October 2, 2024 • 54 mins
Special guest, Claude Harmon III, joins Chris to share how much your body can hold back your game. If you're struggling to gain speed, distance, or do what your instructor asks you to, it's likely a physical problem. Get assessed and you'll know exactly what works, what doesn't work, and where to focus to unlock your best golf! More from Claude: Podcast: Son of a Butch Instagram: claudeharmon3 Twitter/X: claudeharmonIII Assess yourself: https://www.par4success.com/podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome back to the Golf Fitness Bomb Spot.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm your host, Chris Finn, and we have a very
exciting guest with us today. If you've been living under rock,
you may not know who he is, but if you
have anything in terms of golf knowledge, you definitely know
the name. Claude Harmon the third. Claude, Welcome to the podcast.
It is an honor to have you, particularly with your pedigree.
You know, I think number five on the on the
(00:32):
Golf Digest Top hundred.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's excited to have you on. Man, thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm always happy to talk about golf and golf fitness
and everything. So excited.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah. Man, It's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It's whenever we have guests that I always do research
and everything. And I was looking talking on my team.
I said, man, we got Claude coming on the intro.
Could literally take the whole episode with his resume. So
excited to go quick to the point. But obviously you've
worked with, you know, a lot, a lot of the
top players in the world. You know Bubba Ricky, you
(01:06):
know Adam Scott. I mean the list goes on, you
know Brooks. I guess the cool thing for our listeners
that I always when ever have somebody who works kind
of at your level on is really kind of trying
to help them understand how do you approach a you know,
a top player like that, particularly if we're talking like
the physical the physicality of them, Like you know, you
(01:28):
get a new tour guy who comes up and says, hey, yeah,
you're gonna start working with them, versus if you get
a guy who's I don't know, fifty five amateur, you know,
good club player, but like, is there a difference in
how you approach those? And I think a lot of
insight into that is always interesting and helpful for all
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I mean, obviously at the elite level. You know, at
the tour level, if you're going to work with a player,
they're probably going to have all the top players have
teams of people around them, their physio, theirs, trainers and
stuff like that. So I would say, you know, in
the last fifteen years, I've spent as much time with
physios and trainers and on that world and in that
(02:08):
world as I have with golf instructors. So you're always
trying to talk with the player's team, you know, what
is their body doing, what can they do? What can't
they do, you know, and you get a good idea
of what they're working with. I think every golfer has
their own kind of DNA or signature with what they
(02:29):
do with regards to their golf swing. And you're also,
i think trying to figure out what the player does
naturally as well, because I don't ever want to take
something away from a player that they do naturally and
replace it. And I think it's easy to do that, right.
It's easy to look at what a player does physically
and say, oh, okay, well we've got to fix that.
(02:50):
But that might be where they're generating power, where they're
generating their consistency and stuff. So I think you want
to you know, at the elite level, you're looking at everything,
but then you know, just at the regular you're teaching
golf lessons to regular people. I think the biggest change
in meeting Greg Rose and Dave Phillips from the Titleist
(03:12):
Performance Institute, you know, twenty years ago, is when I
look at a player now and they're hitting shots and
they're doing something wrong if they've got a fault in
their golf swang, unless it's a concept problem that they
don't know what they're supposed to be doing. Most of
(03:32):
the time, it's going to be physical. And I just
twenty years ago, you just didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Think of that.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
You didn't think, Okay, why is this player coming over
the top? Well, just tell them to stop coming over
the top, because coming over the top is bad and
all that stuff. Now, when I look at players, I think, okay,
there's unless they don't know they're not supposed to be
doing this. There's going to be a physical reason as
to why. And then you just kind of go about
(04:00):
connecting the dots for the player and saying, listen, this
is what you're trying to do in your golf swing.
This is what you're doing in your golf swing. Most
of the time they're going to say, oh, I'm not
trying to do that. I didn't know I was trying
to do that, or I didn't know I was doing that,
And so in that respect, you're able to then say
to the player, listen, it's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You, but it's not you, right right.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So I think that's powerful for the player to know, oh, okay,
I'm not physically able to do some of the things
I'm trying to do in my golf swing. So and
then I think it allows me as the instructor to
then say, okay, listen, there's a couple of different tracks
we can go down. If you want to work on,
you know, fixing some of the physical issues that your
(04:47):
body has, this is a direction you could go and
these are people that you could work with. But if
you don't have time to do that, then the things
that you're trying to do in your golf swing you're
not going to be able to. So we need to
try and go down a different road with the way
that we're going to have you hit the.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Golf ball one, especially with the amateur, that time is
sometimes the issue.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, the time crunch for the average golfer. You know,
I think everybody listening to this podcast game would somewhat
improve with a consistent, dynamic warm up, with a consistent
set of movement patterns in a gym setting or a
(05:34):
non gym setting, but just some dynamic movements that you
kind of know are going to help what you do.
