Achieving Peak Golf Mental Game Performance: An Interview with Mental Performance Coach Rick Sessinghaus
Dr. Rick Sessinghaus is a Mental Performance Coach, Author, Speaker, and Golf mental game coaching expert, Trainer for high-performance golfers. Rick has been a golf mental performance coach for some of the top amateur golfers and teams in college, and is currently the Swing and Golf Mental Game coach for one of the top golfers in the world, PGA Tour winner Collin Morikawa.
In this conversation, Evan Burk talks with Rick about his golf mental game coaching journey with top PGA golfer Collin Morikawa, the background and mental setup that helped separate Collin to become one of the top golfers in the game, and what it takes to master peak performance on and off the golf course.
Tune into this episode to hear:
- Rick’s journey from swing coach to mental performance coach
- How peak performance at the highest levels of Golf has evolved in recent years
- Rick’s coaching journey with Collin Morikawa
- What separated Collin Morikawa from other golfers his age as an amateur
- The influence of Collin’s parents on his development as a person and a player
- How Rick helped Collin create a 4-5 year plan to become a Division 1 golfer by combining long-term focus with metrics along the way
- The moment of defeat where Rick knew that Collin had a chance to be great
- How Colin Morikawa prepares for the Masters
- The importance of the people that surround you in an individual sport like golf
The Highest Level Podcast with Evan Burk features thought-provoking conversations with athletes, coaches, and leaders in sports, to reveal how championship team cultures are built and the keys to leadership excellence at the highest level.
Golf Mental Game Performance with FlowCode Golf Academy
Video Transcription
0:00
well rick thank you so much for joining me today on the highest level and you have a really uh interesting path to
0:07
where you are now and you work as a mental performance coach uh an author a flow state trainer and we’re gonna touch
0:14
on all these things uh but i want to kind of go back to the beginning and i want to know how do you get started as a
0:21
mental performance coach sure it was my own journey as a
0:26
an athlete right i mean i think you i grew up in a very sports-minded household i played five sports i have
0:34
golf was the last one that i was introduced to when i was 12 years old i got obsessed with golf quit football
0:40
when i was 16 and played um division one college golf at cal state northridge here in the los
0:46
angeles area and i think with that you look at some of the basic stuff of performance and you know this quite well
0:54
is we certainly want to look at the technical skills of someone um in golf you know our golf swing and the
0:59
fundamentals and the ball goes where the club goes and of course that is is vital and then we have equipment right we got
1:04
to buy the latest driver and all the fun stuff that comes with golf because we think that’s going to help us perform
1:11
and then i went into fitness i go i’m going to get stronger i was one of the first players on our team to go to the gym right this is a long time ago yet
1:17
there was always this this nagging and literally a thought that was like wait there’s got to be something else because
1:23
i’m not performing at the level i think i should with all the time i’m putting in
1:29
and i was very very average d1 player but i thought i was technically very
1:34
sound physically very ready to play at a high level but i never materialized so going down a mental game was all selfish
1:40
to begin with i was trying to figure out my own interferences my own issues um
1:46
and challenges and so that’s what sparked it and then when i became a member of the pga and taught you know
1:52
we’ll just say you know golf swing I was a golf swing coach as i saw these
1:58
players who in a lesson were much better they’re hitting the ball much better and then they’d come back two weeks for
2:04
another lesson and say rick still shot the same score and i’m like wait a second wait you just hit the ball great in front in front of
2:10
me we did everything i know i know but when i got on the course i did this and i go ah so now it became more about
2:18
less about me and more about my students they weren’t getting better and it wasn’t because they technically
2:24
weren’t getting better it’s that mentally and emotionally there were still interferences that they did not have strategies for so that’s when i
2:31
started going down the rabbit hole i’m still going very deep in that rabbit hole by the way um but i just wanted to
2:37
know why people weren’t performing to the level i felt they should so i went back to school got a doctor and applied
2:43
sports psychology started doing less and less swing coaching and more and more about mental coaching with
2:50
competitive players and junior players and um i just am so fascinated with it because
2:55
i i do want to know what people are thinking and feeling um in in those moments of performance so i could talk
3:02
autonomous which i know we’re going to get into but that’s kind of where the road went it went from selfish to now i wanted to serve my clients better
3:10
which a lot of great leaders have that realization at some point in their journey they realize oh it’s not about
3:15
me at all it’s it’s about the people i lead um and i love that and just just curious how is the how has that aspect
3:22
of the peak performance at the highest levels of golf changed uh specifically i
3:27
guess in the last decade or two but like i imagine it’s vastly different from this period that you’re talking about
3:33
where you kind of transition from swing coach to middle coach to where we are now with the perception and the focus on
3:40
the middle game you know it’s a great question i think um you know 30 years ago is when i
3:45
played college golf and you golfers i believe were already at the cutting edge of mental game because they were at
3:51
least more open to it it was an individual sport we understood they were more vulnerable people always say yeah
3:57
the golf is very mental game right and so we’ve had that kind of
4:02
knowingness for a long time uh there’s been like bob rotella there’s been wonderful sports psychologists that
4:08
found their niche in golf so it was more well accepted but i don’t think it became something you trained
4:14
until maybe like ten years ago right five ten years ago where now you have more pga tour players that have a sports
4:21
psychologist on their team you have uh college programs that are either
4:26
utilizing people within their university um or they’re bringing outside consultants which i’ve been brought in
4:33
