Your Separation Is in Your Preparation: The Complete Pre-Round Routine

 Most golfers show up to the first tee in yellow light — rushed, cold, and mentally scattered — before they have hit a single shot. Then they wonder why the first three holes always feel like waking up mid-round. 

Today Bo and Shannon fix that permanently. 

This is the episode that bookends the entire One Round Away system. Every tool taught across twelve episodes works better when you arrive at the round already in green light. Today you get the complete protocol from the night before your round to the moment you grip the club on the first tee. 

Here is what you will hear: 

— Why Sam Snead was shaking so badly at the Greenbrier in 1936 that eyewitnesses said he needed both hands to tee the ball, and how he went from that panic attack to outdriving everyone on the hole with his best drive ever 

— The night-before mental course walkthrough: how to pre-experience the round so your nervous system has already been to the first tee before you ever leave the house 

— Why picking up your phone before making a single mental deposit is the first mistake most golfers make on round morning, and what to do instead, including Shannon's list of God's promises as Power Talk statements 

— Dr. Andrew Huberman's physiological sigh and why it outperforms every other breathing technique tested across 700 studies for lowering your stress baseline 

— The Justin Rose simulated play clip Bo shared in his community, and why treating the range exactly like the course is the only way to close the range-to-course gap permanently 

— Why static stretching before a round decreases muscle activation per twenty years of research, and what the dynamic warmup actually does instead 

— The two-ball putting drill, the David Orr face angle calibration, and the 82% stat that changes how you think about start line forever 

— The four yellow light triggers that fire before the round even starts — including the well-intentioned playing partner compliment that accidentally puts you in score-protection mode before hole one 

Remember, you're just one round away...

