#52: [Inside the Mind] Ryan Mouque: The Benefits of Off-the-Ball Training, Goldilocks Swing Training, and Cultivating a Growth Mindset on the Course

The Golf Hypotherapist (00:04.189)

Hey Ryan, thank you for joining me on an episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset Podcast. are you

Ryan Mouque (00:09.664)

Very good, thanks for having me.

The Golf Hypotherapist (00:11.697)

Yeah, thank you for making this happen. I know we had to navigate some time zones, some rescheduling and flexibility, but really looking forward to this. And let’s go ahead and dive right in. I want to start painting a picture of you, your background, your experience to give our listeners a great foundation for the remainder of this conversation.

Ryan Mouque (00:30.444)

Sure, yeah. I mean, where do want me to start?

The Golf Hypotherapist (00:34.077)

What’s your background? What is your niche, your passion for the game of golf?

Ryan Mouque (00:39.062)

Yeah, well, guess it started, I mean, ever since I could walk, my grandfather introduced me to the game as I think most people get introduced to their game by their grandfathers. Golf was always my second sport. I played a game called rugby league when I, when I was growing up and decent at it, made all the rep teams, New Zealand squad, all that kind of stuff. And, and I actually came over to Australia to pursue that.

dream of playing in the, in the NRL, which is what we call the major league over here for league. And, you know, now that I look at it from a coaching perspective, there’s some early specialization that crept in there for sure. Because when I was about, about 18, 17, 18, we had rep training and the boys got on the bus and I didn’t. and they kind of, yeah, they thought I was joking. They’re like, come on, let’s get on the bus, hurry up. I was like, I’m done. I’m out. And,

This was at a time where I had a full scholarship at a school. and I just, I just hate not, not hated. shouldn’t say hated. just was over rugby league. was. And it sounds weird to say this because golf is exactly what I’m about to say, but it was the same training over and over and over again. And I was like, man, I did this when I was five. Like I know how to catch a ball. I know how to put my head to the side when I tackle. And I think one of the big things about league was, you know,

The Golf Hypotherapist (01:56.051)

you

Ryan Mouque (02:07.104)

being a team sport, I could pass someone the ball and just hit hit it perfectly on their chest and they would drop it. And I’m like, man, that’s like, that’s not on me. Like, this is so annoying. Like, you know, and I used to be someone who I’d treat the ball like gold, like, do not drop that ball. That’s your number one goal, right? Because otherwise you hand over possession and my, my attitude was just hold onto the ball as, as much as you can. And other guys would, you know, fling it around their arms and

And I’m just like, just hold like, it’s not that hard to hold the ball. So there was some like a sense of like frustration there as well. think. And at that time I, you know, I’d played golf all my life as my second sport and I got my license and I just couldn’t wait to get to the golf course. And I think a lot of golfers listening to this will attest to the fact that, you know, they finished work and the first thing they want to do is go to the golf club. And that’s the feeling that I had.

And I knew once I had that feeling for golf, that league was on the, on the back burner because I wanted to go and play golf. wanted to play. would be raining. still remember a Saturday. I turned up to the golf course, places flooded and I’m like, I’m keen. Like if anyone else is keen to go out, I’ll go out. and I look back on that now and like, if it’s cloudy outside, I’m like, yeah, I’d probably just rather coach rather than go play now. Right. But, but that was kind of where I was at with my golf at the time. And that’s.

That’s kind how I really got into doing what I’m doing now.

The Golf Hypotherapist (03:39.131)

And give the listeners like a good overview. What is it that you do now? Who specifically do you help and with what?

Ryan Mouque (03:45.974)

Yeah, so full-time golf coaching. Once I completed my traineeship in 2015, I quickly got out of the golf shop, basically said to my head pro at the time, said, look, like get me out of here. I can’t be in here. It’s not my passion. I’d rather not have guaranteed money per se and just get me out there and I’ll make it happen. And yeah, I was coaching full-time pretty much.

from then on, 2016 onwards. yeah, I mean, I coach everyone. I coach anyone that’s keen to improve. I’ve got tour pros under my belt. I’ve got college golfers. I’ve got scratch golfers. I’ve got 10 markers. I’ve got 30 markers under my belt. Females, males, a few juniors. So as long as you’re keen to get to work, I’m keen to help you. That’s who I help.

The Golf Hypotherapist (04:44.103)

Yeah, I love that. And one point that I see is a constant thread throughout your social content, which by the way is so not only consistent, but fantastic. So keep up the great work there is you mentioned people who are keen to get better and improve. And one aspect you and I know to be invaluable in that process is having a growth mindset. Talk to us about a what is a growth mindset? And what does that look like and feel like in regards to improving your golf game?

Ryan Mouque (05:13.858)

Yeah, I think a growth mindset is just seeing failure as a way to improve, you know, not seeing failure as, a place to, you know, sit on your hands and kind of go, I can’t do this. This isn’t for me. I mean, you’re either going to, mean, you you just said there about the consistency of, of social media. I mean, dude, I still post now and get two likes, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t faze me. Like I would.

I would then go and look at that social content and go, okay, it got two likes. No one liked it. It didn’t get any views. What was it that made it not get any views? And then I’ll go and study the one that got 2 million views and I’ll go, why was that so successful? And I’ll try and recreate that or, you know, create a different hook for the start of my videos or whatever they might be. So I think for golfers, you know, we hear it a lot. as a golf coach, I, you,

You know, I can’t be fixed or, know, I just play the way I do now because that’s how I play. it’s like, well, that’s a fixed mindset. you know, there are, there are people in the gym who are 80, 90 years old that they don’t have a fixed mindset. They have a growth mindset. They still believe that they can get better at what they do. And that’s who I like helping because I like to try and get better at what I do. And it would be great if it was reciprocated with a student that wanted to get better as well. So.

