Sports

Richard & Debbie at the Halfway House

Golf is such a timeless, ageless game that anyone who’s encountered it even casually gets attracted to it. As Arnold Palmer puts it, “ Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” It’s both the simplicity and the complexity that make is so interesting and so much fun.

What Attracts Seniors to This Sport?

1. Gets You Out: Golf is a game that requires you to stay outdoors for long periods. This means you get fresh air, lots of Vitamin D and exercise. Staying cooped up indoors leads to depression and lack of confidence.
2. Fitness: Being a more gentle form of exercise, golf is ideally suited for seniors. An average game may require you to walk at least five miles and it may take at least four hours. Walking is not a high impact exercise, yet it provides sufficient cardio and lung work-out, improves muscle tone and stamina and helps you lose weight and body fat.
3. Live Longer: Scientists have found that the death rate for golfers is amazingly 40% lower than that of others in the same age group, sex and socio-economic status. The powerful blend of physical exercise, mental stimulation and emotional bonding provided by golf helps to extend the nature and quality of life.
4. Social Benefits: “To find a man’s character, play golf with him,” said PG Wodehouse. Golf helps you make new friends, cement old friendships, renew contacts, combine business interests and social interaction and helps you develop a sense of community and connectedness. Meeting the same group regularly also helps you make strong emotional bonds that help ward off loneliness. Often, these social contacts tend to spill over into other areas of life besides golf. You discover other shared interests and hobbies which you can enjoy together. It provides a recurring event to look forward to on a regular basis.
5. Learn New Skills: If you haven’t played a sport before, your body is probably not attuned to the requirements. Taking up a gentler sport like golf helps your body to become more flexible, improves circulation and it works muscles that have probably not been used for a long time. Mentally, learning a new skills stimulates different areas of the brain so that you feel much more alert and confident.
6. Wards off Alzheimer’s: The biggest fear that most seniors have is of dementia and Alzheimer’s. As pros know, golf is mainly played in a five-and-a-half inch space between your ears! It’s a mental game, involving strategy, assessment, spatial intelligence, etc. Apart from this, golf also provides the right kind of physical exercise that keeps the brain supplied with fresh blood regularly and this is one of the most important features of Alzheimer’s prevention. Exercise can also slow the progress of dementia or Alzheimer’s in case someone has already developed symptoms of these.
7. Lower Injury Risk: Golf is more leisurely and the overall risk of injury is much lower. However, seniors do need to warm up and stretch before they start. When the weather is colder, they should ensure that they’re well wrapped-up and in summers, they should use adequate sun-protection. Avoid the hottest and coldest parts of the year and day. Drinking enough water keeps you hydrated, and take help in lifting and carrying the equipment.
8. No Age Limits: This is a game that anyone from nine to ninety can safely play. A great benefit is that you can play at your own pace, according to your health and age status and still enjoy the best game in the world.
9. Travel and Play: Golf is one of the most popular games world-wide. If you’re traveling, there’s no need to miss your regular game. Most clubs have international affiliations and you can certainly find the right time and place to plan a few sessions while on holiday.
10. In The Lap of Nature: Best of all, golf allows you to appreciate nature and enjoy the outdoors like no other sport. The sport involves walking, which is gentle and calm exercise, and helps you relax. There’s very little stress in the game as most of it is self-driven and in your own control.

Above are some of the reasons why older people enjoy it so much. In summary, the unique blend of exercise and social interaction is what attracts seniors to this sport.

Conclusion

Played by millions, golf has enormous physical, emotional, mental and social benefits. It’s something that can be played at all ages, with differing goals and at a different pace at every stage of life.

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Psyche

Being successful in sports is not just about physical training, as every athlete and coach knows. Those outside the field of sports and training assume that it’s all about getting the right work-outs, eating and sleeping well, learning the right techniques and the like.

The Real Story

Those who have an inside track know that success is as much about mental training too. So what’s the real story? Let’s look at some of the things that people may not have known about the psychology of success in sports, especially basketball.

When you watch an athlete on court, in the pool or on the track, you see the physical effort but what’s hidden from spectators is the fascinating and mysterious power of the mind and its role in that athlete’s success.

