How Do You Eat an Elephant?

You've probably already heard the question, "How do you eat an elephant?" Well, no surprises, the answer still is, "one bite at a time."

This simple 'elephant' metaphor has, in most cases, always applied to achieving big goals. How do you achieve a huge goal in life? One step, one task, one measure at a time.

It's interesting though, as the first Golf Fitness Expert to the Pros and golf fitness coach for thousands of amateur golfers, I amazed just how reluctant most golfers are to setting big goals when it comes to their desired performance. Many golfers are hesitant to make 'elephant-sized' goals - perhaps because, from their past experience, they don't really believe that they will be able to play much better!

Golfers will all agree that they'd like to be 'more consistent'. They all will also say that they want 'more distance' and would like to be better 'ball strikers'. But, when I ask them for clarification, very few golfers, regardless of their experience, are prepared to specifically define the exact amount of positive change they would ideally like to experience within their golf performance ... nor, in what time frame.

So, to help them out, I have a 3-step process that helps my golf clients reduce the 'elephant' into bite-size morsels that they can easily chew and digest.

Step #1:Identify Your Most Valuable Element of Change
I start out by asking my golf clients the question,

"What one area of your total golf game, if improved, would make the biggest change in your overall performance?

Step #2: Physical Evaluation
Then, whatever their answer, I perform an evaluation to identify the physical relationship connected to that specific performance factor and design a customized fitness training program based on the findings. In fact, in most cases, if the golfer can tell me what they 'don't like' about their game - what's going wrong - then, I can evaluate what it is about their posture, balance, flexibility, strength, stability, conditioning and/or control that needs to improve in order for them to reach their stated ideal. And, like eating the elephant, we design the program to take one 'bite' at a time until their new structure supports their new function.

Step #3: Customized Golf Fitness Program Design
Once the golfer's structural relationship to their golf performance dysfunction is clear, then designing their step-by-step customized fitness training program becomes quite simple. After all, by law, to achieve the desired function, you first need to create the proper structure. In other words, build 'it' properly, and 'it' will perform the function you design it to perform. No matter what the 'it' of the equation is! And, in the case of golfers, if you design the correct sequencing and integration into the golfer's program that sufficiently takes into account the other essential performance factors including the mental game, professional instruction and club-fitting, it's absolutely amazing how much golfers can accomplish if they break their tasks down into bite-sized pieces, set deadlines, and then do one piece at a time, every single day.