We both help each other in that regard.

The Golf Hypotherapist (06:41.339)

I love that. And what I also heard in one of your beginning part of your response was like, there’s an acceptance that mistakes are learning opportunities. There’s a curiosity and it’s this mistakes as an opportunity that becomes the catalyst for growth. So for somebody listening right now, who’s guilty of my swing is what it is. It’s always going to be that way. I’m destined to be a 20 handicap. What’s the starting path?

beginning to let go of that outdated way of thinking and starts cultivating a growth mindset.

Ryan Mouque (07:14.252)

Well, I think, you know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Right. So I think that the players that say that kind of stuff, they’re out there trying to do the same stuff all the time and it’s not working. and I say this to a lot of people, like, I guarantee you, if you just went to a coach, not for six months or 12 months, but if you just got a couple of coaching sessions, you would at least then be on your way to.

to understanding the pathway that you need to take. Now, whether you choose to hire a coach to continue to help you, obviously that’s an investment. There’s a financial investment there as well. But if you don’t wanna do that, that’s fine. But you’ve gotta get the direction right first. And I think a lot of golfers who have in a way given up on trying to get better is because they’ve just tried everything on their own to know success and…

They’re not willing to go and ask a coach or go and ask an expert to actually help them. And believe it or not, if they just did that, they’d probably be way better off.

The Golf Hypotherapist (08:22.811)

I often come back to asking for help accelerates results. Asking for help is a sign of strength. Even though, especially as men, we’re conditioned that asking for help is a weakness, a sign of vulnerability. can’t be trusted, but you and I both know to be true. That’s the opposite. It’s how we get to our desired goal or outcome a hell of a lot faster. Yeah. So kind of building off of that in your, you know, your coaching expertise, you’re just in depth understanding of the swing.

Ryan Mouque (08:43.394)

For sure, for sure.

The Golf Hypotherapist (08:52.817)

What are bad recommendations that you chronically hear in your niche and expertise of coaching?

Ryan Mouque (09:02.626)

Bad recommendations in regards to like what people should work on or?

The Golf Hypotherapist (09:07.325)

Just you have those coaches out there. You and I both know there’s no shortage of misinformation out there about multiple elements of the swing, what to work on, how to and how not to do things. What are some of the recurring themes that you hear when individuals are trying to coach the swing, help other people improve their swing that you just feel is bad advice?

Ryan Mouque (09:28.226)

Well, I mean, it’s a hard one that one because I mean, anything can work for anybody. I think, you know, golf is, or can be so feel orientated that, you know, someone could say, well, I felt this and it worked. And it’s like, well, what you felt and what actually happened may not have been the case, but it’s hard to convince someone sometimes that, you know, things like lifting your head, right? Like, you know,

The Golf Hypotherapist (09:35.785)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (09:55.348)

we always hear you shouldn’t lift your head, but dude, I’ll tell you what, like if that’s going to help someone maybe rotate through the shot a little bit better, right? They’re, you know, they’re trying to keep their head down or if they are keeping their head down and, they’re not rotating through the shot, maybe they do need to lift the head a little bit to try and release their body and things like that where it’s, you know, that’s a big no-no in our, in our industry. It’s like, well, yeah, theoretically it is if you, if you literally keep it down the whole time, but

I think, you know, players are so feel orientated sometimes. And like I said, feel isn’t always real, but I think a lot of the time, mate, golfers just don’t know how to practice. Like I continuously find myself with my content, just trying to educate players on how to practice. think there’s just the information out there nowadays is great. and I think what we’re finding is

You can go online and you can go and search up my stuff or stuff on YouTube or whatever it is that that information is fantastic. What’s not out there a lot is how to practice it once you’ve gained that knowledge. And that’s where I think a lot of golfers struggle because, you know, like I said, this is just so much to watch. And I actually think golfers are actually quite smart in regards to.

knowing what they need to work on, they can see flaws in their swing. They know what an across the line position is. They know what early extension is, but you know, they just don’t know how to practice it.

The Golf Hypotherapist (11:29.959)

Yeah, I hear you on that and I’ll put myself under a microscope for a second. So Ryan and I are recording this it’s late October and I’ve already mentioned on my podcast, like my practice has been anything but intentional lately. I feel a bit lost in what to practice. So I’m curious, you know, should somebody listening and I know there’s a many, many of them who feel lost in how to show up and approach their own practice regimen. Where do we start gaining more intention and focus during our practice sessions?

Ryan Mouque (12:00.032)

Well, it comes back to that, that original thing we spoke about by having a plan. you know, if, if you turn up to a golf golf course or a driving range and you kind of don’t know what you need to work on, like straight away, you’re, you’re, if you don’t know what you’re going to work on, you’re not going to be able to structure your practice the correct way anyway. So that’s why I say, you know, and I know, know coaching isn’t for everyone. I understand that. And I don’t want to.

The Golf Hypotherapist (12:04.477)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Mouque (12:26.314)

sit here and say, you must get coaching to improve. Cause there’s been two players that have never had a coach and got to the tour. Right. But I mean, as a coach myself, I see the value in coaching and I’ve worked with enough golfers to know that those who don’t get coaching are just super confused and it doesn’t take much to actually get them on the right track. But once you are on the right track, that’s where structure to your practice, you know, how much time are you going to devote to the

to the practice session. If you’ve got an hour, well, here’s how to structure an hour of time. Do you need the majority of that practice session to be on technique? If so, here’s how to structure your technical sessions. If you’re a really good player and you’ve got a tournament coming up, maybe you just need to spend 10 minutes on technique. Well, here’s how you do that. And then you need to go into some random and competitive practice so that you’re not thinking over the golf ball like crazy while you’re trying to play into an event. So

yeah, that’s, that’s why, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it later, but that’s why I created the courses that I’ve created, on my website. I’ve got a course called the ultimate guide to practice. And I created that just basically because I, I dealt with so many students who didn’t know how to make it’s a swing change. you know, when I have the same questions over and over again, I think in my mind, why don’t I just put that into a, into a course and have people access it, right? Because.

