481: Start Your Season Right - 7 Lessons To Help Lower Your Scores

0:00From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy goal to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime, because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is... Well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, welcome back to WickedSmart Golf, aka WickedSmart. This is your host Michael Leonard, and this podcast is committed to helping you play better golf without changing your swing. This episode is supported by Hitz Golf, the newest speed training driver that actually lets you hit golf balls while speed training. To learn more, click the link down in the show notes, and to get started, make sure you use the code WickedSmart at checkout to save 10% on your investment. All right, golfers. It is almost April. We're right there. And what a month in March for this podcast. We hit so many cool guests. Hopefully your game is trending. My game is filled in solid. I cannot wait. Unfortunately, there's not a ton of tournaments in April.

1:04So we're going to keep being WickedSmart with practice. But yeah, I wanted to do a recap of some of the best lessons I learned. I did some lessons in my own game. And also some of the guest lessons. We've had so many amazing people on lately and give you some tips as we're heading into the new season because it is pretty much game time. And so if you're been doing offseason work, maybe let's transition more into playing golf and getting more into a little bit more competitive practice and a little bit less time relying on training aids all day. So let's get into some of the lessons right out of the gates here because I just I have been consuming as much golf information as I feel like a possible head. I think probably the next six weeks already mapped out with podcast guests. So I've already had those in the bank. So I learned a lot in March and I want to share as much as I can with you guys. So first things first, if you did not check out the fast Eddie interview that released a couple of weeks ago, I just couldn't recommend it enough. Probably a lot of you guys follow him on Instagram, amazing content on there. Three time world long drive champion is just an absolute beast when it comes to hitting driver.

2:08I did my lesson with him earlier this year where he casually put up 136 club head speed. I mean, he just did it like as easy as someone swinging a hundred miles an hour. I was so impressed. But his his long drive stuff is obviously amazing. His product hits driver is amazing. I've been using that now for what are we on the week seven just getting started and I'll share more about my results here later. But his story is just unbelievably inspiring. I mean, I part of the reason I think I started this is to try and share as many cool stories like that as I could I didn't know the direction was even going to go. And it's just kind of funny because my old podcast was called inspire your success. I did a lot of personal development, a lot of motivation talked with a lot of inspiring stories of entrepreneurs and a lot of that is very similar in the golf world. And I think his is just amazing in that sense because if you ever need a little jolt or some inspiration to keep going or maybe take a new path in your career and like chase your passion, that interview will absolutely do it. He talked about when he was 40, he had done the mini tours, just could make it enough money and ended up giving up golf, then he got back into long drive a couple years later.

3:15But I mean, a few years he was not really living his passion ended up finding his path in the long drive world, winning the long drive championships. But man, just a lot of struggle throughout, but a lot of perseverance. And I think we need that in this game more than anything because you could have all the best plan in the world and then golf happens to you. So yeah, just highly recommend that from a general motivation, inspiration, tackle the season, reset for Q2 kind of feel. I think that's such a good interview. And I definitely want to do another interview with Eddie for more and more speed tips. So we'll be looking for that hopefully in the summer. But again, I've been using the hits driver. I absolutely love it. If you have not tried it yet and you're someone that wants to get started speed training while actually hitting golf balls couldn't recommend it enough. Again, I linked to it down in the show notes there. And there's a code wickets mark to save 10%. But my seven week journeys or six week journey. I'm just starting week seven has been incredible. I have started the year 110 club ed speed. I got all the way up to 118 on track man. I got 119 on four site. I was cruising on the golf course at one 15 with the personal launch monitor. So we're seeing some gains.

4:22My buddy I play with all the time was like, dude, what are you doing? And I was like, man, I've just been pounding that hits driver two times a week. So again, check it out and also just a side note. If you have been speed training in the off season and want to keep that speed in season, make sure to stick with it a little bit. You might not have to do quite as much. You might have a busy schedule and and obviously want to be playing golf. But one of the biggest mistakes I made in my off season to in season transitions. A lot of years was speed training and then stopping. So make sure that you still have some sort of schedule. Maybe it's just once a week. Maybe it's once every 10 days. But it's just like muscle. If you are working out of the time and then you stop, you're going to lose some muscle. Same thing with speed. So make sure we are just training for it. So that way again, we can continue to push boundaries and make golf easier. So another thing on speed training, I had Cordy Walker on just released his new book and has an amazing YouTube channel. And he talked about his speed training journey and how he sees the best results after hitting 50 plus golf balls. Now, if this is something you've never done before, I do not recommend that yet, you got to work your way up.