You know, golf from must but the average golfer gets
to the golf course fifteen to twenty minutes, they go
to the driving range, some bullshit, they do some bullshit,
toe touch sketches, that, you know, and kind of move
(05:54):
their arms and stuff like that, and then they start
hitting golf balls and they get ramped up to full
speed quite quickly. There's no other sport in the world
where that happens, right, there's just even if you're going
to go play a pickup basketball game in your thirties,
you're probably going to do some sort of stretching. And
if you think about it, look at how many people
(06:17):
that play recreational sports, still play pickup basketball, still play
whatever that blow their acls out, that blow their hamstrings out,
that blow their achilles out. Why because they're not physically
able to do the exercise and the movements that they're
(06:39):
trying to and they don't have the proper warm up
to do that right. They don't have the proper stretching
the warm up. So golf is no different. And I
think that's one of the problems that we've got is
you know, golf isn't I think by a lot of
people taken not so much seriously, but just a fifteen
(06:59):
twenty minute dynamic warm up before you hit golf balls
to get your body moving, sprinting, jumping, moving, It would
wake up the body parts that we're going to ask
you to use in the golf. I mean, I think
people forget it's a dynamic The golf swinger is a
dynamic movement pattern that's over in about second half to
(07:22):
two seconds. And if you look at all of the
body parts that you're trying to coordinate in a very
very small time window. You know, two feet, two legs,
you know your hips, then you've got your chest, You've
got two arms, two hands. You've got all of these
body parts that in a very small time window and movement,
(07:47):
and we're having you, as the athlete and as the golfer,
do that from a completely static position. So you have
to start the motion to begin with. There's no momentum,
there's no reaction, there's no running to where the ball
is going, and there's no throwing to where someone is running.
The ball is on the ground, we put you to
(08:10):
the side of it and we say, all right, get
it in the air and move from no. I gave
golf lessons once to a guy that had sold his
semiconductor company to the US government and just made you know,
billions of dollars, and he wanted to learn how to
play golf. And when I tell you. He had no
athletic ability. He was just a scientist. He had no
(08:32):
athletic ability at all, and golf was very difficult for him.
But he said something that's always stuck with me. And
this has got to be over twenty years ago. You know,
we were taking a break. You know, he's putting on
band aids, his hands are covered in blisters, he's frustrated,
and he said, the hardest thing about golf for me
(08:53):
is I'm starting at zero energy. And it was something
that was a throwaway comment to him, but it was
very profound. We put you in this position as a
golfer and say, okay, now move the golf club and
move your body and control it. And I think it's
very hard for players to do that. And I think
(09:15):
it's very hard for people to do that given that
they have no idea what their body can and can't
do from a golf standpoint.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, and I think it's severely underappreciated by the average
golfer of you know, if you can't move, or if
those sequences are not consistent, then the ability for consistent
face control is going to be.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That much harder.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I think one of the most interesting things that I've
seen is when we look at it kinematically, when we
look at guys who don't have the rotary mobility, and
you look at ten swings kinematically, it's literally a different
seek sweekens every single time.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And then as you start to and you start to.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
See more rotary mobility be achieved, there starts to be
a little bit more consistency in that movement. And then,
you know, I always joke that the game of golf
is hard enough. Never mind if you have no idea
what the heck your body is going to be doing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Well, I mean, if you think about it. I mean,
I remember we were at a seminar once, a TPI
seminar early on, and we were talking about, you know,
how to describe how the body works. And I think
it was Gray Cook that said, the body operates and
functions in an alternating pattern of stable and mobile joints. Right,
(10:19):
so your foot is stable, your ankle is mobile. Right,
your ankor your elbow is stable, it can only kind
of go in one direction. Your shoulder hyper mobile. So
these constant alternating patterns of stable mobile joints, you know,
as you know, and I went through this, I had
back surgery and had a micro disecto me in twenty
eleven very limited internal hip rotation. The problem wasn't my back,
(10:44):
The problem was something above and below the chain. But
if you think about the way, so something that happens
when you get injured is something that's supposed to be mobile,
it isn't moving. So something that's supposed to be stable
and not move has to start moving. So in my case,
with my hips being really really tight and very little
(11:06):
internal rotation, my lower back had to start taking a
lot of torque and movement, and it's not designed to
do that. But the golf swing is the same way, right,
If you think about the golf swing through impact, the
golf club can't move itself, right. The golf club is
an inanimate object that us, the player, have to pick
(11:27):
up and move. It doesn't have a mind of its own.
So the golf club as you're swinging it through impact,
should really be stable if other parts of your body
are working in the right way. But if the other
parts of your body are not working in the right way,
then the golf club will have to start to become very, very,
(11:50):
very very mobile. Your hands have to become very very
active in the I think in the over twenty years,
the two decades that I've been teaching profeestional golfers, I
haven't had one say to me, I need to get
my hands more active in golf slump. Yeah, I need
to find a way to get more hand action through impact.
(12:12):
Everybody that I work with has said to me, Listen,
I've got to try and find a way to get
my body to keep moving and slow my hands down
and to match up the movement pattern of matching up
what my hands and my arms and my golf club
are doing and matching that to my body which is
rotating hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
But I think you said something early on about just
everybody has kind of unique patterns and Greg on a
while back, and he's talking about on the physical side,
how he looks at golfers as physically people will have
kind of a superpower and his goal is to not
take away the superpower in an effort to help the problem.
I mean, do you see a similar thing in the
(12:53):
golf side of things in terms of certain moves that
you kind of alluded.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
To it earlier. But I wanted to kind of ask
you from the Star.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Is everybody is trying to you know, I mean, right now,
the big rage is to shallow everything out right, you know,
to get the club laying down, laying down, laying down.
