Hey Fellow Golfer -

In the first edition of the More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter, I delivered a masterclass on how emotional mastery is the key to shooting more pars than bogeys. For a thorough understanding of how unmanaged emotion - from anger to excitement - is wreaking havoc on your game, I recommend you read that first. 

Click here to do so. 

You and I both know that golf is an emotional game.

• One moment, you experience an intense sensation of joy, confidence, and pride after sinking an 18’ birdie putt.

• The next is an overwhelming sense of anger, frustration, and regret as your bunker shot remains, well, in the bunker

• Oh, and don’t forget the intermittent bouts of anxiety and nerves in between, such as when you watch your competitor chip in for birdie or discover there are a few tree branches impeding your shot to the green.

The root derivative of the word emotion is “energy in motion.” 

When you have an emotional experience, a significant amount of energy moves throughout your body. 

This is what you physically feel.

• You experience tightness in your chest when you’re stressed.

• You experience tension in your body when you’re frustrated.

• You experience heat in your body when you’re angry.

• You experience butterflies in your stomach when you’re over-excited or anxious. 

• You experience heaviness on your shoulders and neck with expectations and pressure to perform.

When unaddressed and not adequately managed, each emotion contributes to tension and tightness throughout the body.

Why is this noteworthy?

Tension and tightness are the antithesis of the smooth, fluid swing you’ve spent hundreds of hours (and thousands of dollars) working on.

A fundamental skill that every great golfer has become proficient in is awareness and managing his or her breath.

Your breath can increase presence, dial in focus, cultivate confidence, and regulate your emotional, mental, and physical states. 

In today’s newsletter, you’ll learn how and why cultivating a mid-round breathwork practice can help you play with greater confidence, focus, and calm. 

You’ll also learn my five most recommended breathwork strategies to boost energy and regulate your emotions so that you can shoot more pars than bogeys.

Let’s tee off!

How Your Breath Impacts Your Golf Game

The majority of this newsletter will detail the benefits of cultivating a mid-round breathwork practice to help you manage your emotions and dial in your focus. 

However, it’s also essential to recognize how impactful consistent breathwork practice during your round can be in optimizing strength and performance.

Here’s a quick refresher on what’s happening each time you inhale:

• When you breathe in, oxygen from the air enters your lungs. 

• Oxygen passes through the walls of tiny air sacs - known as alveoli - and enters your blood.

• The oxygen then travels through your blood to all body parts, including your muscles, which need oxygen to perform optimally during your swing.

And what’s happening each time you exhale:

• When you breathe out, your body removes carbon dioxide, a waste product that builds up with muscle contraction. 

• Carbon dioxide is produced when muscles use oxygen. It travels back through the blood to the lungs, passing from the blood into the alveoli. 

• Then, when you breathe out, the carbon dioxide leaves your body.

In short, each inhale provides adequate fuel to your working muscles, and each exhale removes the metabolic waste products from your contracting muscles. 

This natural process helps ensure your muscles have all they need to perform optimally - without interference from fatigue-related byproducts.

To further optimize the beneficial impact breathing has on your ability to remain calm, focused, and relaxed, you must understand three basic points when choosing to breathe through your nose or mouth.

1. Primarily Breathing Through Your Nose: Nose breathing filters and warms the air, making it more efficient and effective for your lungs to breathe. It also helps you take deeper breaths, which means more oxygen for your body. You’ll learn to use this strategy to help induce a calm state.

2. Primarily Breathing Through Your Mouth: When you primarily breathe through your mouth, you stimulate your sympathetic nervous system. When done with intention, you can cultivate more energy and a heightened state of arousal on demand. 

3. Lengthening Your Exhale (relative to your Inhale): When you exhale longer than your inhale, your brain receives a signal to relax. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which calms you down.

The Benefits of Breathwork

Breathing is at the center of everything you do.

When you cultivate consistent awareness, management, and regulation of your breath, you can change your emotional, mental, and physical state on demand. 

In turn, you reap several health benefits. 

Here’s a list of some of the most research-backed benefits of cultivating a consistent breathwork practice and how they directly apply to aid your efforts to shoot more pars than bogeys.