Mental Toughness Wins Games

1. The brain has total control: Don’t even think otherwise! Your brain controls every move that you make and every thought that you think. That’s how an excellent coach can help you strategize out-think and out-perform your competitors. Along with physical training of the muscles and the body, the coach trains your mind to tread the path to success by incorporating a mental game plan.
2. Growth happens in downtime: Pro basketball has three seasons – regular, post-season and off-season. Success is recognized and rewarded in the first two seasons, but the real development of the player happens in the off-season. This is when they review, analyze, refresh their game, learn newer techniques, perfect different strategies and develop that killer instinct slowly but steadily.
3. Analysis of Barriers: Just as there may be physical limitation and barriers to success, athletes may have hidden obstacles or barriers in the mind that prevent them from using their true potential. These could be in the form of self-esteem, confidence, self-worth, fears and anxieties, self-imposed limits etc. Mental training helps the athlete to understand and eliminate these.
4. Improved Concentration and Focus: In the midst of physical training, athletes could easily forget about the importance of training their minds. They also learn to “think in the present.” This is crucial, for instance, if there’s just two minutes left in a tied game, you have a free throw and the crowd is roaring, your adrenaline is pumping and negative thoughts seem overwhelming.
   Mental training helps them focus clearly on the ultimate goal with complete concentration and eliminate all distractions while they’re playing.
5. Emotional Control: The ability to stay calm and composed under severe pressure, control the emotions and keep the focus on the game is a huge component of success. Players who allow themselves to go to pieces after a referee’s bad call, aggressive tactics from the other team, lack of co-operation from a team-member etc can soon find themselves sliding down in performance.
6. Using Visualization: One of the most powerful and effective ways of achieving a goal is using the imagination. Visualization helps you to add details, sensory inputs and emotional color to the picture of success. It also helps you to deal with eventualities – you can plan “What to do if…?” Mental training helps to recognize and use the neural pathways in the brain to get the psychological, emotional and physical aspects of success as a whole.
7. Toughness Training: Being “comfortable with uncomfortable” is something that every athlete has to train themselves to become. This means overcoming natural responses to pain, fatigue, discomfort and also dealing correctly with mistakes, obstacles, failure and adversity. Players have to realize that it’s their minds that can control these reactions and physical responses.
8. Dealing With Failure: Failure is a huge part of sports and there’s no guarantee of success every time you step out on the court, pool or track. In fact, failure presents the best learning opportunities and gives you the time and space to take a step back and look at things objectively.
9. Handling Pressure: Most athletes can tell you of that one time (or more) when they simply folded under pressure and gave in to the forces beyond their control. These are times when they had just that split second to make decisions and ended up with the wrong one. Mental training helps you face adversities and anticipate them.

Conclusion

Experienced and successful athletes know that success is around 75% mental. Yet many sportspersons fail to give it the requisite importance or time. Mental training is a lesser-acknowledged aspect of the final successful outcome but it has the biggest impact on developing the athlete’s skills and achieving goals.

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Clearing the fairway bunkers

Golf swing is fundamental to mastery of the golf game. It is complex and lots of factors must be taken into consideration for a great golf swing. First, before the swing, the golfers should be able to select a suitable club and a very good posture. This is followed by the actual swing.

Golf Swings

A good golf swinger has to be precise with time and should be able to select just the perfect mechanics for the grip of the club and movement of the feet. Even with these, something can still go wrong leading to a mishit. Subsequent paragraphs will discuss some of the things you must know to become a pro at golf swings:

• KEEP YOUR HANDS LOW. The height of the shot is affected by the height of the followthrough. A low height followthrough will give a low shot trajectory and vice versa. There are other ways to achieve a lower ballflight like changing the position of the ball to the back while maintaining your posture or using a stronger club. These methods however, are difficult and less reliable.
• GIVE YOUR SPINE THE FOREARM. What this simply means is ensure that your forearm (right forearm) is parallel to the spin. You can confirm that you have achieved this when your left wrist is flat and your elbows together with your arms give a triangular orientation.
• USE YOUR BODY FOR POWER. The power for golf swing should come from the body and not the arms. This enables the golfer to get the ball into the air more consistently. It is possible to learn how to create the power for swing from the body. To do this, the golfer sets the ball and puts the club just behind the ball, then hits the ball just that way without a backswing. This may seem to be difficult at first but as time goes on, it becomes easy to hit the ball into the air.
• HINGE FOR POWER. In an attempt to give a crisp shot, some golfers tend to swing their arm too far in the backswing. This could affect the posture and lead to a mishit. To overcome this, golfers must be able to control the length of the swing. This starts by presenting a 45- degree between the club shaft and the left arm. With this done, the swing remains hinged halfway to the necessary 90 degrees. In the takeaway, the hand maintains close proximity to the ground and the clubhead is readily raised. This is to ensure that the thumb of the left hand is in the direction of the right shoulder. This becomes obvious when the left arm is in the direction of the ground and at 90 degrees to the clubshaft. It enables appropriate backswing that achieves a proper hinge swing while maintaining the posture and reverse pivot of the golfer.
• GIVE THE SLICE YOUR ELBOW. Great shots can be achieved by flying out the elbow or tucking it in. flying the right elbow enables a fade ballfight while tucking it in allows a draw. It is pertinent to prevent faulty shoulder tilt and right elbow position for keeping slices at bay and right elbow position at the top. The best right elbow position for a draw is on or just inside the seam running down the right side of your shirt. This ultimately allows for improved downswing power and control.
• SLICE PLANE- NO SLICE. A faulty swing path as well as an open face as the clubface hits the target may be the cause of a slice. Swing paths from the inside are necessary for all golfers. Hookers’ swings mostly come from the outside while slicers’ swings come from the inside. To achieve this, you can try the box drill method where the golf ball box where you stand on its sides, parallel to the ball. Then try to hit the ball without hitting the box. For slicers, the box should be set up on the same line in front of the ball. Also try to hit the ball without hitting the box.
• THUMBS UP, THUMPS DOWN. Thumbs up are adopted by hookers while thumbs down position by slicers. They are used to show the closing of the clubface. The thumbs down approach used by hookers eliminate shots that curve to the left.

Conclusion

The above tips have been put into test over time and they have proven to be reliable. If these tips are carefully studied and put into practice, one can be sure of great improvement in one’s golf swing skills. Practice will only take a little time with constant practice.

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The Stress-Free Golf Swing Review