because they do know it’s and then it gets beyond performance though right we now know there’s mental
4:38
health and other things so now it’s being more and more accepted and i think like yourself like me like we have
4:44
coaches that are making it more tangible and trainable and not just hey it’s positive thinking and believe in
4:50
yourself and um so i think it’s getting a lot more momentum and now in the last few years and not only in golf but other
4:57
sports people are talking about it more in a very positive light so i think it’s
5:02
definitely trending in the right direction absolutely and you know it’s very interesting because i we talked about
5:08
this when we first met in 2019 and you had kind of shared some of the work you had done the book that you had written
5:14
uh and shortly thereafter you had had been linked up with uh colin murakawa
5:20
who was one of the top golfers uh in the game of golf right now and just kind of
5:26
take us back and just talk about how that coaching journey started uh with such an elite athlete sure no and it’s a
5:33
wonderful uh it’s a wonderful story to be honest with you so i was coaching golf at the local
5:39
public golf course which I’ve done for years and years and years and um here comes a father and his son coming up to
5:46
me and say rick we understand you work with a lot of uh very good junior golfers we would want to know if you
5:52
would like to work with my son and he hits a golf ball and i said yeah you bet he had a very athletic swing
5:58
well colin was eight years old at the time and so at that moment you know now it’s 17 years ago i became a swing coach
6:06
okay great so that as progresses part of my coaching philosophy is obviously more than swing i would take him on the golf
6:13
course a lot and we talk about routines we talk about competition we talk about pressure we’ve talked and it was just
6:18
kind of dripping it in every week i would see him once a week for the first 10 years until he went to college at cal
6:24
Berkeley and so i was able to be able to literally see him every week
6:30
not only on the mechanical side but also the mental side and be able to blend that together and then as he became an
6:37
all-american in college became the number one ranked amateur in the world he gets on tour he’s now um as of this
6:44
recording he’s number three in the world he’s won two majors um that progression has been
6:51
uh i’ve been fortunate to be a part of it yet we’ve been able to build that foundation for 17 years and now
6:58
when i look at his performance i don’t always say it’s oh we hit the ball to the right that must be a swing thing
7:04
no it might be a mental thing you might be having interference over the shot maybe there’s a little doubt maybe
7:10
there’s a little anxiety or it’s not always mental right it could be physical so that’s what’s fun for me in
7:16
this environment is to work with a arguably one of the best players in the world and when we look at performance we
7:23
don’t always just think it’s one or the other it’s always a combination and that’s what intrigues me about any kind
7:29
of performance but now at a high level like this i’m always trying to tweak and figure
7:34
out what his patterns are and such and this might be a tough follow-up question but having
7:42
had so much time to to be there especially like at a very young age where quite honestly probably
7:48
early into his introduction in golf and to be able to kind of be there firsthand to see the progression through the years
7:56
was there one thing that you talked you know you mentioned routine a moment ago like teaching the routine was there one
8:02
thing that you can remember that maybe clicked and and caused like a huge jump
8:07
where you were like oh wow like we might be on a path towards something special here or was it just always just a
8:13
constant evolution and improvement oh i’m gonna cop out and say it’s both
8:20
because he always trended in the right direction even college coaches recruiting him saying he was always getting better every six months when
8:26
they looked at his scores and when they trend his trends right if we looked at like mental emotional
8:32
skills um very very fortunate he he has two of the best parents you could have
8:37
uh which is a key part of this and how they uh how colin developed uh colin has a is a very intelligent uh young man a
8:45
hard worker he had a lot of some of those intangibles um from such a great
8:50
environment i felt i could help cultivate some of those things a couple things come up to me is what
8:57
makes him i don’t know if different’s the right word but hey he’s elite is he loves
9:02
competition um and he also has a growth mindset so he always wanted to put himself in
9:07
challenging situations to compete whether it was i always competed against him in every single lesson by the way
9:13
the last five minutes was always competition and i wanted to see how he dealt with that well he took it on he wanted to
9:18
beat my butt every single time awesome okay great and if he didn’t win it wasn’t make excuses it wasn’t
9:24
complaining it was okay i got to get better now that’s not always seen with junior golfers okay
9:30
yes they may want to compete but if they lose it’s like well it’s not fair rick you’re older you’re a professional i
9:36
never heard excuses from him i only heard somebody who wanted to get better so that
9:41
part of him um i of course wanted to keep cultivating this learning mindset and curiosity and hey what did we do on
9:48
this tournament what could we do a little better what did you do well and he dove right into it so i he trusted me
9:54
his parents trusted me and so we always had this constant feedback loop that was occurring that wasn’t about short-term
10:01
fixes it was about long-term development and again not every golfer i’ve worked with has embraced that mentality
10:09
you hit on so many things just now we could spend the next two hours talking about your answer just now i absolutely
10:15
love that and i think i might have mentioned to you uh earlier that i just published my first book called finding
10:21
intangibles and it’s really surrounding a lot of the things you just talked
10:26
about and you talked about you know the parents uh and the influence that they had on him you talked about the
10:32
competition uh in the competitive nature in him since early on and and i love it growth
10:39
mindset which was kind of like the origin of what gave me the idea to write to write my book and i and i think you
10:45
see these you know you’re talking about an individual sport or an individual performer but these were the same
10:51
intangibles that led to elite performers in football and also the great teams that i was a part of as
