Guest: Bo Watson & Shannon Shuskey (In the Zone Mental Training, Authors In the Zone Secrets)
Host: Jeff Pelizzaro
Episode Number: 371
Podcast: The 18STRONG Podcast
Partners: Linksoul, 1stPhorm

Summary

Join us as we explore the intricate dance between the mind and the golf swing with mental training experts Bo Watson and Shannon Shuskey of In the Zone Mental Training. Together, we unravel the significant impact of mental coaching in conjunction with golf instruction. Hear about Bo’s personal struggles with golf and the pivotal role Shannon’s expertise played in not just refining his game, but transforming the way he—and any golfer—can harness the power of visualization. From the tee box to the final putt, this conversation is a treasure trove for those looking to elevate their mental game and savor the joy of golf like never before.

Listen in as we discuss the transformative power of mindset in sports performance. Shannon opens up about his journey from anxiety-ridden to confident, culminating in becoming a national champion speed skater, and how that mental shift can be equally effective on the golf course. Skepticism meets evidence when Bo applies a custom mental trigger, leading to astonishing improvements in his game after a two-year break. This dialogue will leave you pondering the potential for mental techniques to revolutionize sports and how a single change in perception can be a game-changer.

We round out our conversation with an insightful look into mental imagery’s role in sports performance and technique, the concept of ‘caveman golf’ for achieving flow, and the psychological intricacies unique to golf. Discover how legends like Tiger Woods and Sam Snead leverage mental imagery to perform under pressure and how these techniques can empower you to reset mentally on the course. As Bo and Shannon share their book insights and their passion for the game, this episode is not just a lesson in golf—it’s an invitation to transform how you approach every shot, mentally and emotionally.

Bo and Shannon’s Background

Bo is the Co-Founder of In The Zone Mental Training and Co-Author of the new book called In The Zone Secrets. He has been a host of 2 Consistent Golf Summits and the Road2TheTour Golf Summit, which collectively drew over 20,000 registered attendees. These Summits featured some of the world’s best coaches such as Sean Foley, James Sieckmann, David Orr, Mark Broadie, Scott Fawcett, Nick Clearwater, Dr. Kwon, Andrew Rice, and many others. The primary purpose behind these summits was to help golfers shortcut their path to consistent golf!

Shannon was the Operations Manager of the largest Golds Gym on East Coast and Mental Performance Mastery Coach for 20 years, Sports Performance Specialist for 30 years, specifically working in the sport of speed skating, coaching hundreds of high level athletes in including several Olympic qualifiers and medalists. It was Shannon’s mental training techniques that helped his athletes achieve such high levels that intrigued Bo to try them on himself for golf. The success of this “experiment” led to the partnership that is now the helping golfers all over the world shoot their lowest scores ever.

Bo and Shannon’s mission is to help 100,000 golfers shoot their new lifetime low rounds. They currently work with Tour Players, College Golfers, and the everyday golfer who wants to play their best golf yet!

Main Topics

(00:03) The Mental Edge

Mental coaching and visualization can enhance golf performance and enjoyment, discussed by In the Zone Mental Training.

(11:06) Triggering Performance Excellence

Transformational journey in sports performance, from anxiety to confidence, using custom triggers to improve without practice.

(21:45) Mental Imagery in Sports Performance

Nature’s mental imagery in sports includes basic visual and kinesthetic techniques for skill acquisition and muscle memory.

(29:02) The Power of Caveman Golf

Nature’s “caveman golf” focuses on target and flow, contrasting with pursuit of perfect swing. Psychological aspects and influence of Alex Morrison also discussed.

(36:26) Mental Imagery in Golf Techniques

Exploring mental techniques of top golfers like Tiger Woods, importance of protein for athletes, and power of positive mindset in golf.

(47:14) Mental Imagery and Performance Enhancement

Mental approaches in golf, interest-curiosity mindset, anxiety and reward value, “ball reset” technique, positive self-talk and imagery, Sam Snead’s success.

(59:00) Golf Book and Course Recommendations

Bo and Shannon share insights from their book, discuss impactful books and dream golf foursomes, and recommend inspiring social media accounts.

Follow Bo Watson & Shannon Shuskey

Instagram

Bo Watson: @schooloflifetimelowrounds
Shannon Shuskey: @shannonshuskey

Links Mentioned

Website: IntheZonementalTraining.com

Book: InthezoneSecrets.com

Episode Partners:

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More Cool Stuff to Check Out:

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18STRONG Pro Shop (Get your 18STRONG gear!)

18STRONG Resources (All of the cool stuff we recommend: products, books, golf stuff, etc – and discount codes for the 18STRONG Crew)

Want the full episode transcript? (click the “+” )

0:00:04 – Jeff Pelizzaro
the 18STRONG podcast, episode number 371, with bo watson and shannon Shushkey of in the zone mental training. What’s up, guys? Welcome back to the 18STRONG Podcast, where we’re here to help you build a stronger game, because we believe every golfer deserves to play better, longer. In this episode we have Bo Watson and Shannon Shushkey, the creators of the In the Zone mental training and the authors of the recent book In the Zone Secrets. And today’s episode is awesome because we’ve got the mental side, we’ve got the golf side. Bo’s background is in golf instruction and is a high level golf coach and went through a period of time where he was a little frustrated with the game, ended up actually leaving the industry. But when he met Shannon Shushkey, who is a mental game coach, performance coach, but really his background is in speed skating and working with speed skaters, but learned how to teach them and work with them on getting in the zone, when the two paths crossed, they started to figure out that this could be a game changer for the game of golf. So in this episode we go deep into visualization and what it looks like to really visualize to help your performance on the golf course, what it looks like when you step on the tee box and what that mental rehearsal and work really should look like and ends up looking like if you’re going to shoot lower scores. We also talk about how you can accelerate swing changes. Often we hear that when you’re working on the mental game, should you be looking at the shot or should you be looking at what your body’s doing? So we talk about how working on your mental game and your visualization can actually help accelerate your swing changes and how you can drop your scores without physical practice. So we’re going to go into depth on controlling the images that you see, controlling your emotions out on the course and ultimately enjoying the game even more. You’re going to really enjoy this episode with Bo and Shannon.

Our partners over at Link Soul have been providing us with the best apparel for both on the course and off the course, from polos to t-shirts like the one I have on right now. Everything that they have is meant to be worn from the golf course to wherever you’re going next, whether that be casual, whether that be to the beach there’s all different options over there. So go to 18strong.com slash Linksoul. You’ll get 20% off of anything in your cart over on Linksoul’s website. So again, 18strong.com slash Linksoul for our favorite brand of apparel for anything on the golf course and off. Now let’s get to this week’s interview. Brand of apparel for anything on the golf course and off. Now let’s get to this week’s interview Bo Watson, shannon.

0:02:51 – Bo Watson
Shushkey, welcome to the 18STRONG Podcast.

0:02:54 – Shannon Shuskey
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. This is exciting.

0:02:56 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Absolutely. This is going to be an exciting one for me and our 18STRONG crew. I know, bo, I kind of heard of you guys through your connection with Carl Morris and being on Carl’s show and Carl’s one of our favorites over here at 18STRONG and you guys did a great episode with him that I’m also going to encourage everybody to listen to and we’ll put that in the show notes. So I know that just by listening to that episode going through your book, the philosophies are so aligned with what we believe here at 18STRONG, just as far as the intention of the game is really for us to really enjoy it. And I think that you know, obviously by playing better you enjoy it more. But you guys go so much into the idea that you know putting this intention into playing better allows you to really enjoy the game more. And it’s about even bigger things than the game too.

