Training Tiger Woods

Over the last few weeks both Ben and I have talked about the importance of respecting the energy of the season.

Since the first of the year, the gym where I have my office has been inundated with people who obviously have made New Year resolutions. They’re running, jumping, lifting weights, and doing exercises that are way beyond their current abilities. I hear them grunting and groaning and I watch them grimace in pain.

Because I’m there every day, I notice as they begin to miss workouts. Some get sick, while others get injured. Soon, they are gone. Just another failed resolution.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that 70% of people who make resolutions fail in the first 8 weeks. Ignoring the energy of the season is usually why.

If you want to successfully begin an exercise program, start slow. Build a foundation and increase the intensity of your workouts gradually. Possibly, seek professional help from someone who understands the principles that Ben and I have laid out in our Training Tiger Woods program.

Remember, whatever your fitness level is right now, it has taken you awhile to get there. It’ll take you just as long to get to where you’d like to go.

In our pieces from last week, Jerry and I both spoke of the need to attend to the energy of the season when setting goals.

Which points to an interesting conundrum for my winter. I'm teaching skiing this winter, and I've been surprised to discover just how physically arduous it is. I go home deeply tired every single day I work. I expected that because I'd be skiing at the levels of my students, I'd be skiing much less than I do on a typical day on the slopes. And while that's true, what I hadn't counted on is that skiing inefficiently, which I have to do to demonstrate the techniques I want my students to work on (in order to model the progression to the next level, I ski just above their current level), is vastly more exhausting than skiing efficiently. Two top-to-bottom runs in a snowplow demand as much from my body as a full day of carved turns. Throw in the energetic demand of focusing as hard as I do when I teach, and my days are really tiring.

Jerry and I both described winter as a time for rest and recuperation, but I'm certainly not tamping down my physical activity.

What has also been interesting, though, is how much energy I've had when I'm on the mountain. Even after nights when I've woken up after four or five hours of sleep and been unable to get back to sleep, my energy during my workday has always been excellent. Over the years, I've noticed how good I feel when I'm in the mountains. This winter, I have come to believe that time on snow-covered mountains offers powerful support for us energetically.

All of this is a long introduction to the framework under which I'm operating for my winter-time goals. If I weren't teaching, I'd probably be resting more, as the season dictates. But I am teaching (and enjoying it), so I'll continue to have to put out the energy the job demands.

So then my main goal, from a fitness and health perspective, is to stay healthy and uninjured. That means being very careful to get adequate sleep, moderating my alcohol intake, and trying my best to eat well. It also means paying close attention to what my body is requesting on days when I don't work. I have no choice but to meet the physical demands of my job, but when I find myself especially tired on a day off, I have to either keep my exercise, be it on the slopes or in the gym, to a light to moderate level, or else take the day off completely.

I am applying Training Tiger Woods principles to my skiing and that of my students each and every day, and of course I'll continue to do so. My goal is to ski and ride with less stress and more flow, which dictates that I continue attending to the breath and continue practicing holding a strong center. That approach, coupled with the instruction I get from the stronger skiers who surround me at work, has already help me improve my skiing markedly this winter, despite having very little time away from teaching to actually practice. I hope to see continued improvement now that the teaching schedule has lightened after the end of the holidays.

I expect to practice or play very little golf or tennis until nearly the spring equinox, at which time we'll establish new goals in line with the growing energy of spring. So beyond what I've mentioned so far, my focus will be in the gym, aiming to provide myself with a stronger base for activities of spring, be they golf, tennis or soccer.

One last thing: I'm in Las Vegas this weekend for a soccer tournament. My team's goal is to win the thing. That's my goal too, right behind staying healthy and uninjured and having a lot of fun. Wish us luck.

Last week both Ben and I talked about goal setting and the need to respect the energy demands of the season when setting and pursuing goals. In this week’s post I am going to share the method I use for setting and achieving goals that has been very successful and is applicable to almost any goal.

State Your Goal

It’s extremely important to verbally declare your goals aloud. Nobody else has to be present, but verbalizing your goals gives them power and brings energy to the process. While verbalizing your goals notice how your body physically and energetically reacts to the goal. If you feel strong and energetic during the process, your chance for success will be greatly enhanced. If you feel weak or uncertain when declaring your goals, re-examine them. There is something within your goal that is causing conflict and it will make them much harder to achieve.

