You feel a lot of tension in your golf swing and you try to tell yourself to relax but the harder you try to do this the more tense you become.

If this sounds like you the first piece of advice is to not “try.”

Why?

Because trying creates tension so cut that “trying” out first.

Next you should go out to your practice area and simply hit balls while humming.   When you’re doing this focus on your humming and notice if it stops or changes pitch at any time during your swing.

Just keep swinging focusing on your humming with the goal of swinging without the hum changing pitch or volume from the moment you start swinging to the end of your swing.  But please don’t “try” to achieve this.  Simply keep swinging and focusing on your humming, and soon without you noticing the “whys” or “hows” your swing will become more rhythmical and less tense.

Once your swing is more in tune with your natural rhythm you want to keep it that way, and I suggest you do this by having a few swings each day while humming.  Doing this will help to create a good consistent golf swing.  One that you can rely on under pressure.

If you often feel under pressure on the golf course which makes you tense and try harder then you need to get out of that vicious circle.  Because when golfers “try harder” the worse they score.  So I’m going to give you some simple golf tips you can do to stop the tension cycle.

Now when most golfers get tense they hurry and try to complete their shots as soon as possible.  Although this is a very natural response to tension and stress it’s just going to cause more, because by rushing you’ll play worse and that’s just going to make matters worse.

To avoid this happening you first need to notice when you’re getting tense and uptight and then when you notice this happening you should take a couple of deep breaths and ask yourself why you’re playing golf.  And your answer will hopefully be because you enjoy the game, you enjoy the company, the challenge etc, etc.  So play as if you were enjoying it, even if you’ve played a few bad shots.  Would someone who is enjoying what they’re doing rush it to get it over as fast as possible?

Of course they wouldn’t!

So play golf at a constant leisurely pace, take some deep breaths.  Enjoy the fresh air and enjoy the challenges of each shot.  And hey, it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad round is it?

Another thing which will help you with your tension is to have some nice big practice swings, forgetting about any mechanical thoughts but instead concentrate on your tempo.

And here’s a really good technique to help you do this.  When you start your backswing breathe in through your nose and then when you start your downswing breathe out through your mouth.  Doing this will naturally give you good tempo plus it will focus your mind on the breathing and not the result.

If you do these things you’ll be able to stop the viscous tension cycle and enjoy your game of golf more.