NY Times story about the Yips

[carrera]

With an appearance from the microfibers guy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/sports/golf/the-yips-bane-of-golfers-may-be-muscular.html?_r=1&ref=sports

Excerpt:

Prichard [my note...he is the Microfibers Guy] said he was analyzing the swings of some of golf’s greatest ball-strikers for his book, “The Efficient Golfer,” when he noticed that Snead, Hogan and Trevino all restrained their driver swing in order to return the club at impact to its original position. A friend, Prichard said, pointed out that they had one other thing in common: the yips.

“They were gripping the driver very hard, so as to limit extension at impact,” Prichard said. “The driver head is going over 100 miles an hour through space and is pulling away from the golfer with 100 pounds of force. Even though this pull only lasts for a fraction of a second, it is repeated over and over again and it results in the tearing of hundreds of the tens of thousands of small individual muscle fibers that make up each muscle in the forearms.”

Over time, Prichard said, the accumulation of scar tissue and the tension in the forearms from fighting centrifugal force causes spasms when a golfer grips the putter lightly, activating the same set of muscles. In other words, what was good for consistent ball-striking was ultimately bad for putting.

[Jim Waldron]

Pritchard's opinion - and that is all it is, since he presents NO evidence to back it up - is really a stretch. How exactly does he know that Hogan, Snead and Trevino all used really strong grip pressure, and only with the driver? I have never once come across a good ballstriker - pro or amateur - who used a really tight grip pressure, or who changed it for the driver. It's an easy thing to check, just ask them to grip your own hand with their own normal grip pressure. It is almost always WAY lighter than most average golfers use. In fact the ONLY time a good player is likely to significantly increase their grip pressure is on a shot from heavy rough, for obvious reasons. Tom Watson himself uses and advocates for a very light grip pressure.

Resisting the outward pull of centrifugal force is indeed a fundamental of the golf swing, but you don't do it primarily with the smaller muscles in your fingers and forearms - you do it with the chest, legs, belly and upper arms. The golf swing is a cascade of Opposing Forces.

Haney is correct - there are numerous causes of the yips, and even several different varieties of the yips. Most have a strong mental or emotional component. I have seen and heard about some cases that appear to be purely neurological, especially in senior players with a lifetime of golf behind them, but these types are a distinct minority.

Haney is wrong that there is no cure. I have helped many students to overcome the yips. You could argue that for very severe cases of the yips, a 100% cure is much less likely - but I have seen it happen. I had a student once who had developed such a severe yip over several years. By the time he came to see me, he would stop at the top of his backswing and visibly shake his arms and hands for about three to five seconds, before starting his downswing. I fixed that in just a few minutes. The student kept in touch with me over the next couple of years and the yip was still 100% gone. His handicap dropped dramatically during that time.

The key to understanding and fixing the yips is the mind/body connection, the power of the subconscious mind and the ability to re-program the subconscious.

[keygolf]

Echo what Waldon say, with a couple of clarifications, in addition to which I have participated in a continuing examination of the subject and we found that, with the player attached to an EEG machine and put though swings under typical (normal) conditions, that the brain waves go all over the lot. When that same player uses a clear key while making the shot, the brain waves go to resting.

To begin with yips is not an illness, so "cure " is not indicated. Yips is a handicap, which requires rehabilitation and or management, not a "cure." IIlness is "cured." Handicaps or malfunctions are rehabed. I won't comment here on the number of "experts" I have contacted and with whose work I spent time to study their perceptions of the problem. Even Mayo clinic finally admitted the possibility that their research showing yips to be a matter of Focal Dystonia was incomplete at best, and just plain wrong at worst. Many and varied procedures have described by many and varied people, almost all of which contain unfinished business or full bore inaccuracies. The book "Choke" does the same thing.

