Want to slash your scores? Get a good night’s sleep—at least that’s the theory behind a new cutting edge, scientific concept—a concept that could transform your game. While research into “sleep storage” is still in its infancy, the idea isn’t new. It’s been around for eons.
But now scientists taking a closer look at it. If it works the way scientists say it does, it can cement swing changes in your Brain overnight, speeding up the learning process and helping you cut strokes form your scores.
Get A Good Night’s Sleep
There’s nothing like getting a good night’s sleep. It rejuvenates both the body and soul. But that’s not all it does. It also improves learning. Sleep lets your mind consolidate what you learn during the day, then stores it in your long-term Memory, say many of today’s neuroscientists.
Instead of drifting off into nothingness, your sleeping mind runs a clip of events that occurred during the day, edits it, marks the critical stuff, then hits save. The result: You remember whatever it is you’re thinking about when your head hits the pillow, like how to hit a draw, lag a putt, or hit a bump and run.
The Science Behind Sleep Storage
The theory behind sleep storage isn’t wishful thinking. It’s backed by a good deal of scientific research. In fact, research strongly indicates that sleep is crucial not just for learning but also for creating long-term memories of something.
How such memory activity works is a critical question of inquiry in neuroscience these days. It’s also a question neuroscientists have been grappling with for years. Now neuroscientists at the University of California, Riverside, think they’ve found the answer.
A recent report on a study from the scientists at the school, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides for the first time “a mechanistic explanation for how deep sleep (also called slow-wave sleep) promotes the consolidation of recent memories. So, while your brain decouples from sensory input during sleep, your sleeping mind remains active, replaying the day’s events.
Strengthens the Synapses
During memory replay, your brain’s synapses are strengthened for long-term storage in the cortex, etching the information into your brain. Synapses are junctures between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter. In other words, one cell sends a message to a targeted cell either by a chemical or electrical signal.
Memory selection during the replay of events involves a selection process. It determines not only what things you remember, but how deeply etched it is in your subconscious. The effort is even more effective if you tag a selected memory before sleeping, according to Dr. Jessica Payne, Ph.D. a Harvard Medical School researcher
In other words, thinking about something hard enough before you doze off can make you dream of it. It’s the dreaming about it that makes the new information stick. For you that means instead of counting sheep during the night, you might be better off thinking about ways to hit a SW.
Testing the Sleep Storage Technique
Below is a three-step technique for helping you perfect your golf game using the concept of sleep storage, as explained in a 2015 issue of Golf Magazine. It refers to the process as the 14-Night Note System, and it can help you cement swing changes firmly in your brain:
- Write down the significant elements you want to learn. Be specific: “At the end of my takeaway, my hands and clubhead are at the same height.” You need to convince your brain that these moves are critical. Otherwise, the brain won’t work its magic.
- Keep the note on your nightstand. Read it aloud as you drift off. As you verbalize each move, visualize what it looks and feels like when doing it.
- Repeat this nightly for two weeks (14 days), coupled with some range time. By the last night, you’ll have ingrained the move(s) in your long-term memory.
Try this learning technique for yourself. Focus on one weakness in your swing—like slicing or hooking—and use sleep storage to correct it.
If the process works the way it should, you’ll ingrain the moves and correct the swing flaw. That, in turn, will shave strokes from your scores and increase your chances of breaking 80.
The post Use “Sleep Storage” to Transform Your Golf Game appeared first on How To Break 80.