10:59
well they embraced all of these aspects that you just mentioned uh like i said we could talk about this all day i do
11:05
want to ask you mentioned his parents and you don’t have to get too deep into
11:10
specifics but like what was that influence like were they just kind of hands off and allowing him
11:16
to be on his own journey were they holding him to high standards were they just very supportive like describe their
11:22
influence on him yeah it it is impressive uh because it
11:27
was a little bit of both of where they they supported him they saw how
11:33
passionate and how much he loved the sport so they were going to do everything they could to support that
11:38
right yet what i remember talking to his his father blaine who showed up to every
11:44
single golf lesson now a lot of your listeners would say oh my gosh the god didn’t say a word he asked questions he
11:50
said oh oh rick what do you mean by that oh okay great because he wanted to remind colin when they did go practice
11:55
oh yeah i remember coach rick said this he never debated me he never said oh my gosh colin didn’t break 80. what
12:01
happened right and get into results he saw where we were going he trusted me in
12:07
that and yet i think his big thing is that if colin wanted to be the best
12:12
junior golfer or whatever um i think all he did was believe that colin should put the time
12:17
in and not be forced to do it but say hey if colin wants to be good okay i’ll drop you off at the golf course for a
12:23
few hours and and so but never force colin to do anything um and and and a lot of it
12:30
again is about their character is it wasn’t about winning things it’s about how you handle things and that’s again
12:35
oh it’s a it’s a godsend when you’re in that environment so parents were supportive they did what they could to
12:42
help him because golf is a very expensive sport to play at a national junior level um they certainly allowed
12:48
him that but they saw the love he had for the game they saw his work ethic came very intrinsically it was never
12:54
forced um and so they kept supporting it and and they trusted me and along that journey
13:00
and one of the things and i’m sure you’re echoing this and i’m sure you’ve seen this before with others you’ve worked with is this
13:07
process driven approach not results oriented and i think especially in our society today we get
13:14
confused and we think that it’s all about the results and like if you don’t win like what does it really matter and
13:21
like what i’m hearing is that there was like in a relentless
13:26
focus on the continual development and not getting too hung up on shooting 80 one day versus having a great day the
13:33
next day uh it was just kind of this constant evolution it sounds like sure and and i don’t want to dismiss
13:40
results because honestly i do talk about results a lot with my clients there has
13:46
to be some benchmarks are we actually getting better at this are the things we’re doing in the processes and routines leading to better performance
13:52
please i i’m actually a big believer too that we can have metrics to say is my
13:58
game getting better and it could be scoring average it could be rankings i get that but
14:03
what i was allowed to do with colin is saying hey colin let’s say he’s 12 years old do you want to play college golf
14:09
that’s the question i post i didn’t say pga tour yet i said college golf they said yes i go do you want to go what kind of school i want to be at a high
14:15
level d1 i go great in the next four to five years we have to develop you in this way
14:20
so by the time you hit 16 and 17 you’re getting recruited these are what the coaches are going to look for
14:26
it didn’t matter if at 12 he’s winning a golf tournament which a lot of parents are obsessed with it was okay we need to
14:32
learn these shots so by the time 15-16 happens we’re ready to go he bought in on that okay
14:38
the goal was to keep peaking and keep going like that but i wanted to prep him for future challenges not just quick uh
14:46
fixes for the moment and again he bought into that but there still was results he wanted to get recruited he wanted to go
14:52
to a top school those are all results but we had to create a plan based on that and have little metrics
14:58
along the way yeah and you’re making me kind of think like okay maybe i need to reframe the wording in my coaching uh and like we
15:06
all realize that the results are part of the business right especially in the high performance business well right and again i know we get
15:14
we get bogged down it’s all about the process it’s all about the process but i try to talk back and say hey
15:20
if i want to go lose 20 pounds okay my process is going to look different
15:26
than if i want to maintain my body weight okay two different goals two different processes so getting clear
15:33
on the goal and the outcome that we are looking for some of it’s out of our control i understand that but it does create a
15:39
plan i have he wanted to be well he want to be the best player in the world which is getting close to that
15:45
now and i’ve had some players when they’re 14 say hey i want to go to a d3 school and and not be stressed and stuff
15:51
like great different plan awesome okay um because the d3 plan is not going to
15:56
work for colin who wanted to be the best college player you know on that so that i do use i use
16:02
goals as a motivational factor but i do want to have us have an idea where we’re going yes and like one thing i want to point
16:09
out that i really like is the reverse engineering of okay what’s the goal okay you want to be a high level division one
16:16
golfer okay so like what do we need to do over the next four or five years it wasn’t just like well we need to keep
16:21
getting better you need to shoot lower it was actually breaking it down into very specific
16:27
details and this is one of the things i’ve seen in my own coaching uh where i reflect back on teams that didn’t quite
16:33
reach their potential it was coaches that were like hey we need to we need to develop a road mentality or hey we need
16:39
to we need to win these close games okay that’s great that sounds great but what
16:44
does that actually mean and i think you know what you just said kind of connects the two like these are
16:50
the actual habits yeah and in areas to improve to become
16:56
what we desire to to become no exactly and just a quick story
17:01
along those lines is that um colin was already trending in the right direction when he
17:06
was a 16 year old and he was a nationally ranked junior yet he still wasn’t at the level we wanted him to get
17:14
