THE QATSPY® Inside-the-Leather Health And Lifestyle Sports Page
By: Charles W. Boatright
ASPEN Meditation Exercise to Improve Your Performance
Most doctors believe that meditation, or awareness and perception, benefits not only the mind, but also the body, heart, and soul; I AGREE TOTALLY with this philosophy, especially in the sport of golf. Sports Psychologists realize the importance of incorporating meditation in a athlete’s training, like perception or awareness. Athletes have a tendency, however, to rely more on their cognitive ability (the thinking process) like it gives them more control, but in reality it does the exact opposite.
It is essential for most athletes, especially golfers, to make a paradigm shift from a predominantly cognitive based training, swing thoughts, into a perception or an awareness-based training. The ASPEN Meditation Technique, shown as a pyramid in the feature photograph in Figure 1, allows the athlete to make this paradigm shift from a cognitive- based training into a more perceptional-based training.
A key component of the ASPEN Mediation Technique is called Apperception, this is the base of the pyramid, in Figure 1, where athlete can tap into their instinctive motor skills. Apperception is where the athlete can use a previously well-developed skill in one sport and develop another skill like golf. This perception technique allows an athlete, or the golfer, to have a more natural and an instinctive performance, in what we refer to as Being in the Zone.
The ASPEN Self-Coaching Pyramid Breakdown
When you think about meditation or perception, you might envision a person in a Yin Yoga Pose, but this only describes a small portion of your ability to meditate. Meditation can also be a pause-and-perception technique for short periods of time. This is a major part of the ASPEN Training Technique. A great example of the ASPEN Training Technique is highlighted in the famous Be the Ball quote in Caddyshack.
Caddyshack is a comedy about golf, but that quote can actually be a key part of improving the athlete’s, or golfer’s, performance. (Ty Webb- played by Chevy Chase mentioned to Danny Noonan- played by Michael O’Keefe)– I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.
Let’s Break down the Caddyshack Be the Ball quote into these bullets:
Apperception is the force or our ability to visualize specific motor skills in a well-defined routine, or sequence, under similar conditions. The reason Apperception is a critical part of my training as it relies our existing motor skills that are instinctive to the golfer. The key is to recreate the conditions that these motor skills were developed under. In my case, it is creating a simple baseball-type strike zone, in Figure No. 2, that allows me to use my baseball swing to preset my golf swing.
Sequence is the ability to get in touch with it, or our sense of feeling. This is a major part of my coaching technique called low-to-high kinetic chain. This uses the low Threshold muscles, like in the wrist, to engage the higher Threshold muscles, like the core muscles. The Low-to-high is a key ergonomic principle in Kinesiology. In Golf, the Low-to-high kinetic chain is the presetting of the wrists before the arms, shoulders, and core muscle are engaged. In THE QATSPY Technique is the Sync, Preset, and Yaw Technique.
Perceptual Performance allows the athlete, or golfer, to stop thinking during both their practice and performance. Thinking is replaced with the athlete’s, or golfer’s, ability to focus. It is extremely difficult to focus without having a focal point, or a perception. This is exactly how pitchers and batters both use the strike zone as a focal point, in Figure 2. For the right-handed golfer, I use the strike zone and the golfer’s right palm to change the perception of their golf game.
ExtraSensory is letting your focal point be the ball in the baseball-type strike zone, in Figure 2. As one of my primary coaching techniques, I want the golfer to treat their dominant palm as the clubface. I actually draw a golf clubface, shown in Figure 3, onto the palm of the right glove for the right-handed golfer. This metaphorically is how the golfer transfers the golf ball from the ground into the baseball-type strike zone. ExtraSensory allows the golfer to accentuate their Apperception, or taking their golf swing from the batter’s box, that is more natural, to the tee box.
Neuromuscular, or muscle memory, allows the golfer to simply let things happen by setting up a trigger muscle. The trigger muscle that I discovered during my Kinesiology research project was where I compared a baseball swing with the golf swing in Figure 4. The preset Position is preset using the Palmaris Longus Muscle/tendon, or what I call the Palmer Muscle/Tendon, shown in Figure 5.
This actually is the golfer’s missing link that most golfers spend their entire golfing career trying to figure out. This muscle/tendon links the golfer’s wrist and palm with the elbow. This is the muscle/tendon that the golfer wants to preset in their golf swing, by what I call the Palmer-Dorsiflex Technique. Essentially, the Palmer-Dorsiflex for the golfer is similar to throwing a baseball underhanded, as in Figure 6.
I have attached four (4) of my FREE YouTube Videos and a Download for $25.00 that you can purchase and perform in the convenience of your garage year-round. This is based on the same concept that Colonel Hall used while at the Hanoi Hilton. Especially during the Coronavirus quarantine period, you can use this to get exercise, reps, and improve your mental golf game:
Bunt-Rap-Rip Golf Swing Video
Verifying THE QATSPY Golf Swing Medicus Club
TICK-N-TOCK Putting Technique
The CASPER Fitness Program
Garage Golf Tech Hitting Draws & Fades
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