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Transcript

0:00

I want you to pitch something that happens almost every golfer every single weekend. Saturday morning. You set the alarm for 7 a.m. You hit snooze twice. You scramble to get dressed. You skip breakfast. You grab something in a car, and now you're stuck behind a slow driver. Finally, you whip it in to park, and you have only 12 minutes before your tea time. You throw your shoes on, you jog to the range, and you only have time now for 15 balls. You grab your driver, you swing as hard as you can, trying to figure out your shot shape for the day, your heart rate's elevated, your shoulders are tight, your mind's replaying the traffic jam, and then the argument you just had trying to find your golf glove in the back of your trunk. Finally you get to the first T. And you wonder why the first three holes, it took you until the mid-round to finally wake up and start playing. The reality you started in a yellow light state and you try to play golf from there. And today we're gonna fix that. Hey, what if your best round of golf wasn't yours away? What if you were just one round away? Welcome to the One Round Away podcast, where our mission is simple to help a hundred thousand golfers just like you shoot their new lifetime low round. Not just once by accident, but to finally become the kind of golfer who knows how to perform when it matters most. Hey, I'm Bo Watson. And I'm Shannon Shusky, caveman golf, sea target, seaball, hit ball. Simple, instinctive, and free. And today we're adding the piece that makes caveman golf possible from shot number one, not shot number seven. If you're brand new to the show, welcome. Thanks for coming on board. And if you can, please go back to episode one because we have covered a lot of stuff and everything builds upon each other from what we've done for the last 12 episodes. But it also stands completely on its own. Today is the pre-round routine. By the end of this episode, you will have a complete protocol from the night before your round all the way to the moment you grip the club on the first T. That arrives and you arrive in green light. Not what Bo just talked about in a yellow light state, or actually, in that case, more than likely you're in a red light state, but you're having to the first T in green light state. Absolutely, Shannon. And yeah, I want to say something really quick before we get into the content today. Because up to this point, we've been building on this since episode three. We've installed the trigger, we've given you a CPR, we've talked about Signalize, we've talked about the ball reset, we've just recently talked about the Power Talk library and walking in your identity and the internal thermostat. And these are all fantastic tools. They work amazingly well when you are constantly trying to play this game from a green light state. That's being in flow state, being in the present moment, right? And what we want to do is show you how to get off to a great start because one of the biggest things that I see all the time, and I hear it all the time from our community, and that is it takes me several holes to finally get warmed up, or I got the first T jitters, or I really struggle with my first T nerves. And today we're gonna finally address all that. The beautiful thing is we're gonna get you to a green light state before you even swing that first shot on the first T. Okay. Now, let that sit for a second because the biggest thing that you need to understand is that many of you are arriving to the course in a yellow light state. And the reason why that's happening is because of everything that happened before you got to the first T, the rush morning, the cold body, your mind still processing everything from the week, your work stress, family obligations, the conversation that you just had in a car on the phone, the range session that wasn't even a warm-up, but a desperate search for a swing fault. How many of us can relate to this, right? And then, because of all that, you got the first T anxiety that's firing up the moment that you start seeing other people that maybe you haven't even played with, or there's people just casually observing and watching you, or if you're in a tournament, you got people standing around watching you tee off, and now your nervous system doesn't even know that you drove to a golf course, it just knows that your heart rate is elevated, your muscles are tight, and now your mind is scattered, and it's just responding accordingly, and it's putting you in this yellow light state, and then some of you can even get into a red light state. Yeah, and remember from episode seven when we talked about signal lights, what happens in that yellow light state? You're operating at roughly 40% of your available performance capacity. That is affecting your coordination in a big way when it comes to you being able to swing your golf club. And in a red light state, it even drops to only five to 15%. Who wants to start off like that? You then stand over the first T-shot, the most exposed shot in golf, the one that the most social pressure, the one where everyone is watching and you attempt with your brain to partially, and your brain is partially offline. And then you wonder why the first hole feels so hard. The pre-round routine is the answer. It is how you systematically move from wherever your nervous system is when you arrive at the course, yellow light, red, scatter brained, back to green light before the round even begins. Arnold Palmer said it perfectly. The more I practice, the luckier I get. But he was really saying, and you're gonna hear us say this all that your separation is in your preparation. That preparation creates performance, not luck. The preparation is what ignites your performance because your separation is in your preparation. Today, we will give you that preparation protocol. Yeah, the pre-routine, uh, as you already know, is not starting at the golf course, right? And a lot of times it's not even starting up when you wake up that first thing in the morning. This is where I want to share a story from Bobber Otello's book, The Golfer's Mine. It's a fantastic story that really will illustrate this point, probably the best way possible. In chapter two of that book, Bob talks about how he was giving a presentation and people warned him, and this is early on in his career, and people warned him that Sam Seed was going to be in attendance, and Sam Seed had a reputation for speaking his mind. If Sam were to get up and say, Bob, you're full of it, then Bob Rotella's career would have ended right then and there. We would not know Bob Rotella today, right? So that's what's really on the line at this presentation that Bob is