to for d1 right and one quick story he comes back from a junior tournament in
17:19
florida and and posts one of his worst scores ever and yet he comes to me without saying oh
17:25
my gosh i don’t know why i shot whatever it was um hey rick we still have to work on fighting our irons because the the
17:32
the winds affected my ball flight too much we got to still work on that i’m like wow i’m not hearing excuses i’m
17:38
hearing ownership and accountability for their performance and he still knows that we have some work to do i’m like
17:44
holy smokes this is awesome right so he knew that we certainly wanted to work on iron play and stuff like that but it was
17:50
exposed in that setting in florida because it happened to be a very challenging golf course that has a lot
17:56
of wind so those are the things that we were always looking at is we we have these tournaments which are outcomes
18:03
not just the score but how it what happened is is a way for us to have that feedback
18:08
loop that um again i believe is crucial for improvement of performance yeah
18:13
really really cool insight and uh before we kind of move on to the flow states i do want to ask we’re sitting here we’re
18:19
uh a week before the masters the biggest golf tournament of the year uh and just
18:25
want to hear kind of like the preparation oh look at that
18:30
uh this is the biggest tournament of the year and i just want to know obviously there’s like a two-week prep leading up
18:36
to it does the preparation routine change for for a tournament this big just kind
18:42
of talk about how things change or maybe how things stay the same for for the biggest tournaments of the year yeah so
18:48
the answer is both um is when we show up which we will show up sunday night and and uh fly into augusta
18:56
showing up on monday tuesday wednesday will be almost identical to any other tour event okay
19:02
um we as a team have refined his monday through sunday routines um it’s worked
19:09
fairly well um and will there be tweaks of at augusta yes for instance wednesday is
19:16
the par 3 contest it’s they haven’t had it the last two years because of kovid that will change his wednesday prep okay
19:22
other than that we’re probably gonna do the same things um it’s like i said it’s worked before now with that being said
19:29
he just did have a week off and i would just came back from las vegas and spent a day with him to we’ll
19:35
call it prep for the masters but it’s a good check in time for us to say okay here’s the first three months of the
19:40
season what do we have to tweak here’s some of the things we’re going to need at augusta we need to hit a a draw off number 10 drawing off number 13 we’re
19:47
going to have some big sloping greens so we are prepping for that
19:52
um but once we get on site it monday tuesday wednesday looks very very similar to any other pga tour event we
19:59
want to manage our energy we certainly want to know the golf course we want to but we don’t really work on technique um
20:05
during the week got it this is similar in football we used to call it six days to sunday
20:12
and it was basically our pre-game routine our pre-week routine uh and i
20:17
you know i kind of asked that and maybe i kind of knew the answer but i think a lot of the elite performers and elite
20:23
teams they have a very consistent approach and the bigger the game the
20:29
more they they lean into that routine uh and i think we did that in football as a
20:34
way to say okay even though this game is gonna be in front of a hundred thousand fans and in front of millions of people
20:40
on television prime time on saturday night sunday during the day it was the exact
20:46
same prep leading up to that game uh and and that’s what i’m hearing from you
20:52
leading into the biggest week of the year definitely and as coaches um you know a team we have a team around colin
20:58
and um i made mistakes as a coach when he was he as an amateur he got to play in
21:05
two pga tour events as an amateur and we got so excited that at the end of the week he was so darn
21:11
tired because we over prepared and we over so we’ve made mistakes don’t get me wrong and then he’s now won six times
21:17
worldwide and we’re looking at what are those threads and a lot of its energy management a lot of it is um not doing
21:24
technical stuff a lot of it you know and his his caddy jj has been a awesome because it helps
21:30
uh our our learning curve as far as golf courses because he hasn’t experienced caddy and so we’ve learned um but we
21:38
feel like you just mentioned is that if you can count on what you’re gonna do monday tuesday wednesday and you have plenty of energy showing up thursday for
21:44
your first round we’ve done a lot already um i think that’s you’re exactly right you lean
21:50
into that as a way to deal with whatever some people say oh my gosh it’s pressure it’s such an important event
21:56
colin wants to win every single week so it’s not trying to put one thing is more important than the other because i think
22:02
that already shifts your mindset yeah totally understandable and uh it
22:08
makes sense um even even in other sports uh and we we talked about coaching flow
22:13
states and this is something that you’ve mentioned to me even early on uh in our friendship and just want to start with
22:20
like where did that passion come from because like that was not something i’d ever heard from football and i just want
22:26
to know kind of like where this uh where this originated for you yeah sure it was uh
22:33
when i was going down my own road of being a professional golfer um i read enough kind of mental game books and
22:40
stuff and and the word still wasn’t out there yet so but i was intrigued with back then called the zone right i’m
22:46
playing in the zone and i go oh wow this is pretty cool and then i took my first class in sports
22:51
psychology and i remember a very basic exercise on one sheet of paper
22:57
write out the best athletic experience so for me it was golf best golf experience and then flip it over the
23:02
worst golf experience right and the professor was asking kind of you know is there anything you notice off of
23:08
that and what i noticed real quickly was not at one point did i say my swing was good or my swing was bad it was all
23:15
mindset it was all focused it was all confidence it was all emotions like holy smokes what a contrast here
23:22
of that so that then stemmed into we read the the book by um uh me tai chi
23:28
set me high flow the optimal experience and i’m going wow this makes sense and it wasn’t a
23:34
golf book per se it was optimal experience in life so he had done enough research on athletes and musicians and
23:41
surgeons and teachers and we all had this common bond of a flow state of