Having spoken many times with Geoff Mangum, his point of view is totally missing any comprehension of the non conscious mental function, but he is not about to give up his point of view by intaking something that is disagreeable to him (a lot of folks still refer to the function as"subconcious,' which is a long-standing attempt on the part of psychoanalysts to refer to that portion of the non conscious that is accessible in therapy). The non conscious is where our actions are stored and the conscious is our declarative mental function and those who do those studies will tell you that we golfers spend so much time loading the declarative mental area with the [i]idea of the swing[/i] that our learning never reaches the non conscious mental storage to become useful as an action habit. So at its root, yips is more apt to spring from a playe's own unfinished business than from some other source. But as pointed out here there is more than one kind and source of yips, but every one of those is either directly triggered or directly accentuated by anxiety (or as most prefer to call it, "pressure").
.
The key is to know how to manage what is going on in your mind during the seconds when you have a club in hand, moviing it toward impact with the little ball, using a management process which has an extended record of no interfernce from any form of yips - and that brief moment is only addressed by one single source. All others speak and write only of before or after that brief time frame, but only apply a mantra of no value whatsoever that says, Just don't think," which is found to be an impossibility. The important issue lies in knowing what content is needed to occupy your mind during execution, and it best not be declarative.

BTW, there are tons of yips daily on every golf course in the world, but so minor that most do not notice them. Did you ever intend to hit a ball in a direction only to have it go elsewhere? Did you ever top a shot? Ever hit one in the heel or on the toe. Ever s*^&K one? Ever feel a bit of the shakes? Ever spin out? Ever wonder why you could not stop going over the top? And there are many, many more that are not commonly called "yips," but any of those malfunctions can come under the heading of "A hitch in your gitalong." And they are all manageable Whether you call them by that name or not, they are there. No you can't cure them since you are not sick with them. But you can manage the process that keeps them from showing up..

[acschiropractic]

[quote name='Jim Waldron' timestamp='1308004488' post='3304537']
Pritchard's opinion - and that is all it is, since he presents NO evidence to back it up - is really a stretch. How exactly does he know that Hogan, Snead and Trevino all used really strong grip pressure, and only with the driver? I have never once come across a good ballstriker - pro or amateur - who used a really tight grip pressure, or who changed it for the driver. It's an easy thing to check, just ask them to grip your own hand with their own normal grip pressure. It is almost always WAY lighter than most average golfers use. In fact the ONLY time a good player is likely to significantly increase their grip pressure is on a shot from heavy rough, for obvious reasons. Tom Watson himself uses and advocates for a very light grip pressure.

Resisting the outward pull of centrifugal force is indeed a fundamental of the golf swing, but you don't do it primarily with the smaller muscles in your fingers and forearms - you do it with the chest, legs, belly and upper arms. The golf swing is a cascade of Opposing Forces.

Haney is correct - there are numerous causes of the yips, and even several different varieties of the yips. Most have a strong mental or emotional component. I have seen and heard about some cases that appear to be purely neurological, especially in senior players with a lifetime of golf behind them, but these types are a distinct minority.

Haney is wrong that there is no cure. I have helped many students to overcome the yips. You could argue that for very severe cases of the yips, a 100% cure is much less likely - but I have seen it happen. I had a student once who had developed such a severe yip over several years. By the time he came to see me, he would stop at the top of his backswing and visibly shake his arms and hands for about three to five seconds, before starting his downswing. I fixed that in just a few minutes. The student kept in touch with me over the next couple of years and the yip was still 100% gone. His handicap dropped dramatically during that time.

The key to understanding and fixing the yips is the mind/body connection, the power of the subconscious mind and the ability to re-program the subconscious.
[/quote]


I agree. I had the full swing yips for 2 years and my new instructor fixed them in 1 session after 3 other instructors couldn't figure out what the cause was. It was a faulty backswing and pivot that turned into a mental issue.

[Geohans]

Yipsbegone.com

[tembolo1284]

this microfiber champ just won't go away...