giving. Come to find out, Bob gives his presentation, he finishes. Sam Sneeds does stand up, and everybody is like eyes on him because what is Sam gonna say? Sam stands up and says, This man, young man, we need to listen to him because when I was playing my best, this was the routine that I routinely used. And those of you that don't know, Sam Sneed is tied with Tiger Woods as the all-time leader in PJ tour wins, hall of fame player. And what he goes on to say is that the night before his rounds, he would visualize perfectly the perfect round the night before. He would sometimes get 11, 12, 13 holes, and then he would fall asleep. And then he would wake up, he would have his normal morning routine, and then he would go through that process, and he'd go to the course, and he would play really well, and it would just be rance repeat, and that's what Bob shares. And what I want to do now is I want you to hear from Shannon the routine that we give our players. So, Shannon. First, I want to talk about when you do your mental course walkthrough, so to speak, because you heard what Sam did. He would do it and then often fall asleep, going in the middle of it. I would suggest do it a little bit earlier where you don't fall asleep. That way you're getting the full performance of getting your mental imagery in. So, with that being said, step one is your mental course walkthrough. You're doing this like the night before your round. You find 15, 20 minutes of quiet, no phone, no TV, just you. Sit down, close your eyes, and walk the course, so to speak, in your brain, hole by hole, T to T. Visualize yourself on each T, looking down the fairway, see the shot shape, see what you're gonna hit, see the ball where it lands, the ideal position, see your approach from that position, see your green, see the putt, the breaking, where's it breaking toward? You're visualizing basically a full round of golf and getting that much more familiarized with the golf course. You're actually visualizing the same course that you're getting ready to play. That's the key. And we're gonna give you a little bit like a course map on how to do that as well. If you have played that course before, use your actual memories if you can. If you're playing somewhere new, use a course map. You can use a scorecard that way you can see the yardage for the holes, or watch YouTube footage if it exists. Build the best mental picture that you have of each hole. If you're fortunate enough to have a practice round, we have learned this and we have shared this with so many people. And this right here is can be a game changer for you. If you're fortunate enough to have a practice round, take pictures with your phone from the first T-box going down to the fairway, your next shot, take a picture of where that might be going into the green, your approach shot, whatever it is. You're taking pictures starting from each hole, T-box down the fairway, the second shot, your approach shot, take pictures of your third and fourth shots, the greens. The reason why is because your separation is in your preparation. You're gonna use those pictures, you're gonna visualize your shots on the course. You're not just planning your strategy, you are pre-experiencing the round. You are setting yourself up to perform your best the very next day. By the time you step onto the first T tomorrow, your nervous system has been there before. This familiarize yourself with the course and the territory. It does not trigger a yellow light or red light because you're in unfamiliar territory. Why? Because you put the work in, your separations and your preparation, you're visualized and you familiar yourself with that. That way your nervous system is online and you're completely ready to go in in a green light state going into the first T. One of the other things that you also want to incorporate in this mental reps is your Power Talk. It's great, even at the very beginning, where you can rehearse some of the Power Talk statements that are more in alignment with your identity, such as, hey, I am a PGA champion, or I am a Hall of Fame player, or for those of us that are weekend warriors, hey, I am a sequel digit handicap, or I am a club champion. And these are things where you could say that and then followed up with the more pressure on the line, the better perform. Yeah, but exactly. Incorporate the power talk. And the beautiful thing is you want to incorporate that in with your mental imagery as well. Very simple. You step up to the first T. What do you think about? What's the first thing that's going on? You incorporate power talk. Adversity is my advantage. The pressure is my privilege. It's privilege to walk in this, and the more pressure it is, the better I perform. And then you visualize that shot, and then you go into the next shot. So you're incorporating power talk in with your mental imagery of your pre-round the night before. And that's what's setting yourself up. Bo, you got something else? Oh, that's really good, man. Those are all perfect examples of what it looks like to incorporate the power talk in with the actual mental reps themselves. So now what we want to do is shift gear is like, what does it look like the morning of the round? And this is where a lot of golfers make the first mistake, and they don't even know it. They wake up in the morning, especially if it's like a morning tea time, uh, they pick up their phone, they start scrolling through social media, they read the news, they check your email, they start filling their brain account with other people's content without even making a single deposit of their own. And then they wonder why in the world does their mind feel so scattered by the time they actually reach the course. Now, those of you that are believers, I want to speak to you just really quick because this would be a great time that as soon as you wake up, and this should be honestly your daily uh occurrence, anyways, just because of ultimately what God has done for us, at the end of the day, like when we truly understand the full essence of John 3 16, God so loved us. He sent his son who literally stepped into humanity and stripped himself, he chose to come into humanity, go through all of our struggles, through all of our stress, through all that stuff, right? And yet died in our place. Why in the world could we not just out of pure adoration for him, the very first thing that we do is just take time and just sit and commune with him, is read his word, sit with him, right? And more importantly, understand that our identity isn't wrapped up in our performance and what we do. It's just more importantly, it's wrapped in who he says we are. When you spend that quiet time with him, now you're coming from a place that is