23:46
optimal experience where we’re performing our best we’re feeling our best i go this really resonates with me right
23:53
and so you you study that a little bit and then it comes full circle where now flow is a more utilized term than zone
24:02
because in research um a flow state has a certain brainwave activity it has a certain heart rate variability it has a
24:09
you know certain neural chemicals and that’s what then jumped me back in is that and i i i’m assuming you have had the
24:16
same struggle with the mental game is how do you make it tangible measurable trainable and so with the flow states we now know
24:22
oh we can measure it now oh well that’s cool this actually is a state that is researched it has these neurochemical
24:30
markers it has this brain waste okay cool um that’s at least okay we can measure
24:35
it now trainable okay now that’s still being worked on but there are certain cues and triggers that could help
24:41
somebody focus in the present moment for instance which is a key element of flow um so then i just i went
24:47
diving really deep into this um i was fortunate to do a coaching certification through a gentleman by the
24:54
stephen kotler who has a company called flow research collective i learned so much from that and again his idea was
25:01
that flow starts physiologically and then we can reverse engineer back to psychology
25:06
i came from the standpoint of oh everything’s psychological but it was interesting now putting the
25:12
two together it really helped me understand the performance that was in front of me because if i just thought it
25:17
was just psychology psychology i i i bumped into a few obstacles but if i
25:22
could look at it from the opposite way too i think i had a much fuller picture
25:28
so now you fast forward and i started a company called flow code golf academy
25:33
and um you know we we know that there’s ways for a golfer to slip into a flow
25:39
state maintain it have strategies when there’s interference to get them closer to it
25:45
i’m not saying 100 of the time people are playing in a flow state one of my goals is how do i up level
25:52
their default though like if somebody is not in a flow state i still would want their default stage to be a very very
25:59
high level i see too much extreme i see some people oh yeah eric i’m in the flow and then they’re in like 50
26:06
to me that’s too drastic of a change so i of course want somebody in a flow state but if they
26:12
default under stress or pressure they’re still at 90 let’s say so that’s how i view things i view things from a
26:18
positive psychology way of that there’s greatness with within all of us um and
26:23
there’s ingredients we’ve done it before we can do it again my background is not a clinical psychologist so i’m not looking at it
26:30
from an abnormal standpoint i’m looking at it from a positive psychology standpoint so i could again i could keep
26:35
chattering all along but that’s that’s kind of where i’ve been going with that road well let’s touch on something that
26:40
you’ve mentioned to me before which is flow follows focus and i know we’ve talked uh
26:46
about how distracted people are and obviously athletes elite
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athletes are not immune to this like they’re probably more subjected to it
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than the normal person uh so just want to hear from you like maybe dealing with colin or anybody else
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that you work with like do you kind of prescribe to like maybe remove yourself from the internet as a way to maybe kind
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of put yourself in a better position to achieve these flow states or or just
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kind of talk about your flow follows focus uh philosophy well to answer the quick
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thing about internet yeah we should all be off of it not on social media but that’s a whole other discussion um uh
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but yeah i mean what i pay attention to my energy goes to correct and you know this and um i think when you’re you’re
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coaching quarterbacks or something it happens so quickly um that you rely on
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their training and their awareness and then they can boom boom boom golf is a very slow moving and there’s
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potentially more opportunities for interference to to come in okay
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so flow follows focus is is my attention in this moment on something that’s relevant for my performance so golf we
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have pre-shot routines and i i want somebody to use their eyes
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ask questions and use their breathing as ways to refocus so my eyes where my eyes
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look at i’m now paying attention to it so i can pay attention to the flag in the distance or i can look at the water on
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the right and look at that i’m putting energy to that my attention is now shifted based on my eyes so i work on
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eyes and visualizations and stuff like that my favorite one is just asking present-based questions so for instance
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if i i have somebody that i’m coaching and i notice they’re a little distracted it could be for various reasons
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i go tell me how the lie of this ball is going to affect the shot well that question they go what uh okay
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the ball’s sitting up it’s ball below my feet i go how’s that gonna oh the ball is gonna go low now they’re in the
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present moment based on a question which is part of self-talk that redirected their attention if i say where could
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this ball go well it could go here here here here i mean it could go all over the place right
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what’s a good shot look like here well rick i’m going to aim at that palm tree 15 feet left of the hole i’m going
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to hit a cut it’s going to land at 152. the question poses their attention to be funneled in a certain spot