Everyone says I can’t transfer my range game to the golf course. It’s like, yeah, I know that it’s because you don’t practice the way that you should. It’s like, well, how do I practice? It’s like, well, here it all is. It’s all there. So that’s why I created that. And a lot of my social content is about that. It’s about trying to help golfers practice with more purpose.

The Golf Hypotherapist (14:10.331)

And what have you noticed maybe in your own game or those that you coach as someone begins to progress from consistently shooting in the nineties to the eighties and into the seventies, what elements of their practice structure begin to change? What looks different as they improve in their skill and their ability to score lower?

Ryan Mouque (14:29.622)

Yeah, well if you think about a standard, let’s say, 100 shooter, for example, like, we could all agree that they probably don’t hit the ball very well. Right? They make a lot of doubles, they make a lot of triples. Some of them might putt decent, some of them might have decent short game, or let’s say good enough short game to shoot in the 80s, for example, but a lot of the time someone shooting 100, their ball striking is just not good enough. They drive it out of play.

you know, they’re, miss hitting a lot of iron shots. They can’t control their distances due to the strike they’re hitting on the face. so ultimately if we are to separate a 70 shooter, 80, 90, a hundred shooter, a lot of that’s going to be in how you drive the golf ball and how you hit your approach shots into the green, which ultimately leads to better technique when you swing the golf club.

The Golf Hypotherapist (15:23.209)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Mouque (15:24.29)

I mean the question for the viewers here would be would you rather swing it like Adam Scott and have a terrible short game or would you rather have a swing that shoots 120 that have Adam Scott short game? Well the stats are going to say and I’ll kind of give kudos here to Lew Stagner because when you asked me this question I messaged Lew and I said look just fact check me here this is what I think needs to happen for a hundred to go to 90, 90 to 100.

The Golf Hypotherapist (15:45.288)

Yeah.

Ryan Mouque (15:54.272)

I’m sorry, 90 to 80 and 80 to 70. And I said, just fact check me here. I want to get this right. And the stats do suggest that it’s driving an approach play that need to get better as your scores come down. And your short game and putting aren’t necessarily the biggest influence in those score drops. And it’s purely because the better you drive it, the least penalty shots you’re going to have, and the better you strike it, the

The Golf Hypotherapist (16:16.425)

Mm.

The Golf Hypotherapist (16:21.789)

Yeah.

Ryan Mouque (16:22.486)

the better your approach play is going to be and the more greens you’re going to hit. And like I said, you can probably get away with having a very similar short game than what you had in the nineties because you’re in the nineties because of your ball striking more often than not. I’m not saying that’s for everyone because there could be people listening to this with the short game yips and you know, but the typical player needs to improve ball striking and that comes from better technique.

and obviously a little bit of short game and putting for sure.

The Golf Hypotherapist (16:55.325)

That was a phenomenal response. I appreciate how you broke down the framework of where you’re getting the most bang for your buck on improvement. And again, this is in October. So I hope when the episode comes out, my average score is remarkably lower, but having just broken 90, I’m stuck in those low nineties. And I know for me it’s consistency off the tee. feel, this is a biased opinion. I do have a pretty strong putting chip game. know, I had 28 putts the last round, 32 before that. That’s pretty darn good from where I’m at, but.

If I don’t keep the ball in bounds, how am I going to score well? So building off of that, I’ve got two questions here. Where are you seeing most golfers struggle off the tee? What is that common denominator low hanging fruit that gets them into the most trouble?

Ryan Mouque (17:40.694)

Well, I mean, they’ve got wild golf swings. They’ve got golf swings that just don’t produce very good ball flights, to be honest. you know, when we talk about consistency, a lot of golfers who slice the golf ball 50 yards are actually quite consistent. They consistently slice it 50 yards, but you know, it, to me, it’s that there’s nothing really you can do off the tee other than pick another club, which doesn’t guarantee anything anyway.

Other than literally improving your technique and when I say that with we’re looking at improving the club path We’re looking at improving the clubface. We’re looking at improving the strike We’re looking at improving the angle of attack just all your delivery patterns or your or your You know all your impact dynamics and a lot of that can come sure you can train that on its own So you can do some face training you can do You some ground contact stuff

But ultimately, I think if your swings all over the place and your body moves horrendously, like that stuff’s going to be very difficult to do. yeah, I think for me, it’s going to be improving technically. And that’s where, again, that’s where the coaching side comes in. Because a lot of golfers that I’ve worked with, there’s actually quite a lot of things that they do not very well. And it’s quite…

when you’re coaching and I don’t want to sound like this is going to be too difficult for people, but it’s quite common. If you’re shooting a hundred, you’ve got, and I’m just plucking a number out of the air here, but you’ve got seven things wrong with your golf swing, right? And if we fix one thing, cause this is what a lot of people say, I’ll just, just work on one thing. It’s like, okay, but that one thing doesn’t necessarily improve the ball striking. You actually have to improve the three things prior to that.

to then improve that fourth thing that really makes a difference to your ball striking. So just working on quote unquote one thing doesn’t always, it’s not always that easy.