So first of all I just want to kind of preface that to our audience that they’re in for quite a ride here with you guys. I would love to start out with and, bo, I’ll kind of throw this at you I’d love for you to start out with a little bit of the background of how you two met because I think the story of your connection and where you were mentally in your career and everything, bo, is really crucial to the story. And then how Shannon came in.

0:04:10 – Bo Watson
Yeah, it’s always a funny story to tell, because where I was is where I think a lot of people are kind of in their game right now or have been at some point in their golfing journey and so kind of give a little bit of a context behind that. In 2016, I actually stepped away from the game Like I closed down my golf school. I was a very successful golf coach up to that point. I’ve been blessed to learn over some of the best in the game. You know the who’s who, so to speak, and mainly that’s because of my relationship with David, or those of you of you that aren’t familiar with David Orr. David’s considered the best putting coach in the world. Him and Phil Kenyon are kind of battling neck and neck for that title. But the thing is, because of that relationship, because I was at school at Campbell and I fell in love with teaching a game, I left school, opened my own golf school and I’m having a lot of success. But the problem was, as a coach, I’m a type, a type personality. Every person that comes and sees me I want to help and, you know, kind of give you some background on our track record. We were averaging 4.7 shots dropped across handicaps, uh, for every student that we worked with, on average in about a six month time span. So we were doing a little bit better than the industry average at the time. You know, golf Tech prides themselves on seven strokes in a year. We’re doing a little bit better than them. So I kind of like to say that and rub that a little bit in the Clearwater space a little bit. But the thing is, at the end of the day I still had, you know, a few students coming to me and I couldn’t help them. And the ones that I couldn’t help, jeff, were the ones that were like hey, bo, why is it that I always start terribly on the front side but then I play amazing on the back? And it could be vice versa. I mean it could be. You know, they play really well, shoot like 36, 37, 35 on the front, and then they go to the backside and shoot 46, 48. And you know, some of them would have this trouble of getting to this one hole and it’s a negative habit loop and that’s like no matter what they do, they always hit in the water. And it was those kind of students I didn’t have an answer for and I’ll tell you.

It came to a head in september 2016. I’ll never forget it. It’s september, it’s late in the evening, he’s my last lesson of the night and we we basically had an honest conversation where I said you know what? I can’t help you and the the interesting thing about this one particular student was that, on paper, strokes gain data. When we go out and be playing lessons together, we go out and play a few holes, the data is showing that he should be in the 70s and even on top of that when we do lessons and we’re working on his game ball striking wise, this guy should be a low, single digit handicapper. But the issue was, when you go and play in tournaments, it would be high 80s, low 90s every time he goes out and plays and I, finally, I just I don’t have an answer and we decided to part ways.

I got fired that evening and, uh, that was like the final straw for me because it finally came to head, where I was so frustrated, not only not being able to help my students, but the biggest reason was because, personally, as a player, I still had yet to overcome these obstacles in my own game, and then I, when I left that evening, I shut down the golf school. I started putting out resumes and I started applying to different jobs, and then I left the game of golf for good and had no intention of ever coming back into the game until two years later. I meet this guy, shannon Shushkey, at a dinner one night. And then, you know, I got to say and be honest, my game changed, but then my life also changed as a result of it.

0:07:52 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And that’s why I’m now here and loving what I do on a daily basis. So, Shannon, if you could kind of pick up where you met Bo.

0:08:02 – Shannon Shuskey
I know you guys went out to dinner, I believe, and it had nothing to do with golf, right? No, absolutely. I was over the ministry team at our church and I was leading prayer class and he was wanting to be on the ministry team and stuff like that, and so I wanted to go out just to get to know him. And what’s crazy is you can’t make this up he was working at a place where I just quit, probably about two years prior to that or a year prior to that, and so I was like, okay, this is first and foremost. That’s uncanny, you know, but you can’t make up the story of how we met and because, once we got there and at the restaurant we were eating and with how, everything, we didn’t even get to know each other. I was sharing with him the things that I’ve experienced when it comes to speed skating and being able to trigger my body to get in the zone on demand at the flip of the switch, and he was like there’s no way. And I was explaining to him where I was in my speed skating, how it literally transformed me as a competitor.

Um, for example, what happened with me was, um, my background. I played soccer, played semi-pro, so I was pretty fast with shoes on, but then you put skates on. What in the world was going on? It’s a different monster that was out there, and I was getting last off the starting line, um, every single time. Now, here’s the thing the team that I skated for we had 22 national champions in the prospective age group, so it was kind of like me going out against a who’s who I was like a 30-year-old, you know, going against these kids, however, and so I’m getting last off the starting line in practice, not just in practice, but at meets and everything like that.

But I knew that there was a mental disconnect, because whenever we were playing around and we’d have our shoes on or whatnot and we would race, I would beat them hands down, hands down. So I knew it’s just like in golf. You know how often um, you did, does your listeners and everybody’s listening this podcast, for example. You know you can play lights out on the golf range, but yeah, when it comes time to any kind of pressured situation or just going out to the golf course, the change in atmosphere, the environment and stuff like that, and it’s like, okay, where did my game go? That’s what was going on with me and so I was getting mental reps in and literally after I figured out with this concept and this system that I developed, literally within one month I started beating. I would say I was probably getting about halfway through off the starting line and then, within a little over a month, I was winning every single start. And then a month and a half I was winning every start, not just practice, but at meets.

And then there was a huge shift, even like literally my I was not nervous before any race. That changed. I was going in more confident and as a result of that, on top of that and it was like, okay, a name is, is just a name. But when I stepped up to the stop of mel, whether this is true or not, a name is just a name but mentally, going up to the starting line, I knew that I was the one to beat. Now, whether that was true or not, I mean I would race world champions knowing that I wasn’t, you know, on the same level as them, but mentally, a whole shift.

And so I’m sharing with Bo on this system I literally the whole, I mean probably an hour and a half and I’m sharing with him how to trigger his body and stuff like that.

Now his reaction was not what I thought was going to happen, because he was laughing at me. He was like there’s no way, you can’t do this, not for the game of golf. And then he’s laughing. He’s like I’m going to go out and I’m going to prove you wrong, right? And so then I was like, well, I pulled out my phone and I started showing him a few things. But now I’m going to transition. I went, you know, uh oh and by the way, not just, not just me when it starts either becoming national champion and breaking the record in speed skating, and so that was a huge game ship game changer for me. But then I’ll let uh both kind of finish the story on what happened the rest of that night and then the next two months yeah, I’ll see what everybody is is probably thinking right now at this point, and that is this is totally full of crap.

0:12:52 – Bo Watson
and that’s what I said to shannon that night when he said, you know, I wasn’t able to get my speed skaters or trick their bodies in the zone down. To get some context for you guys, he had coached 142 national champions, eight world champions, two Olympic medalists. Now that’s a hall of fame resume. And that’s what prompted me to be like well, that’s amazing, like what did you do? And then that’s when he dropped the bomb on me, so to speak, and he said I was able to get my speed skater stricter by his end his own and I I literally laughed, and I still laugh because I feel like there is absolutely no way this could be true. Because I said look, from my own experience, you know, when I struggled in high school and when I started, you know doing everything under the sun like getting, you know, training days, reading all the books and living on Golf Channel Academy Live and I’m trying to do everything I can to get the edge in my own swing. You know, again, kind of falling into the trap of the search for the perfect swing and unfortunately that made me worse and then, as a result, it sidetracked me to a point where I thought everything was mental. So I read all the mental game books out there and you name it, I read it and I read those outside of the game of golf. And I said, shannon, you realize that sports psychologists and these authors have all said what the zone looks like, but nobody has ever found a step-by-step process on how to get there. And you’re telling me that you figured that process out. And he said yes, and I said I still don’t believe you.