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okay what i pay attention to could trigger an emotional response i could look at the water that could trigger
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fear and anxiety i could look at the flag it could be excitement right so the
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focus could trigger an emotion well emotion’s going to affect how i feel now that’s
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going to affect my performance so flow follows focus is the starting point and it’s very cliche in golf to say one shot
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at a time why is it a cliche because it’s true this is all i can do in this next 30
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seconds is pay attention to what’s relevant what’s the best strategy for me to perform this and then be able to
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trust myself to execute the shot so cool because i’m reflecting on some
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of the great coaches i’ve been fortunate to work with and two things stood out to what you just said number one we used to
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always say it was just like we did it in the drills like it was just like we did it in the
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drills and and coaches used to talk about in our practice we were training
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for the game right like obviously but i think sometimes it’s important to remind
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especially younger athletes that’s why you’re doing it uh and the second thing is we uh the
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great coach gaines used to always say one snapping clear like we got one snap we’re gonna focus
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all our energy on this snap and then once we’re done with the snap regardless of what happens we’re gonna clear
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and then we’re gonna get ready for the next one so great to see the parallels between
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you know high level golf and and also football too um and you talked about something as
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well you know these are you’re talking about creating situations where everything is going right and putting
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yourself in the best position to make sure everything’s going right but we all know that that’s not what life or sports
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or business is about it’s all about those random events and setbacks that we experience seemingly every day
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uh so talk about adaptability and how adaptability is important when we’re talking about the peak performance of
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anybody yes and now i’m going to go back to to flow training is what i really enjoyed
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about mihai chick sent me high and his work is we say flow follows focus but flow is
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also about a challenge skills balance and so i loved how he put that challenge
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is a part of peak performance most uh maybe i shouldn’t say most but i’ve had
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a lot of junior golfers who you know look at challenges something bad it’s like i don’t want to challenge
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myself that might mean i’m going to be bad at it i’m going to fail and write that but he said no no no the more we
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can challenge ourselves the more we push our skills the more we push our skills the more we can take on challenge so on and so forth so
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i look at adaptability which i love that word is how can i look at this situation as a
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challenge instead of a threat now most people who when they’re a little bit outside their comfort zone is
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like this is a threat this means i could fail and oh my gosh how am i gonna look at other people are gonna look at me this way and like whoa time out
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let’s just look at the situation here do i have the skills to match what’s in front of me
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if i don’t in golf i could always choose a different shot right but people become overwhelmed with it a little bit so i
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love the challenge skills balance that flow is when we are challenged at a high level but we believe in that moment i have the
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skills to match that or maybe it gets pushed a little great but when we believe that the challenge
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is greater than our skills that’s when the anxiety and worry gets kicked in okay
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um and so i am a big believer also in feedback loops of after a shot’s been hit how do
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i process that uh what’s a post-shot routine but i’m very much into cognitive
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reframing is how can i look at this situation in a certain way that’s either neutral or positive i don’t think it’s
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always going to be positive but that’s why i’m saying i can look at this as a challenge okay let’s bring it on but most people look at it as a threat oh my
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gosh it’s uh this is going to happen and they’re going down a a tunnel with their thoughts that is
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going to stay black for a long time so i think the adaptability is because golf’s a slower moving sport i start with
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cognitive things of how i could define this and can i look at this in a different way hey what skills do i need
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to bring to this um maybe a little different than obviously a quarterback getting blitzed and i’m
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going to be put on his butt here real quick but i think golf provides us the opportunity