You know, when my dad started working with Dustin Johnson,
you know, fifteen over fifteen years ago, everyone said that
the left wrist of being in that bode tons of
(13:24):
flat at the top, and everybody said, oh, you've got
to fix that, You've got to change that. Brooks Kepta
had the same thing. Brooks has always played from a
little bit of a shut position. But I think we
know enough now about the body and we can measure
enough to where if you can rotate, you can move,
you can offset some of this stuff. I do think
(13:44):
that some of the moves, if you're trying to make
a move that is based off of someone else's model
or someone else's golf swing, you need to have a
very good understanding is to what it is that those
players can do physically and what you can do physically.
(14:06):
I think it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
To the widest gap between amateurs conceptually and what pros.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, and I just think that the average golfer learns
visually because they watch so much golf on television and
obviously with social media, now, you know, you can. You know,
there are tons of YouTube videos of everybody's golf swing
and high speed and high motion, and you can break
down all the golf swings. But if you are going
(14:35):
to go down that rabbit hole and say, okay, I
want to swing the golf club like this person, you
better have a good understanding of first of all, what
they do, why they swing the golf club that way,
But you also need to have a very good understanding
as to what you do what he's going. I mean,
if you talk to Greg and Dave, you know, at
(14:56):
TPI they're seeing tons of players now who are getting
you know, blowing out their knees, blowing out their hips,
blowing out their wrists, blowing out their shoulders, trying to
do some of these moves that we see on social
that are you know, these extreme shallow it out moves
that look great and sound great, and you know the
(15:20):
videos always are accompanied by someone going straight to the
ball speed and pushing it. But if your body can't
sustain some of those moves, you're you're going to get hurt.
And we see that a lot. You know, we see
players come in and say, hey, listen, you know I
was out for six months or six weeks or something
(15:43):
because I got hurt doing this, and I think it's
important for everybody listening. You know, golf is not a
team sport. You are the only player on your team.
So if you get injured and you go down for
I tell my juniors this all the time. You go
down for three months, four months with a vacu injury,
we don't sub somebody else in. Yeah, you're on the
(16:04):
bench for four months, you know. And we are seeing
so many overuse injuries with our juniors now because so
many juniors the parents are taking them out of other
sports and just putting them into one kind of specific movement,
which is golf. I mean, that's the worst scenario for me.
(16:27):
A sixteen year old, the sixteen year old kid who
take a lesson, they've only been playing golf since they
were eleven. They're very reluctant to be coached, They're very
reluctant to any sort of change, and they are injured
on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I'm glad you're going here. I wanted to. I wanted
to actually go this route with you anyway as well.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Like I know, you had no account on your pod
recently and just kind of as you're as you're seeing
the the future of the appose you've been in this
two decades you're you've kind of been you'll probably through
one of the biggest changes techn like technology wise of
the video camera to now like to now that everybody's
got the phone and now the fourth and then there's
sports plates and there's three D Like what are you
kind of let's let's go down this road where you're
(17:13):
talking about the juniors, because we're seeing the same thing.
I mean, the clubheads be increases we've seen even in
the last five years since all the knowledge of understanding
speed and how to train it. It's wild what we're
seeing with our kids and juniors. Well, how are you
seeing that changing? And where are you seeing that kind
of going? And concerns everybody inside of it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, I mean I think we are definitely in the
speed era of golf. You know, it's rare that you
see a junior now that is, you know, a senior
in high school that isn't kind of pushing the one
eighties in ball speed Now, I mean that's pretty normal.
Those used to kind of be outliers. Whereas you see
(17:54):
that on a regular basis. I think a lot of
that has to do with fitness. I think a lot
of it has to do with we can measure now,
but at the end of the day, the only numbers
that matter are the numbers that you put on a scorecard,
right your ball speed numbers. I mean, you know there
are so many players right now, you know that have
(18:14):
some crazy, crazy speeds. You know, Gordon Sergeant. You know,
at the collegiate level there's a couple of South Africans
that are trying to play that have tons of speed.
But do they win every week? Are they winning five
times a year? Are they winning six times a year?
Are they winning every time? No? So I mean I
think that there's a balance. There's there's an art to
(18:38):
playing golf, there's an art to practicing golf, but the
only thing that matters is playing golf and speed. Yes,
speed is great. I mean, you it helps to have speed,
but you have to be able to not crash the car.
So everybody wants a fast car, but you got to
be able to get it around the track without crashing, perc.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So, like we have a I guy Ryan Gerard, and
he's been a rally kid, he's been with us since
high school.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
You had a good year, you know, kept qualifying and whatnot.
Was doing well. He's on Corn. Back to Corn for
right now though.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
But I had conversations with him, and we were talking
about club at speed and you know, basically just saying, hey, man,
are you good with where you're at? And he had
a very kind of I thought was a profound or
interesting insight. And he said, he said, look, my ball
speeds between one seventy six one seventy eight. He said,
if I go to to one eighty or more, for me,
my dispersion gets to the point where I can't play.
He's like, I'm good enough here. So as long as
(19:30):
we can just maintain that. If we can build a
buffer where I'm more healthy, that's all I care about.
I thought that was very profound. He eats, you know,
early twenties. Do you kind of approach that similarly with
your play with your players?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I mean, I think that if you look at what
Bryson did, I mean, Bryson went down. I mean, Bryson
went the ultimate distance rabbit hole. You know, we were
locked down in the pandemic. You know, he completely I
remember that first tournament back when the PJ tour started
at Colonial. You know, Bryson looked like he ate Bryson.