1. Reduces Stress: Cultivate a sense of calm on-demand while ridding feelings of stress and anxiety. 

2. Improves Focus: Enhance concentration and mental clarity to optimize course decision-making. 

3. Promotes Relaxation: Activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and calmness, when standing over a birdie putt or putt to win the round on the 18th green.

4. Controls Heart Rate: Lower your heart rate before a tricky or pressure-filled shot to create a sense of calm concentration (this is helpful when hitting over or navigating around water).

5. Enhances Emotional Control: Manage your emotions in high-pressure situations - whether in your club tournament or sinking that putt to take your buddy's money. 

6. Boosts Oxygen Intake: Improve oxygen flow to your brain and body to increase energy levels and overall performance.

7. Improves Lung Function: Learn to breathe more efficiently to retain the same focus and energy on the 17th hole as you did on the third hole. 

8. Aids in Sleep: Every aspect of your life improves with better sleep. Need I say more?

9. Enhances Mindfulness: Be here - now. When you focus on your breath, you cannot be anywhere else but in the present moment, which creates focus and presence before your next shot.  

I help golfers overcome the mental and emotional hazards of their minds to shoot more pars than bogeys. 

Whether you’re a double-digit handicapper trying to claw your way to single digits or a single-digit handicapper looking to win your next tournament, mindset coaching and hypnotherapy can help you get unstuck from the proverbial bunker of playing below your potential.

Click here to schedule a free Mental Game Strategy session to learn how I can help you shoot lower scores. 

5 Mid-Round Strategies to Emotionally Off-Gas to Shoot More Pars than Bogeys

Below, you’ll find five of my most recommended breathwork strategies designed to help you manage your emotional and energetic state during a round of golf. 

The first two strategies - the rapid reset and 2-1 initiator breaths - are designed to help boost energy.

The following three strategies - the four-count box breath, 4-7-8 breath, and 1:1-2-3 breath - are designed to help you regain control and lower your heart rate.

Each strategy can be used during your round any time you need to reset the emotional dial to create the focus, confidence, and calm you need.

The Rapid Reset Breath

The Purpose: This breath aims to bring immediate attention to the present moment before off-gassing whatever accumulating emotion begins to step into the driver’s seat of your decision-making. 

When to Use It: I recommend you implement this immediately after you notice a surge in toxic emotion - think a bad shot - or while on the ride to the next hole or shot.

Watch me do it:

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do it:

1. Take two sharp inhales through your nose.

2. Exhale audibly through your mouth for two seconds.

3. Take two sharp inhales through your nose.

4. Exhale audibly through your mouth for four seconds.

5. Take two sharp inhales through your nose.

6. Exhale audibly through your mouth for six seconds.

That is one round of the rapid reset breath, which will help you off-gas any pent-up emotion spilling over.

Key Point:

• Note that your exhales should be audible. This helps to remove any emotional energy that is no longer serving you.

The 2-1 Initiator Breath

The Purpose: When the clubhouse is too far away, and the cart girl is nowhere to be seen, this breath will serve as the symbolic shot of espresso you need to refocus and reenergize yourself.

When to Use It: I recommend you use this breath any time you notice fatigue setting in, particularly on days with a sunrise tee time. However, this breath provides great benefit anytime during the round you begin to feel tired, especially on the back nine.

Watch me do it:

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do it:

1. Take a sharp, strong inhale through your mouth - with pursed lips as if you’re blowing out a birthday candle (except now you’re inhaling) for two seconds.

2. Relax your lungs, allowing the air to exhale (rather than forcefully exhaling) naturally.

Repeat five times to complete one round of this breath.

Please note that this breath will begin to “turn on” your sympathetic nervous system (hence “waking” you up). 

If you’re inexperienced with breathwork or out-of-shape from a cardiovascular health standpoint, you may experience lightheadedness or dizziness if you do too many rounds. I advise you to start with one round and assess how you feel before continuing with an additional round. 

Work your way up to three to five rounds. 

Key Point:

• Ease into this breath. Start with one round and assess how you feel before continuing with an additional round. 

The breathing techniques I’ll describe below also play a pivotal role in helping you manage expectations by keeping you more level-headed. 

In episode #11 of The Scratch Golfer's Mindset Podcast, I detail how costly it is to have a large space between expectations and reality.

Listen in.

The Box Breath

The Purpose: This breath is designed to restore a sense of presence, calm, and relaxation. 

