During #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek it’s a great time to shine a light on the benefits to mental health that golf can bring: for our Golf Foundation charity team we listen to young people carefully about what they look for from golf, while all of our activity is there to make the game, fun, inspiring, enriching and inclusive for children from all backgrounds, while offering transferable life skills to help in their wider lives.
Appropriately this week, we are reaching out to PGA Professional coaches, golf volunteers and teachers who might like to learn more about our ‘Unleash your Drive’ life skills coaching programme and to book their free place on our next online workshop.
Unleash your Drive (for 11-16 year olds) teaches young golfers techniques such as breathing, self-reflection, imagery and concentration to help improve their levels of confidence, commitment and concentration. These are taught as part of a normal golf lesson and the youngsters involved are then encouraged to think about how they can use these skills away from the golf setting. The approach is backed up by the results of a pilot study that showed a 20% increase in these key skills and overall mental toughness for young people involved in the programme. The aim of the Golf Foundation is to share this learning with interested PGA coaches, junior organisers, teachers and community leaders through a new online workshop – visit here.
The next workshop will be delivered over the course of two evenings (each lasting one hour), with dates to be confirmed. The sessions will include some excellent video content showing examples of how coaches can apply the practical training techniques in sessions.
Between February and April, 20 coaches and volunteers have benefited from the workshop and will be applying their learnings as restrictions ease post-lockdown.