(20:01):
He looked like he looked like a high school linebacker
that was injured, right, and you know, he looks kind
of puffy, didn't look jacked, He looked kind of big.
He looked like a like a high school athlete that
you know, blew his acl out that you could tell
had worked out but had kind of and then you know,
it was just hitting. You just couldn't believe how far
(20:22):
he was hitting the ball, and you know, all the
stuff and he wins the US Open and all of this,
but I think he realized that it's hard to play
at that speed because the miss is so far off line.
And you know, that is one thing that I think
that there is a rabbit hole that you can go
(20:45):
down that to gain more speed. What's it going to
do to your iron game? What's it going to do
to the other aspects of your game that are scoring?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So how do you approach that with your players?
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Like, like, I'm sure that's at some point it's kind
of like there is a point of diminishing return.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
How do you is it different for every player that
you work with? You know, how do you kind of.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I think it's different, and I think that you're I mean,
I look at players individually across the board, right. I
think there are some generalizations and some similarities that you
can make. But every athlete and every golfer that you
meet is different. They're going to have their own self
that they bring to their golf swing, and so I
(21:33):
think everybody goes through the learning curve different. I think
it's important to figure out with players how they learn.
Are they visual learners, are they data learners? Are they
you know, feel learners? What type of learners are they?
What are you going to give them to help them
kind of get to that next level? I think there,
(21:57):
you know, we know through all of the TPI stuff,
there are speed windows, you know, speed windows for girls
and boys when they're younger. I think I think where
we see speed as a massive differentiators in the women's game.
You know, if if you've got speed, if you can
(22:17):
carry the golfel a long way. I teach a girl
on the LPGA Marina Alex Marina is you know, early thirties,
maybe five three, had some back issues. You know, Marina
carries her driver kind of two twenty five to two thirty.
So we can't really make any changes because she's had
(22:41):
some back injuries that have gotten her very close to
being out of the game, to having to retire. So
all of the natural things that we would do speed training,
you know, just throw all of that onto her. She's
out of the game if we do that, correct. So
you have to know the athlete and the player. So
when Marina came to work with me, you know, three
(23:03):
four years ago, you know, I'm able to go online
and look at you know, her stats on the LPGA website.
We can see distance wise, but as soon as you
talk to her, she's like, I can't. I can't get
any more distance because I can't. And so what what
you have to do as an instructor there is say, okay,
where is the worker around here? How can I help
(23:28):
this player increase you know, a couple of miles per
hour in ball speed maybe and hit it more solid.
So in Marina's case, you know, in an effort to
try and get more power, she was making this big
move off the golf ball, you know, to try and
make this big shoulder turn and get to her right side.
(23:49):
And that's something I think I see a lot of
players do is they know that they don't want to
stay on their left side. They know that they don't
want to have that reverse spine and that killer move.
But in Marina's case and in a lot of of
mid handicap range players, I see a lot of players
now that we can measure through force plates, is they
(24:11):
get over to their right side sometimes you know, seventy
eighty percent of their weight on their right side at
the top, but then at impact they're fifty to fifty
right because of the left because they don't have the speed.
But I also think they don't have the concept either.
They don't know that they need to be getting left.
(24:31):
So in that respect, I think one of the things
that's changed in the last you know, five years that
I think is a positive is all to talk about
ground force reactions now, you know, with the way that
we look at how people work and the ability to
get on force plates and see this, I think you
can make gains with players that don't have the type
(24:54):
of speed that elite golfers have by just having them
get left earlier. You'll get that way transferring to their
lead side earlier to offset some of the fact that
they don't have the rotational ability to rotate to get
their hips, you know, to do some of the things
(25:15):
that you know, some of the guys with a lot
of speed. You know, when you when you look at
the LPGA and you look at the PGA Tour, the
LPGA players hit it so straight because they don't have
a ton of speed. They don't have the club head
speed and the ball speed to really hit the golf
ball massively offline, whereas you know, guys like Victor Hoblin
(25:39):
and guys like John Rahm and guys you know, like
Max Hommat, They've got you know, tons of speed. When
they hit it, they.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Missed it, it's going to go off the planet.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It's going offline, so you know. And the other thing is,
you know, going back to Marina and going back to
that connection between the body and the player and speed.
Anything that I'm doing with her technique wise, the first
question I'm asking anytime we make any sort of change
technique wise is what's that doing? Back wise? How's the
(26:11):
back feeling? Where are we with the back right? And
We're talking this is like in in the middle of lessons,
and I'm constantly saying, don't bullshit me, where are we
with the back. How's the back feeling, because we just
we're trying to get you to make a little bit
of a different move, and you know, we don't want
(26:31):
to do anything that's going to compromise your body. You know,
on tour, you know, the guys Brooks and DJ, you know,
I'm constantly talking to their physios. Hey. You know, they'll say, hey,
the body's not great this week. Yeah, you know, it's
just you know, the knees bothering him, the shoulders bother them.
Back's a little sore. So we're not gonna be able
(26:52):
to hit a ton of golf balls. They're coming in
with you know, a little bit. You know, they're a
little bit under the weather. So we can't put a
ton of practice in this way, right, We can't have
a lot of range sessions. But this is something that
I don't think the average fifteen to twenty five handicapper
that's listening to this podcast has any concept of I
don't think they ever think about how their body works.