[hoganfan924]

Great posts by Jim and Keygolf. This "Mr. Microfiber" guy is trying to sell something. Apparently, he doesn't know the difference between correlation and causality. One thing he fails to realize is that the majority of great players in the Hogan/Snead era "resisted centrifugal force" and released the club in a very similar manner. Souchak, Devicenzo, Burke jr., Don January, Middelcopf, et. al., a whole bunch of them. Did they [b][i]ALL[/i][/b] have the yips? lol

Also, the centripetal force of roughly 100 lbs. that he sites is present in all golf swings with the 100 mph+ clubhead speeds cited, regardless if you "resist it" or not. The only way not to resist it is to let go of the club!

[Jim Waldron]

Another interesting fact about the yips - the vast majority of yippers NEVER flinch during a practice swing or stroke. It is the perception of the stationary golf ball, just sitting there on the ground and seeming to say "C'mon and HIT me - and make sure you don't MISS me!" that is the primary trigger of the flinch. Take the ball away - no yip. Which means it is mostly a form of anxiety disorder or performance anxiety in particular, with too much emotional attachment to the success or failure of the shot. I have fixed mild to moderate intensity yips by asking the student to miss it on purpose, and hit many shots that are missed deliberately, to take away the fear of missing. One thing I have discovered in my years of golf research is that great players learned early on in their careers to not over-emotionalize the misses. They let the bad shots go, and then get down to business by focusing on and commiting to this next shot, in the here and now.

It always amazes to see how difficult it is for some of my yipping students to miss it on purpose, for say a half hour of ballstriking. Most cannot even accept the concept of doing so at first. Which should tell you something about the nature of their problem. When you can miss sixty balls in a row on purpose, and realize that you are "okay" emotionally and mentally, you "survived", it can be very liberating. Once they can miss it like that on the range, we do a playing lesson, where they miss it on purpose on the golf course. A lot harder to do for most golfers. It's like they are learning a lesson about the game that they should have figured out during the first days and weeks of playing. It is a very healthy thing to be able to accept that golf is a game of misses - not perfection.

[TEConnor]

Good responses to a horrible theory. Being a scientist and a golfer this article had me tearing my hair out.

I had a yippy action creep in over the winter w/ the irons, especially the wedges. I talked with folks around my club casually about it and heard everything from "oh no, the inevitable decline begins...quit while you're ahead" to "here, wear these magnets, they cured me." Went to visit Geoff Jones in March, and he cured me without even seeing me hit a ball. I addressed an 8-iron, and he calls me off mid-waggle. He then addresses the ball and has me step into his footprints. I just about screamed in shock/horror/hysteria. I somehow had crept about 5 inches too close to the ball, to the point where my arms were actually hanging in towards me. LOL. Hysterical moment. We joked about it the rest of the trip, cause I flew 1500 miles to get fixed without hitting a ball. Been great ever since, having one of my better tournament seasons and striking every club (including the short irons/wedges/pitches) superb. Thank goodness I never ran across this microfiber guy...or maybe I did. LOL.

Cheers,
Tim

[keygolf]

Maybe it's been acknowledged and I missed it, but the reality is you can prepare like mad, practice being at ease, practice resisting pressure, etc. but you still need a tool or process to manage the real onslaught at the moment whatever task is in process of taking place.That is to say that you can sit in your easy chair and imagine how you will handle it if a thief sticks a gun in your face and threatens to shoot if you do not hand over your wallet and watch, but that will not stop the instantaneous physiological responses when the real thing happens, so you must have a means to manage that. "Yips" is a physiological result (response) to the immune system's recognition of anxiety (see Hans Selye, MD, book "Stress without Distress"). In golf the advanced planning helps, but not at the moment of truth. There you must have a way to literally block the signal from anxiety (that most call pressure), or you will still become a potential victim. You cannot defeat mother nature, and that's part of what she has supplied to each person living. It works from the same basic law as gravity. Dead people don't have to worry, though.