When To Use It: Use this breath practice any time you notice the first feeling of tension in your stomach, chest, shoulders, or neck, which may indicate that a specific emotion is trying to hijack the driver’s seat of your decision-making on the course. 

Even one round is sufficient to help me feel more relaxed, so I try to incorporate it while driving to my shot or waiting to tee off. 

Watch me do it:

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do it:

1. Inhale through your nose for four seconds.

2. Hold your breath for four seconds.

3. Exhale through your nose for four seconds.

4. Hold your breath for four seconds. 

This is one round.

You should strive for at least one round on the course and work up to five consecutive rounds when incorporating this away from the course. 

Key Point:

• You can exhale through your nose or mouth; however, I recommend exhaling through your nose for added calming benefit.

The 4-7-8 Breath

The Purpose: This breath helps to ground you in the present moment while also turning down the volume of any heightened emotions. 

You’ll notice that after completing this, you’re present, much calmer than before, and able to consciously respond to how to think and act in the next moment.

When to Use It: This breath is best used after a frustrating hole or front nine when you need to regroup and refocus - and have a few minutes to do so. I recommend you implement this on the ride to the next hole or while waiting for your partner to hit their next shot. 

Watch me do it:

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do it:

1. Inhale through your nose for four seconds.

2. Hold your breath for seven seconds.

3. Exhale through your mouth - with pursed lips as if you’re blowing out a birthday candle - for eight seconds. 

That is one round. 

To initiate a second round, immediately begin your four-second inhale again - without a pause at the bottom.

I recommend a minimum of three rounds. 

Key Points:

• When exhaling through my mouth, I find it helpful to maintain control by pursing my lips as if blowing out a candle. 

The 1:1-2-3 Breath (my favorite)

The Purpose: This breath helps to ground you in the present moment while also turning down the volume of any heightened emotions. 

You’ll notice that after completing this, you’re present, much calmer than before, and able to consciously respond to how to think and act in the next moment.

When to Use It: This breath is best used after a frustrating hole or front nine when you need to regroup and refocus - and have a few minutes to do so. I recommend you implement this on the ride to the next hole or while waiting for your partner to hit their next shot. 

Watch me do it:

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do it:

1. Inhale through your nose for four seconds.

2. Exhale through your mouth - with pursed lips as if you’re blowing out a birthday candle - for four seconds. 

3. Inhale through your nose for four seconds.

4. Exhale through your mouth - with pursed lips as if you’re blowing out a birthday candle - for eight seconds. 

5. Inhale through your nose for four seconds.

6. Exhale through your mouth - with pursed lips as if you’re blowing out a birthday candle - for twelve seconds. 

This is one round of the 1:1-2-3 breath.

Often, one round is all you need to refocus and ground yourself in the present moment. However, I recommend pushing for three rounds as often as possible, especially when practicing at home. 

Key Points:

• You’ll notice that your exhale lengthens with each subsequent breath. This helps to reduce your heart rate further and promotes a deeper state of relaxation - fast. 

And you’re welcome.

You can now use this powerful tool while stuck in a Zoom meeting, trapped in traffic, or dealing with any other inevitable trigger life throws your way.

Your Next Step

Every newsletter will conclude with a suggested action step and further resources on the topic we discussed.

I’m most excited to share my five go-to breathwork strategies with you because the benefits you receive also extend off the course.

To begin learning and practicing these strategies to help you shoot more pars than bogeys, I recommend you commit to implementing one energy-boosting breath and one emotional-regulating breath during your next round - practice as many times as necessary.

As needed, rotate through several options to learn what feels best and is most effective. And don’t hesitate to add or subtract a couple of seconds to incorporate breath holds or put your spin on these to make them more effective.

This is your breathwork practice and should be tailored to meet your needs. 

Thank you for reading today’s newsletter.

If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow golfer ready to take their game to the next level.

Until next time,

Paul

P.S. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Reply back / drop a comment below to let me know.

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2. Overcome the Mental Hazards of Your Mind: How Hypnosis Can Help You Shoot Lower Scores: Whether you spend two or ten hours at the range each week, if you don’t learn to address and overcome your mind's mental and emotional hazards, you’ll remain stuck in the proverbial bunker of poor performance playing well short of your potential. Shoot More Pars.
   

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