even, in my opinion, a stronger green light state because now your worth is not even dictated by your performance, and you're going into your round that day from a very healthy identity, and more importantly, in a green light state. So that's something that I would just say there really quick. I know you're taking some notes. I'm sure you want to share something there too. Absolutely, because this goes along with the power talk statements. This is a perfect time. Write you down a list of promises that's in God's word and what he says, and then quote them, say them. Because here's the thing we've talked about psychologists is finally coming in line with the word of God. As you we've even talked about this numerous times where science is actually proving that the word of God is true. There's a verse that says, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The word there is the word rhema in the Greek, which means spoken word. And that's why you want to speak it. That's another reason why we talk about power talk. So, what do you do in the morning? Write down a list of God's promises. Here's some, I'll give you some that you can start on. You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. Come on. That's a promise. That's a great power talk statement. If God be for me, who can be against me? Who? What? Not even God can be against you. You're walking in your full identity. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but check this out. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but he's giving me a spirit of power. He's giving me a spirit of love. And here's another one that I love, and then of a sound and well-balanced mind. You're gonna have a sound and well-balanced mind going into your round. You can't make that up, man. These are great promises. So then what happens is you start tapping into that as well as the other power talk statements, you're incorporating those in there, and you're actually going into the round and you're not letting golf define you because you are defined by what the word says that you are. And so then you can walk in a higher state of being, so to speak, with your brain. Because what it says is that you have got the mind of Christ. That's what it says in Corinthians. So then you fully walk in that and you're fully subjected to that. Then you're stepping up again, you're starting off your morning and at an elevation instead of a demotivation. Bo. 100%, man. Great job on that. And so from there, this is where you want to take some time, maybe right after that, do a mental rep session. Maybe if it's just five minutes and you just take some time or you do your physiological side breath. We talked about that in the past. That's where you simply breathe in through your nose, like a big deep breath, and then another quick inhale, and then you exhale slowly for about five, six seconds. So it's like two seconds in, one second, and then exhale five, six seconds, and you just do that um for several minutes if you'd like. There has been multiple studies. Dr. Andrew Huberman and his colleagues, they have tested every breathing technique under the sun. The physiological side breath way outperforms them all. The physiological psi is in a totally different category, and it has been proven to lower your stress baseline, uh, which is amazing. Because if you do that five minutes every single day, they have shown massive reduction in just overall anxiety. So and then just by doing this, puts your stress level and your resting baseline number, so to speak, at a much lower level, and then that even sets you up for success for the day um challenges, whatever you may face, whatever. Uh, but the thing is, right after that, it would be a great idea to do some mental reps, you know, your full uh visualization, what we taught you in previous episodes, where you actually visualize the room, you're doing your full trigger CPR, mental imagery, your mental rep, and then play a few holes. Now you're in a place where you can do an actual warm-up. Shannon, you want to do a real quick and explain what the physical activation they could do right there at their house? You just woke up and you want to trigger your body and activate it and be like, man, you want to go into performance mode, not office mode, not daddy or mama mode, or so on and so forth, but you want to be in performance mode. So, what you want to do kind of like a mini dynamic warm-up. Okay, a dynamic warmup is not static stretching. I want to make that clear. Is not static stretching where you go down, touch your toes, hold it for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and get up. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later, about the significance. You're doing this at your home. You're doing simple arm circles. Start small and then get big as you go, very slow. You can do leg swings, forward and backward leg swings. Start with your right leg, do 12 leg swings each. It's very simple. Not forcing it really high like you would when you get it at the course. You're just slowly getting that muscle flow, that circulation going. Get a golf club, do light club swings. It's the same thing. What I was talking about with your legs. You're just doing the same thing with your club. Just back and forth, going through the rotation. Um, what you would normally do. You could do this in your yard, your garage, depending or if you have a room that's big enough to do it. And then do wrist rotations, get those going in up and down, forward and back with your wrists, walking, just walking lunges, not many, maybe 10 walking lunges. All you're doing is you're just basically saying, All right, body, it's time to get into performance mode. Let's start switching gears from getting from waking up mode to performance mode. Your body has been horizontal for eight hours. That way you're going to be fully prepared. And your first priority is waking up. And it's not gone, it's waking up. And your job in the morning is to remind you that today is performance day. Light movement starts the communication between your brain and your muscles. That same communication that your pre-shot routine triggers you that you rely on, that you're getting ready to do in a few hours. You may not even know what the word dynamic warm-out is, or this may be the first time you heard it. First, you need to understand this that this is from research that we included in our book. But here's the thing: this is what I did with my skaters back in 2003 and 2005. I was introducing to this, and you should have seen my skaters. They thought I was crazy. They looked at me like a deer in headlights. Like, you want me to do what? And then what's interesting is we were at the World Championships, and all the other world