Bob Rotella explains why coaches and players need to focus on having fun: when you relax and stop overthinking, your muscles loosen, your mind quiets, and rhythm and flow return. Trying to consciously control every motion makes you a serious, uptight nerd and kills unconscious performance.
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It's funny, I spend so much of my time teaching people to have fun because I think in all of sport, you play a lot better when you're having fun and you're enjoying it. But from a psychological standpoint, when you're having fun, not only do your muscles relax, but your mind gets quiet. So I'm always telling players, you know, you have a choice every time you go to the golf course or get near the short game is you can either suddenly feel like a really talented athlete or you can turn yourself into a serious, uptight nerd. And I'm always telling players that when you're having fun, you're much more likely to feel like a talented athlete. And when you start getting serious, you're more likely to turn into a serious nerd. And when I say serious nerd, I mean someone who tries to play consciously. When I say consciously, I'm talking about people suddenly start overthinking everything or trying to do it correctly or thinking about how to make the motion instead of letting it happen. The reason we want to have fun is so that the mind gets quiet and you can go unconscious, because we all play better. Like, you hear so many people talk about rhythm and flow. It's impossible to have rhythm and flow if you're doing it consciously. So you're going to get a lot more rhythm and flow and a lot of touch and feel if you're unconscious.