Next, write down your goals and share them with someone else. This accomplishes a couple of things.

First, writing down a goal gives it life and creates a sense of energy around it. This is different than verbalizing your goal. When verbalizing it, you’re feeling how the energy of the goal flows with your energy system. At this stage, it’s still an idea or something you think you want. When writing the goal down, you are breathing energy into it and giving it life. It goes from being something you are wishing for to something that you’re working towards.

Second, by sharing it with someone else you’re not only accountable to yourself, but you now have to account for your successes and failures with someone else.

To illustrate the whole process, I will share a goal of mine and the process for achieving it.

One of my goals this year is to improve my overall fitness level. I had a series of abdominal injuries last summer and my fitness level and my weight isn’t where I like it to be. I have some measurable parameters of lowering my exercise heart rate and blood pressure while losing 15 pounds.

Start Small

Nothing kills progress like a goal that is impossible to reach. I like to set very attainable, relatively short-term goals that act as stepping stones to achieving the larger long-range goal. Each step should be relatively easy to accomplish and should lead directly to the next logical step in the process. The plan should be flexible and allow for any necessary changes. It’s my experience that nothing gets in the way of achieving goals like too fixed of a plan early in the process.

My first stepping stone is to do four 30-minute exercise sessions per week. Notice that the number of sessions as well as the duration of each session is easily obtainable. I purposely leave the type of exercise and days I plan to exercise vague. This allows me to react to the energy of the day and the conditions in the gym without upsetting a rigid schedule.

Accountability/ Journaling

It’s important to be accountable for accomplishing each step that you have laid out. Give yourself a timetable to accomplish the step and journal the process. Journaling it on something you see everyday reminds you that you have made an obligation to yourself and keeps you aware of how you are doing.

I have a calendar set up in plain view next to my desk at work. Each exercise session gets logged onto the calendar. A notation might be as simple as 30 minutes of rowing or 20 minutes weights and 10 minutes of cycling.

Review / Restructure

The review process is critical for success. It allows you to determine what is and isn’t working in the process of achieving your goal. Reviewing should be done after each step is accomplished or the time set for accomplishing the goal expires. This is where your goal journal becomes important. By re-reading your journal, you can better understand what worked as well as what hindered your progress in accomplishing each step.

I like to set a check-in with myself two weeks into the process. I’ll look at the number of and type of exercise sessions that I have logged over the two-week period. Based on the results, I can plan the next step in the process. I might increase or decrease the goal for the next two-week period based on how I did previously.

Be Kind

When critiquing your results be nice to yourself! If for some reason you were unable to achieve one of the steps, it’s OKAY! Assess why. Too vague? Too much work? Needs more structure? Less? Did life get complicated? Now, based on your answers adjust the next step on the journey of achieving your goal.

Plan/Change The Next Step

After the review process, it is time to plan or make changes to the next step in the process. Keeping the plan fluid allows you to react to the ever changing circumstances of your life. When changing the steps associated with achieving your goal make sure you keep the overall picture of what you are looking to accomplish firmly in mind.

I am constantly changing and tweaking my step-by-step process to achieving the goals that I stated. If things are going well, I will accelerate the plan. If events have conspired to set up some road blocks on my path, I’ll adjust as necessary to keep my head up and keep myself moving forward.

Success Vs Failure

When pursuing goals in this fashion, the only way to fail is to quit. By reviewing progress and adjusting the next step forward from the results from the last step, we can continue the journey forward one step at a time. It doesn’t matter if there are 6 steps between starting and achieving your goal or 126.

Sometimes, you’ll achieve your goal ahead of schedule and other times you’ll get there but it’ll seem like it took forever. Whichever way it goes, you have achieved the goal and you’re ready for the next one.

Neither Jerry nor I particularly believe in new year's resolutions. Resolutions rarely seem to work in practice. If a single application of willpower was all it took to make a change in our lives, we'd all do it every single time we noticed something not working as well as we'd like it to. "Goodness," we'd say. "I eat too many sugary foods. I think I'll stop." And then we would.

But life doesn't work that way, does it?

However, the idea of resolutions is wonderful. Both symbolically (a new year, a new beginning) and energetically (the winter solstice is energetically the moment of the yearly cycle's rebirth), the early days of winter are an excellent time to look ahead.

So in that spirit, we decided to write about goals to start the new year. Unlike a resolution, a goal, properly stated, offers us both a destination and a direction. It essentially creates a path, and then offers us a means to walk that path.