teams were doing the same stuff. And then they're like, man, okay, this dude knows what he's talking about. The difference is this static stretching is like going down and touching your toes and hold it for 30 seconds. A dynamic warm-up is doing leg swings, like what I talked about. And so what happens is study have shown over the last 20 years have consistently shown this. This kind of stretching, where you hold that position for 30 seconds and you feel that pull before around, it decreases your muscle activation and coordination and may increase injury risk. What happens is it elongates your muscle, it stretches your muscle out, and it goes into a relaxed state for the next 45 minutes. And now once you get to the course, because science supports this that the dynamic warmup helps support blood circulation, it's activate your muscle groups, and obviously it's increasing that communication between your brain and the muscles, right? And that's the most important thing when you think about the dynamic warm-up, as the very first thing you do at the course. This is what you should be doing just before you start anything else. Just really quick, when you do the dynamic warm-up at the course, it should take you about five, ten minutes. This is the very first thing you should do before you touch a club. What does it look like? It's like what Shannon talked about just a couple seconds ago, but it's your wrist rotations, it's arm circles, it's torso twists, it's taking a club across your shoulders, and then you're doing trunk side flexion, you're doing leg swings, whether that's holding onto a cart or wall or your bag, uh, you're doing walking lunges, and then you're progressively swinging from small to large. And if you want a great step-by-step and even visual of this, you know, just simply get a copy of our book. If you're in the US, you can get a copy sign in the zone secrets book from us, and you just go to Indazonescrets.com. Or if you're outside the US, you can get it on Amazon and you can simply get it there. And the beautiful thing about this is you don't need any equipment, you don't need a trainer. All you literally need is about five to ten minutes. This is the thing that most people skip, and it is dangerous, especially for guys and ladies over the age of 50, because you're in a position where you can put yourself in harm's way and injure yourself. And remember, we want to play this game for the longevity, and this is why it's really important that you do a dynamic warm up so that you are preventing injury. And so after you do that, then you're gonna move finally to the range, and this is where a lot of people make their biggest mistakes. They go right into grabbing a bucket of balls and then they just start beating away. The problem with that is you're just simply exercising. This is a huge mistake because you're not making the range have a consequence. And there's no social pressure here. There's no score. There's no performance identity at stake. And right now, yeah, you're in a green light, but you're not training the way that you would actually play. And this is why a lot of times people mess this up, and especially just in practice in general. And we talked about this in the very beginning on our podcast, you know, why you can't transfer your range game from the range to the chorus. And it's simply because, well, number one, it comes down to this. How can you expect consistency if your approach is inconsistent? What does that mean? It means that why in the world are you just going through the motions on the range, but yet when you go play, you're actually doing your full pre-shot routine, you're doing everything under the sun out there playing, and your play game doesn't even match up anywhere near your range game. It's actually really interesting. I posted this in our uh community. We have a membership, and we also have clients we work with, and so we have two communities there. It was really cool. I came across this little segment, and they showed Justin Rose. It was awesome. The commentator was like in between play, they were showing him, and the commentators look, this is why, and he's talking this through. If you ever want to see a great example, what it looks like to uh truly practice the right way, watch Justin Rose. And then they're showing Justin in real time standing in the thing visualization box, and then he walks up and he goes through his entire normal. If he was actually playing with this few head looks, if you had a timer on him, it would probably be absolutely identical to what he would actually do on the course. So it's a really beautiful example of what it looks like to treat this like you're playing on the range. Now, here's what it looks like if you're gonna do this correctly. We call this after you've warmed up a few times, you start with shorter clubs, you're actually going through a routine, you're making the shots count, and you move through your bag and you finish with driver. Now, what you're gonna do is simulated play. This is where you can actually choose two targets on the range, uh, get creative, find two targets, and make that your boundary for the first hole as a fair way, and then go through your entire routine again, do your trigger and all that, and play like simulated three to five holes right there, where you're actually hitting a drive, then you're going to your bag, get creative with your mental imagery of the green, put bunkers out there, pick a target on the range, put a mental image of the green. If there are bunkers on hole one green, put them there on the target or around the target, and then go through your full routine, hit the shot. Now you got a consequence. Even if you mess up, you don't hit that shot again. You go right back to next hole, and then you take a drive route. When you do this and you do it really well, even if you do hit some bad shots, thank God you got them out of the way. But here's the biggest thing that you have to understand is that when you get to the first hole, it's gonna feel like you've already played three or five, six, seven holes. And that's a beautiful thing because for those of you that you struggle and it takes you three, four, five holes to finally get in a groove, by the time you actually get to hole one, it's gonna feel like you've already played four, five, six holes, and then you can hit the ground running. Now, after the range warm-up, including the simulated play, you move to the short game area again. So you want to take about 10 to 20 minutes when you do this. And the purpose of the short game practice, after you do the simulated play, like what Bo was referring to before the round, it's not the fix technique. No, it's about building touch, it's about building feel