The Golf Hypotherapist (19:47.041)

Yeah, I like that. I’m curious. I’m going to share an analogy my coach shared with me. I think this will resonate with you is building off of that. If we use that seven things example, rather than having one or two of those things turned up to 100 % consistency effectiveness, and the other three, four or five turned to zero, it’s have all of them at 10, then 20, then 30 to start producing more consistency. And of course, you can zone in on focus on minuscule aspects here and there. the collective again, for this example, seven aspects,

to slowly and gradually be brought up together. Is that correct in my understanding?

Ryan Mouque (20:21.344)

Yeah, absolutely. And you’ve got to also, and this is kind of like, you know, the journey and the growth mindset of improvement is sometimes you’ve got to just work on the, you know, the one or two things that actually need to improve, but won’t improve ball striking straight away. So like things like setup, right? Like if we’re set up incorrectly, that’s going to hinder your opportunity at hitting good golf shots. So let’s fix set up, but that doesn’t always mean that

just fixing setup alone is going to now turn your 50 yard slice into, you know, a 10 yard draw. But it’s a key, a key aspect in getting you to that point. And that’s what I mean by your, your setup might need work. Your grip might need a little bit of adjustment. That’s two things that don’t necessarily mean that you’re going to improve your ball striking, but are super necessary for the third thing and the fourth thing, which ultimately then leads to better ball striking.

The Golf Hypotherapist (21:20.623)

Yeah, and my listeners know my very first lesson I spent a god awful amount of time just focusing on the grip. I was so frustrated. I was like, I just want to hit the damn ball. And now here we are so many months later. I’m like, my gosh, I’m so grateful. He taught me to coach myself to make adjustments to the grip. And now I feel so much more empowered that I can self diagnose and coach myself in those moments where things are a little off kilter.

Ryan Mouque (21:44.898)

Absolutely.

The Golf Hypotherapist (21:46.217)

Yeah, I love that. So building off of that, I’m going to throw us a different direction here. If you could have one gigantic billboard with anything on it positioned on a golf course, what would it say and why?

Ryan Mouque (22:00.982)

So I wrote this one down. There’s heaps of billboards that I can do here, but I wrote here, and this was just off the top of my head when you asked it to me, I said, it’s just a game. You don’t practice enough to get that upset about playing poorly. So the reason why I wrote that is, you know, like I used to be, I used to be a little bit of an angry human as a kid when I played golf.

The Golf Hypotherapist (22:21.704)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (22:30.26)

Right. And I look at it now and where I’m at with my golf and in my career and my coaching, coaching is number one to me. when I go out and play now, honestly, I do not care what happens out there. I have a zero care attitude towards my golf now. Now that doesn’t mean that I literally don’t react to bad shots or I don’t get upset when I play poorly, but I look at it and I go, you know what?

lunch is going to taste really good after this. you know, I get to go home and I get to do a little bit of coaching or I get to answer some emails that have come through or I get to go and view some nice testimonials about my coaching. And at the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world. If I play poorly now earlier in my golfing career, when I was somewhat trying to play every shot was the most important shot of my life.

golf used to dictate the way that I ran my day. If I played really well, I’d be happy for the day. And if I played poorly, I’d be miserable for the day. And when I started coaching versus actually trying to play, I realized that my livelihood now didn’t rely on trying to play good golf. And I think for everyone listening, unless you’re a tour player who’s livelihood, does it. Yeah. It does affect.

It doesn’t matter. It’s just a game. Honestly, I know you’re trying to play well. know you’re trying to, you you’ve been hard at work, maybe practicing for the week, but I say this to students. There’s always someone that misses the cut at the Masters. So no matter what your lead up to an event is, you’ve got an important member guest or you’ve got your club championships. It doesn’t guarantee that the work that you do prior to that doesn’t guarantee a great round of golf.

And if you’re going to get upset about that, you’re in the wrong game. So that’s kind of why I say now, you know, it’s just a game. It doesn’t matter. And believe it or not, that attitude has actually made me a better golfer. So I actually play better now because of that attitude, because I don’t put any pressure on any given shot. It just, doesn’t matter to me anymore. So that’s kind of what I’d put on a billboard and very small writing that you’d have to stand next to and, and look at.

The Golf Hypotherapist (24:48.85)

Read it, read it one more time for me, because I love it. I think it’s so valuable.

Ryan Mouque (24:52.574)

It’s just a game. You don’t practice enough to get that upset about playing poorly.

The Golf Hypotherapist (24:59.281)

And that part, that last part resonates with me so much because I found myself on many instances having a poor performance and doing a good job completing my after round reflection only to realize, well, shit, you only got one practice session in or you had two, but they were unfocused. And it’s like, yeah, like that just hit home. I’m so, and I know it’ll hit home with the listeners. have an excellent quote.

Moving us along Ryan, like something that’s always stood out to me as I’ve first started coming across your content many months ago is this passion for knowledge. It seems to me you’re an avid learner, a student of the game because that empowers you to be the best coach possible. I’m curious, is there anything in the last two, five, 10 years that you’ve actually changed your mind about or changed your approach based on further learning or experiences?

