AUGUSTA, Ga. The scene is Wednesday of the 2006 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago. Dr. Michael Lardon, a San Diego-based sports psychologist, is hanging out on the putting green with a client, Rich Beem. Next to them, Tiger Woods is working, head down, hitting putt after putt. Beem, the 2002 PGA champ,… Read more »
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Acute Performance Failure
“Choking” is a colloquial term that is used to convey the phenomena of acute performance failure under perceived stress. However, acute performance failure is not a homogenous phenomenon. In the sport of golf there appears to be at least three entities that produce acute performance failure – panicking, choking and the yips. All three of… Read more »
Anxiety Disorders
What is an anxiety disorder? Anxiety disorders are extremely common. Women have a 30% chance of developing an anxiety disorder in their life and men have about a 20% chance. Everyone experiences anxiety. Anxiety is characterized by an unpleasant, vague sense of apprehension that often is accompanied by increased heart rate, tightness in the chest,… Read more »
Athletic Peak Performance
So much has been written about Athletic Peak Performance – being in the zone or being in “flow states.” What is the “ZONE” It is a state of mind where athletes perform at their highest level. Time may slow down. A 90 mph fastball may come in slow motion, a phenomenon that baseball great Ted… Read more »
The Biology of Positive Thought
Can we really choose to always think positive? The concept of free will refers to our ability to choose what we do and what we think. Imagine an Olympic ski jumper moments before leaving the gates suddenly flashing on the possibility of crashing. The athlete must make a choice to let the thought pass and… Read more »
Eric Heiden – An excellent example of a process-oriented athlete
In 1981 in “Introduction to Organic Chemistry,” I found myself sitting next to five-time Olympic Speed Skating Champion and U.S. Pro Cycling Champion, Eric Heiden. To this day, people ask me what it was like and I remember that Eric was on the cover of Time Magazine, Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated only one year… Read more »
Headgames – Getting in the Zone
In 1976, I was in the final of the United States Junior Table Tennis Championships in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada, when a strange event happened to me that forever changed my life. My opponent, Perry Schwartzberg, was the United States’ best junior player and I certainly was not of his caliber. However, prior to… Read more »
Mood Disorders
What are mood disorders? Mood disorders are very common and, in fact, some studies suggest that each individual has up to a 20% chance to develop a mood disorder in his or her life. Mood disorders come in two common variations. Generally individuals will either have a depressive disorder or a bipolar disorder. What is… Read more »
The Difference Between Sport Psychologist and Sport Psychiatrist
Our own mental health lives on a continuum like our own physical health. Both are not static entities. Our mental health fluctuates as a function of what is happening in our lives. The vast majority of sport psychologists are not clinically trained to help people with life problems whether it is handling the spotlight, martial… Read more »
Doctor Helps Pro Golfers Get “In the Zone” and on the Green
Dr. Michael Lardon with Pro Golfer Rich Beem It’s not a word that appears with regularity in psychiatry’s manual of mental illnesses, but Dr. Michael Lardon knows precisely what his patients mean when they say they’re plagues by “demons.” They’re not talking about the Loch Ness monster or Godzilla or some blood-curdling creature from a… Read more »