Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Welcome back to The Golfer's Mind Lab — the podcast that trains the mental side of golf one experiment at a time. Every two weeks, host BJ Stremple breaks down one mental challenge, explains the psychology behind it, and gives you a real experiment to run in your next round.

Episode 6: Your Mental Anchor — Building a Pre-Round State of Mind

Five episodes in, you have a reset breath, a target lock, a Caddy Tally, a tension scan, and a two-column framework. Every single one of those tools works better when you walk onto the first tee already in the right mental state. Episode 6 is about building that state on purpose.

In this episode:

— Why the pre-round window is the most wasted mental real estate in golf

— What sports psychologists mean by pre-performance activation and how to use it

— The three elements of a personal mental anchor: physical cue, mental cue, and process intention

— Your happy place — the specific peak memory or image that puts your nervous system in performance mode

— Why your anchor gets stronger every time you use it

— BJ's personal on-course recap — what his anchor actually looks like

The Golfer's Mind Lab. One concept. One challenge. Every two weeks.

Share your anchor: @thegolfersmindlab

All music written and produced by BJ Stremple.

This episode is supported by Forelinks Golf. Use code GML10 for 10% off your next purchase of premium golf gloves at forelinksgolf.com

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Welcome back to The Golfer's Mind Lab — the podcast that trains the mental side of golf one experiment at a time. Every two weeks, host BJ Stremple breaks down one mental challenge, explains the psychology behind it, and gives you a real experiment to run in your next round.

Episode 5: The Control Illusion — Playing What You Can Actually Influence

By episode five, you've built a real toolkit. The reset breath. The target lock. The Caddy Tally. The tension scan. Today's episode is the philosophical foundation underneath all of them — because there's one reason we get tense, one reason we use bad self-talk, one reason we fixate on OB. We're trying to control things we can't control.

In this episode:

— The Stoic concept of the dichotomy of control and why it maps perfectly onto golf

— The specific things on a course that are yours and the ones that aren't

— Why the score isn't actually in your control and why that's a good thing

— The Two-Column Practice: a 10-second mental check that redirects attention on purpose

— What it actually feels like when you get this right

— BJ's personal on-course recap

The Golfer's Mind Lab. One concept. One challenge. Every two weeks.

Share your two-column result: @thegolfersmindlab

All music written and produced by BJ Stremple.

This episode is supported by Forelinks Golf. Use code GML10 for 10% off your next purchase of premium golf gloves at forelinksgolf.com

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Welcome back to The Golfer's Mind Lab — the podcast that trains the mental side of golf one experiment at a time. Every two weeks, host BJ Stremple breaks down one mental challenge, explains the psychology behind it, and gives you a real experiment to run in your next round.

Episode 4: Tension — The Invisible Swing Wrecker

The best swing you've ever made felt effortless. The worst ones felt tight, forced, muscled. That difference isn't talent. It isn't technique. It's tension — and it's almost entirely driven by what's happening between your ears.

In this episode:

— What tension physically does to your swing mechanics

— Why trying harder under pressure guarantees worse results

— How fear of OB, negative self-talk, and mental pressure all produce the same physical outcome

— The Tension Scale: a 1–10 body awareness tool for every shot

— The Heavy Arms cue: a pre-shot release technique used by elite performers

— How tension connects everything covered in Episodes 1 through 3

— BJ's personal on-course recap

— This week's listener challenge

The Golfer's Mind Lab. One concept. One challenge. Every two weeks.

Share your Tension Scan result: @thegolfersmindlab

All music written and produced by BJ Stremple.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

You’d fire a caddie who talked to you the way you talk to yourself after a bad shot. So why have you been carrying that bag for years?

In Episode 3 of The Golfer’s Mind Lab, BJ breaks down the psychology of self-talk — what negative inner dialogue actually does to your nervous system, why golfers are so much harder on themselves than they’d ever be on a playing partner, and why the fix isn’t forced positivity.

This week’s challenge: the Caddy Tally. No behavior change required — just a tally mark on your scorecard every time the inner critic shows up. The data from one round might be the most useful thing you take off the course.

Plus: BJ’s personal on-course recap from his own round running the Caddy Tally.

Share your Caddy Tally result: @thegolfersmindlab

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

There's a hole at almost every course that gets in your head before you even tee it up. Usually there's a white stake involved.

In Episode 2 of The Golfer's Mind Lab, BJ breaks down exactly what happens in your brain when you see out of bounds - why the harder you try to avoid it, the more likely you are to find it - and introduces the Target Lock, a three-step attention technique used by elite performers to redirect focus from trouble to the target.

This week's challenge: run the Target Lock on every shot where OB is in play and track where the ball goes versus where your attention was.

Plus: BJ's personal on-course recap from his own round testing the technique on a course with plenty of white stakes to work with.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Welcome to The Golfer's Mind Lab — a podcast that trains the mental side of golf one experiment at a time. Every two weeks, host BJ Stremple breaks down one mental challenge golfers face at every level, explains what's actually happening in your brain, and gives you a real challenge to run in your next round.

Episode 1: The One Shot Rule

Most golfers are wired to replay mistakes. It's not a character flaw — it's negativity bias, an evolutionary survival mechanism that gives more weight to negative experiences than positive ones. On the golf course, it's costing you strokes.

In this episode:

— What negativity bias actually does to your game

— The One Shot Rule and why "play one shot at a time" fails without a mechanism

— The reset breath — a breathing technique that activates your parasympathetic nervous system and signals your brain that the last shot is done

— This week's challenge: the reset breath for one full round

— BJ's personal on-course recap

The Golfer's Mind Lab. One concept. One challenge. Every two weeks.

Music credits: All songs written, recorded, and mixed by BJ Stremple.