Ryan Mouque (25:49.728)

No, I think I wouldn’t say I’ve changed my mind, but, but guys like Lou Stagner have really opened up my eyes as a coach. Mark Brody as well, obviously with his, his book, every shot counts. There’s research data proof that shows us now where we have to focus to become better golfers. And I think early on you get bored into, especially as a coach.

you get bored into the whole, you know, short game putting inside a hundred, you know, I heard it on the TV. we’ve got the Aussie events happening, happening here at the moment. And, know, all the, all the players last week, or when this was being recorded, they were playing in Adelaide and the commentary team, you know, was saying 75 % of your practice should be inside a hundred yards. And I, I put that on my story and I was just like, it still baffles me that that’s.

still being projected onto golfers. It’s just not true. Like literally there is a book from Mark Brody, Every Shot Counts, that shows exactly where you should be working to improve your game. And the fact that there’s people on TV basically saying, you should still be 75 % inside 100. Some people should, for sure, for sure. But most people don’t.

you know, that kind of stuff for me, I really like from a coaching perspective now looking at research and data to back up what I say, man, on the internet nowadays, if you get something wrong, you’re to be fact checked. So you can’t afford to be wrong now, you know, and if, if the data is out there to suggest otherwise, then you kind of need to look at that and, and, you know, follow that a little bit within reason.

The Golf Hypotherapist (27:43.655)

Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me of my time as a dietician and everyone used to say, weight loss is a hundred percent diet. And it’s like, no, no, it’s not. There’s about a million other factors that are involved. Maybe for some people, they need to pay more attention to that, but they should also move and take care of themselves and manage their stress and learn how to sleep, yada, yada, yada. So I hear you on that. I’m curious and we’re going to pretend that there is no currency conversion right here between Aussie dollars and US dollars. But if you had to recommend,

a golf tool or a golf investment to help people perform or practice better. That’s under $100. Again, give or take with the currency. What’s your go to or best recommendation as a training aid?

Ryan Mouque (28:30.134)

wearable training aid you reckon or like video courses or learning what what do you mean?

The Golf Hypotherapist (28:36.603)

It can be something to bring to the course with them in any capacity to help with their striking, their positioning, their alignment.

Ryan Mouque (28:45.504)

Honestly, I would say a towel. I would say alignment sticks. would say a glove. Those three are, I mean, you can do anything with those three. mean, alignment sticks, what do they cost? Like 29 bucks for two or something like that. You can do anything with an alignment stick. You can put it in the ground at certain angles. You can…

The Golf Hypotherapist (29:03.133)

Yeah.

The Golf Hypotherapist (29:06.717)

Yeah.

Ryan Mouque (29:13.594)

That can stop an inside takeaway and outside takeaway. You can put it on your inside your belt buckle so you can check your rotation and there’s just so much you can do with an alignment stick and I mean a glove as well. I thought about a glove just quickly because I mean I put them under my arm sometimes to keep everything connected and things like that.

The Golf Hypotherapist (29:23.241)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (29:38.964)

A towel you can put on the ground just behind your golf ball for low point control. I guess for training strike, like a, like foot spray, you can spray on your club face. I think the sign of a good training aid is something that you can use and take away and still get the benefit. I think when a training aid forces you into a position, that’s not ideal because you know, like

The Golf Hypotherapist (30:06.93)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (30:08.716)

There’s that, have you seen online like that robot where you, you hold the club and the robot swings you like that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Like you’re not. So here’s a saying for you. He who does the work does the learning. So I’ll say that again. He who does the work does the learning. So if you go onto that robot, who’s doing the work, the robot, right? You are not doing the work. So you’re not learning.

The Golf Hypotherapist (30:15.399)

Yeah.

Ryan Mouque (30:37.554)

The best way of actually learning things is to actually do them the complete opposite. So if you’re trying to push forward in the downswing, for example, it would be ideal for someone to actually push you back so that you physically have to go, you have to like exaggerate the amount of forwardness you need because someone’s actually pushing you the other direction. That’s your over speed, under speed. Like when sprinters are training, right?

The Golf Hypotherapist (31:03.497)

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Mouque (31:06.026)

they’re going to either train on a treadmill that kind of pushes them back, right? Like imagine an escalator. Imagine a hundred meter race and they’re training on an escalator that’s actually making it harder for them to run a hundred meters. They’re going to have to work even harder to get speed. But then there’s the other way where you can go, hey, I’m going to help you. So Usain Bolt could maybe run that in six seconds, right? But then he could also use that escalator the other way around.

15 seconds. So things like that’s really helpful.

The Golf Hypotherapist (31:40.135)

I love that because you’re building awareness as to what the right, call it movement motor pattern is and being able to contrast from a feel-based lens what’s wrong as well. Such a timely point because literally hours ago today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Waldron. Are you familiar with that name? Okay, I’ll switch your message after. But we talked all about he’s very big on super slow rep training.

Ryan Mouque (31:56.512)

I’m not, no.

The Golf Hypotherapist (32:05.037)

And we’re talking about 30 seconds swings and whatnot. And then when you’re really confident, you’ve ingrained the right motor pattern doing one correct repetition and then doing one of your outdated pattern, just so you can really not only feel the difference between the two, but then put that coaching hat on yourself and be able to quickly self-diagnose. Ooh, that felt off. Here’s why. Let me find two in the appropriate movement pattern.

Ryan Mouque (32:28.134)

that’s what I would call, I physically call it Goldilocks training. some people call it sandwich training, right? So you want to try and, know, and I say this all the time and it’s quite, it’s quite weird. Actually, I get quite a lot of blowback on this. just from people who don’t understand why I’m trying to get them to do it is if you’re slicing the golf ball, right? Your, club path is out to in and your face is miles open to that path. Okay.

So that’s your current pattern. What’s the complete opposite to that? What’s the Goldilocks, right? The too hot, too cold, just right. Okay. Well, that would be to have your path move extremely into out with an extremely closed face, which would mean you’d hook the golf ball. And people go, are you teaching players to hook the ball? No, no, no. I’m teaching them awareness on how to change their out to win with an open face into an into out with a closed face.

The Golf Hypotherapist (33:05.469)

Yeah.

The Golf Hypotherapist (33:22.77)

Yeah.

