riding a bike, you have to think about how to balance, steer, and brake. Over time the physical tasks require less conscious thought; they become natural and automatic. The real fun comes when you feel so connected to your skates or your bike that you move as one!
For the golfer in flow, the brain filters the extraneous, zeros in on the task, and provides us with the wonderful perception of being in easy harmony with the equipment and the game itself.
Energy and Effort
When you spend a lot of time traveling with golfers, one of the things you notice is that people involved in the traveling show known as the PGA Tour become road weary around the end of June. By the time September rolls around, many of the world’s best golfers are walking around like zombies with dead eyes. Flow states noticeably diminish in frequency. The hope, energy, enthusiasm, motivation, and effort characteristic of late spring and early summer are replaced, for many, by a limp to the finish line. This state of psychological atrophy is the antiflow.
Although flow states seem effortless, the body and mind are actually working extremely hard. Think of driving a V12 Ferrari Testarossa with 390 horsepower. As you accelerate in the Ferrari, it may seem as if the car isn’t expending any energy at all, but in fact it is burning a great deal of fuel. Similarly, an F-16 fighter jet can fly with effortless lift, but that level of performance burns an enormous amount of fuel. These two analogies fit the flow state on many levels. Flow states are the most premium and optimal of mental states. They are best in class. They are also efficient and powerful. And like the Ferrari and the F-16, they consume a great deal of energy, though you don’t feel it at the time.
The energy used to fuel flow needs to be restocked, and if it isn’t, golfers fall into antiflow. For that reason, many of the world’s best players vary their playing schedules. They often choose to play three or four weeks in a row and then rest for a couple of weeks so that they can replenish their physical and emotional energy in the hope that they can generate flow during the next cycle. Johnny Miller and Phil Mickelson, who both preferred to play many early season tournaments, garnered few of their career victories in the second half of the year.
The links between subconscious control and effort are abundant. By trusting your habits and engaging in implicit (rather than busy and verbally explicit) thinking, you are essentially reducing the communication between motor and nonmotor regions of the brain. A gradual withdrawal of conscious, particularly verbal, thoughts about the golf swing occurs as a golfer slides into flow. As control gradually rises, the game of golf should feel more effortless.
Because the purpose of this chapter is descriptive rather than prescriptive, I will wait to expand on how you can harness the power of this effortless effort. For now I simply ask that you make sense of effortless effort and appreciate your brain’s ability to myelinate and ultimately, the power of automaticity.
Here are some other descriptions of flow that reflect the sense of effortless excellence that golfers experience.
When I’m in it, golf is effortless. Things just seem to happen rather than you working hard to make them happen. It becomes a more natural, more rhythmic flow to your game or your stroke or your swing than trying to be repetitive and mechanical.
Davis Love III, 20-time PGA Tour winner
You get over it, and there is really not any doubt in your mind how you want to play the putt for whatever reason. You just look up and you are seeing right where you want to putt it. Every putt that has break, you are just seeing right to that point where you want to putt it until it breaks and your speed is really good. It is kind of like playing with the bank’s money in Vegas. You just don’t feel like you can lose. You got the big “cush.”
John Huston, 7-time PGA Tour
For the golfer in flow, the brain filters the extraneous, zeros in on the task, and provides us with the wonderful perception of being in easy harmony with the equipment and the game itself.
Energy and Effort
When you spend a lot of time traveling with golfers, one of the things you notice is that people involved in the traveling show known as the PGA Tour become road weary around the end of June. By the time September rolls around, many of the world’s best golfers are walking around like zombies with dead eyes. Flow states noticeably diminish in frequency. The hope, energy, enthusiasm, motivation, and effort characteristic of late spring and early summer are replaced, for many, by a limp to the finish line. This state of psychological atrophy is the antiflow.
Although flow states seem effortless, the body and mind are actually working extremely hard. Think of driving a V12 Ferrari Testarossa with 390 horsepower. As you accelerate in the Ferrari, it may seem as if the car isn’t expending any energy at all, but in fact it is burning a great deal of fuel. Similarly, an F-16 fighter jet can fly with effortless lift, but that level of performance burns an enormous amount of fuel. These two analogies fit the flow state on many levels. Flow states are the most premium and optimal of mental states. They are best in class. They are also efficient and powerful. And like the Ferrari and the F-16, they consume a great deal of energy, though you don’t feel it at the time.
The energy used to fuel flow needs to be restocked, and if it isn’t, golfers fall into antiflow. For that reason, many of the world’s best players vary their playing schedules. They often choose to play three or four weeks in a row and then rest for a couple of weeks so that they can replenish their physical and emotional energy in the hope that they can generate flow during the next cycle. Johnny Miller and Phil Mickelson, who both preferred to play many early season tournaments, garnered few of their career victories in the second half of the year.
The links between subconscious control and effort are abundant. By trusting your habits and engaging in implicit (rather than busy and verbally explicit) thinking, you are essentially reducing the communication between motor and nonmotor regions of the brain. A gradual withdrawal of conscious, particularly verbal, thoughts about the golf swing occurs as a golfer slides into flow. As control gradually rises, the game of golf should feel more effortless.
Because the purpose of this chapter is descriptive rather than prescriptive, I will wait to expand on how you can harness the power of this effortless effort. For now I simply ask that you make sense of effortless effort and appreciate your brain’s ability to myelinate and ultimately, the power of automaticity.
Here are some other descriptions of flow that reflect the sense of effortless excellence that golfers experience.
When I’m in it, golf is effortless. Things just seem to happen rather than you working hard to make them happen. It becomes a more natural, more rhythmic flow to your game or your stroke or your swing than trying to be repetitive and mechanical.
Davis Love III, 20-time PGA Tour winner
You get over it, and there is really not any doubt in your mind how you want to play the putt for whatever reason. You just look up and you are seeing right where you want to putt it. Every putt that has break, you are just seeing right to that point where you want to putt it until it breaks and your speed is really good. It is kind of like playing with the bank’s money in Vegas. You just don’t feel like you can lose. You got the big “cush.”
John Huston, 7-time PGA Tour
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