Review

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Renegade Mindset Techniques for Golf
by Stephen Ladd

More and more golfers know about what EFT can do for their game - Gary Craig even shows a golfer improving in real time on one of his training videos.  
So how does this book by a professional golf coach and EFT practitioner measure up as an introduction for golfers?

As Stephen Ladd, the author, notes, golfers are typically a conservative group of people, not given to anything airy-fairy or "new age", so I was curious how a book aimed at this group would manage to present EFT in a way that would seem appealing and worth their time. He succeeds, I think, by keeping the focus on what really matters to golfers - their score!

(Stephen has long described himself as a "Renegade Coach" as a way of indicating that he is deliberately breaking away from "conventional" sports psychology techniques. He has now renamed his whole technique accordingly - but basically it is simply a "golf-specific variation" of EFT.)

The first thing to strike me about this book was its clarity. From the font and layout to the way things are explained, everything feels very simple, straightforward and solid. The author clearly knows his golf inside out - and is clearly an experienced EFT practitioner - and you need both for an domain-specific EFT book like this.

It begins with an excellent EFT tutorial with photos. (The author uses a shortened form of standard EFT which he calls TIG - Tap In Golf - but gives full credit to Gary Craig as originator which is always nice to see!) Where so many beginner books fall down is in giving newbies too much information too early. Or giving too little and expecting the beginner to be able to work out everything else for themselves. The author is obviously well used to pacing his instructions for his clients - and here he keeps it clear and simple with no extraneous details or complications which might confuse. He offers variations and additional information later on in the book - but only after the basics have been practiced several times over. The tutorial finishes with a nice list of actual setup statements which give a good flavour to the absolute beginner of what sort of things you can tap on.

The book quickly moves on to the important stuff of giving the reader some tangible things to try. The Putting Challenge in Chapter Five gives the reader a practical way of testing the results of using EFT. This is well thought out and the sign of a good teacher who's really thought about the question: "How can I get a golfer I've never met to actually try this out and see the results for themselves?"

The rest of the book details how to use tapping in specific ways and at specific times in order to improve different aspects of your game. The chapters on using tapping pre-round, on the course, pre-shot, post-shot and post-round, not to mention his views on "swing thoughts", are not only practical but show how the author has fully integrated his understanding of EFT into the game (full contents listing here).  This is the sort of domain-specific insight you need from a book like this. Golfers don't need to know how to deal with old traumas or phobias or childhood issues - and this book sticks steadfastly to golf and the issues and environment around that.

The transcript of a session with one golfer was an excellent way of showing by example something that normally is difficult to convey - what it's like to work with an EFT practitioner and the flow of how you move on from one round to the next. This all adds to the feeling of tangibility and clarity - nothing abstract or academic here.

The chapter I enjoyed most (as a coach and EFT practitioner myself) was probably Chapter Eight - on using EFT to address your Comfort Zone i.e. your idea of what you are capable of, your normal range of score and so on. He doesn't say so, but the author is actually addressing identity issues and belief systems. But he doesn't talk about any of that explicitly - the focus stays on getting a better score. It's a great example of how to get your students where they need to be but without forcing a lot of theory on them.

In fact I find it hard to see how the book might have been improved. But the author does. He has Volume 2 already planned - along with some DVDs - which, if they match the standard of this book, will be well worth it.

Overall rating:  Clear, focussed and practical 

Where to buy:  Ebook $47     www.rmtforgolf.com

Also available:  RMT for Baseball  and  RMT for Tennis

 

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