and getting confidence for your shots. You want to chip and pitch the different targets and how the ball is reacting, then you can be able to adjust, you get your hands and your eyes calibrated for the pace and firmness of the turf that day. That's another thing that you're doing. One course plays completely different from another. The short game warm-up is basically a calibration session and prepares you. Remember, that's your separation, is in your preparation. That's why you want to do that. If you have seven to 12 extra minutes, in the book, we even talk about this as what we call the up and down challenge. You do an up and down challenge. Basically, it's like you're playing nine holes on a short game using one ball. You simulate nine holes, different shots to different targets, then always put out the ball that you're using. In the short game practice, what this does is it actually creates pressure for you to get it in at least two shots. Now, sometimes you might hit it in one, which is gonna be awesome. That'll make you feel good. But a good score to aim for is about 20 to 21. And Bo's gonna go a little bit into what those shots may look like. This is not just a skill practice, uh, this is basically green light activation for your short game. You're doing your routine for every single shot from your chip shot, your pitch shot, and then when you're putting out, you're doing your pre-shot routine, you're visualizing that shot, everything. You're going through the full thing. That's why it's like performance simulation. Every chip and pitch, you're building that evidence of competence that your nervous system needs to walk to the first team with genuine confidence instead of being forcing, instead of you trying to force your optimism or being positive. So, like just really quick on the up and down challenge. And the neat thing is if you aim for a score of 2021 or even better, you're basically simulating what you would do on the course. The beautiful thing about that is that means you're converting about 60 to 80 percent of your up and downs. That means your score is going to drop really fast. So that's why we like the up and down challenge. And when it comes to putting, the final piece that you want to implement as part of your pre-round uh routine is first thing, as soon as you step on the green, you want to do what's called a two-ball drill. This is hands down the best uh drill, and this is coming from our book. So these drills I'm giving you actually come from our book, In the Zone Secrets. And so the two-ball drill, you take two balls exactly the same, hit the first one out 20 feet, 30 feet, 40 feet, 15 feet, 35 feet. The objective is as soon as you hit the first putt, regardless of how far it goes, pay attention, obviously, how far it goes. But ideally, the second putt is you're trying to make the exact same stroke as the first one, and get that second ball within about 8 to 12 inches of the first ball. You're not gonna put to a hole, you're gonna put to open space, and you're gonna hit a lot of different uh distances, like 15 feet, 30 feet, 45 feet, 20 feet, 60 feet. And then once you do it, the second ball within 8 to 12 inches of the first one, and you do that three or four times in a row of different distances, then you get that pretty much calibrated. And the beautiful thing about that is it helps you get acclimated to any green speed or any course. So let's say you played a chorus a few days ago and those greens are rolling like a stemp of 12, and then you go to a chorus and the greens are running a stemp of nine, major difference, a lot slower. But this two-ball drill, it's gonna get you acclimated very quickly to what my 20-foot stroke is, my 30-foot, my 40-foot, my 15-foot, my 50-foot on today's surface. And that's the beauty of the two-ball drill. After you do that, then obviously start hitting to a lot of different holes of different distances. And the main focus here is just working on speed, and then from there, you will want to go find a straight putt. I got this from David Orr, who I've had the pleasure of working with, and I was his intern when I was back in college. I consider it probably the best putting coach in the world. Him and Phil Kenyon kind of neck and neck for that title. Anything about this drill that I'm giving you right now is the best calibration for start line. See, to be a great putter, you gotta be really good at three things. One, you gotta be good at your speed control, two, your green reading, and then three, your start line. This drill that I'm giving you right now is the best at getting your start line dialed in. So find a straight putt, five feet. First putt is aim dead center and then purposely open the face to burn the right edge. Next putt, aim dead center, and then purposely close the face to burn the left edge. And once you've done that successfully, last one is aim center and then make center. Once you do that a few times, then you have your face awareness dialed in. And here's the thing, when it comes to start line, it is all about face control because a ball will start 82% to where that face is pointing at the moment of contact. That is the key to start line. Last thing is, it's always great to then do around the world or around the clock drill. Yeah, that's where you go five feet out and just hit a lot of different putts on a tilted planar surface, and you just kind of get a really good idea of what the break characteristics for that day and that speed for those uh greens that day. So that would be your putting warm-up, and then you go to the first T. Shannon. The first T ritual, the 60 seconds that changes everything, or can change everything, good or bad. You've done everything right. The night before, you've done the mental walkthrough, the morning power talk session, you spent your time with the Lord and you've done your dynamic warm-up, you simulated range play, the short game practice, and the putting calibration, and then you're walking to the first T. And this is where most golfers, even the ones that have had that perfect preparation going in, fully confident, this is where some of the biggest mistakes happen. You're listening to the conversation that's happening around them. You let the first T environment fill that space in your head, the six inches, fill that course that the preparation is created. And then all of a sudden, the inner critic starts firing up and you start hearing the what ifs. What if I start off this? What if I top the bum off the first T? What if I shake it? Or what if I and then that fear-based mentality starts coming in? Here's another thing, too. Mentally, then we start thinking about man, I have to start well. Guess what? That's a future-based thinking. Or then you start