(27:16):
There are there are times where we want to practice,
but we're not going to get anything out of the practice.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, And I think that's I always think mental frameworks
are helped me a lot of it, and then thinking
of the constraint. And I think the average amateur golfer
thinks of a golf constraint in their golf game, whether
it be if you's the Mareen example, like, hey, my distance,
I need more distance. But then they don't connect the
dot that hey, I've had three back surgeries and my
hip can't rotate past you know, ten degrees of internal
rotation on the lead side, and.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I don't form up and I don't have a workout program.
I'm doing nothing to help the injuries that I've got.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Exactly, And so they almost mentally have this like brick
wall between the two and they say, well, I'm just
going to go after that constraint and try to get
more distance, and they don't make the connection of well,
I'm gonna screw up my back and I'm not going
to play the game at all.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well, the other thing that I think from a years
ago when launch monitors were first coming out, I was
out at the Titleist Performance Institute and I was sitting
in on some club fittings, and you know, when you
see your clubhead speed and your ball speed with your
driver for the first time, you know it's an eye
opening experience. And so there was a player, he was
(28:24):
probably a fifteen handicapper. He'd never been on a launch
monitor before. He was doing it, you know, a full
club fitting. And they got to the driver and they
gave him his club head speed number and his ball
speed number. And the immediate response was, Okay, how can
I make that faster? Right? And I'll never forget this.
(28:45):
Dino was the guy's name, the club fitter. He said,
rather than try and make this increase, why not do
this ten times in a row with the driver. So
whatever the clubhet speed and the ball speed was, do
it every single time, then try and increase the speed.
So when I'm looking at you know, clubhead speed and
(29:08):
ball speed numbers, I'm always looking at the ball speed
number more than I'm looking at the club speed number
the club head speed number, because I think a lot
of times you'll look at the arc of a lesson
and you'll look at the data. And if I'm able
to say to a player, listen to me, contact is everything, right,
(29:34):
I don't care about clubhead speed and ball speed. To
me is the contact of the golf ball. I think
the average golfer and everyone listening to this podcast is
hyper focused on the curvature and the direction of the
golf ball's going, and they're not hyper focused on the
quality of the contact and the quality of the strike. Right.
(29:56):
So when I when I look at speed games, a
lot of times, if we can get a player moving
better and working on something differently, the club head speed
number might drop two miles per hour, but the ball
speed number might jump five to ten miles per hour,
and they hit it fifteen yards further by swinging the
(30:19):
golf club slower. But that's because they're catching it more
in the center of the face and the movie and
they're moraviatedly, more repetitive and better. So when I'm looking
at speed games, we are always looking at you know,
certainly at the elite level. I want to know what
(30:39):
their cruise numbers are, you know, driver numbers. Cruise for
me is what they're swinging. That is my cruise thirty
five thousand feet, take the seatbelt sign off, no turbulence.
That's just what I swing at day in and day out.
And then do I have the available to have a
(31:02):
golf swing with the driver that I can go get
maybe a little bit more on my driver for a
par five so maybe go get a few more, but
what's that going to do to the dispersion? And then
also with all of the elite players building in the
fairway finder with the driver, whereas, okay, this is one
(31:22):
where the clubhet speed and the ball speed are going
to be probably you know, maybe five miles per hour
less than your cruise driver. But this is just one
that we're getting in the fairway. So we kind of
have three driver swings. We have our every day, day
in and day out driver swing. We have our fairway
finder driver swing to where hey, I know I can
(31:44):
just kind of chip bump this in the fairway. Just
have to get in and play one shot lead, gotta
make par and then build in that extra.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Our swing.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
But knowing when to.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Use those percent I think that's when we look at
our test and our database, like fifteen thousand guys, we
do two. We do two numbers, right, So we call
it gamer speed, which would be your crew speed, right,
and then we call it you're all out and we're
always looking. Hey, the only reason for the all out
for us is how big is the engine? Like, we
don't care where the ball goes, just how fast can
you move the club fall speed usually is worse with that,
(32:22):
as you pointed out, and then it's hey, what is
the what is the gamer speed or the crew speed?
And I think that's an important piece as people are improving,
you know, through their body is understanding. I think that's
where we will see almost like ladders, right, we may
see three months where hey, the the all out went
up three and four miles an hour, your crew stayed
the same. Great, that means you got more buffer. Or
(32:44):
we may see some where you know, we have some
guys that come in their crews and they're all out
are exactly the same because they just don't have conceptually
and even.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Know how to get any higher.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I think that's an important point to make and
the connection for everyone listening framework of the connection of
physicality and the instructional side and that yeah, how big
is the engine, but can you keep it on the
road in third year as well?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And also I think that I see it a lot
in junior girls. Right, the junior girls will come in,
they'll hit the golf ball incredibly straight, you know, fourteen
to fifteen year old twelve year olds just very very
straight with the driver, and they'll play in a tournament
(33:26):
with a junior golf tournament or a high school golf tournament,
and they'll be a girl who's on the basketball team
who's trying out golf, been playing golf less than a year,
and we'll play in a tournament and we'll hit it
seventy five to one hundred yards past the girl that's
been playing golf NonStop for five years and hits golf
balls five hours a day. Right.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Ok.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Two things happen. One they want to quit, or two
the parents say, okay, well, now just swing and swing faster.
