Focus and Fitness: Golf demands a laser like focus and a very specific level of fitness. Focus provides the thoughts and feelings you need to concentrate, gain confidence, relax and manage your emotions. Fitness provides the strength, muscle memory, eye-hand coordination, and energy you need to achieve your desired results. To get better at golf, you must insure that your ability to focus and your level of fitness complement one another. Just the right balance of focus and fitness and your skills are sharp; lose the balance, get angry, distracted or sick and your game is in trouble. Specifically, consider the trend in golf to train with weights: the increase in strength is designed to improve focus. Since additional strength allows you to swing easier, it is also easier to focus, to be more relaxed. The result is that you hit way more accurate shots. Caution: strength gains need to be gradual to allow you to adjust to the feeling of having more muscle mass. With too much strength, your muscles become tight and you ruin your focus. You also need to train just right so that as you increase your strength you increase your endurance and flexibility as well.

The HiLevel Model: Many people see life via two primary emotional lenses: "I'm happy or unhappy; this is good or bad; I feel negative or positive." Anyone who regularly experiences boredom, frustration, pain, anger, fear, and similar negative emotions knows that such feelings destroy performance, relationships and are hard on your body. On the other hand, enjoyable emotions such as interest, curiosity, intensity, excitement, passion, and satisfaction clearly help to improve performance, build positive relationships and good health. Golf is emotional. The challenge is to play the game, manage your emotions and achieve your desired result.

The Coaching Points: HiLevel is defined as the ability to show up poised and ready, clear of what you want to accomplish, aware of what's required and committed to performing at your best. The coaching points presented here involve the process of learning how to relax under enormous pressure, focus your intensity, maintain your skills and accept the results of your actions, especially when you hit a bad shot or lose a close match. The process involves the ability to listen from within and to use the metaphor of the fire to represent positive emotion, to find the fire, light your own fire and continue to fuel the fire. This process will allow you to manage you're emotions, increase your energy, learn from your situation, improve as a player, and grow as a person.