thinking, I can't start bad. That's opposite, but it's still the same thing, it's still future thinking. What is the future and past stresses or stressors? Let me give you a brief definition of what that is. Past stress. We call that depression. And that's someone who's obsessed with something that happened in the past. That might be something that may have happened three weeks ago or something like that. You're coming up to the first day, something happened three weeks ago. So you're becoming obsessed with the past. I'm just putting a simple definition in there, so then you can really embrace what I'm saying. So future stress that that's anxiety. That is someone that obsessed with the future. But optimal performance is someone that obsessed with the now. And what happens that you need to do, it'll be a perfect time to do the ball reset. Breathe, affirm, look back, look forward, get that flowing in. The first T is the moment everything that you prepare for either activates or gets overwritten by the environment or by the inner critic speaking too loudly, and we're not confronting that and walking in our true identity. And the way to protect that, your preparation is with deliberate that 60-second ritual. You step into the first T, you can just do the ball reset, that 60-second ritual. Yeah, and the other thing too, just really quick, when you're on the first T and you're thinking of all those things, the biggest thing you have to understand is it's all about getting yourself back to a green light state. So once you are there, one of the things you could immediately start implementing is the physiological side. So while you're waiting, maybe your playing partners are going first, or even if you're waiting for you to go first, you could be off to the side and just simply doing several physiological side breaths back to back, right? Then this is where you would want to do what Shannon just talked about, deploy a ball reset. It is the fastest thing to take you from a red light state back to a green light state in the brain. And that's ultimately where we want to perform. Now, let me share a quick story of what we talked about a few episodes ago. If you remember the episode when we talked about from panic attack to hitting his best drive ever, Sam Sneed in 1936, when he was just a rookie on the PGA Tour, and this is a week before his PGA tour debut, he is paired with two former USM winners and a US Open champion, and they all hit first, and there's such a large crowd that's gathered around the first T, and he is shaking like a leaf. He is shaking so bad that eyewitnesses said he had to steady the ball in a T with both hands. Guys, I don't know about you, but that is pretty much the symptom of a panic attack in full blown form. So then once he gets the ball steadied on the T and he backs up and goes to the thing visualization box, he closes his eyes and he recounts and replays his best ever drives on that same hole. That's why the ball reset is so powerful, because it's a look back. That's the first L in the ball reset acronym that we implement. But Sam just does a look back here, okay? Then he brings his attention back to the present shot, goes up and hits it, and everybody gasps. Why? Because he outdrove his playing partners, and still at that point, that was his best ever drive, beating all of his previous ever drives on that same hole at the Greenbrier. Phenomenal. How do you go from just a few seconds ago, he's on the verge of a panic attack to then hitting his best ever drive? That's the power of the look back. But the ball reset implements something even more powerful. We are changing in the brain in real time with that breathe hard reset, the first letter in the B, is how we are neurologically taking the brain from being off to back online. And now you have a really good chance, 80% capacity is what research has shown that you are now bringing your brain and body into connection with each other, and now you are able to play to your true potential. And that's all we're trying to do is we're giving you the tools to do the best that you possibly can under the circumstances. And I don't know about you, but that's what I would want. So, as friend to friend, that's what we're giving you. That's how you battle the first T anxiety. Now, before we wrap up today, I want to address something because we talked about this a little bit in our book, but we want to like just really quick highlight some of the maybe the specific triggers that can activate a yellow light state uh before the round even starts. And the first one we already talked about, it's like when you're rushed and you're driving as fast as you can to the course. This is like obviously cortisols flowing, and you don't have the extra time, like you're there in just a few minutes. That's one example. Channel, you can talk about the other one. Yeah, here I'm gonna give I'm gonna give you two examples, and that is this. Let's say you're a tour player, you might be playing in your first tour event, and you're not used to having a gallery with you. And that is a trigger in and of itself. Talk about red light state, where you got all these people, you got a crowd that's around you and you're about to hit. Before that, get mental reps before that round of you playing with a gallery with you, because it'll be a game changer. Then you can step up to that first T, even that much more confident. If you're a tour player and you're listening to this podcast, this right here will be a game changer for you to incorporate in your mental imagery sessions with galleries with you. That way you're not feeling uncomfortable, you're not feeling that pressure to even to perform higher because people are watching you. And then you start going through all these things in your mind, you're trying to guess what other people are thinking about you. It stops all that, it eliminates all that, and you cut off the head of the inner critic by that kind of preparation. And then the second yellow light trigger is like, for example, your playing partner compliments you going in. Man, you had a great warm-up and you're playing well. And then someone says, Man, you're really striking it great today. This could be a good round. So if somebody says something like that, even it's well-intentioned compliment, what happens is it puts you in a yellow light state. Some for some people, it may even put them in a red light state, getting more future thinking, thinking about the score. And because now you're managing that expectation and you are protecting a score starting from the first T, and you haven't even started yet. When this happens, do what Bo said, do that ball reset, get that back in there right there on the range if you need to, before you've