5:25I remember when I was writing the Wicked's Mark all fitness formula, doing some research about how Bryson would hit, you know, hard drivers for 90 minutes to up to two hours sometimes of just ball after ball. So obviously hundreds of balls like that. I know a lot of long drivers do that as well. But if you are not speed training yet, and you don't want to invest in ripstick or hits driver that you still want to gain speed, you got to hit driver at speed more often. So the things you can do is just go to the range or the simulator and just commit to saying, hey, I'm going to swing harder on a certain number of golf balls. So it could be just 10 to get started. And then you do that for a couple weeks, a couple sessions and then you go up to 15 and then you go up to 20, you know, work your way up. But like Cordy was saying, he sees a lot of his success. Actually later in the sessions and I was testing this out during one of my speed training days and I found the same thing. So I think I had done probably 30 or 40 drivers and then I was supposed to do just 10 more to kind of finish. But I ended up doing probably 20, 25 and that's where I got that 118 club speed. And I posted on Instagram that you could see the like Tiger like fist pump off of so stoke.

6:28Because I'd never thought I would see something like that. And it's just it's making golf easier. But again, it is about working up to it. I've been speed training for on and off for five years, all kinds of programs. But it is something where one, keep doing it throughout the year and two. Don't be afraid to try new methods. So if you've always used a speed trainer, maybe try and hit driver at max speed sometimes. Maybe you try to swing, you know, the last 10 balls of your rain session at max speed. So there's a lot of strategies out there. But I just want you guys to remember that one speed makes golf easier and two, there's a lot of ways to mix it up. So I don't feel like you have to do the same way over and over again. And the Courtney interview, you know, he shared a lot of other great tips. One of them was how during competition, he really focuses on his senses. And Dr. Izzy Justice has been on the show a couple of times talking about this and he calls them the five doors to your brain. So as the season gets started, as you're out there playing golf, make sure to rely on your senses when you need to calm down. If you find yourself drifting off to the past or drifting ahead to the future, thinking about the future holes, where you're thinking about that three, but you just had lean into your senses.

7:29So what are three or four things you can see what colors, you know, I'm going to, I try to find different colors. So I'll say, hey, there is blue on that T marker. I have read on my head cover that guys wearing a green shirt. So when you're doing that, you're literally staying in the present moment and you're searching for what is out there. And additionally, you can also do this with breathing. So what I like to do is when other players in my group are putting I will close my eyes and I'll do some intentional breath in and out very much through my stomach, but I will also be trying to hear one or two things. So I might hear the group ahead of us hitting their t-shirt. I might hear a cart drive by. I might hear a bird chirping. And again, I'm using my senses to stay in the present moment. So I really liked it. Cordy was talking about that as well. I think that's one that you could definitely learn from again, his, his YouTube channel has amazing stuff with all the coaches that he features in the books. I'll make sure and check that out if you haven't yet. Another guess we had on last month was Matt Stenson and Matt went from basically a two handy cap to a pro golfer in less than two years playing over in Australia. And just a really cool story. I mean, he obviously has a lot of talent, but he puts in the work.

8:37But one thing I think no matter if your goal is to break 90, 80, 70, you know, get into tournaments, whatever your goal is, is that you can steal this one principle from him. And that is to act as if he said that when he was an amateur, you know, he was a two handy cap and he got back into golf. He's like, I was just kind of like, okay. He was shooting some higher scores sometimes. He's like, but once I turned pro all of a sudden I locked in and I like locked in on my rounds and finishing strong and my practice sessions. And I was like, I have to act like a professional. I was like, I wish I would have done that before I even turned professional. So I think this is a fantastic strategy. So think about your goal, your goal handicap, the goal type of golfer you want to become, how does that person act? How can you act like that right now? Because you have to act as if so that you will become not only from a habit standpoint from, but also from a mental standpoint. So for example, like my own goal, be a plus five handy cap. It's a huge goal. Super lofty. I'm actually went the wrong direction for a little bit. Now we're hopefully trying to write back. But I know that short term, that's not the issue. It's about long term. What are the habits that I'm building? So for example, one of the reasons I'm a speed training so hard is because I know that as a plus five, I'm going to need to maximize distance as much as possible.