And it was at that point when Shannon said earlier, he pulled out his phone and he starts like going through and he’s finding these text messages of all of his world champions, the Olympic medalist that he coached and these other national record holders, and they’re all saying the same thing Jeff, custom trigger, custom trigger, custom trigger. And I said you know, okay, this may work for speed skating, but I said, jeff, it’s not going to work for golf. I said there’s no way. And he kind of pushed me a little bit further and then he walked me through an exercise and we can get through that in a second. But it really opened my eyes and I said, all right, this may work.

And I said, Shannon, if this does work, this is going to change a game of golf overnight. And I said you know what? I’m the best prime candidate that could prove this, if it does work for golf. And I said here’s why. I said I haven’t touched a club in two years, I haven’t played around in two years and nor do I even really have a desire, but this is intriguing enough to where I will come out and go and play and see if this thing actually works or not.

And I said here’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll take what you’re gonna teach me. I’m not gonna practice. I’m not even go to range, I’m only gonna go straight to the first tee. I might hit a few pots on the day of the time I’m playing, and that’s it. That’s what I. Eight rounds in the second half of 2018. I go six out of the eight rounds under par. I go from an index before the 2.4 plus 1.7 within that same time frame, and the rest is history. We’ve done some amazing things ever since, but yeah, that’s kind of a quick run around how we came together.

0:15:40 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I mean it’s such an incredible story and I love hearing it again. I mean it’s such an incredible story and I love hearing it again, and just like I can only picture you sitting at that dinner table, you know, just kind of like laughing, like, yeah, okay, this guy, you know, and then he starts rattling off. You know like who he’s worked with and you start to see those, and then it’s kind of like, okay, let’s. But you were saying that you thought it’d be different from golf, because golf is so different from other sports, right? And so, shannon, first I want to ask you it sounds like you first kind of figured this out for yourself and started to implement it into your own practice speed skating, into your own endeavors athletically, then started to teach it what, like where did the shift come from? Or what is that missing ingredient that so many other coaches have not been able to put their finger on, that you were able to just kind of inherently figure out for yourself.

0:16:35 – Shannon Shuskey
So what’s interesting is? It’s funny because this is even mind blowing to me, because all the books that I read up until that point I was doing it plain wrong than what they were saying. But it actually goes down to when Psychology 101 actually took that in college and if anybody’s ever taken that as an elective or as a psychologist, we’ve worked with doctors and psychologists and stuff like that too. They’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs and which is so in the, in the study. With Pavlov’s dogs there would be a light or a buzzer, a sound or anything like that, and then what would happen is food would drop down for the dog to eat and then what happened is they noticed two different things in classical conditioning. They noticed the behavior of the dog, but then also salivating. We hear a lot about the salivation part of it, but we don’t really necessarily talk about about the behavior, and everybody has a dog can do this.

You, as soon as you get food out, what’s going on? The dog starts jumping around, it starts doing in circles and stuff like that. Right, that’s the behavior, but also the salivation that was going on with the dog. The light would come, the food, and then what happens is a week later they were come the food. And then what happens is, a week later they were training the dog. So then what happens is two couple weeks later, or a short term, spin came they. They noticed that when the trigger went, that the light or the buzzer went off, and then that would not drop food, the dog would. Behavior would be the same thing, but also the dog would be salivating.

And see, that’s what I was doing. I was figuring out okay, I’m going to do a trigger to get my body there, but then I’m also going to put the pieces of the puzzle together using kinesthetic mineral imagery. And where, at the time, I didn’t know anything about kinesthetic mineral imagery, it just so happened that the definition of it actually is exactly what I was doing, right, um? And so the important thing is like, when you’re doing mental imagery, um, you have to have all your five senses activated, I mean at a high level. You know, you want to be attention to detail, like, for example, if the wind is blowing, can you feel the wind? You know, and not just that, you know the sights. What are you seeing? Can you see the dimples in the in the ball? Can you hear? You know when you swing your club, you know, going to hit it, uh, and stuff like that.

So then I was that’s what I was doing with my mental imagery was I was making it so real, getting all five senses, uh, involved. But however um, I like to use it this way when it comes to mental imagery, there’s actually seven senses and getting seven senses involved. The reason why I say that is because, number one, you got to have limb movement, your arms, your body, body movement going into it. You got to feel it, you got to do it and, matter of fact, the more that you do it, matter of fact, there’s been numerous studies when people have been hooked up with electrodes and EMGs and stuff like that. And when you’re doing mental imagery, the ones that are making it real, they actually their muscles are twitching, they’re firing and stuff like that.

But then also that the seventh sense is adding emotion to it, because your emotion can change, how focused you get, how dialed in that you can get, for example, making the target feel like a magnet pulling you to it. You know what I’m saying when it’s almost like okay, even though aim small, miss small, but it seems like that target is huge because you’re just so dialed and locked into it, and so that’s what I was doing. I was getting those three pieces, the trigger with the emotion and the mental imagery in there. So then, when it came time for me to perform, I was doing it. So that’s what I was sharing with Bo that night. But I was going step by step by step on how to do it, and so that was basically a long answer to your question there.

0:20:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
No, that’s great, and I want to get as much as we can out of this short time that we have together so we can give some people some actionable steps. And then obviously you know we can’t put a whole book in an episode, so then they’ll want to go get the book and, you know, dissect every single piece. But you talk about kinesthetic mental imagery and psychoneuromuscular imagery, psychoneuromuscular training, and I want to kind of break those down a little bit. But what’s the difference between kinesthetic mental imagery and mental imagery? You guys make a distinction in the book, because I think that most of us hear about visualization and, like you just said, we picture what we’re trying to do and I think we’ve all tried this as golfers. But you guys go into so much more detail about those kind of things. But can you differentiate really between kinesthetic and mental? Is that simply bringing in the emotion and the movement, adding those pieces?

0:21:44 – Bo Watson
100%. Mental imagery is in its most basic form. It’s just simply just seeing things Like there’s no emotion that’s attached to it. It’s just, I would say, visualization 101, kind of like what most people are doing on a very basic level that they’ve been taught. I’m a big fan of Vision 54, what Len and Pete have done, and so when the people are standing back in a think visualization box, I think the simplest way to describe what mental imagery versus kinesthetic mental imagery is is.

Mental imagery is you’re just simply just close your eyes and you’re just seeing the shot, like there’s nothing else that’s really attached to it. Kinesthetic mental imagery is where you’re taking it to a totally different level, meaning you’re now putting in all the awareness what you’re hearing, what you’re seeing. Maybe you can even see yourself like tasting like Gatorade, or if you’re drinking a beer in the round and you’re just walking up to the tee box, you’re hearing your playing partners over to the side. You know you’re also more engaged with the detail, like what Shannon just shared. But the other piece of this is again what Shannon just shared when moving. So you’re actually physically feeling the movements as you’re doing it and then, last but not least, the emotion that’s attached to it. And so when you look at the two types and then you look at all the studies there have been numerous studies and we have a lot of those referenced in our book at the end of the book but I guess it’s really fascinating when you see what kinesthetic mental injury is doing for people when it comes to like rehab, when it comes to, you know, even strength gains. You know there have been numerous studies out there where people are just doing uh, shannon can reference that in a second but like there are numerous studies where people just do tennis, study mental injury of them doing an exercise or workout and yet they’re still seeing amazing strength gains versus just doing it physically only and so like when you do the combination of two, I mean it’s like a massive, like knockout punch, so to speak, and so you can really accelerate things. And this is true even when it comes to the swing and how you want to improve your swing and you want to do a swing change. This is how you would do it and you can accelerate in a shorter time span. But I will say this about kinesthetic mental injury because shannon kind of alluded to it earlier.