been walking up to the T, breathe, squeeze, affirm, process over outcome, right? That'll be your power talk statement that you can use. The score takes care of itself. Look back for a great shot, look forward to the next one, and return back to green light. Bo. Absolutely. And another one that we've covered in the past is the comparison trap on the range. How many of you you've done all the right things, and then you just happen to casually look up and down the range, and you're like, oh my goodness, these guys are striking it like crazy. And I'm over here just like barely hitting it as far as them. How many of us can relate to that? The thing that you have to understand is that a lot of these golfers, we could easily say 70% of them can't even transfer their game from the range to the course in the first place. Like, why in the world are we spending and wasting our time and energy when they're not even going to be able to take what they're doing on the range to the course? So just stay in your lane and keep your eyes on the target in front of you and give your brain a path, and that is the very next shot. That's how you win. It's what's important now. And then, of course, do a ball reset right then and there. Shannon, you want to talk about the other one? Yeah, so the fourth yellow light trigger, so to speak, is before the round. It's the slow start. You hit your first three or four shots on the range, and then your shots are not what expected. That's what I mean by slow start. It's your performance is not meeting your expectation, so to speak. And instead of recognizing this as a completely normal thing, because we say this all the time, the swing that you show up with is a swing you gotta play with. If you're a poker player, the best poker players in the world, they can win with not a great hand. And so maybe that might be another opportunity for a different area of your game that's what's gonna win it for that day. And instead of recognizing this as being completely normal, your body has been horizontal for the past eight hours, right? And you're asking it to perform a complex movement. You're catastrophic. The day is gonna be ruined and is started. If this is what happens, you need to get refocused and again to go through that ball reset, even with a slow start from the range as far as your performance. But then also you do the same thing with a slow start of let's say something else happens and you're sitting there and you got to wait 10 more minutes going in. That kind of slow start. Again, it's a good time, not even to think about your rate, you can think about something else because, and then do the ball reset going to the first T. And so, guys, we've covered quite a bit on this particular episode. And what I want to do is just really quick, briefly summarize the complete protocol so that way you have it in one picture. You know, so again, when you look at the night before, take a few minutes, do a mental rep walkthrough of the holes that you're playing of the next day's round. Of course, make sure that you're reading your identity statements, use your power talk. That's when you want to implement that. And then the morning of the round, this is where, again, take a few minutes. Those of you that are Christians, like actually spend time in the word, spend time, commune, make sure that your identity is in the right alignment, that you are not defined by your performance, you're just being, but just understanding that. And then signs of success. Those of you that aren't Christians, by all means, use your power talk statements. Read the signs of success. That's simply going through your power talk and restating to yourself, like, hey, I am a club champion. I am you filling a blank, right? And then from there, you want to actually do some mental reps of the course that you're going to play that day. Do your dynamic warm-up. Uh, this is where you activate a few things there at the house. Then, when you get to the course, is when you want to actually do another dynamic warm-up. You take five to ten minutes. And again, those exercises are in our book. If you want a really good example of that, then head to the range. Start with short clubs, work your way up to long clubs, make sure you're doing your routine, make the reps count, and then finish with you doing simulated play of the first three to five holes where you're doing your full routine, triggering CPR, and then trigger on the actual shot, make the reps count. Then go to the short game area, and if you can, do a few short game shots and then do the up and down challenge. And then from there, you go to the putting green, start with the two-ball drill, then you hit a lot of different holes to get really dialed in your speed, then get your uh start line drill, and then finish with around the world or around the clock drill at five feet. And then when you get to the first T, if you feel those nerves, anything that's coming in, physiological side breath, and then do a ball reset. And a beautiful thing, if you do all that, you are putting yourself in the best possible uh state to perform at your absolute best from the very first shot. And with that said, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this pre-round routine episode. I know we covered a lot, so you definitely want to go back and re-listen to a few parts and pieces, but hopefully you guys will now be able to have something that's very concrete, very solid that you can implement before your next round and let us know how it goes. And again, those of you that have been listening and you've been on this journey with us for quite some time now, all the way through the episodes, do us a favor if you don't mind, go ahead and leave us an honest review on the podcast. We would love to hear from you. We've actually been getting several emails, but we'd also love for you guys to rate the podcast as well. That helps other people find the show, and that way we can also help them, and then it furthers our mission to help 100,000 golfers just like you shoot their new lifetime low rounds. Some of you are like, hey, I want to get to the next level of my game. I want to compete, I want to win, I want to make it to maybe the highest level in the game. We've helped multiple players get to the top levels in the game. And if that's schedule a free call, you go to in the zone secrets.com slash free call, we'll jump on a call. Like you're gonna get a lot of good things from that. Even if it's not a fit, we'll make sure we point you in the right direction. You'll still get the help that you need. Last thing is this just remember go out there, be a caveman, be a cave girl golfer. So that said, hope you guys enjoyed the show. And remember, you're just one round away.