Awareness, Focus or Concentration?


Every coach will tell you the importance of mental skills and talk about awareness, focus and concentration. I often hear these terms used to mean one thing, but are they all the same? I would say no. So what's the difference?

As I see it, concentration means to narrow your attention onto one specific thing. However, whilst it's necessary to be able to shut out distractions, you may also be shutting out things that are relevant to your game. For many players there's also a physical aspect of concentrating - they may furrow their brow, tighten the jaw or even hold their breath. These actions can interfere with your coordination reflexes (head and neck righting reflexes) and therefore do nothing for your timing. What do you do when you feel the need to concentrate?

Try the awareness test below. It's a bit of fun but it does emphasis an interesting point.
If you concentrate on one task you could miss something that has a far greater influence on your shot. I mentioned earlier that the act of concentrating can also involve unwanted muscular actions. Any undue muscle activity will take you further away from a poised state - the ideal state for a golfer. You may be adding any number of unnecessary actions to your golf but be completely oblivious to them if you're concentrating too hard on your grip, the ball or where you want to hit it.

Obviously these are all aspects of your game that require your attention, but how do you do it without concentrating? This brings us to awareness and focus. 
I see awareness as the ability to be able to notice everything around us; focus is the ability to determine what's relevant and what isn't without it being an effort. For example, you're about to take your putt when a jet passes over head. If you're focused you'll hear it and decide whether you're going to wait until it's passed or carry on regardless not letting the sound distract you.

If you're concentrating on your putt, maybe also tightening your jaw, you won't notice the jet at a conscious level, and play your shot unaware that your shoulder muscles have contracted slightly in response to the irritating sound. More likely, you won't notice your habit of getting set by tightening any number of muscles because you're fixed and concentrating on your game.
To be focused you have to be 'in the moment' or the 'here and now'. I teach golfers to initially be aware of something not related directly to their game. This may be something like the touch of their clothes on the skin or the movement of their ribs. You can try it now, also add the support from the chair underneath you. These simple tricks can help to open up your awareness and when you're ready to play your shot you can focus on the golfing bits without narrowing awareness.

You can read more about my approach to teaching golfers in my book, Golf Sense. For more information please click here.

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