One of the best early examples was in 1980. The author of the study was Suinn S-U-I-N-N. You can go look this up. And what was so cool about the study is they studied an Olympic downhill skier and what they did was they had him actually physically go out and do the actual training of the course, where he was running down the slopes and everything, and they had his muscles hooked up and so they’re measuring off the ekg I think that’s what it’s called and they’re seeing the muscle activity. But then they sat him down and he is physically sitting completely still and they’re having him go through the course in his mind and he’s engaging all the sensors and what was fascinating is that his muscles were actually firing at a even higher level than when he was doing it physically well so that was one of the big I guess you would say um hallmark studies, that kind of like got a lot of other people on board and so this has been a big, heavily researched topic over the last like 40 years, uh, since that one study came out.

It has been really fascinating. People go down a rabbit hole really quick when you get on the kinesthetic mental imagery.

0:25:10 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah. So, shannon, when you’re talking about the kinesthetic and feeling the limbs moving, you’re not actually standing up and like practicing a swing. You’re literally just trying to tap into the feelings that you would have when you’re out there. Is that correct? To tap into the feelings that you would have when you’re out there Is that correct?

0:25:25 – Shannon Shuskey
Yeah, absolutely.

However, what we want to do is because, for example, a beginner, when it comes to doing mental imagery, what we would have them do is physically do a swing and then do mental imagery of that swing and go back and forth. So then that way you’re getting the feeling of it dialed in right, because it’s fresh on your mind. You know, we always say when you’re going out, you know, when you’re on the golf course, you’re doing your swing twice, you’re playing the round at least twice. It’s sometimes three times or four times, not just once, because mentally you’re rehearsing it over different, different shots over and over again in your head. And so that’s one of the things that we’re doing when it comes to that like and and then you. Then there’s levels of mental imagery that we actually talk about in the book. We call them five levels of mental imagery, and that’s the basic level, and the elementary, preschool level is all right. Let’s get the feeling dialed in, and that’s how you get it done. Like you can go out to the range, for example, get your balls there, go through your pre-shot routine, hit the ball and then do mental imagery of what that felt like, and then just keep alternating back and forth and then do more mental imagery going in there. So then you’re actually feeling it. So then, but then when you get your mental reps away from the course, that’s where all your gains are.

A lot of people think that their gains are on the golf course. No, that’s just, that’s like taking your test right. You’re getting everything away from the golf course before you even get there. Because if you wait till you get there, it’s too late. Your body’s going to react to what you’re, what you’re, what we’re saying here for. So you got to get your reps away from the course.

It’s just like you know, going to the gym, you know somebody is trying to lose weight, they go to the gym, you know, to the gym, you know somebody’s trying to lose weight. They go to the gym, you know. And then they come home and then they look at uh, look in the mirror. They’re like, well, nothing, nothing happened, I’m done. No, that’s not how it works, right, you have to give your body time to start reacting to it by going to your mental gym and getting those reps in and getting the feeling of that swing. Um, not just that, because here’s the thing your driver’s gonna feel a lot different than your putter. So you gotta get them all dialed in, not just one, and it takes some work, don’t get me wrong. But here’s the thing is it hard work? Absolutely not. It’s actually pretty easy. You know you’re not going out and breaking sweat and suffering when you’re doing it, it’s just, it’s easy work, but you just got to get the work done.

0:28:06 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So you mentioned there’s different levels of this and obviously we start at the beginning level and most people have tried to go and visualize, right, I think we’ve all been there and I would say that one of the big dilemmas that people come into is well, am I visualizing this shot or am I visualizing internally what my body’s trying to do? And I know we’ve had, you know, carl and Gary on the show and they talk a lot about well, does the shot create the swing? Does the swing create the shot? Is it internal focus? Is it external focus? Bo, I’m going to leave this one to you. How do we differentiate where that focus is? Is it both? Is one helping to foster the other? And what direction do you give people when they’re kind of stuck between, I don’t know, am I working on me or am I working on what that shot looks like?

0:28:55 – Bo Watson
Yeah, it’s a fantastic question and it really depends on where the player is and their journey and where they’re at in the system. So, like one thing that we always want to get a player to is ultimately what we call caveman golf. We know our best performances are going to come from caveman golf. So what does that look like? It’s C target, c ball, hit ball. That would be basically a caveman’s approach to playing golf at a high level. And you know what’s funny Every time I have a conversation with a golfer in our community, you know the common denominator I always hear from every single one of them when they tell me like their best round was, or their lifetime low ground.

The common denominator across every single one of them was I was in a zone, I was in a close state. Okay, let’s go down a little bit deeper. Did you have swing thoughts throughout the round? You know what every single one of them said no, I did not. And then I go and press a little bit deeper. I’ll say what was your main focus, my target? And that’s why, like, one of the most important things that people can write down and always remember is where your attention goes energy flows. And there are so many studies out there in multiple different sports that have backed up this idea that even though your technique could be off, for an example, but if you intuitively know that this is your target, your body will compensate in a way to get a ball, whatever sport it is, from point a to point b, and I mean they’ve done it in so many different studies and so many different sports. But it’s true for golf too, which is why, like, yes, working in a swing is important. You’ll never hear me say that technique is not important. It is um. But at the same time, there’s got to be a healthy balance and unfortunately and I think this is what will help a lot of people listening to us and give me a little bit more context behind why what we’re teaching is so powerful is because, unfortunately, over the last 50, 60 years, this game has gotten this unhealthy pursuit of the search for the perfect swing, and that’s not the answer.

You will never hear a major champion in a press conference after they just won a major championship, come back and say you know, today I won because I was able to hit my P3 position extremely well and then I was able to get my wrist flexion at 22 degrees at the moment of contact. And then I had my weight pressure, you know, with ground reaction forces and getting everything to move back into my left heel, and that’s where I had to snap and get the left lead leg. No, you never hear a major champion say that. What do they say? They said I was really dialed in, I could see my shot clearly today. And what do they say? They said I was really dialed in, I could see my shot clearly today, and it’s all those things. Even when you look at basketball, for example, you’ll never hear you know, kobe Bryant a late Kobe say yeah, I was, uh, I was able to get my knees bent at 24 degrees at the moment of my release and then I felt my pressure go back to my right heel when I actually landed and I knew that was my way of making shots. No, it’s always like I saw the shot and anybody that’s ever shot basketball, you know that if you think about mechanics, you’ll be looking at the backboard or much less at the rim at all, but when you shoot your best, it’s always because you had a clear vision of the arc, of the approach, of the ball going into the hoop and where you want it to go in at a certain Unfortunately.

Yes, it is the hardest sport in the world, which is why I had to argue with Shannon early on when we were at dinner that night and why I said this couldn’t work. But what’s fascinating is over the last two years I’ve been on a lot of research and so to kind of give context to everything we’re doing, for those of you that are very scientific-minded and still skeptical, this is a system that is a blend of classical conditioning and what’s called operant conditioning. So it is psych mesmerizing. It is blending the custom trigger with the CPR kinesthetic, mental imagery. There you go. Those are pieces.

But I want to go back to why this game has gotten away from its roots when you look at the best players in the game Sam Snead, tiger Woods, phil Mickelson, ben Hogan and then Jack Nicklaus and Mickey Wright on the LPGA Tour side of things. But I want to just focus on these four players just for a second. Sam Snead, ben Hogan they both shared the same coach. Who was that coach? Henry Pickard, jack Nicklaus first childhood coach, his name was Jack Rowe. Now Mickey Wright worked with a coach named Harry Pressler. Those were the three coaches Harry Pressler, henry Picker, jack Routt, who was all three of their coaches’ mentor. It was nameless Alex Morrison.