9:48So that's why I do my speed training twice a week, religiously. And I block it out every Sunday. I say, hey, here are my two speed training days. And I'm going to do it because I know that's what the plus five version of me is going to do. I also started a new visualization app that I'm going to share here in just a second. And I've been doing that every single day because I know that the plus five version of me has new beliefs. He has new confidence. He has new levels that I haven't achieved yet. So you have to act as if in so many areas of your life, if you want to be a fit individual and you're someone right now that's overweight. Well, what does a fit person do? How do they eat? How do they train? How do they talk about food? How do they talk about and think about alcohol? All that makes a big difference. So when he talked about that for golf, I was like, man, you can use that for golf and you can use that for every area of your life because you have to one build the habits to help achieve those goals. And two, it's a mindset thing. You might just be someone that you've been in a handicap forever, but you want to be a scratch golfer, but you just can't seem to budge. Well, how does a scratch golfer think? How does a scratch golfer talk to himself? How does a scratch golfer practice? And then you start doing that and you start doing those habits.

10:50You improve your physical and your mental skills. And that's actually how you're going to become that scratch golfer over enough time. So I think time horizon is also key with this, but this is something you can start doing immediately. Kind of that's what a lot of speakers talk about, you know, fake it until you make it. But in reality, you are kind of tricking your brain and brainwashing yourself into success. So steal that habit. I think that is a really, really easy thing that we can do. And it makes and it costs nothing like it's not like you have to spend a bunch of money on it. You just have to figure out who you want to become and start acting like that today. And speaking of fitness, I had on Brad Thompson, 14 year golf trainer on the podcast as well in March and a fantastic interview. We covered all kinds of cool stuff from strength training to mobility, nutrition, hydration, tournament golf. A lot of great topics covered there. But one thing I really liked with him is that he's like, if I'm in the gym and I see you looking like you're trying to mimic a golf swing or doing a bunch of golf stuff that I don't want to see that. He's like, I want to see you training like an athlete. I want to see you lifting heavy things. I want to see you doing explosive movements. I want to see you doing some cardio as well.

11:52I want to see not just training for golf, but training for life, basically. And I think this is just great. So if every one of your workouts looks like you're trying to swing a golf club and make it a weighted club, you're doing it wrong. You know, I talk about this in the wicked smart golf fitness formula. I got the most gains in my and my golf game and in the way my body looked when I started changing up my lifting habits and I wasn't trying to quote unquote train like a golfer. Instead, I was focusing on compound movements, progressive overload, eating enough protein. And now all of a sudden I developed this massive amount of power and built up the engine. But that all started because I started training more like an athlete and not a golfer. I remember years ago, I would go to these golf specific classes and we just be doing all these quote unquote functional things. And I'm not saying there isn't a time and place for that. But I think for the general majority of us, we need to just build strength. So we're going to be good in our old age and we're good on and off the course. But we need to build strength first and foremost, then we can add in more of those functional type movements. But at the end of the day, I want to see you guys training like athletes and building up that strength, building up that power. So that way you have that engine built. Then when you add on some speed training, you were going to be absolutely dangerous.

13:02So I really like that part of our strength training. Don't train like your golfer. The second thing was he talked about cardio zones and how awareable can help so much with that. And I just got my new whoop 5.0 so I can't wait to to throw that on. I've been using the 4.0 for the last year now and absolutely love it. And if you're not wearing a wearable to me, this is just an easy way to get some mini wins. Some trainers disagree, some fitness coaches disagree, but I'm just sharing what's worked for me. And that when you see your sleep patterns, when you see your daily steps, when you see how many calories you burn, you get to a little bit more awareness. And that's how you make change, you know, I talk about this with my mental coaching students. If you want to change a habit, you first need to become aware of that habit. And if you have no idea how many steps you get, how many calories you burn, it's going to be hard to hit your fitness goals. The same thing with golf. If you're not aware of your weaknesses and don't track your stats, it's going to be hard to change. And so wearing a whoop, for example, and to me, that's my favorite and most reliable wearable. I've tested a bunch, but to me, this is, it's worth the $300 or whatever it is a year, but it is a really, really good investment because it tracks so much into me. It's so much more accurate, but you can track your cardio zones pretty easily.