But that player has never done anything to swing hard,
to swing fast at anything.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
The only thing they're trying to do is hit the
golf ball straight. So if you are going to chase speed,
there is a way and a pattern and a road
to do it, because it's going to make it's going
to change the way that you're moving. Dave Phillips told
(34:30):
me story. They had a player come out who wanted
to hit it further and played on the PGA Tour
and wanted to make some games, and so he went
out to Greg and Dave, you guys, let's get on
three D. Show me all the stuff in the gym,
show me all the the exercises and stuff like that,
And I think Greg said to him, have you ever
thought about just swing trying to swing the golf club faster?
(34:54):
And he was like, yeah, no, but all the stuff
in the gym, He's like, no, no, you can do all
of that stuff, but at the end of the day,
you have to take the object that you're holding. You
have to fundamentally swing it faster. So I think that's
one of the reasons why players struggle when they do
try and get more speed. Is all they just try
(35:15):
and do is they don't do anything fast anyway. They
don't move anything, They don't do anything in their daily
life that is ballistic in any way, right, that is
dynamic in any way. And so I think if you
are going to try and chase speed, moving the golf
(35:37):
club faster is what's correctly do. But you also have
to understand, Okay, to move the golf club faster, what
do I have to do with my body in an
effort to move this golf club faster.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, And we see it all the time, particularly you know,
guys who've lost mobility or don't have good hit mobility
for a while and then.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
We'll get them.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
You know, we'll see guys, all, okay, you got full
internal rotation of your lead hit. We'll go on the
force plates and they'll produce the same amount of vertical
force as somebody swinging ten fifteen miles an hour faster.
And you look at it and it's like, you got
to educate it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Hey man.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So you produced a lot of force, but you did
it after you hit the golf ball. So now that
you have this movement, we got to figure out. You
got to learn how to do it. And to your point,
they just conceptually have no idea how to do it
a lot of the times.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Well, and I think that's where I think the information
age that we're in through mediums like this, you know,
with podcasts. But I think, you know, from a speed standpoint,
I think it was really interesting what Bryson did. I
think Bryson brought speed training to.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
He made physics cool to the mass.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Right to the massive. Oh okay, there is a way
to train this. I mean, if you think about what
brought what Bryson was doing, you know, he was training
for long drive. They what do they get I can't
remember how many they get? What do they get? Eight?
How many do they get?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
In in insects in a.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Set, sticks in a set, So he's only trying to
catch lightning in a bottle once. Right, That's where going
back to what we were talking about before. I think
he realized that it was hard to play golf like that.
Oh yeah, And so I think what he's learned how
to do over the last yes, since he won the
(37:24):
US Open and we came out of the pandemic. I
think Bryson won, his body's going back to being somewhat
like a normal human being. His diet has gone back
to somewhat of being a normal human being, and he's
still doing a lot of the speed training. But yeah,
and and Greg and Davi at TPI had talked about
this as well, that they believe there's a rate of
(37:46):
diminishing returns with speed at the elite level, Like you know,
there's once you get to a certain level, you know.
I think it's all also as because kids are hitting
it further and further, we're seeing enormous gaps in distances.
(38:11):
They have dead zones in their club makeups to where
you know, their short iron makeup from what they're hitting
from a wedge to a nine iron, you know, you
get these kids to tell I carry a nine iron
two hundred yards, I'm like, okay, what are you doing from?
What are you hitting from one hundred and forty? What
club do you do you have in your battles?
Speaker 1 (38:33):
So what is available to you?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
And again I think you know we talked about this.
You know at the beginning. Speed is only good if
you can use it. Speed is only good if you
can apply it, and it's manageable. And so I think
that everybody wants to hit the golf ball further. The
(38:57):
easiest way to hit the golf ball further is that
the golf ball more solid consistently. And the way that
the easiest way for you to hit the golf ball
more solid consistently is one to gain better control over
how your body is moving. And the easiest way to
(39:17):
gain better control over how your body is moving is
to find out how your body moves. Go get screened
physically and have someone say, Okay, this is what your
body can do, this is what your body can't do. Obviously,
if you've had this injury in the past, it's going
to compromise this body part and this movement pattern and
(39:40):
something like that, and then you can just go into
your shots knowing Okay, that wasn't me, but it is me. Okay, yeah,
that's the shot. Because my body doesn't like to do
x Y. My body doesn't do so I've either got
(40:03):
to fix that or I've got to go in a
different direction.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
You gotta understand what it is and learn how to
and how to play with it. I think that's to me.
The body is the one. There's so many unknowns in
the game of golf. It's such a hard game. The
body is something that doesn't have to be an unknown.
It's particularly with the science and research and like, get
assessed and you're going to know exactly what you can
and can't do.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
You know, I work with Pat Perez for four years.
Pat's in his late forties. Now he's forty, you know,
forty seven, forty eight. You've got the aging process of
his age. But also when Pat was younger, he was
in a car accident. He broke his pelvis in three places.
So telling him to do something with his lower body
that Dustin Johnson does is.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
It's gonna put.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Pat in the hospital because his body fundamentally can't do that.
It doesn't like to do that, and it's not able
to do that. So the workaround is an instructor. I
actually think now that the information forces us as golf instructors.