Ryan Mouque (33:24.544)

And then it’s up to you to go, okay, let me just minimize the amount of close face and into our path. And let me now try and hit a 10 yard drawer instead of a 40 yard hook. And to be honest, that’s one of the things that really helped me as a player when I first got into coaching is, you know, there’s all this stuff now about, you know, we don’t need to shape the golf ball to be good players. We can hit one ball flight. mean, Bryson hits a draw all the time, literally all the time.

The Golf Hypotherapist (33:30.899)

Bingo.

Ryan Mouque (33:54.138)

but training shot shaping, so training that the theory behind shaping your shots actually creates awareness on where the clubs moving in space, how to get more into out, how to get more out to win and then how to shut the face, how to open the face and golfers, you know, if you, if you think about it, if you one day need to snap hook a shot around a tree because you’ve got a dog leg left and you’ve hit it left, well, wouldn’t it be

beneficial for you to actually learn that shot. And, you know, I bring this then back to stats where we go, well, it’s actually better proximity wise to be 50 yards from the hole than it is 130 yards. So if you’re behind a tree and you don’t have that shot, that big kind of hook shot, because you don’t train it, because you don’t believe in it. Well, I’m going to snap hook my shot to 50 yards to the green.

and you’re gonna chip out to 130 yards. Now, the difference in our skill level there was nothing other than you’re not prepared to go on the range and learn how to hook at 50 yards, I am. So straight away, I’m gonna become a better golfer just because I know how to manipulate my club path and my club face when I need to.

The Golf Hypotherapist (35:10.939)

At what point, and let me just comment how incredibly insightful and beneficial that comment was, at what point as a coach do you begin adding that to your player’s toolkit? Is there something you need to see, a scoring average? Help me better understand when you’re beginning to implement this technique and training around shot shaping.

Ryan Mouque (35:33.11)

Well, again, it’s not about shot shaping. It’s about understanding the club and the, and the, you know, the club pop and the club faith. Why can’t we just do it for five minutes at the end of a session? Right? Like it doesn’t have to be when you shoot 89, you’re now, you’ve now unlocked this level. What if it’s just, Hey, at the end of the session, just do me a favor, hit you. If you’re a slicer or whatever, hit some big hooks for me. Get, put that on camera, show me, let’s have a look at it. And this is where, from a coaching perspective,

The Golf Hypotherapist (35:37.397)

That’s what I meant, sorry, the awareness.

The Golf Hypotherapist (35:43.593)

Hmm, okay.

Ryan Mouque (36:02.59)

If you change the intention, you can actually change the movement. So, you know, this is where Adam young is very good at what he does. He’ll, he’ll ask players that are hitting shanks to hit it on the toe. Now it didn’t tell you how to do that. He just said, just hit it on the toe. And I mean, I stayed with Adam young for a week when I was in Vegas with him. Not that long ago, very, very smart human, very, very good, good guy.

And yeah, we were, we were talking about this and I said, but I want to, as a coach, like if that was me, I’d want to film that and see what happens. Adam doesn’t care about that. Adam’s just like, it doesn’t matter what happened. You hit the tone now. You’re not shanking it. but for me as a coach, I would go, well, let’s go from, you know, hitting a massive slice, show me how you’d hit a hook. And if we were to put those two swings on camera and we were to do a before and after.

I reckon you’d find quite a lot of differences and differences in regards to where we’d actually want that club moving when you’re trying to hit a hook. So without even thinking about your right elbow or your lead wrist flexing or whatever it might be, just by trying to think, I’m going to hit a massive hook, you actually change what your swing looks like for some people for the better.

The Golf Hypotherapist (37:25.821)

Fascinating. I know what I’m adding to my practice regimen. This is really really helpful. Super cool. So now I’m curious and I know I’m speaking on behalf of quite a bit of the listeners to talk to us about online coaching the swing training and feedback aspect and I’m gonna ask from a place of complete ignorance. What does that look like? What does your client need to set them up for success to deliver to you the video or whatever it is you need to be successful?

Ryan Mouque (37:28.716)

haha

Ryan Mouque (37:55.202)

You know, I think before we start with that, we need to hit the pain points of in-person coaching. And why does one come to online? Well, and I did, I did in-person coaching for six years. And it was always my pet peeve that I wanted to see my students more, but it meant that they would have to pay more, right? They would have to get more lessons, right? Which I mean, great for me, sure. But.

for the student, it’s like, look, I don’t want to spend $150 every week, right? That’s very much okay. So I couldn’t see my students enough. So when they would have a lesson with me and then, you know, a month later, they’d come back and I’d say, so how’s your practice been? Now for me as a coach, I kind of thought about that and I’m like, that doesn’t make sense. any other team in the world who has a coach,

they train with their coach all the time. So their coach sees their training and looks over their training and things like that. But for golf, we seem to spend 30 minutes or an hour with someone and then we just send them on their way. And it’s like, they don’t know how to practice. They don’t know how to do slow swings. They don’t know how to do anything. All we’ve done is provided them with a technical thought. And then we’re basically saying, good luck. I’ll see you in a month’s time. And it’ll probably be the same lesson.

The Golf Hypotherapist (39:20.905)

Hmm, yeah.

Ryan Mouque (39:23.968)

And that, that irked me because I was like, there’s, there’s, isn’t right. Like, you know what I mean? I came from rugby league training, where my coach was there Tuesdays, Thursdays, and my coach was there for my game. So the game on the weekend actually dictated what we worked on that week. So for golf, it was just so the opposite. you know, if you’re taking in-person coaching, you’re limited to the instructors around you.

