We often get asked, what’s the difference between Opti and Focusband.
From my understanding of Focusband, they are training FP-1, which is the prefrontal lobe side of the brain and they are training it to quietness, which is a very good skill to have. We did some of that research in the ’80s. We started with gun-shooters, archers and I took it to golfers. We were looking for what occurs in the brain when people perform well. You do want to definitely quiet the left side. They are also training Quiet Eye Joan Vickers’ work and that’s a very important one as well.
If you are looking at somebody who tends to be a little more left-side dominant, analytical, logical, verbal in their thinking, Focusband can be very helpful to teach them to quiet that. If you have a golfer that is pretty balanced or a little more right-sided, I’m not sure we’ll have such a big effect on their performance using only the Focusband.
The other thing we find is I’ll get a resting measure with people on Opti, and then as soon as you put a club in their hand, they are in a quiet different state. They might be a little more left-sided in life and when you go down and perform, or they go to perform, they tend to switch over a little bit already. So, it’s always interesting.
One of the unique features of the band is that we are training patterns in the brain and not states. So, we are not in the linear domain, we are in the nonlinear domain.
What we are attempting to do is help people find their pattern, and there’s leeway in terms of what those different sides are doing. Once they find their pattern, we are training them the skill of being able to create synergy during that last second before they perform. They do use different techniques to get there just like in the swing.
Right around the impact, people tend to be very similar, but to get there, they do quite different things. It’s no different in the brain.
We help them find that pattern, help them train that pattern to always bring it into synergy. The other unique feature is that we don’t train you to be like anybody else or a standard. Many feedback systems train what they would call a normal standard and let’s bring people into there and they’ll perform better. But our belief is if you are going to be better than your best is that you are going to be a little extraordinary.
If that is the case, we just want to help you find the pattern always and be able to create it on the golf course and that’s going to benefit you the most.