It's important that goals reflect the energy of the season. As Jerry noted, the winter solstice and the early days of winter, the short days and long nights, energetically harbinger a time of rest and reflection.

Of course, most of us do not live this way at all. In our culture, we generally treat every day as equivalent to every other day. We put out as much energy in the dead of winter as we do in high summer. Ever wonder why people tend to get sick in the winter? Getting out of sync with the energy of the season is a major factor.

So within this framework we can begin to talk about our goals for the winter. We'll speak specifically about our goals next week.

I hope your holidays were safe, fun, and everything you were hoping for and more. Now that they are over, it’s time to get back to work.

A new year is a great time to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’d like to go in the coming new year.

Resolution vs Goals

The idea behind making resolutions is great. When people resolve to make a change in their lives they have noticed a behavior or part of their lifestyle is less than they desire and “resolve” to do better. Having said that, the average life span of a health or fitness resolution is 6-8 weeks. That’s right. More than 70% of people quit within the first 8 weeks. The numbers only get bleaker after that.

Goals are like resolutions except with a plan of action behind them, and so are much more effective. Stating goals and periodically checking in and assessing the results keeps us moving on the desired path. Often, the goals that we started with will change based on new life circumstances that make the previously stated goals obsolete.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to map out a process for setting and achieving goals that has been very successful in the past, both personally and for my clients, and is applicable to almost any goal.

When talking with Ben about setting goals for the coming year, it seemed appropriate to break it down into quarters. However, rather than follow the calendar year, we decided that setting goals based on seasonal changes made more sense for the Training Tiger Woods program.

The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, was on December 22nd this year. That was the actual day that our off-season started.

During the first quarter of this new season our collective and individual goals should reflect the energetic changes that the winter solstice dictates. Quite often, this is much harder than it sounds. What we’re doing here is very exciting and working on it is FUN. Ben and I enjoy the work and the camaraderie that we have created with this project. While slowing things down may seem counter-intuitive on the surface, following the energetic pattern dictated by the solstice will help us maintain balance as the energy demands of the coming year become greater.

Next week, I will share the specific goals that I have set for the coming quarter.

I challenge each and every one of you to take some time and set your own goals for the coming quarter. Whether or not they are golf-related doesn’t matter. Think about the energy that accompanies the winter solstice and set some goals for yourself.

For a while there, despite what we were hearing about El Niño, it was looking like Jerry and I were going to be able to practice golf all winter long, like we'd have no hiatus at all. But now it's finally gotten cold and the snow has arrived and winter has come.

Assuming the White Walkers don't make it all the way to Boulder, what are we intending to do with Training Tiger Woods during what will be the golf off-season?

Well, first of all, every year that I've lived in Boulder, there has been a mid-winter warming in which the snow melts, things dry out, and it's possible to go out and hit balls, perhaps even play. I'd be surprised if that's not the case this year as well. When it rolls around, doubtless we'll take advantage of it and get outside to practice.

But our focus will mostly be elsewhere. As Jerry said on Monday, in the gym we're going to focus on foundational conditioning, as well as applied meditation and visualization. And I'm hoping to take a little time to let/help my body return to full health. I've had pain in my elbow from overextension during tennis serves since back in the summer, and I still have a lot of tightness in my body from when I separated my shoulder, because the muscles tightened to protect the injured area. I'm hoping some regular yoga practice and body work will help open up the stuck energy in and around each of those parts of my body.

Also, I'll be on the slopes a lot this winter. I'm working as a ski instructor this year, and while I'm in the high country I intend to work on TTW-related skills quite a bit.

With respect to my own skiing and riding, I've already been practicing and playing with the sorts of techniques we've talked about here on TTW, and I've seen them apply successfully to skiing and snowboarding. Back in 2013, poor early season snow had me spending most of January and February skiing cruisers and working on my technique. I subsequently had the best late-season of skiing I'd ever experienced. Though the snow is much better this season, I've taken that same focus and coupled it with centering, breathing, and the kind of practice techniques we've talked about here. So far the results have been quite positive.

I'll also be exploring teaching TTW techniques to my students. Instructors are given a pretty thorough training by the resort before we first work with students--the ski school's trainers have been doing this a long time, and they have the teaching of skiing progression pretty substantially down at this point. But I've already found that there's a gap in the training. Already I've seen the necessity of teaching core activation and breath focus. I've also seen that those areas are really unfamiliar terrain for most people, far more unfamiliar than skiing itself.