Maybe you don’t gel with them, maybe they’re not good enough, or maybe you’re lucky enough to find the one that you want and that’s great. So long story short, I come back from America in 2002 and basically six or eight months before I had quit my role in my in-person job to go and travel, and I come back and I didn’t have an in-person role. So I was like, well, let me try online.

Let me just see if I can pick up a few students and then I’ll find an in-person role. know, long story short again, I got super busy with online. Like I got full in about two to three months. almost took what it was to a point and it still is now. I don’t have time to do in-person coaching. but the great thing about online for me is I have a few different programs, but let’s talk about the unlimited model. So my premium, my premium program.

It’s unlimited golf coaching. So if you think about it, you take a lesson with me. So you’ve got a tripod, you put your phone on your tripod, you film a face on a down the line video, seven iron and driver for the first lesson. I will then analyze your swing. Same as I do in person. Hey, come over here. Let’s have a look at the swing. It’s the same thing. And then I will go outside and I will film a personalized video for you.

showing you how to move your body or whatever drill that I need you to do to fix your movement and Then what I want from you for your next video, which could be in 24 hours time could be in two days time three days time whatever suits you I Want you to show me you performing the drill? Because the thing is is if I just give you the lesson and I say alright off you go you try it

Ryan Mouque (41:44.96)

and you’re doing it wrong for two, three, four weeks before your next lesson, we’ve just wasted four weeks. So I wanna make sure that you can first do the drill I’m asking and say you’ve got a rolling takeaway, right? Say you take the club outside and you roll it to the inside. I know that pattern for a lot of people needs to be quite exaggerated in regards to say like hands in, club out, right? And it’s quite common that

when you do that for the first time and you send that video back to me, it still looks a bit rolly because you’re not exaggerating it enough. So that’s where being able to send it to your coach and say, Hey coach, here’s my video. Am I doing this correctly? And it’s like, Ooh, it’s still a little bit rolly. You’re still separating the hands here. Here’s, you know, here’s maybe another way of doing it or keep doing what I just gave you. Send me another one in 24 hours time or whatever it might be.

The Golf Hypotherapist (42:25.097)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (42:41.046)

And then from there, once they prove to me they can do it off the golf ball, then I might say to them, all right, let’s start to go onto, let’s put a golf ball down and hit me a little pause swing. So stop at that takeaway position, go to the top, a ball. And that’s where we start to talk about how to practice this more effectively. So that’s kind of how it would work.

The Golf Hypotherapist (43:04.169)

And it’s interesting again, just the through line again, I had multiple podcasts interviews today, off the ball drills off the ball practice to be frank, this is this is foreign to me. This is novel to me. I understand it logically makes total sense and just hearing it from your perspective, the way you articulated just continues to make sense for me. And for those listening, I’m going to I’m going to clump some of my listeners into my category of experience. What are they missing? What what benefits are they missing by not

focusing on off the ball drills and training first before they bring that, let’s call it an upgraded swing to the ball and to making contact.

Ryan Mouque (43:41.954)

Well, here’s one for you that people will again blow back on, which is muscle memory doesn’t exist. Okay. So everyone talks about muscle memory, right? Your muscles don’t have memory in them. You, your bicep doesn’t have memory, right? If you’re in a coma, God forbid you’re in a coma, but if you’re in a coma, you can’t move any part of your body because your brain is not working. Right? So you’ve got to train the brain to move the body the way that you want.

The Golf Hypotherapist (43:49.609)

expand.

Ryan Mouque (44:12.214)

So think about that. A lot of golfers go out, they grab their lesson, or they have their lesson, they go out to the range, big bucket of balls, and they start just firing away trying to work on their new movement. But they haven’t trained the brain to actually move the body the way that they want. when you’re trying to swing really fast, chances are that movement’s not gonna be changing, right? It’s gonna be super difficult, which is why a lot of golfers go, when they’re…

trying to change their motion, driver’s always the hardest to change. Why? Because we swing driver the fastest. So if we’re swinging that the fastest, it’s the hardest club for our brain to actually compute what’s going on. what I like to do first, as I say to players, do this drill off the golf ball so that your mind, so that your brain is not thinking of contact, ball flight, wind behind you, the person next to you shanking balls across your face.

just try and jump in front of a mirror and look at that movement and go, right, that’s what it feels like. That’s my old swing, do some Goldilocks training. Okay, so that’s what the rolling feels like. All right, so I’ve got a good idea of that. What is an exaggerated movement of hands in club out look like? okay. And then what is an ideal movement feel like? okay, so that feels strange, but when I look at the mirror, that actually looks exactly what I want.

So I have to associate that feel with that look and go, okay. So now once you start to speed things up and do it kind of, within the, guess, within that swing, that’s when it will start to get much harder. So again, it’s stepping stones, right? A kid can’t just, or a child or a baby can’t just stand up, start walking, cross the road. It’s going to…

You know, it’s going to start crawling. It’s then going to stand up and fall over. And then it’s going to stand up again, take one or two steps and then fall down. And eventually, right? Hopefully by the time you’re 18, you can stand on your own. And sometimes if you’re drinking, maybe that’s not the case. We turned into a child again, but, that’s how I view the golf swing is look, you’re learning to crawl here. Yet you go to the range and you’re trying to do a backflip on a balance beam.

Ryan Mouque (46:37.408)

You need to learn how to roll backwards on the floor first. Don’t go straight onto the Olympic balance beam.

The Golf Hypotherapist (46:45.405)

Well said and for those of you listening to I have an imagination you may find based on your athletic background and experience it’s frustrating to feel like you have to start with crawling because you’ve already sprinted in other areas of your life but let that be a humble and insightful reminder that Ryan just shared that you’ve got to take that fundamental basic beginning step first and then you can allow that to transform and build into the positive momentum of running sprinting backflipping on a balance beam.

