Yip-pee for Focal Dystonia!

It's been noted, by me and those who've played golf with me, that I've been prone to bouts of the 'yips'. This is a common ailment for golfers everywhere, most notably (and most frustratingly) experienced during short putts on the green.

The yips suuuuuck. When suffering from the yips, I've often remarked that I'd much rather leave myself a 12 foot putt than a 2 foot putt, as I'm much more likely to be afflicted on the tap-in. It's a horrible feeling, knowing that the muscles in your hands and arms are about to do the exact opposite of what you want. When what you want is to guide the ball gently into the back of the hole to save par, any other variation in outcome is less than ideal.

Until today, I only held basic assumptions about the yips and their origins - that they were a phenomenon delivered by Satan himself to punish me for indiscretions I was unaware I'd committed. Turns out that's not what the yips are. Instead, they're a symptom of a term called Focal Dystonia (FD).

Whilst the causes of FD haven't been pinpointed, it's generally accepted that the condition spurns from miscommunications between the brain and the musculoskeletal system.These miscommunications manifest themselves in the brain losing the ability to inhibit the muscles that are supposed to be silenced when specific movements are commanded. Let me explain using an example I'm oh-so-familiar with:

There are a great many varieties of putting stances and techniques, but the underlying theme of all these techniques is simplicity. To execute an accurate putt, you've gotta keep your body pretty still, and ideally minimise the number of different movements required to keep the putter head square to the ball on impact. For me, this involves a low centre of gravity to keep my body balanced, with my head over the ball. I lock my arms in position, holding the putter with a fairly soft grip, and my intended movement is a simple pendulum - bringing the putter back, then back through the same line, careful not to break the position of my wrists or my elbows.

When I'm experiencing FD - or the yips - something goes awry. My brain knows what's about to happen, so it sends messages to my upper body to move in only one certain way, while simultaneously telling the muscles that need to stay still to essentially shut the fuck up. During bouts of the yips, these messages overlap each other and the brain loses the ability to target only certain muscles. As a result, the wrong muscles are instructed to move at inopportune times.

There's been suggestions that FD is the result of overuse of specific muscles during repetitive tasks - which is why its commonly found to affect sports people like golfers, darts players (it's a sport and I won't hear any arguments to the contrary, thank you) and bowlers/pitchers in cricket or baseball.

My own assessment of the causes of Focal Dystonia from past experience would suggest that this scrambling of messages between the brain and the musculoskeletal system find its root cause in an improperly functioning mental state of the athlete (or hacker) in question. I work hard on my mental game in golf, as a loss of focus, inability to visualise shots, calmly assess a situation or strategy, or the inability to calm my swing-thoughts before playing a stroke have disastrous consequences on my game. My suffering of the yips is most common during periods of poor mental game management. During these periods, my head is a mess - trying to fight off evil swing thoughts and negative emotions. It's no wonder that when my brain needs to send very precise messages during the moments my fine motor skills are tested the most - i.e short putts - it struggles to do so.

The yips have a name: Focal Dystonia. That's what I learned today.