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to train our thinking and uh create new meaning to what’s in front of us
33:41
yeah and you hit on some things there that you know i wrote about in my book because it’s specific around
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understanding the growth mindset of an individual like do they welcome the challenges like do they look at
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competing against the best as like an awesome opportunity to show what they’re all about and show who they are or do
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they look at it as like oh i’m about to be found out like i’ve had a a history of pure success and this is a
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bad thing for me because i have a chance to lose and this leads right into my next question and uh
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i wanted to know when we talk about mindset and peak performance do we mean growth mindset or does it mean something
34:21
different yeah i think we start with mindset can mean many different things because i think mindset is our values our beliefs
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our uh personality for that moment what does this mean to me what’s my mindset
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of this me playing golf i have a different mindset than me playing ping pong right
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my mindset would be different because one i want to still compete and do well and ping pong is that let’s just have some fun
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um built within that could be am i growth mindset am i curious am i
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competitive mindset am i i think there’s sub mindsets but overall i’m looking at is my view
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which is based on beliefs and values and and my goals and what i bring to this
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how do i view what’s in front of me so that’s how i look at mindset and i think there’s sub
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mindsets growth mindset being one of them that’s how i look at it got it got it uh and we talked about this a little
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bit earlier but like one of the things i’m very fascinated by and as i was kind of breaking down the
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intangibles you want to look for in elite performers there was mindset there
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was heart uh and then i also kind of identified a third piece which was team players um
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and kind of like being surrounded by the right people now a sport like golf it’s a little
35:40
different like you’re out there by yourself you mentioned you know ping pong or tennis or any sport where you’re by yourself but you still have people
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that surround you and so like i know we talked about colin’s parents earlier but like when
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you’re talking about an individual sport how important is the people that surround you
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without having a team so to speak on the field with you i think it’s crucial and now that i’ve
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been on really out on the pga tour for three years and i see other teams we’re going to call them teams because they are um and and i know
36:12
you’re an expert at this already with cultures and leadership and you want to create a culture within that team now
36:18
the the individual athlete is pretty much going to run what that
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culture is because a lot it’s based around them but you know with with colin’s team i’m his mental game and and
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swing coach he has ca caddy jj who sees more shots than i do of him who’s there
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every single shot of the way who helps him prepare he has um his parents still to a degree he has his
36:41
his fiancee he has his agent uh we have tailor-made uh club company we got
36:47
adidas we got there are a lot of people that would affect colin okay and
36:54
we have very very fortunate is a very a culture that is built around positivity
37:00
and support and we all want to grow we all want to help each other we have mutual respect for everybody so there is
37:05
no friction i’m not saying every team on the pga tour is the same way okay some players have you add nutritionists
37:12
and we do have fitness trainers uh ugp which is a great company helps colin with that but you have
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nutritionists and you have putting coaches and you have this i mean you sometimes get teams and i’m not exaggerating that are 10 11 people
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and yet we call it an individual sport yet when they’re not performing they’re still with that team and if the team is
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toxic if the team is egomaniacs it’s like that it’s going to affect the environment so
37:38
you know it’s but more behind the scenes in golf than it is but it does affect the player because they want to have a
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clear mind out there they want to have no baggage that’s that’s that’s being brought there yeah and i mean like
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relating it to your own life or anybody’s life i mean like you’re responsible for setting the tone for the
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people that surround you uh and i of course firmly believe that even if you
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have 10 of those 11 that are aligned with what you want if you have one person that is selfish or like you said
38:09
maybe like upset because they’re not getting enough attention in the media or whatever
38:14
that may not seem like a big thing because a lot of people would just say oh well they’re an elite athlete they need to deal with it they’re going to
38:20
need to deal with the jeers and the clapping and all the other stuff on within within the performance arena but
38:27
like that small thing can have a huge effect um especially when you’re talking
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about having kind of like these pure moments of flow where everything seems