Getting to work directly with students throughout the winter will doubtless teach me a huge amount about how to teach and apply these techniques effectively. When golf season rolls around again, I expect to have a lot more in my bag, as it were, and I'll be very excited to get to apply it.

As I mentioned in my last post, we are heading into our off season. In fact, this post officially begins the off season for Ben and myself. Now I’m not saying that I won’t swing a club or occasionally practice if the weather permits. I’m saying that my clubs will not be in the trunk of my car and Ben and I will not be at the driving range on a regular basis.

During the off season we will be working on our flexibility and improving overall strength and physical conditioning for golf. Ben and I will be creating stretching routines and looking at strengthening exercises that improve the body mechanics associated with golf. We’ll also look at the role visualization exercises and meditation can play in improving performance.

We will take a break for the Christmas Holidays after Ben’s post on the 18th. We will resume our regular Monday and Friday posts on the 4th of January.

I wish you and yours the happiest of holidays.

Over the past couple of months, we've given a pretty good background about what we're trying to do here, what the goals might look like, and how we aim to achieve them. I've written about practice, about my baseline abilities (both physical and mental), and about my relationship to centering. But I notice there's something missing that needs to be addressed.

Ultimately, my goal with golf isn't really to lower my score, not really. What I really want to do is to be able to go play 18 with a friend and have a lot of fun. That's what I'm really aiming for.

Now, that doesn't mean I could just go to the course and whale away. That's not how I derive my fun. I don't enjoy performing poorly at things. Not being able to hit anything besides the shortest irons isn't fun. Not being able to encounter common situations on the course with a sense that I have the ability to meet those situations isn't fun. Flubbing shots completely isn't fun. My goal isn't really to shoot a lower score, it's to be able to grab any club from my bag and feel like I've got a pretty good chance of doing what I envision with that club--because that's fun. I want to feel like I have an amateur's full repertoire of shots--because that's fun.

Of course, a pleasant side effect of developing that repertoire and having more fun is that my scores will fall. All the things that make me say, "Hey, that was a pretty good shot," are things that would make me a "better" golfer than I am right now.

In last week's piece I wrote about noticing negative emotional patterns held over from when I was a kid. I've used these patterns to hold myself back throughout my life. Holding back served me in some fashion. It no longer does.

So when I talk about having fun at golf (or any of the myriad activities I participate in), I'm really using it as a shorthand to describe something deeper still. What I'm really talking about is developing and deepening an approach to life that sustains me in a way that my earlier habits did not. Seeing better scores on the golf course will be lovely. I'll enjoy it. But the real goal is living a better life.

A couple of weeks ago, Ben shared a self-analysis of his current golf skills. As we get ready to move into the off season for golf, I thought I should do something similar.

Putting

I’m a fairly good putter. I’m comfortable within 3 feet of the pin, and generally I can 2 putt inside of 10 feet. I continue to work on controlling the speed of long distance putts. Ben is definitely a better putter from outside 15 feet. In fact, he usually wins our putting competitions when we are practicing.

Chipping

Since starting this project, most of our practice has been on the short game. For the first time in my life I am confident that I can keep the ball on the green within 2 putt distance. That’s really a huge improvement for me. Before we started this project, I could easily chip the ball back and forth from one end of the green to the other.

Short Irons (9i – 58 degree wedge)

Over the last few years I have usually been solid with my short irons. My struggles have usually been hitting to the right of my target. I’m not talking about slicing the ball; I struggle with my aim. With the swing mechanics that Ben and I have been developing, I have gotten better. I am usually hitting the ball within 10 feet, left or right, of my aim point.

I can still struggle with shots from 40-80 yards out. Typically, if I take a full swing with my 58 degree wedge I hit the ball round 100 yards. I will continue to work on accuracy when having to shorten my swing, but I also hope to improve my course management and leave myself more comfortable distances when hitting into the green.

Longer Irons (6i-8i)

I don’t regularly carry any irons under a 6i. Typically my favorite club to hit is my 7 iron. I can usually hit it about 165 yards with a comfortable swing. With the improved swing mechanics, my aim has gotten better and I am usually hitting in the direction I’m actually aiming. I have often thought that I would score better if the longest club that I played with was a 7 iron. But, the goal isn’t only scoring better, it’s also to be able to reach into my bag and feel confident with whatever club I chose to hit.

