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Eliminate Playing Yips

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:52:58 GMT

Inside Golf Australia Interview - August Edition 2026

T he swings of left-handed golfers somehow seem more elegant, more graceful, than those of the right-handed majority, but does playing from the wrong side give golfers any sort of advantage?

Sunshine Coast golfer Greg Spence put it to the test a few years ago when he made the most fundamental of changes to his swing and taught himself to play left-handed.

Spence, a professional musician who had been a self-confessed hacker playing golf right-handed for 30 years, wanted to understand how humans actually learn.

Using the principles of neuroplasticity — a term that refers to the brain’s remarkable capacity to change and adapt in response to experiences, learning and environmental changes — he spent more than six months relearning how to play the game left-handed.

He practiced nearly every day. Then he went out and won the B grade club championship at Peregian Springs Golf Club.

Five years later, Spence is still playing golf — right-handed again, because he says it feels more natural and doesn’t take quite the same concentration.

But he says he’s proved the effectiveness of his experiment, and is now taking his theory to a wider audience, helping musicians and athletes recover from career-threatening performance disorders.

And he’s convinced those same principles can improve everybody’s golf game, and eradicate the dreaded yips — the sudden loss of control as a golfer makes a putt.

“Many people think the yips are caused by a lack of talent, confidence or mental toughness,” Spence said. “What I’ve discovered is that these issues are actually learning problems disguised as performance problems.”

He talks about a person’s fear of failure and the brain stopping through a “threat detection process.” He likens the yips in golf to a dart player becoming so traumatised he can’t release the dart, or a major league baseball pitcher who finds it impossible to let go of the ball.

Spence says all golfers know the feeling of missing a putt they should have made, and of making a poor swing on the tee, just as they recognise the feeling of a shot well played.

His message is simple — if the brain learned the problem, the brain can learn a solution.
He talks about simplifying an otherwise complex process, putting drills together and practicing the motions until they become second nature. Process, he insists, rather than positive thinking, is the solution.

Spence’s learning theory recently took him to New York, where he spoke at the International Trumpet Guild Conference — one of the world’s largest gatherings of elite brass performers and educators.

Spence was not out of place in such company. One of Australia’s finest trumpet players, he has shared the stage with stars like Shirley Bassey, Michael Bublé, Wayne Newton and K. D. Lang, and has appeared on Dancing With The Stars, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the Logie Awards and Channel 9’s Carols by Candlelight.

He told delegates about his principles of learning, neuroplasticity and performance psychology to help musicians recover from Musician’s Focal Dystonia — a devastating neurological condition often compared to the yips in sport.

For musicians, focal dystonia can mean the sudden loss of control of highly trained movements that have been performed effortlessly for decades. For many, it ends careers.

His work has attracted musicians from around the world who had been told recovery was unlikely. Through his programs, many have returned to performing after years of frustration and failed treatments.

More recently, athletes suffering from performance blocks, anxiety and yips-like symptoms have begun reaching out after recognising similarities between their own experiences and those of the musicians Greg has been helping.

Spence’s unique philosophy has now expanded beyond music and sport through an initiative to help performers, executives and athletes better understand how pressure affects performance and how to build genuine confidence through process rather than positive thinking.

He has launched a website, panicperformance.com, where he hopes to help people overcome fear, self-doubt, overthinking, and performance breakdowns — including the yips.

Finding Stillness—The First Step in Musician’s Dystonia Recovery

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:18:06 GMT

Defusing the "Battle" Between Mind and Muscle

F or a musician navigating focal dystonia, picking up an instrument—or even thinking about playing—can trigger instant anxiety.

Your muscles prepare for battle, your mind races with anticipation, and the body defaults to its familiar, locked-up patterns.

True recovery cannot begin in this chaotic state. Before you can build healthy playing habits, you must master the art of establishing absolute stillness.

Physical and Mental Silence

Recovery training is not about forcing your muscles to behave. It’s about retraining your nervous system to process movement without triggering a survival response.

To do this, you must first teach yourself to be physically relaxed with closed eyes and a quiet mind.
This might be challenging at first. If keeping your eyes closed induces panic or anxiety, keep them open with a soft gaze initially.

If your environment is triggering unease, move away from your dedicated practice space to a neutral living room. You can eventually close your eyes and move to your practice space as you become more proficient with establishing this internal calm.

