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Tension is a killer for golfers, especially beginner golfers. It prevents fluid motion, adds stress and can start the negative dominoes falling until you spiral out of control on the course.

The first step to managing tension is to be able to recognize tension within your swing. One way to do this is to work your way through Iain Highfield's drill that I call the tension scale in your next practice session.

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To do this you flex your muscles as hard as you can which takes you to a 10 on the tension scale. Then you relax as much as possible feeling completely loose, that’s a zero on the tension scale. Work your way up and down the tension scale at least three times then hit your shot from around one or two on the tension scale.

Here’s a video of Iain working with one of his students:

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The second step to managing tension is getting rid of it. This strategy comes from one of our past guests, Debbie O’Connell the 2002 LPGA National Professional of the Year.

Debbie shared with us some information from a Harvard study that shows if you stand and pose like a superhero for 2 minutes your testosterone can go up by 20% which helps instill confidence. Additionally, and potentially more importantly, it can drop your Cortisol levels (the stress hormone) by nearly 25%!

If you want to take it up a notch and add some heroic music (I personally like the Superman soundtrack by John Williams) that’s cool too!

For more on the Harvard study you can check out the actual results here: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9547823/13-027.pdf?sequence=1

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