Now who is this Alex Morrison guy? When you do research you find out this Alex Morrison guy was actually way ahead of his time and, honestly, we hope our work is actually paying a tribute to him, because he was actually the godfather of the one that wrote the book in 1940 called Better Golf Without Practice and, if I’m not mistaken, harvey Pinnock said Alex Morrison was one of the absolute best swings he’d ever seen in person. And that’s amazing when you consider all the people that he’s been around right Now. Here’s the thing about Alex Morrison. In that book, better Golf Without Practice, there was a comedian. He tells the story of a comedian, lou Lohr, and this guy could not break 90 to save his life. So everybody that’s listening, you’re struggling to break 100, you’re struggling to break 90. Well, you may want to pay attention to this part right here, because Lou Lohr tried everything under the sun, could not break 90 to save his life. And finally comes Alex Morrison and he said hey, I need help.

What does Alex do? The total opposite of what everybody else does in this game. He didn’t go get training aids, he didn’t go and do full. You know so many hours of physical practice and do lessons physically on the range. Now what does Alex do? He sets them down in a chair and over the next two weeks all they do is basically kinesthetic mental imagery of him rehearsing what out of the system is called the five Morrison swing keys. That’s all they did, plus while actually playing around in his mind. Now what’s interesting is Lou Lord goes out his first round back and he actually shoots 87. Now here’s what’s crazy about that. Let’s go back to Sam Snead, those of you that are Bob Rotello fans, and Jeff. I don’t know if you’ve read Bob Rotello books. Did you ever read the Golfer’s Mind, that particular book?

0:35:07 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I don’t know if I read that one. I read Golf is Not a Game of Perfect and a couple of the other ones. Yeah.

0:35:14 – Bo Watson
Yeah. So in the Golfer’s’s mind book, in chapter two. This is so fascinating to me. Bob Rotella is giving a seminar that can make or break his career and he details it pretty, pretty bluntly, so to speak, because he said if Sam Snead gets up and says this guy’s a crook, you shouldn’t listen to him. Bob Rotello’s career would have ended right then and there in the game of golf. That’s what was on the line for him. Now he is nervous because Sam Snead does stand up after he gives his talk, but what comes out of Sam’s mouth was actually shocking to everybody in the room. Sam says we need to listen to this young man because he has a lot of truth of what he just shared, and what was interesting is what sam shares.

Next he said the reason why I was so successful in my career was because the night before I would play my rounds, I would visualize it and do mental imagery of what I would see, my perfect shots. For the next day’s round, he said, I’d fall asleep between like hole 10 and 14, wake up next day, feel, go through my normal routine and I go and play a great round. And what’s so crazy about that is that he’s tied with Tiger with the all-time PGA Tour wins. Now, why did I say Tiger? Tiger won an early 2000s clinic and it’s also in his book.

Tiger shared something that was really, really interesting and it’s the key to why he has made some of the most iconic putts on Sunday final round in majors and some of these events that he’s won over the course of his career. He said on the outside it looks like I’m calm and collected, but on the inside I’m extremely nervous, like when the pressure’s on. Now we would think that would be totally, you know, untrue, right? But this is what Tiger said. And he said when I’m nervous, when I’m going through these uh putts, this is what I do, and he’s walking everybody through it.

And he said when I’m standing to the side of the ball, I’ll look, and then what I’m doing is I’m taking a picture. So if you go back to those old like polaroids, you know those little click pictures, right, the cameras, and that’s what he’s doing. And he’s like I’m looking, I’m taking a picture, and then I get up over the ball, I’ll take another look, I’ll take a picture. And then he said I’ll take one final look, I’ll take a picture, and then he’ll say all right, tiger, let’s putt to the pitcher, like Papa used to say. And that’s what is basically. I mean, that’s mental imagery right there and that’s a big key of why he’s made some of the most amazing putts over the course of his career.

0:37:36 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s unbelievable. Let’s take a second to thank our sponsors over at First Form, and this week I want to highlight their Formula One post-workout protein shake. I use this thing pretty much every day after my workouts because, let’s face it, being here in the gym working all the time with clients putting on a podcast, it can sometimes be tough to get my protein in on a regular basis, and so I know that with the post-workout shake the Formula One, first of all, it’s fast acting. So right after your workout is a great time to get your protein in to help build your muscles, get yourself stronger and repair what you’ve done in the gym, but also, if you don’t know if you’re going to be able to get your protein in in your regular meals, it’s just a great way to make sure that you’re supplementing and hitting those marks. So be sure to go over to 1stPhorm.com forward slash 18STRONG to get your First Form Formula One protein shake, and everyone that enters through that link is going to be put into a drawing every single month for free First Form products. So again, go over to 1stPhorm.com forward slash 18strong.

You know you talked about how with the game of golf being different than other sports and you know we don’t focus on the techniques when we’re basketball players and, shannon, I know you have a background in soccer. I played a lot of soccer growing up and I always go back to that. Or even baseball, like you never think about. If you get hit a ground ball and you’re at shortstop, what does it take to throw the ball to first base right versus if you were in center field and still had to throw it a second base? Like you’re never making calculations in your head, or I always find it amazing that if, even if I’m going out and messing around with my son’s soccer team and helping coach and I hit a pass and I put it right to a kid’s foot, that’s like running down the line.

I’m like, how do I still know how to do that? Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t happen all the time, but you do that and you’re like why is golf not like that for most of us? But you’re saying that that’s really what you’re teaching it to be by implementing a lot of these techniques and these tactics of mentally rehearsing. Shannon, what does it look like when we’re actually on the golf course? So we’ve talked a little bit about. You know, like some of the training off the course but Bo mentioned the custom trigger earlier and I know that you know when we’re on the course, how do we then take some of this and what does it look like when we’re physically implementing day of game day? You know you’re standing on the tee box.

0:40:00 – Shannon Shuskey
So yeah, and so, um, standing on the tee box first, there, there’s several types of imagery that you do. Um, what I mean is is one is you want to see your shot pattern, how it’s going to go, the trajectory and stuff like that, but then you want to do your mental imagery before you know. Matter of fact, jason I believe it’s Jason day. He was notorious back when he was a PGA champion that, I mean, it was obvious. He’s there holding his club, he got his eyes shut and he’s going through his mental imagery, and so that’s one of the things that you do, because what it does is it’s teaching your body to react to it. Matter of fact, phil Mickelson I love in the interview that he was talking about, he makes it reactionary to when he makes the shot surrender in his brain. Like if you look at him and he’s staring off off and it looks like he’s in la-la land. That’s what he’s doing. He’s doing mental imagery making that shot surrender. So then when he’s confident and committed, he reacts to it, and then that’s when he steps into the play ball and then he goes and plays. That’s the important part. When you’re, when you’re going through your shots, is seeing that, and here’s a part. Here’s a thing you have to always vision the perfect shot. You don’t want to envision a bad shot, because what you’re doing is you are programming your brain and wiring your brain to perform negatively.

A great example is Jacqueline Hernandez. She was in the Sochi Olympics. She was a downhill snowboard cross racer. And what was happening and you can actually look this up in the New York Times there was an article that was written because there was going around talking about mental imagery. Everybody’s doing mental imagery and all this stuff. However, when they got to her, she said that she kept seeing herself fall in this particular turn over and over again. And then what happens is she’s setting herself up as like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But here’s the thing she’s training her mind and body to react that way, going into that turn when she goes down. So here she is she’s going down, she’s making it, she’s taking her turn going down the hill and as she gets to that turn, guess what? Her muscles start reacting the way that she’s programmed it to do so many times before going into it. Where what happens is she starts feeling shaky. She starts oh no, here’s that turn. Mentally, she’s dreading going into that turn because she’s done it so many times negatively and she’s fallen. Well then, unfortunately, the hate that this happened. She actually fell and then she actually got knocked unconscious and had to carry her off because of it. Now that is like an extreme example of it.