The Two Pillars of Stillness

• Physical Relaxation: This is your clean slate. Release the subtle, hidden tension in your neck, shoulders, hands, fingers, and embouchure before you even touch your instrument.

• A Quiet Mind: A shield against alert mode. Thinking about past “failures,” future anxieties or recovery progress keeps your nervous system on high alert. Turn the volume down on thoughts.

Stillness requires absolute presence in the current moment. There’s no past or future; there’s only this moment. Without this baseline of quiet, any recovery strategy you attempt will simply be layered over old, toxic tension.

The Power of the Mini-Ritual

How do you step out of the daily hustle and into this deep state of readiness?

Many successful musicians use a personalized mini-ritual to establish this feeling of calm before every practice session, rehearsal or performance. Some even start their day with it.

The more you reinforce stillness, the more deeply your brain and body memorize the calm. Eventually, this free, easy feeling will seep into your recovery training sessions and beyond. But you have to get yourself back to ground zero first.

This ritual does not need to be long or complex; it just needs to be repeatable.

Remember, insisting on a pure state of calm—rather than rushing forward while tension creeps in—is what allows you to begin building new neurological pathways. Take the time to get this right.

Prep Ritual Examples:

• Breathing: Three slow, deep diaphragmatic breaths with your eyes closed.
• Humming: Gentle vocalization to stimulate the vagus nerve, your relaxation partner.
• Letting Go: A brief progressive muscle relaxation, consciously dropping your shoulders and releasing your jaw.
• Appreciating the Moment: Hold your instrument in your lap without playing, simply feeling its weight while keeping your hands completely limp, and amplify your gratitude for the opportunity to make music.

The goal of your ritual is to create a reliable, repeatable physical sensation of absolute safety, physical ease, and mental calm.

Your Internal "North Star "

This feeling of profound quiet is the most important tool in your recovery toolbox. Establishing a baseline of stillness first provides a clear, undeniable target for your brain and body.

As you begin to introduce micro-movements or basic playing exercises, you must constantly check in with this baseline.

• Does making this movement feel as free as my stillness ritual?
• Did my mind start to wander or panic?
• Did a tiny micro-tension creep back into my hand?

If you lose that initial feeling of deep ease, you’ve pushed too far.

Establishing stillness without compromise was one of my biggest recovery challenges. I had to learn that stillness wasn’t a lesser version of the extreme tension, shaking, and mental chatter I was experiencing. It was the complete absence of them.

By insisting on absolute calm before movement, I was laying a robust foundation—one that would finally allow me to heal from musician’s focal dystonia.

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How Long Will It Take to Resolve Musician’s Dystonia?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 02:46:11 GMT

Why Recovery Requires a Radical Mindset Shift

T he “How Long?” question is frequently one of the first questions many musicians ask after receiving a focal dystonia diagnosis or clarity about symptoms. Your livelihood, your identity, and your deepest artistic outlet have suddenly been disrupted. It is a completely natural, human response. You want a timeline—a date on the calendar to circle, a finish line to cross so you can get back to "normal."

But if you are on this journey, you quickly realize that focal dystonia does not operate on a standard recovery timeline. It doesn’t heal predictably like a broken bone or a sprained ankle.

Perhaps the better question to ask is this: How much do you want to recover, embrace the learning process, and grow into a freer, more expressive musician?

The Trap of Old Thinking

The brutal truth about musician’s dystonia recovery is that we cannot use the same thinking that got us into this situation to get us out of it.

Take a moment to look back honestly at your relationship with your instrument leading up to the onset of musician’s dystonia. This might include:

Impatience: Driving through physical fatigue to master a passage or a playing technique.
Frantic Push: A constant, anxious pressure to meet rigid performance goals.
Perfectionism: Viewing mistakes as personal failures rather than helpful feedback.
Comparing Ourselves to Others: Worrying constantly about what others think.
Conditional Self-worth: Defining your value as a human being based strictly on musical “achievements."

This hyper-focused, high-stress approach creates the perfect neurological storm.

And beneath it all are the roots of ego.

If you approach your rehabilitation with that same frantic, impatient, goal-oriented mindset, you will only reinforce the very neural loops that caused the musician’s focal dystonia. You cannot bulldoze your way through neuroplasticity retraining.