(41:08):
If you can think about it for the instructors, then
it forces you to be better. Yeah, because once you
learn what someone's body can and can't do, then if
you've got a model in your head on what you
want them to do or a position you want them
to put the golf club in, you kind of take
that stuff and throw it out the window because if
(41:29):
they can't physically put the golf club in that position,
if their body physically can't do that, if you're trying
to get them to do something as an instructor because
you want it to look a certain way or you
want the position to be a certain way. Because Mac
O'Grady put the golf club in that position, and Mac
(41:51):
talked about that, you damn that well better, No, can
my player do that?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Can this player body physically do and fit into the
mold I am trying to put them in. And I
think if you have a model, and you have a
mold that you want everybody And there are instructors out
there that have ideas and systems and models, and you know,
(42:23):
and very specific ways to swing the golf club. And
if you are someone like that, you better be one
hundred percent sure your golfer and your athlete body can
sustain your aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And what you're asking you You got to know what
you're asking them to do, be sure they can do it.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
And they've got to have an understanding as well. Because
of the Internet, you know, because of social media, the
amount of players that come in that are trying all
this crazy stuff that they saw on an Instagram video.
You know, Darren Clark talked about that a couple of
weeks ago about how he's gone down the rabbit hole
of social media stuff. So if the best players in
(43:09):
the world are doing that, the five handicapper that just
wants to break ninety for the first time, it's very
easy to do that. But I think you you want
to know what your body can do. You want to
know what your body can't do, and then you want
to know how that fits into the construct of what
(43:35):
you're trying to do with your golf swing or one
of the things that you're trying to do with your instructor.
The other thing I think is important for everyone listening
is that takes lessons it's incumbent upon you to ask
questions to the physio, to your trainer, to your golf instructor,
if you have a player, if you are working with
(43:56):
someone and you are paying then and they are telling
you to do something that you don't understand or you
don't get the concept, if you don't ask them why,
if it sounds odd, if you don't get it, and
if you keep doing it it doesn't work. That's on
you because if you ask someone their opinion, they'll give
(44:16):
it to you.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
So in a golf lesson, ask questions, say okay, help
me connect the dots here, because if the player knew
what they were doing, they wouldn't come for a golf lesson.
So they don't know. And we as golf instructors sometimes,
you know, think that our athletes and our players know
(44:41):
what we're talking about, and they don't. And so I
think when you do try to impress your player with
fancy words and fancy concepts and all this stuff. You know,
my dad used to tell me all the time, the
player doesn't care how smart you are. The player only
cares about you helping them get better. That's the only
(45:01):
reason they've come to see you. They haven't come to
listen to you, try and truss them with how smart
you are, fancy words that they don't understand a bunch
of information they are paying you to.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Say, we call an expert itis. Yeah, so you know.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
I think it's incumbent upon everyone listening that ask questions
and don't feel like you can't ask questions. If you're
in an environment as a as a as a student
with an instructor that is making you feel, you know,
dumb or simple or somewhat kind of bullied into not
asking questions, you need to get out of that and
(45:41):
just go find somebody else. You should the people that
you are paying should be able to say, Okay, let
me connect the dots for you. We are doing this
because we are trying to fix this. We are doing
this because your body can't do this. This is the
(46:02):
road we're going on, and this is the path that
we're going to take you down. I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
I think that's like turbone listening.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
That is a wonderful blueprint of what you should be
looking for in an instructor student relationship and an experience.
Like to me that that would be how I would
just I couldn't have summed it up better in terms
of what should the blueprint look like, what we're doing,
why we're doing it, and let's have an actual conversation
and make sure you understand what the heck I'm saying
to you.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I give lessons to so many players when you ask
them what they're doing in their golf swing. They can
tell you what they're they can't They don't know what
their body can and can't do, and they're trying to
do something in their golf swing, but they don't have
any understanding as to why they're just being told to
(46:54):
do it. Now, that could be their fault, that could
be the instructor's fault, that could be a combination of both.
But I think it's very easy to get lost and
get in the instruction rabbit hole because you don't really
understand what you're doing. You don't know why you're trying
(47:18):
to do what you're doing, So when it doesn't work,
that's why everybody bails out on it. Yeah, that's why
everybody goes, now, I'm just gonna try something else because
they don't have real understanding as to what they're trying
to do. They didn't really ever kind of get told
the picture, so there was no real ability for the
player to buy in.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, there's not gonna be if you' understand why you're
doing something. You're not future paced to understand where you're
going and these are the five steps we're gonna take
to get there. Yet, I mean, it's it's unreasonable to
expect to buy in.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
So the buy in as soon as you're at one
bad shot on the golf course, you just throw it
out and you go to the golf course and you
try five different things. And I think if players add
clear pictures of what they're do. I get players that
come to take golf lessons from me, and they expect
me in ninety minutes to fix things in an hour.
(48:10):
They expect me problems all their world problems. They don't
play golf for a living, they don't really do anything
physically on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And they only have sixty minutes a week to practice.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
And it took Tiger Woods three years to tool his
golf sway playing golf every single day, six seven hours
a day. So I also think that a lot of
times golfers somewhat have an unreal expectation of the impact
(48:43):
and how much taking a golf lesson can improve the game, right,
I mean, listen, I'm good at what I do, geting
golf lessons, but it takes some ability for a golfer
to be able to hold up there into the bargain.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I mean, especially if you just you means you look
at movement learning science. I mean the number of hours.
I mean every movements a new synapse, Like there's no
such thing as muscle memory, like the every move is
a new experience, and so you have to continue to
mold those pathways. And yeah, I mean the ten thousand
hour rules you know would be an extreme example, but like, yeah,
you got to put in time. I mean that I
(49:23):
think I think the fact is putting it concretely. Tiger
Wood's three years, and you think you can get it
in three lessons?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Like three most most people want one in one.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. But
also I.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Think the average goal for if they could spend an
hour a week, right and divide that hour into half
short game, a full slight right one hour. To me,
that is the equivalent of saying you want to lose weight.