But just think in golf. It’s different. You’re shaking the ball, you’re topping the ball, you’re doing this. You know what I’m saying. So you want to actually visualize the perfect shot, but here’s the thing you can visualize coming out of a bad situation, going into a good situation. What, what? So this is the thing like when you’re going doing you know, for all the listeners going through your mental imagery.

Don’t just think about you’re hitting the perfect shot off the perfect line every single time.

No, you know you. Your limitation is in your imagination. What kind of lie are you in? Are you in a bad rut, deep grass? Are you hitting it off of near a root or something like that? You know what I’m saying, where there’s all these things that can actually take place. But then you’re actually performing the shot perfectly, seeing the shot shape and also as it reedmen, as in reading it. That’s the other thing too is like, when you like, answer your question again coming up, visualize the perfect shot where it goes to the, to the exact place where you want it to go every single time. And then that way, when you’re stepping in number one, you’re going to be a lot more committed, you’re going to be a lot more confident going into your shot. But then you got to trust your athleticism when it comes to when you address the ball that’s what Bo was talking about. Caveman golf, that’s what it is, it’s the less thoughts that’s going in your brain and literally trust your athleticism to pull off that shot that you just visualized.

0:44:25 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I’m picturing standing on a tee box and we’ve all got a hole that we kind of dread, or, you know, we’ve hit a couple bad shots and we’ve got these, these mental images of you know letting that ball fly out to the right and drop into the water or whatnot. And you guys talk about controlling that image and you warn that you know you have to. You have to pay attention to what image you’re putting in. What if we find ourselves stuck on that though, Like we are, we know, like, okay, the second hole at Boone Valley has water on the right. That second shot is daunting and I’ve seen my ball go in there a couple of times, right.

So how do we stop perseverating on that image and break ourselves out of that chain, Even though you know, okay, you’re staying over the wall, All right, I think we all say don’t go in the water, don’t go in the water, and so it’s, you know, focus on putting it on the green. But how do we really break that? And I know that’s not an easy question to answer right here.

0:45:25 – Bo Watson
No, that’s where we have to visit with two things. One, we have to mind map the negative habit, so like when we see a pattern. This is why journaling is so powerful and it’s one of the biggest reasons why we’ve seen a college team that we work with that was outside of the top 50 and now trending into the top 20. And, honestly, if we keep on the same path you know they were averaging over 305 as a team in the fall. Now they’re averaging 284 and they just set the third lowest scoring average in school history on their most recent tournament. So we’re trending in the right direction. But I’m going to tell you the biggest reason why that’s been possible is because of journaling and being very mindful to these details, because when, when we start seeing those kinds of negative, how to lose? Like you said, when we see shots over and over on this one particular hole going to water, we have to first become aware of what behavior and what thoughts are entering our minds when that’s happening. So when we shot a spotlight on what’s going on that triggers it, we can identify the old behavior and autopilot behavior that people just seem to. For whatever reason, we just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and that’s why we like to have these hard conversations. Once we identify there’s a negative habit loop, there is, for an example, let’s say, on that hole you hit it in the water like five times out of the last seven rounds and what we identify is you tense up and you’re trying to control your swing right. There’s always a reward value in our brain where whenever we do some type of behavior, there’s some type of reward for it. Even if you have a very low success rate, your brain will always take that part. Like that one time, four rounds prior, where you are still tense and you still try to control your swing, but yet you hit it 10 yards in from the water’s edge, but you’re safe, right. You will still keep doing that over and over and over again until finally you come to grips with. I like to ask this question to our players hey, out of the last 10 times you do this, what’s your success rate? And what they’ll come back and tell us is like 10%, 15%. I’ll say, okay, now we go deeper in this in the book. But that’s where we kind of teach this interest-curiosity approach that we want to take, and there’s a lot of research to back this up. That’s really, really cool. But when we take that approach where it literally updates reward value in our brain, so to speak Dr Rick Judson talks about this in his anxiety book it’s an amazing resource for that. But what we’ve done is we’ve kind of taken that and we applied it to the game of golf and we show it how it can be even more practical for this and that’s what we’re doing with our players is now we’re able to go. That’s interesting.

I’m about to engage in this behavior that only has about a 15% success rate and what it does it gives you permission to go. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Why would I do this? And then what we can do is is okay, let’s choose a better path. And that’s where the ball reset, which is in the very next chapter in a book where we go deep on that, and what that does is it literally I’ll help shannon’s uh way to explain it but it literally becomes a washing machine, so to speak, for the brain to do a hard reset.

So we can take a player from a red light state. We can go deep into this if we need to, but we can take a player from a red light state. We can go deep into this if we need to, but we’re going to take a player from a red light state in the brain where there’s so many faults happening right after another. So just give a quick understanding of what the red light state is. You know, basically your brain has multiple different wave activity going on in the brain. So, like when there’s a lot of conscious level fault, your brain can basically become inflamed, so to speak, on some of these brain scans and it’s so fascinating because whenever we miss, like a three-foot putt or something like that, we got so many negative thoughts happening right after another after another. So just think of it that there’s a lot of activity going on, but when we do a ball reset, we can get a player back to green light state within about 10 seconds. That is about the equivalent of them doing 20 minutes of meditation or 20 minutes of yoga in the brain.

Now that’s powerful because what we’re doing is we’re resetting the brain, so to speak, back to a green light state where they can process things. And you know you hear people say this all the time. You know you have what’s called a fight or flight response. You know some people call it the alligator brain, and so it’s like you know, now there’s a threat and the whole prefrontal cortex kind of goes offline, so to speak. And what this reset is doing is bringing on the parts of the brain that actually can function and do things at a normal level, so to speak. And that’s what we’re doing is we’re taking them through a process where we do the hard reset, getting back to a green light state. Then we’re falling out of power talk, and then on top of that, we’re having them relive an amazing shot in the past in a similar situation. And when they go through it in that process, they’re now excited when they get to the last L of the ball reset and look forward, and they’re excited to play this next shot. Now I’ll give you an example, and this is why Sam Snead was so dang good.

Not many people know about this story, but we cover it in a book and I’ll share it for everybody here on this podcast. This is really cool. Those of you that struggle with anxiety, those of you that struggle with nervousness, listen to this. Sam Snead. He is in 1936, the week before he’s going to play in his PGA Tour debut tournament at the Greenbrier. Now he’s playing at the Greenbrier the week before. Now he’s playing with Greenbrier the week before.

The head pro organizes an exhibition match. It’s got two former US amateur champions, one former US Open winner, now Sam Snead’s a rookie. Now word gets out there are so many people coming to watch this match and so there is a ton of people that’s surrounding the first tee Sam’s turn. Sam gets up. He is so nervous he is having to use both hands to steady the ball on the tee. Like can you imagine? Like that’s basically on the verge of a panic attack, if we’re being completely honest. Right, so he is trying to steady the ball on the tee with both hands. That’s how bad he was shaking.

Now he collects himself, he walks back Probably lucky that he actually was able to walk back in that situation. But he’s standing behind the ball and what he does is he closes his eyes, and what he does is he then relives all of his amazing shots in the past on that same hole. He gets up, goes through his routine, hits the shot the crowd gasps. And when he looks and sees his ball flying, hits the shot, the crowd gasps. And when he looks and sees his ball flying through the air, not only is he outdriving his playing opponents by about 20 yards, but he hits it about 15 yards further than all of his most successful drives that he had hit on that hole in the past.

