it around here.
Speaker 1: You have to stand up, you have to hit good
Speaker 1: golf shots. If the wind blows for four days, nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna break part. That's how hard this golf course is.
Speaker 1: So I think a lot of the winning score to
Speaker 1: be dependent on the weather, the rough is brutal. You
Speaker 1: have to drive the golf ball in play, and I
Speaker 1: think if you win here on Sunday and you lift
Speaker 1: that big giant trophy up, you're going to have played
Speaker 1: some fantastic golf because there's just no way to fake
Speaker 1: it around o'kill. It's iconic. It's one of the major
Speaker 1: championship golf courses. They've been US Opens here, there've been
Speaker 1: PGA's here, there've been Usam's here, There've been Ryder Cups here.
Speaker 1: So you will get this week what everyone expects from
Speaker 1: a major championship.
Speaker 2: Hard.
Speaker 1: It will be a true test, and I think we
Speaker 1: are going to get a fantastic winner. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. Second major of the year. Let's get it going.
Speaker 1: Son of a Butcher comes to you every Wednesday. I
Speaker 1: want to thank everyone for listening, Rate Review, subscribe to
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. We will see you next week.