14:13And so you can see, hey, I'm pretty much just staying in zone two or hey, my heart rates going to zone four and five way too much. And as Dr. Troy Van Beeson, who was on the podcast last year, Scotty Sheffler's trainer talked about we need to get more zone two cardio. And so we have more endurance to finish the round strong. And so that's where wearables like whoop can help a lot. So track your cardio, track your steps, even if you're brand new and have, you know, a lot of time you skip from the gym, just start with getting some more steps. And that's where a whoop or some sort of wearable can definitely help. And then the final thing from Brad's interview that I wanted to just mention is we head into warmer climates. It's already scorched earth here in Arizona, but it's just the importance of hydration and making sure that we are hydrating after the round as well. It's easy to do it before the round and during the round and you get home and you're like, oh, I'm just going to slam some beers, have some soda or whatever. But then you also have to realize how much weight you can lose heading into summer when it is really hot out and how dehydrated you can get. And so like you said, when you're properly hydrated, you're going to make better decisions, you're going to have more endurance and you're going to help with recovery. So if you have multiple rounds in a row, you have a tournament, you're going on a bucket list trip, you're going on a guy's trip with your, your friends, you want to actually hydrate as much as you can after the rounds that we speed up recovery and not starting the next day super stiff and can barely swing the golf club.

15:26So those were some of my biggest takeaways from all the awesome guests. Once again, appreciate everybody being on the show. I get to learn so much. I love sharing it with you guys and hopefully we're always snagging one or two lessons and applying them to your game because this is as good of free content. I think out there in the golf world and just so cool to learn from so many top minds. And we got some amazing interviews already done for next month. We got Mark Brody from Stroke's game, the guy that created the stroke gains metrics. So I'm really excited for that one. We have a sports psychologist that will blow your mind here on Thursday. We have all kinds of cool stuff coming up. I'm going to be reaching out to some even bigger guests because to me, the show has grown a lot. And that is from your support. And I feel confident knowing that if people do come on the show, they're going to get a lot of people listening and we're about to cross one million downloads. So it blows my mind. We have a couple million over on YouTube, which is still just wild to me. They started in my office four years ago and now hundreds of thousands of people and millions of people. I guess have either read the book, listen to the podcast, watch on YouTube. And it's just I'm so, so grateful. So once again, got some fun stuff coming up in the next month.

16:33So a couple of things I learned in my game that I wanted to share with you as well from March. So I had an interesting month. There's a couple of things. Let's see had to go back in the archive here. I only had a two day tournament and then a one day qualifier and then I guess a one day men's club. So I also had a great lesson with Dr. Debbie Cruz, who was on the show. We did like a mental potting lesson. I'm going to shave some of that for a separate episode because it was packed with information. But tournament results in my own and I had a pretty rough two day tournament. I had an incident with a guy in our group that was just probably content that will be in a future book. And yeah, did not do well. But what I learned from that and you know, life and golf have a way of teaching you things if you're willing to listen and learn. And that's hard for me sometimes, but as much as I hated this day of golf and playing with this individual, I learned that my mental game needs to be better. And that I need to practice under harsher conditions. It's very easy to practice no pressure, no worries, no consequences.

17:38But what if you got paired up with someone that you hated or what if you got paired up with just a very rude individual? How would your mental game hold up? And how do you practice for that? And you know, it's kind of a weird thing to think about. But if you read about Tiger and you know, we'll put all this recent stuff aside. But if you learn about how he grew up, his dad would psychological warfare him. I mean, he would drop stuff while he was hating you talk, he'd jingle coins and keys. And I mean, he would really mess with him. I mean, he did everything he could to train him. And obviously it worked pretty well. So that was something I was thinking of as like, I need to practice in environments and really just add more pressure. That was something I also got from my interview with Dr. Debbie and my in-person lesson with her is that I need to just practice with some more intention. And not even really, not only intention, but like actually saying, hey, this is a birdie putt for my lowest round ever. Or this is a par putt to save the round. This is a bogey to still qualify, you know, after a bad tee shot. Or this is to get into a playoff. This is to win a playoff. This is a fair way of must hit.

18:41You know, when you start adding a little bit more simulation and pressure, it really can't help. And I started doing that the last few weeks after that specific round I had and after my lesson with her. And I was like, man, I was just playing and practicing way too casually. And then hoping my game would just show up in tournaments. And that really just has not been the case. And so I'm trying to increase not only frequency of practice, but the type of practice and making a little bit more competitive, a little bit more adding mental resilience, if you will, becoming as David Goggan said, callous thing the mind. So I just challenge you to look at your practices and say, hey, is my intention really there? Am I on my phone? Am I focused? Am I really imagining a scenario or am I just kind of going through the motions? Again, no judgment. We're busy. We have a million things going on family, life, business, career, everything, right? So it's not easy to do, but you've got to just set that intention. And for me, that's been a big focus. Another new mental hack that I started doing this month was a new app called Cairo, K-A-I-R-O. It's in the App Store. There is no app that I have found that's a better mental game training. I mean, this is phenomenal.