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to be clicking um at the highest level so to speak correct it just it becomes a distraction
38:43
and that back to our flow follows focus but i’m not paying attention what’s relevant i’m paying to something that is
38:48
irrelevant i’ve now pulled myself out of the present moment i’m not going to perform as well yes great way to put it um and i
38:56
just want to know like we talked about kind of the evolution of mental coaches and performance coaches
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over the last 10 20 years i just want to know like are there any coaches that you’ve looked up to or that you have
39:08
followed and tried to emulate on your journey
39:13
yeah and it’s interesting not all of my um influences have been coaches uh they’ve
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been maybe different if like a tony robbins for instance was very influential to me in
39:26
my early 20s right here’s somebody who who wrote a what i believe is a great book unlimited power i saw him speak in
39:32
person i was very his passion uh his speak so that set the tone for me today wow this guy is a wonderful speaker he’s
39:39
obviously had success working with all types of peak performers so that kind of set the tone there um i have other books
39:45
and you know dr joe dispenza who’s known a little bit but he had a book called breaking the habit of being yourself
39:51
that was so i’m looking at different and stephen cutler with flow research collective and so i pick and choose i
39:58
think i’ve looked at coaches outside of golf maybe more than within golf so whether it’s a john wooden and you see
40:04
how somebody just starts with fundamentals and just keeps refining that and only controlling what you can control um and just the character that
40:12
he was about i’m so i i tap into a lot of different things um and i i go down different rabbit holes
40:19
like i say to build different skill sets in me and within that i get to learn from those experts um and such so i i
40:27
don’t think there have been many people in the golf industry that have been extremely influential to me but it’s
40:33
been outside of that for sure it’s great i love that you’re pulling
40:38
from different resources different sports uh and i think that’s really important too i think it helps with
40:44
creativity and i think it just kind of infuses not everything’s gonna relate of course but there’s a lot of parallels
40:50
and i’m sure a lot of useful information from those sources um and uh you know we i wanted to try
40:57
and cover kind of the keys to peak performance so uh is there anything that i’ve missed here in terms of
41:03
adaptability or mindset or anything that you’re jumping on you’re like evan how come you haven’t asked me about this
41:10
i mean you know if we say flow follows focus okay that to me is the cognitive side of of paying attention and the
41:17
mental true mental side my what am i focusing on is a mental process there’s an
41:22
emotional side which is what is my body feeling um which is am i frustrated am i anxious am
41:29
i excited uh that can come from thoughts and come from what i’m focusing on certainly
41:34
and then there’s the physiological response of okay um in golf it’s a fine motor skill especially putting in short
41:40
game my grip pressure my tension in my body right we’re looking at all of that as
41:45
awareness right am i aware that i am ready to hit this golf ball or not
41:51
execute the shot and not enough people i think have the awareness muscle built in
41:56
after the fact they’ll tell me that was horrible and i was distracted i go well then why didn’t you do anything about it
42:01
because their awareness skills have not been built up yet and and i know you talk about it and i talk about it is
42:08
back to focus is i need to pay attention where i’m at right now and what am i thinking and what am i feeling and and
42:14
what is my intention in this next shot people are in their head and they’re they’re distracted and and they’re
42:21
worried and and then they hit the shot and they go oh i really wasn’t focused it’s like wait
42:26
all we had to do was call a little time out on ourselves okay take a breath am i ready to hit the shot or not right
42:33
i mean it seems simple but in the moment we get caught up and i think that is a
42:38
skill that i know i keep learning even in coaching i got to be aware of where i’m at what am i paying attention to
42:43
what am i feeling and having a constant feedback loop of is this truly where i want to be
42:49
in this moment well that’s some great uh peak performance coaching uh here in the
42:55
moment um on the highest level podcast i love that i even listening to you i’m like oh i need to do more more research
43:02
on awareness uh in my emotional states like that is a place i haven’t spent enough time but i know that you have
43:09
created several resources for people that want to learn more about this so you know tell us about your book tell us
43:15
about flow code just just tell us about some of the projects uh that you’re involved in because a lot of them are really interesting and relate directly
43:22
to a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about i appreciate that evan yeah i wrote a book about 15 16 years ago ago
43:28
called golf the ultimate mind game proud of it it’s a good introductory book on the mental side of the game for golf uh
43:34
working on another book now won’t be up until 2023 um and then really what i’ve
43:39
paid i’ve done a lot in the last 18 months is build this um platform called flow code golf academy
43:46
flowcode.golf so flowcode.golf you can go there we have a lot of free resources and certainly have a membership i have
43:52
my own podcast uh flowgolf um on a lot of the podcast services and and we we
43:58
and it’s a team uh we as coaches and as a platform want to share these ideas about flow and peak performance
44:05
my mission though is to take it beyond golf and to take it in life and using these skills and you do it so well too
44:11
is how do we help people live their life better with more meaning and more focus and more awareness um and more emotional
44:18
adaptability and such and so that’s what i’m very very passionate about moving forward i love that and i know it’s a
44:24
project that you’ve been passionate about for a long time so it’s really cool to see it come to fruition i’ll add
44:30
the links in in the show notes so everybody can go there to find it and uh rick thank you so much for joining me
44:37
this was really awesome and i i feel like there’s another level that i can reach in my performance too so thank you
44:43
so much for educating us today thank you so much for the opportunity