Just as Jim W. says, when there is no ball, there is not anxiety. Put the ball there and every semblance of worry takes shape. You cannot will the effects of anxiety to go away any more than you can will yourself to stop freefall in mid-air when you forgot your parachute. There's no trick and there is no magic, and the people who have written about this leave out critical issues, believing they have covered the matter. Keep in mind that every hitch you evr encounter in a golf motion is just another manifestation of what has been referred to as "Yips." Why did that reference emerge? Because there is a psychological act of transference that causes many to believe if they give something a name (yips) it will be handled or somehow go away. That sadly is untrue.

[tembolo1284]

I love this microfiber lunacy. Slicefixer move over! haha.

[russc1597187869]

[quote name='keygolf' timestamp='1308023047' post='3305455']
Echo what Waldon say, with a couple of clarifications, in addition to which I have participated in a continuing examination of the subject and we found that, with the player attached to an EEG machine and put though swings under typical (normal) conditions, that the brain waves go all over the lot. When that same player uses a clear key while making the shot, the brain waves go to resting.

To begin with yips is not an illness, so "cure " is not indicated. Yips is a handicap, which requires rehabilitation and or management, not a "cure." IIlness is "cured." Handicaps or malfunctions are rehabed. I won't comment here on the number of "experts" I have contacted and with whose work I spent time to study their perceptions of the problem. Even Mayo clinic finally admitted the possibility that their research showing yips to be a matter of Focal Dystonia was incomplete at best, and just plain wrong at worst. Many and varied procedures have described by many and varied people, almost all of which contain unfinished business or full bore inaccuracies. The book "Choke" does the same thing.

Having spoken many times with Geoff Mangum, his point of view is totally missing any comprehension of the non conscious mental function, but he is not about to give up his point of view by intaking something that is disagreeable to him (a lot of folks still refer to the function as"subconcious,' which is a long-standing attempt on the part of psychoanalysts to refer to that portion of the non conscious that is accessible in therapy). The non conscious is where our actions are stored and the conscious is our declarative mental function and those who do those studies will tell you that we golfers spend so much time loading the declarative mental area with the [i]idea of the swing[/i] that our learning never reaches the non conscious mental storage to become useful as an action habit. So at its root, yips is more apt to spring from a playe's own unfinished business than from some other source. But as pointed out here there is more than one kind and source of yips, but every one of those is either directly triggered or directly accentuated by anxiety (or as most prefer to call it, "pressure").
.
The key is to know how to manage what is going on in your mind during the seconds when you have a club in hand, moviing it toward impact with the little ball, using a management process which has an extended record of no interfernce from any form of yips - and that brief moment is only addressed by one single source. All others speak and write only of before or after that brief time frame, but only apply a mantra of no value whatsoever that says, Just don't think," which is found to be an impossibility. The important issue lies in knowing what content is needed to occupy your mind during execution, and it best not be declarative.

BTW, there are tons of yips daily on every golf course in the world, but so minor that most do not notice them. Did you ever intend to hit a ball in a direction only to have it go elsewhere? Did you ever top a shot? Ever hit one in the heel or on the toe. Ever s*^&K one? Ever feel a bit of the shakes? Ever spin out? Ever wonder why you could not stop going over the top? And there are many, many more that are not commonly called "yips," but any of those malfunctions can come under the heading of "A hitch in your gitalong." And they are all manageable Whether you call them by that name or not, they are there. No you can't cure them since you are not sick with them. But you can manage the process that keeps them from showing up..
[/quote]

keygolf

have you ever used neurofeedback to help golfers

[russc1597187869]

Obviously the microfiber guy is selling his very expensive series of specialized massages . Relating the yips to the forces on a regular swing sound like quite a stretch;however,Mr Pritchard has helped some world class athletes,so he is no ordinary quack trying to sell something.