19:48So I talk about all the different things over the years, meditation, hypnosis, psyche, journaling. I've tried everything when it comes to trying to improve the mental game and sharpen it up and learn new skills. And one thing you hear a lot about with athletes is visualization. I'm trying to visualize the game. I'm trying to visualize coming back from adversity. I'm trying to visualize bouncing back after a double. I'm trying to visualize going and shooting my lowest round ever. I'm trying to visualize my swing change feeling consistent. Now I'm trying to visualize whatever the end result is or the feeling that you want. However, it's kind of hard sometimes just to go sit in a room and visualize what you want. It's really easy to visualize what you don't want or not really be relaxed or worry about what's on your phone or get a notification. And so it's something I've never been great at just saying, hey, I'm going to do this. I've done meditation. I've done self hypnosis and hypnotherapy. But creative visualization is one area I feel like I've never been great at until now. And I learned about this from Eric over at shop pattern and this new app that I'll be sharing more about in a separate episode and we'll be featuring one of the main sports psychologists who developed this app.

20:53But it basically uses AI to create these short six to ten minute tracks to help you basically creatively visualize and guide you along the process. So instead of guided meditation, this is guided specifically to whatever your outcome is. So for example, I was making a big swing change with my wedges and I developed a feel I've been hitting a lot of reps, but I still feel like it wasn't shown up in pressure situations. And so I was like, this would be a great first topic to cover. So I enter the prompt AI responds. Do you want to add some situations? Do you want to add the course? What's the weather like? I go back and forth with AI for like five times. It creates this short little six to ten minute clip. And it's about it takes about a minute, minute and a half to do it. And then you just listen to it. And then the next day, you can do it again or you can change it up a little bit or say, hey, you know what, on this one, I want to actually make it on this course. Or this one, I want to imagine a 70 yard shot versus a 50 yard shot or this one, I want to imagine a thick lie versus a really thin lie. You can just change anything and it just is able to create this amazing script. It sounds just like a person you can choose between I think six or eight voices male and female. You can pick ones that sound good. And it's literally just programming you for success. It's speaking to you in a very guided creative way.

22:08And it's something that a lot of Olympic athletes and high performers do, but it does the hard work for you have actually scripting and then voicing it out instead of you having to sit there and think about whatever it is you are trying to achieve. I've been doing it one, two or even three times a day because they're short. It's a nice way to take a break. And there's probably going to be a paid app. I think it's free right now, which is insane. I mean, even if this was a hundred dollars a month, I would do it. But it's free. Try it out. I'll be talking a lot more about it. But I started doing this in March. And I'm already just seeing this like new type of belief and starting to really like get in there at a deeper level in my mind. And yeah, like I said, you can do it for any weakness, any area you're trying to improve. Maybe you're trying to heal up from an injury. Maybe you're trying to break a scoring plateau, learn how to hit driver longer, whatever it is, you can literally program it for what you want. And it's all on your phone. Right, you know, easy to do. It's not like you have to spend 30 or 40 minutes visualizing. It's 10 minutes or less. Everybody has 10 minutes. I've been telling all my mental coaching students about it. So I highly recommend that.

23:12So that is that has been really cool. And again, just trying to do different with my practice sessions. Those are two of the big things. But I will be sharing more on my YouTube channel as well on the quest to plus five and kind of monthly recaps there. But hopefully you found some new tips that you can add in from the guests. And then from my stuff as well here, like I said, there's a lot of great resources. And I think the biggest thing that I can really stress is stay hungry and be open to new ideas. You know, I'm not saying that means a hundred different swing thoughts, but challenging your mental game, challenging your belief system, challenging how you practice, challenging your equipment, challenging just yourself and how you view the game and always learning. I mean, that's just a skill of high achievers. And I feel like if we keep learning, you keep pushing, you're going to impress yourself. I've done some stuff this year already that's like, wow, I'm impressed myself. And that's a very rewarding feeling, but it doesn't come from staying in your comfort zone. So don't be afraid to branch out, listen to new people, learn new things, try out new ideas, try new apps, try new training aids, whatever it is, try out new things and, you know, with enough consistency and belief and repetition.

24:16Pretty cool stuff can happen. So I'm very excited for your guys this season to get started. If you're in a colder place and we got masters coming up, I have all kinds of guests that will be sharing more and more about. And yeah, if you guys have any specific topics, please always let me know. You can shoot me an email, Michael at wicketsmarkolf.com. Thanks so much for listening. And as always, I hope you have an epic day on the links.