Now wait a second. How does a guy go from on the verge of a panic attack to then hitting his most successful drive ever on the same hole? It was because what he did was doing mental imagery and that’s why it’s such a major piece for a ball reset in the first L when we do a look back that right there. We just had a conversation with one of our college players just yesterday. She had a scoring average of 77 from her first two seasons and right now she just threw the first three tournaments in this spring season. She’s averaging a 72.8. She said the ball reset has blown her secret weapon and it is one of the biggest, most powerful tools that people need that have been able to get people out of these negative habit loops and actually get them to a place where they can attack these things head-on wow.

0:52:31 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You talk about how you know he he was able to relax and saw his ball go so much further. I remember you guys talking in the book about how so much of this is first of all changing your state to be in a more relaxed state, but then also helping to produce a better rhythm and tempo in your swing. And I, uh and that’s really where a lot of the extra distance and power comes from. We tend to get so focused on trying to muscle through our golf swing, trying to hit a ball further. But I think we’ve all experienced that relaxed swing that just you’re like whoa, how did that swing produce that effect? And I’ve even been doing a lot of research lately just on the body and fascia and how the tempo and the way that our body reacts with contraction versus relaxation and how those things play together with the rhythm. So it’s like so many things that you guys talk about, and then even the physical components from a training side of things, how they all mesh together, and it’s just fascinating to me things how they all mesh together and it’s just fascinating to me.

One thing that I heard you guys talk about on Carl’s podcast was that along with your book, you have a workbook, and I think that that’s important to mention, because so many of us have read books along the lines of what we’re trying to do here, but we tend to read the books and then go on to the next book and go on to the next book. And so, shannon, if you could tell us a little bit about, kind of, the whole structure of your program and why the workbook was so essential to this piece and for people really getting results, I like to say this Our book will put your game on steroids, so to speak mental steroids.

0:54:17 – Shannon Shuskey
But the workbook will put the book on steroids Because here’s the thing you’re going to learn everything a lot faster, first and foremost. But then also, we have activations that are in the workbook, because I mean, goodness, our book would be like a novel, would be huge, if we put everything in there, then downloads and everything like that. That’s in the workbook. And so we have certain activations like going out, doing certain things, playing, um, uh, we also give them like a schedule, it’s in the workbook. Like, for example, you’re like. We also give them like a schedule, it’s in the workbook. Like, for example, you’re like this mental energy, what, where do I start? What do I do? What are the guidelines? You know what am I working on? And here’s the thing we get. We set them, we set everybody up to for success.

For example, like Bo mentioned, about the college coach you know I played soccer in college. About the college coach you know I played soccer in college. Um, I would be extremely let down if my soccer coach did not have a plan. And the same thing on speed skating. You know, with speed skating, that if my coach didn’t have a a thought, well thought out process on what I should be doing now and then not just now, but two months from now and in order for me to peak or to get to a certain level, and stuff like so then what we’ve done is we actually created schedules and things like that in there. All right, what are you working on? What do you need to work on?

And then you know you, you can’t neglect any golf club. For example, we actually had one of the one of our tour players that we’re working with. Um, you know, after about two months, the the putting started struggling was because they neglected putting. You can’t, you can’t neglect anything, any part of the game, and so you basically got to do maintenance work, going through and doing it.

But we, we show you, like, a lot of that stuff that’s in the workbook as well, going in there. And and here’s the other thing too um, I’ve noticed, like when it, when it comes to certain, uh, certain books, that you can go out, somebody will create a workbook that goes with it, right, and it’s like oh man, I’m gonna get that, there’s a workbook that goes with it. And then you look at it you’re like, wow, that’s not even by the author, right, right and then, and there’s, there’s no depth to it whatsoever. So we actually created a deeper depth so we can learn it faster. But then you, you, it’s, you’re, you’re becoming what the book is wanting you to be and you’re walking in your true identity awesome well, anything to add to that?

0:56:50 – Jeff Pelizzaro
looked like you were.

0:56:51 – Bo Watson
You wanted to add a little something that that last statement right there, is like the nail on the head because you are becoming the book at that point. And that is the main purpose behind why we created the workbook that way. They have something that is practical and that that’s always been all right.

Some context there me personally and what I’ve seen a lot of other golfers complain about, and when it comes through the mental side of the game and these mental books that are out there and don’t get me wrong, like there’s a lot of good things out there, but one of the biggest comedy denominators I kept seeing over and over and over again and it was also true of me is that it’s very high philosophical, so to speak, but yet there’s no like practical, like ABC step one, two, three, and when it came to applying these things, that’s why you know when we created the book and then, more importantly, the workbook, it is like hey, here, start here, do this, do this, do this, and that way it’s like a clear path.

But even better, you can actually measure Are you actually getting better? Because we have a business test that will actually measure your ability to visualize how good is your mental imagery, and we’ve taken people that have had like a low score of 24 and get that increase all the way up to as high as like 72, 73 over just like a couple months. And so that part is exciting, because now we have something that can actually measure are you getting better at the mental side of the game? And so that’s a big piece to it.

0:58:15 – Shannon Shuskey
Yeah, we also have like an anxiety test. Who would have thunk it? You know, when it comes to golf, you know what I mean. Like you know, like you had mentioned, like you got this hole that you dread or you got a tournament coming up, you know how do you change the nervous to exciting, but then you know what is your gauge that you’re going by. In other words, how are you going to do a check engine, like check for your brain, and then so we have an anxiety test. We’ve got a lot of self-evaluations that are in there that’s not in the book as well to where you can kind of see, if you’re transparent with yourself, it’s going to give you a much better performance because you know where to start, you know what I mean, and so it kind of gives you that. It kind of puts you in the starting blocks, ready for you to take off.

0:59:01 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, and you guys do have quite a few downloads in the book too that I’m sure are part of the workbook as well. If they don’t have the workbook that they can go and do some of those things. Awesome, Bo. Where can they go find?

0:59:16 – Bo Watson
what’s the best place for them to find the book and everything that you guys are doing? Yeah, the best place it just goes simply to the website. It’s indesignsecretscom. So you just go to indesignsecretscom and what’s pretty cool is we created a really special offer. They can also get the book on Amazon and they can do that, and you go get a full price of $24.95 on Amazon. But if you get it through our website, it’s actually a personalized, autographed version of the book from both Shannon and I and we’re basically buying a book for you. All you have to do is just pay shipping and handling and it’s only $9.95 for that and we will send it out personalized, signed copy and there’s a couple other bonuses there too. So, yeah, you can get the book at either location, but if you go to our website, it’s onthezonessecretscom.

0:59:56 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Okay, awesome, and we’ll make sure that all that’s linked up in the show notes and everything, fellas, we could. I mean, there’s so much in this book. Obviously, people are going to want to go and grab this and dig in a lot more after our conversation. There’s so many different avenues we could go down here, but unfortunately we don’t have the time to do that, so we’re going to finish up with the, the questions we ask everybody that comes on the show. Have a little fun with you, fellas.

1:00:23 – Shannon Shuskey
Um, shannon, I’ll throw this one out to you first, caddy shack or happy gilmore. Oh man, that’s tough. I would say I’m probably happy g Gilmore just because of that. You know, I’ve dealt with some of that stuff in the middle aspect. I thought you know we can overcome them.

1:00:42 – Jeff Pelizzaro
How about?

1:00:44 – Bo Watson
you Bo? Yeah, I thought about that. It’s definitely happy, gilmore, although it’s such a close tie. It’s just so funny, it is funny.

1:00:53 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, bo, if you could pick a walk-up song to the first tee box. What are you picking?

1:00:57 – Bo Watson
You know, I still cannot figure out the name of the song, but it’s the. It’s the most popular Darude Sandstorm, that’s what it was.

1:01:08 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Okay, shannon.