[whatshannenin]

Pritchard's opinion - and that is all it is, since he presents NO evidence to back it up - is really a stretch. How exactly does he know that Hogan, Snead and Trevino all used really strong grip pressure, and only with the driver? I have never once come across a good ballstriker - pro or amateur - who used a really tight grip pressure, or who changed it for the driver. It's an easy thing to check, just ask them to grip your own hand with their own normal grip pressure. It is almost always WAY lighter than most average golfers use. In fact the ONLY time a good player is likely to significantly increase their grip pressure is on a shot from heavy rough, for obvious reasons. Tom Watson himself uses and advocates for a very light grip pressure.

 

Resisting the outward pull of centrifugal force is indeed a fundamental of the golf swing, but you don't do it primarily with the smaller muscles in your fingers and forearms - you do it with the chest, legs, belly and upper arms. The golf swing is a cascade of Opposing Forces.

 

Haney is correct - there are numerous causes of the yips, and even several different varieties of the yips. Most have a strong mental or emotional component. I have seen and heard about some cases that appear to be purely neurological, especially in senior players with a lifetime of golf behind them, but these types are a distinct minority.

 

Haney is wrong that there is no cure. I have helped many students to overcome the yips. You could argue that for very severe cases of the yips, a 100% cure is much less likely - but I have seen it happen. I had a student once who had developed such a severe yip over several years. By the time he came to see me, he would stop at the top of his backswing and visibly shake his arms and hands for about three to five seconds, before starting his downswing. I fixed that in just a few minutes. The student kept in touch with me over the next couple of years and the yip was still 100% gone. His handicap dropped dramatically during that time.

 

The key to understanding and fixing the yips is the mind/body connection, the power of the subconscious mind and the ability to re-program the subconscious.

 

 

 

I'll argue that you are wrong in the fact that good ball strikers don't use tight grip pressure. A light grip pressure is a terrible thing to coach, IMO. I agree that a golfer shouldn't be tense or grip it so hard that their entire body tenses up. However, a "loose grip or light grip pressure" will only further create problems, because proper grip pressure will then have to be created throughout the swing. Sam Snead 'I grip it like I'm gripping a baby bird....' yeah Sammie, as if you were trying to kill that bird in your prime. He along with Hogan had very strong hands, therefore their "light grip pressure" was very strong still. Sammie developed the yips with the driver all the while he was writing books and making videos saying "light grip pressure". Coincidence? Tom Watson also got the yips with the driver, he's on record saying he likes a "light grip pressure". Coincidence? Maybe....but I laugh at when coaches teach rotation of the club face and loose grip pressure.... Hello yips! Why? Because the club face and grip pressure are having to be reestablished to make consistent contact. Do baseball players have light grip pressure? Maybe when they are watching the windup, but they are gripping the heck out of it when before they take the bat back. Just my take....maybe others agree.....I don't know that much though.

[surefire]

 

I'll argue that you are wrong in the fact that good ball strikers don't use tight grip pressure. A light grip pressure is a terrible thing to coach, IMO. I agree that a golfer shouldn't be tense or grip it so hard that their entire body tenses up. However, a "loose grip or light grip pressure" will only further create problems, because proper grip pressure will then have to be created throughout the swing. Sam Snead 'I grip it like I'm gripping a baby bird....' yeah Sammie, as if you were trying to kill that bird in your prime. He along with Hogan had very strong hands, therefore their "light grip pressure" was very strong still. Sammie developed the yips with the driver all the while he was writing books and making videos saying "light grip pressure". Coincidence? Tom Watson also got the yips with the driver, he's on record saying he likes a "light grip pressure". Coincidence? Maybe....but I laugh at when coaches teach rotation of the club face and loose grip pressure.... Hello yips! Why? Because the club face and grip pressure are having to be reestablished to make consistent contact. Do baseball players have light grip pressure? Maybe when they are watching the windup, but they are gripping the heck out of it when before they take the bat back. Just my take....maybe others agree.....I don't know that much though.

 

I know Jesper Parnevik is on record saying a similar thing.

 

The problem is like you say that 'light grip pressure' is relative, would be interesting is someone did a study to measure the actual lbs of force in various players grips, as that would give more information.