Top Tips to Cure the YIPS
Top Tips to Cure the YIPS
The YIPs, the jitters, the twitters – whichever terminology you are familiar with, most golfers at some stage of their golfing career would have experienced them.
Don’t be fooled by the innocuous sounding name, the YIPs can take hold of a golfer and cause havoc with their putting or chipping technique.
The YIPs, this short sounding word can have long-term damaging consequences on the confidence of a golfer. Neither amateurs nor professionals are immune to their debilitating effect.
So what exactly are the YIPs? Jon Adler, Bournemouth based founder of Golf is a Mind Game – offers a unique coaching service that can cure The Yips, explains: “In their physical sense, the YIPs usually manifest themselves either when putting or chipping. Due to anxiety or doubt , the fine motor skills of a golfer become stiff and jerky and thus players are unable to control their strokes due to the tension in their hands and body.”
This may sound like nothing to worry about, but the YIPs are often repetitive in certain circumstances on the green, and its long-term effect can be disastrous for a golfer. Even professional golfers are not immune to the YIPs – golfers have reported that their anxiety levels rise, their confidence diminishes and their love of golf declines.
Some have even given up the game because of the damage caused by the YIPs.
Jon Adler elaborated: “In the past, the YIPs have just been attributed to a bad case of nerves and people have been urged to spend many hours practising their swings, putts and chips incorporating positive thinking techniques. Sadly, this rarely rectifies the problem.”
Adler became interested in how to overcome the YIPs when more and more golfers asked if he could help them. As a Performance Coach with an Eastern philosophy outlook, he began to research the way the mind and body responded to the YIPs and how they could be overcome. The YIPs, he believes are a strong form of inference from the mind, which directly affects the body.
Since then, he has established a Yips Coaching Service for suffering golfers and has helped many sufferers including a European Tour player. Jon Adler explains that the first step on the road to recovery: “May sound simplistic, but the first thing any golfer must do is to own up to having the YIPs and take responsibility for them. They are a manifest of your internal workings rather than a purely mechanical and physical problem. Only once ownership has been taken of the YIPs can a golfer begin to stop looking outside for solutions and begin to look inside of themselves.”
Jon Adler is keen to restore the love of the game back into people’s lives and is keen to share his exercises and advice to other YIP sufferers. There are a range of courses from one-to-one sessions, face to face or over the telephone. He has also produced a great Overcome The Yips video series along with a book.