Ryan Mouque (47:15.488)

Yeah, it’s one of those things that, you know, like, there’s no real athlete out there that naturally is good at golf. Well, I wouldn’t say there’s none, but for example, a good friend of mine, Alex Riggs, who coaches Steph Curry, I remember asking Alex, I said like, what’s it like coaching Steph Curry? Because like the bloke just looks at a hoop and the ball goes in, right? He just, he shoots three pointers from anywhere. But how long has it taken? He didn’t…

he wasn’t born that way, right? He wasn’t just born shooting threes. He had to develop those skills over a long period of time to now get to where he just looks at the hoop and he just goes, right? And then when it comes to golf, and this is where I was talking to Alex about, was like, you know, what’s the hardest thing about coaching Curry or whatever. And a lot of it was, you know, Steph’s so good at basketball and it’s so natural to him now because of all his hard work, but golf’s not like that. So

Steph Curry, the one of the greatest basketballs we’ve ever seen, right? Or shooters, let’s call it. He has to then go back to golf and go, man, I’ve got to learn this new movement. I’ve got to learn to shoot hoops again. Right? Like I’ve got to, I’ve got to go through the technique of how my wrists work or whatever. And I mean, if someone like that has to take a step back from their sport and start to learn almost from the start, mean, obviously Steph’s a very good golfer now anyway, but like,

You have to as well. Right. If I, if I wanted to learn left-handed in golf and I’ve actually, I’ve been tempted to do this. I dude, I can’t, I can’t go out and hit full shots left-handed. Like I’ve got to learn the grip. The grip left-handed for me feels super weird. So I’m going to have to start from scratch. Right. but that’s what I mean about starting off slow and starting without a, without a golf ball. you’ve got to be willing. And again, we come back to that growth mindset. You’ve got to be willing to.

The Golf Hypotherapist (48:58.551)

Yeah

Ryan Mouque (49:11.542)

to suck at something early on to then get better at it later on. Otherwise, you’re just gonna stay where you are. And if you wanna stay where you are, that’s fine. But don’t, again, the billboard. You don’t practice enough to get angry. Stop getting angry.

The Golf Hypotherapist (49:25.371)

I can’t think of a better way to tie every key point you shared or almost every key point together in one to put a bow on this insightful conversation. And that analogy is so good. Steph on the court versus Steph on the course, like so relatable. mean, Steph is just a worldwide phenomenon. We’re all aware of his skill and you’re right. Like he’s got to take that beginner’s mindset, have the growth mindset to start from square one to build up the necessary components of his swing where then he can hit those effortless shots on demand.

Ryan Mouque (49:52.756)

Absolutely. Yeah.

The Golf Hypotherapist (49:54.845)

Ryan, this has been nothing short of incredible. I am so grateful for your time, the wisdom and experience you shared. Where can our listeners go to connect with you, learn more about you, and ultimately to learn from you and to work with you?

Ryan Mouque (50:08.992)

Yeah, I mean, social media wise, it’s all under Ryan Moque Golf, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, basically every social media kind of platform. Just type my name and I’ll be there. Follow me, send me a DM. No problem at all. I’m happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me. In regards to products and services, you know, just my website, RyanMoqueGolf.com.au. In there, you’ll see all my online coaching.

my courses, my video courses, I’ve got an ebook which has 40 performance practice games. So, you know, when we’re talking about block practice, so that’s your technique, random practice, and then competitive practice. That ebook is purely for that competitive side of things to keep practice interesting, to track your progress as well. So you’re not just, just beating balls into a, into a screen or out into the wilderness and

The Golf Hypotherapist (50:47.742)

Hmm.

Ryan Mouque (51:06.164)

I guess the, the, the newest thing that I’ve got going is my online academy. So, you know, this was, this was created purely because I got so busy with, with personalized coaching that, you know, I found myself doing the same drills over and over. And in my mind, it was like, what, I just put this all in one spot and I’d been wanting to do it for years, but it was, it was such a big job that I was like, well, I, you know, procrastinated on it for a while, but it’s, it’s now finished and

that’s basically for anyone who, you you, you spoke about, you know, what learning things should people be doing? Well, that Academy has everything you need in it, how to set up to a driver, fairway wood, irons. There’s a slice fixer program in there. Hook fit. There’s everything in there that, that I know it’s all in one spot. and you can also get a swing analysis in there as well. So there’s plenty of ways to work with me. I feel like I’ve got most.

if not all avenues covered to improve you as a golfer.

The Golf Hypotherapist (52:08.369)

Yeah. And I will vouch for his Twitter 10 times over. find myself there to be frank almost daily learning, digesting, becoming a better golfer. So thank you for all the time you put in, because I know how busy your coaching calendar is, but your social content is phenomenal. So keep up the great work there.

Ryan Mouque (52:26.594)

Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s definitely a lot of work, but it’s work that I enjoy. When people reciprocate like what you just said there, it makes me wanna keep going as well, so it’s fun.

The Golf Hypotherapist (52:40.925)

Yeah, and it shows so thank you for that and for those of you listening, thank you for tuning into another episode. I know you found immense value in today’s episode. So please do Ryan and I two favors number one, go back and re listen to this episode. There are so many gems that are worth hearing two, three, four times. Second, share it with a fellow golfer who you know is serious about elevating their game and playing to their potential. And with that said, if you haven’t taken 30 seconds yet to leave

a genuine rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you’re listening. It means the world to me and it is greatly appreciated. Well, thank you again for tuning into this episode. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Hit them straight and we’ll catch you in the next episode.