Skill Drills with Meredith Kirk: Shake It Off

Today I’m going to give you a drill on how to induce relaxation and do away with anxiety out on the course. And this drill is called shake it off. And what I mean by shake it off is, we want to get rid of any negative energy or tension that we have when we arrive to that first tee. Because many of us can get there and get a little jittery, we have a lot of tension, we’re a little worried about our game maybe. So this drill, shake it off, is going to show you the power of hemispheric integration. Now that sounds really fancy, but basically what it means is this. We have the right side of our brain, and we have the left side of our brain, and then we have a midline. And what you want to do is, you want to cross the right and the left side, so we’re making lateral movements with our body that crosses the midline of our brain, and this has been proven to create more relaxation and reduce anxiety. So let me show you how this works. The first thing that you want to do is you want to cross your right foot over your left like this, that’s one lateral cross movement. You’re going to put your arms out like this, hands or fingers are going to interlock into the hands here, and then you’re going to bring it underneath like this. Okay, so you have two lateral cross movements. So we’ve crossed our midline twice. When you get to this point right here, you want to take a deep breath, you’re going to inhale, big breath, hold it five seconds, then you want to release it. You want to do this with the other foot, okay. So we’re going to cross again, hands out, interlock the fingers, and we’re going to bring this in just like this. Take a deep breath in, hold, and then release. Now you can do this when you get to the first tee and it’s a game-changer. It will really help reduce your anxiety. Another thing that you can do in between holes, let’s say you have a hole and you hit poorly. You didn’t like your score on it. As you’re going to the next hole, I want you to try this other lateral movement. So for this right here, what you’re going to do is you’re going to lift your left leg. With your right hand, you’re going to tap the inside of the left leg, and then you’re going to repeat it on the other side. Now we’re going to move a little faster with it, just at a nice comfortable pace, tapping back and forth. So we’re making a nice lateral movement right here, crossing our midline. And you can do this, again, between any hole, as you’re walking to it, you’re stepping up to the tee, you can do this 15, 30 seconds, it really is a game-changer. This is amazing. So if you have issues with anxiety out on the course, you want to let go of tension, you want to feel more relaxed, you’ve got to try this hemispheric integration. But I’m simply going to call it shake it off.