The rest of my clubs (Driver-3&4 hybrids)

Really, who the hell knows? Over the years, I've been really inconsistent. One day I might hit my driver relatively well, and the next it’s like I’ve never swung it before. Of my longer clubs, I’m most consistent with my 3 hybrid. Often I will use it instead of the driver off the tee, and sacrifice the distance for a more accurate shot.
Summary

My biggest challenge when playing a round is hitting the ball in the right direction. I usually hit the ball relatively straight, just off line 15-20 degrees. I also struggle with obstacles. I’m pretty good getting out of sand traps, which is good because I find myself in them quite often. In fact, if there is an obstacle between me and the flag, I usually find myself in it. It doesn’t matter if it’s sand, water, or trees, I seem to launch my shot as if hitting it was the goal. And god forbid if there is a person or cart in my vision. I have often said that they should make the distance markers and flags in the shape of people and carts. I seem to be able to hit them without too much trouble.

All things considered, I feel that I can be a solid golfer. I really need to improve my ability to think my way around the golf course while maintaining a centered swing. I look forward to starting fresh next spring and continuing to develop the ideas that Ben and I have put together so far.

In my piece from November 13th, I wrote about my baseline golfing abilities from a physical perspective, but that's only part of the picture. At least as important is what's generally referred to as the mental game. Perhaps you noticed in that piece that there's a fair amount of language about inability, frustration and not having fun.

Because Jerry and I practiced a lot but didn't play much--only that one nine-hole round--there was only so deep into the mental game that I could explore, at least as it pertained to golf. During practice, I noticed lapses in concentration, frustration, and times of not enjoying myself. But practice and performance are two very different things.

However, over the course of the summer and fall, I played a lot of tennis, and what I kept discovering within myself were mental/emotional reactions accompanied by body sensations that I recognized, via the discernment that comes with centering, as the same sensations I felt and the same behavioral patterns I engaged in as when I played tennis thirty years ago.

For example, I choked a lot when I played tennis as a kid. If I was beating someone, and he began to show frustration and anger, I would tend to ease off and, to my own perplexed frustration and dismay, eventually lose. Earlier this year I faced a similar situation. I was winning a match handily, and my opponent started getting really angry. I found myself falling into the pattern from my youth--easing off, dropping games, and so on. As I noticed what was happening, I also noticed that it was accompanied by some complicated physical sensations. When I dove deeply into those sensations, I suddenly realized that the pattern from my youth stemmed partly from empathy--I felt bad along with my opponent--and partly from a fear that winning would make the other person not like me. So I would choke, and the other person would feel better. Of course, then I would feel very bad indeed.

That pattern may have "worked," after a fashion, for a shy, sensitive kid who really wanted to be liked, but I'm older now, and I'm not interested in making others feel better by making myself feel bad. In this specific case, once I noticed what was happening, I recentered via the breath and closed out the match.

Now, what I'm describing may look like something I should be discussing with a therapist--"I was a choker as a kid, and I'd like to tease out the reason why"--and there is an element of therapy when these sorts of things come up in the body, but Training Tiger Woods is all about meeting and overcoming our limitations, and what I've been continually noticing since we began this project is how many of my negative patterns I recognize from years and years ago. They are still concentrated in the body. What's been critical is recognizing, as I did in the tennis match I just described, that those patterns served me in some way at some point in my life.

It is very uncommon that we make bad choices in order to hurt ourselves. It is very common that we make unskillful choices, thinking we are helping ourselves or others or both. In many ways, the techniques we're describing in Training Tiger Woods are about finally learning to bring skill to the mental/emotional/energetic patterns that underlie our athletic endeavors.

Let's come back to golf and what I said in the earlier piece about my baseline abilities. What I wrote there is descriptively true: I'm not a very good golfer and it frustrates me. But that day on the range, I also began to recognize within my body the same feelings I felt back when I was young and used to go golfing with my dad on Saturday mornings. I was a poor golfer and it made me angry and eventually I quit. I see now that my relationship to not being very good at golf is substantially a pattern still carried forward from my younger self. On some level, that pattern served me at the time. It no longer does. Changing it will not be easy--I've carried it within myself for most of my life--but I believe that the tools Jerry and I are developing will finally allow me to do so.