1:01:11 – Shannon Shuskey
So it’s by a Christian rap artist. His name is Andy Mineo, it’s called you Can’t Stop Me. I like the. And then he also had one that actually has been in a lot of commercials and it’s called Coming In Hot, okay, awesome.

1:01:28 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, shannon, what’s a book that you would recommend to the listeners? It doesn’t have to be golf, it doesn’t have to be anything related to what we’ve even talked about today, but something that means a lot to you, that you tend to share with people, that has made a big difference in your life.

1:01:45 – Shannon Shuskey
I would say the Power of One More by Ed Milet, just because it literally pushes you to a nother level in every single area of your life. You know um very similar. I would say like that’s, that’s what our book does as well. As far as like um, because you can apply what we teach in our book to everyday life, um, and actually champion um every area of your life as well.

1:02:14 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Fantastic.

1:02:15 – Bo Watson
Beau. Well, besides God’s word, it would be probably Dale Carnegie how to Win Friends and Influence People, because that is an all-time classic and I love it because it just kind of expands on what it truly means to understand people and serve them, and I love that aspect of it.

1:02:38 – Jeff Pelizzaro
One of the most popular recommended books we’ve had on the show so far. No All right, bo, if you could pick a dream foursome to go play golf with. Who are you picking and what’s your bucket list course that you would want to take him to?

1:02:53 – Bo Watson
Well, some of these guys would obviously be dead, but it would be Bobby Jones and one. It would have to be Alex Morrison and then probably Tiger, so I’d be the foursome. And then the course we go to, that’s not St Andrews or Augusta, would be the new, most talked about course right now in the Bahamas or the Caribbean, st Lucia, whatever it’s called. Can I go to St Lucia, play hardy golf?

1:03:21 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Okay, yeah, yeah, that’s a. That’s a good little trip.

1:03:26 – Shannon Shuskey
Yes, okay, yeah, yeah, that’s a good little trip, yeah, so my dream would be to walk with Bo and watch them play, because when it comes to golf, left-handed, right-handed, it don’t matter, it’s like I’ve got a third foot or something you know.

1:03:42 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s awesome. Well, I’m going to throw it back to you, though. Let’s say you just get to walk with the foursome. I want to hear your foursome that you’re picking, or three other guys that you would like to walk and just hang with.

1:03:55 – Shannon Shuskey
Yeah, I would say Phil Mickelson, just because of his history. It took him 14 years before he won a major and now he’s actually been very transparent more about his game and what he’s done. Um, and then obviously, uh, tiger, um as well, but um, yeah, those would be the two. And then, um, I would, I would, I’d have go, but Bo will go with me so he can teach me more.

1:04:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, Awesome. What’s a social media account that both of you guys follow? You don’t have to both follow the same account, but one from each of you. That, and again, doesn’t have to be anything related to golf or anything we talked about that you just find fascinating and think the audience would benefit from checking it out.

1:04:45 – Bo Watson
Bo All right, I got to say two. It’s going to be Ed Milet and Dr Andrew Huberman.

1:04:51 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome.

1:04:52 – Bo Watson
Both favorites of the show here.

1:04:54 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Only one has been on the podcast, but would love to get Huberman on one of these days. How about you, Shannon?

1:05:00 – Shannon Shuskey
Yeah, well, definitely Andrew Huberman, for sure. Matter of fact, a lot of our studies came from his. You know that’s in our book, that came out of Stanford and basically some of the stuff like even like we talked about mental imagery, just the basics of mental imagery just kind of getting back onto that and getting at least 50 reps in, you know no longer than 20 seconds you know that came from studies out of Stanford and stuff like that. But definitely when it comes to that, yeah, I would say by Ed Matalette and Andrew Huberman.

1:05:40 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right. Last one, and Shannon, I’m still going to throw this at you, even though you said you’re not much of a golfer yourself what’s the best piece of golf advice that you’ve ever been given, shannon, you, I’ll have you go first trust it saved it and did that come from Bo? Yes, I’ve had a yes, how about you, bill?

1:06:10 – Bo Watson
You know, I really believe the best golf advice and this is going to help everybody on here is surrender the shot before you play it, love it. Surrender your shot. So the outcome of the shot, surrender it. No matter what happens, good or bad, before you play it, man, you can just move forward much faster fantastic fellas I’d have to agree 100.

1:06:32 – Shannon Shuskey
That’s one, one of the things this, this that we’ve seen, is like. If you, if you, see golf as a game of mistakes, it makes it easier to you, know, you know, to surrender the outcome before you even walk into your shot.

1:06:49 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Well, fellas, this has been fantastic. I’m really excited for the 18STRONG Crew to dig into your work. I know that you guys are on a mission to help 100,000 golfers shoot their lifetime low, so hopefully a lot of the 18STRONG Crew can be a part of those 100,000 golfers. Any last pieces that you want to share with us before we let you go, bo?

1:07:13 – Bo Watson
The biggest thing I can say is, when you look at the game of golf, a lot of people say game of golf is 90% mental and 10% fiscal. But here’s the thing why is it that everybody is spending 100% of their time on 10% of the game? Now I understand different people like, say, beginners. It might be more like a 60-40 ratio, it could be 70-30. But the problem that I’ve seen over the last 40, 50 years is that so many people are going after technique, technique, technique, and then they feel like once they get to a point where their technique’s okay, then they start working on the mental game. It’s already too late.

And I’ll just say this really quick there was a beginner golf study that they did that measured an approach shot, and what was so fascinating is that they found that with the three groups, one did physical and mental imagery, one did physical practice, the other one did something totally unrelated. What was fascinating was that the group that did physical and mental imagery outperformed the one that did physical, and the totally unrelated obviously didn’t even have any benefit whatsoever. But what that goes to prove is that if you put mental work on your game on the back burner, it’s going to hurt you like down the road, and so you gotta gotta get ahead of it, and that’s one of the big reasons why we wrote the book, and so people can actually see a breakthrough very quickly.

1:08:49 – Jeff Pelizzaro
How about?

1:08:49 – Shannon Shuskey
you, shannon? Yeah, so actually that’s a loaded question. I love it. It’s not what’s happening around you, it’s not what’s happening to you, it’s what’s happening on the inside of you. It’s how we respond to certain events. You know how we actually cause. You know your emotions can change your moods. You know your movement can change your emotions and stuff like that.

And so I think that’s a huge game changer and to realize that it’s I like to say it like this it’s our response ability. It’s our ability to be able to respond to certain events that can take it, to take our life to a whole other level, not just our game, but knowing that it’s not what’s happening around you, it’s not what’s happening to you, it’s what’s happening on the inside of you and it’s how you respond to those things that actually change it. It’s not thoughts determine what you want, actions determine what you get, but it’s your behavior that can actually change it. It’s not thoughts determine what you want, actions determine what you get, but it’s your behavior that can change your future and it’s how we act, in that you know decisions determine your destiny, you know, and your focus can determine your future.

1:10:00 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s so good. I’ve never heard it put like that response, response ability. It’s just, it’s perfect. It’s perfect. All right, fellas, can’t thank you enough for the time and really look forward to, first of all, seeing you guys accomplish this goal of a hundred thousand golfers and beyond. Um and just. I’m excited to put this into my own practice, my own game, and shoot my lifetime low as well. So thank you for coming on to both of you guys.

1:10:25 – Bo Watson
Absolutely. Thanks for having us, Jeff.

1:10:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, thanks for listening to the 18STRONG Podcast and if you found this episode helpful, don’t forget to share it with your friends. And, of course, go follow us over on Instagram at 18STRONG. Thanks again. We’ll catch up with you next week. Train hard, practice smart and play better golf.

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371: BO WATSON & SHANNON SHUSKEY- How to Shoot Your Lifetime Low Score!