Shift from "Fixing" to "Learning"

Recovery requires a radical paradigm shift. You are not a broken machine that needs to be "fixed" so it can return to an old, stressful way of operating. You are an artist embarking on a profound process of re-education. Wondering when this will be over, waiting to feel whole again until you’re recovered, and falling into a victim mindset only get in the way.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Embrace the Neuroplasticity Process

Rewiring the brain requires safety, calm, and consistent, deliberate attention. Eventually, you will experience the new pathway that’s been under construction. This has to happen with the right focus and persistent, insistent effort.

2. Learn to Release the Emergency Brake

Many musicians use far more physical effort than is actually required to play their instrument. Focal dystonia recovery requires you to become an expert in efficiency. You must master dropping unnecessary tension and cultivating a sense of freedom and ease—psychologically and physically—that you likely didn’t have before focal dystonia symptoms became obvious.

Unexpected Gifts

If you treat musician’s focal dystonia purely as an enemy to be defeated, the recovery road will feel long, agonizing, and bitter. But as I’ve learned, if you can accept it as a severe, albeit uninvited, teacher, it can transform you.

Musicians who successfully navigate focal dystonia rarely return to being the same player they were before. They return better. They play with less effort, more resonance, and profound joy and gratitude for the opportunity to share music. They become freer because they had to dismantle the rigid structures—both mental and physical—that were holding them back.

So, how long will it take?

It will take as long as it takes for your nervous system to feel safe again, for you to reprogram brain-muscle communication, and for your mind to surrender the frantic push.

Stop looking at the calendar. Instead, dive headfirst into the learning process. The freedom waiting for you on the other side is truly worth every single patient step!

Inner Critic or Coach: Who's Winning?

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:59:44 GMT

Shift Self-Talk from Sabotage to Success

T ake stock of how you talk to yourself.

Our subconscious mind acts as an objective data recorder. It stores every message we feed it.

When we fill our internal dialogue with negativity, unease, and limiting beliefs, our subconscious tends to accept these as facts.

The Grip of the Inner Critic

When I was in the thick of musician’s dystonia symptoms, my inner critic ran the show. I constantly heard thoughts like:

• "Why are you wasting your time? You’ll never get better."
• "You’ll never return to performing again."
• "This recovery approach doesn’t work!"

Some mornings, I felt trepidation about recovery training and interacting with my trumpet before I had even gotten out of bed, and was greeted by a barrage of sabotaging thoughts.

These fed the anxiety and panic I was experiencing—a dysfunctional pattern that I had unknowingly bought into and was perpetuating.

When you are rewiring your brain and body, you need all hands on deck and united in your success.

What Are You Telling Yourself?

Think about your own internal conversations.

How do you react after a subpar performance?
What thoughts pop up when you approach a difficult measure of music that you dread because you don’t believe it will ever
feel solid?
What do you say to yourself before and after a musician’s dystonia training session?
Do you compare yourself to colleagues or worry about what others may think of you, including how you look when playing your instrument?

Awareness is the first step to making change, and recognizing my own deep-seated pattern of negative, self-critical chatter marked a major turning point in my recovery journey.

Breaking the Pattern

To create an optimum learning environment and start calming my nervous system down, I had to intentionally forge a new path. I started monitoring my thoughts throughout the day and used two specific strategies to program a new mindset:

A three-to-one ratio: For every single negative thought I caught—or word I spoke out loud—I deliberately stated three positive things that I could buy into. These were grounding, intentional truths like:

• "I am making progress."
• "I love the physical feel of the mouthpiece."
• "I love sharing music with others."

Visualization: When a destructive thought surfaced, I imagined blowing it up in my mind and watching it drift down in harmless pieces, like a popped balloon. Then, I’d add my three positive thoughts.

Action Is Key

You may find other strategies that work best for you. The important thing is to observe what’s happening and implement a plan to change negative dialogue.

This has to be approached as technical work that you do anytime, anywhere.

The brain would rather stay on the current, aberrant path, which includes the negative thinking that is so often intertwined with other focal dystonia elements.

Building the New Normal

Once I got the hang of monitoring and revising the critical chatter, I felt a distinct shift.

What started as a forced, conscious effort transformed into a natural habit of positive, nurturing self-talk.

It was simply a matter of becoming aware of what I was doing and taking action to develop a new dialogue with myself— one that set the stage for learning and recovery.

If you are currently navigating this journey, take a moment to simply observe your thoughts. Musician's dystonia recovery starts with awareness, and you have the power to change your inner talk to become your best coach.