(49:57):
That to me is the start of okay on a
treadmill and just walk for a half hour three days
a week. You don't even have to run. Just get
on a treadmill, put some speed on it. If you
want to try and lose weight, you do that three
days a week. Walk for a half hour a day,
three days a week. At some point a month later,
(50:18):
someone will say to you, if you've been working out,
you're not even doing any You're not doing CrossFit.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah, it's just moving.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
You're not to step in the right moving. So all
of a sudden, you go to a driving range and
you get golf balls for thirty minutes, and then you
go putt for fifteen minutes, and then you go chip
for fifteen minutes, right, Or you go putt for twenty
minutes and then you go chip for ten minutes. If
(50:47):
you did that religiously, you know four times a month
you would improve because you'd be creating some patterns and
some habits and some regular movement patterns that are consistent
(51:08):
and start from there. Because listen, golf is golf. There's
a time constraint, right, It's hard. People's attention spans are short,
people's lives are busy, So look at your practice time.
However much practice time, you've got to go to a
(51:28):
driving range and whatever that time is, split it between
short game false mine. You'd be if you've got twenty
minutes to hit to go to the rain, you'd be
as good as going to the punt and greens for
ten minutes and going to hit golf balls for ten minutes,
(51:50):
then just going to the driving range for twenty minutes.
That balance of you know, just creating some assistency in
the patterns I think is big.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, and I think the big thing, you know, when
you look at progress and just you know, just the
human the human state, just in starting that, you'll start
to see little wins. And we see this on the
fitness side, like we start with guy like we tell us,
if you get at least ninety minutes over the course
of a week, that's all we need. And you start
to get little wins, and then it's it's funny. You'll
get guys like that's all that all the time I got,
(52:24):
And then all of a sudden, magically, three four weeks
later they start to see progress.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Oh, you know, I can find another twenty minutes, I
can find.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Another And then it starts to snowball positively and so
I think that's that's so important. It's across you know,
not only fitness, but obviously the golf and anything in life.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah, I think that having realistic expectations from a golf standpoint,
I think is very very important. You know, eight feet,
I think is the number where it goes fifty to
fifty on the PGA Tour. Eight feet is where the
pig of the best in the world make they missed
(53:01):
as many as they may. And so the average golfer
expects to go to the golf course in every eight
for it they've got they expected to make them. They
expect to hit every fairway, they expect to hit every green,
they expect to hit every every web shot to three feet,
they expect to get every bunker shot up and down.
And you know, having you know, more realistic expectations, I
(53:21):
think is vitally important.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
I think one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
And I think for everybody listening, there's so much gold
in this episode. Rewind, re listen, probably get out of notebook.
Maybe we'll see if we can put the the AI
transcript here for everyone to so you can take notes
from that. But hey, Claude, I got thank you so much, man,
This has been an absolute awesome just mastermind session for
(53:46):
everybody listening here to get to just hear your thoughts
and how you work with people and and honestly, man,
just just really appreciate you taking the time and in
honor to have you on the pod. And I'll see
in her Lando in a little bit here, So so thanks.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
So much for coming on perfect.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, so everybody listening, go check out Son of a
Bunch of podcasts. And then Claude, you're on Instagram? What
else where else are you at? We'll put this on
the show notes. But where else?
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, Twitter and.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
You know, X or whatever all that stuff. But yeah,
just I've got, you know, on my social all my
content stuff that I've done over the years and stuff
like that, and try and put out as much content
as I can, you know, to try and help golfers
get better and enjoy golf more.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
Yeah, So we'll have all that in the show notes
for you guys, and as always, thanks hanging out with
us here on the golf in this bomb spot and
we'll catch you next time.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Thanks.
Welcome back to the Golf Fitness Bomb Spot.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm your host, Chris Finn, and we have a very
exciting guest with us today. If you've been living under rock,
you may not know who he is, but if you
have anything in terms of golf knowledge, you definitely know
the name. Claude Harmon the third. Claude, Welcome to the podcast.
It is an honor to have you, particularly with your pedigree.
You know, I think number five on the on the
(00:32):
Golf Digest Top hundred.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's excited to have you on. Man, thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm always happy to talk about golf and golf fitness
and everything. So excited.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah. Man, It's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It's whenever we have guests that I always do research
and everything. And I was looking talking on my team.
I said, man, we got Claude coming on the intro.
Could literally take the whole episode with his resume. So
excited to go quick to the point. But obviously you've
worked with, you know, a lot, a lot of the
top players in the world. You know Bubba Ricky, you
(01:06):
know Adam Scott. I mean the list goes on, you
know Brooks. I guess the cool thing for our listeners
that I always when ever have somebody who works kind
of at your level on is really kind of trying
to help them understand how do you approach a you know,
a top player like that, particularly if we're talking like
the physical the physicality of them, Like you know, you
(01:28):
get a new tour guy who comes up and says, hey, yeah,
you're gonna start working with them, versus if you get
a guy who's I don't know, fifty five amateur, you know,
good club player, but like, is there a difference in
how you approach those? And I think a lot of
insight into that is always interesting and helpful for all
our listeners.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I mean, obviously at the elite level. You know, at
the tour level, if you're going to work with a player,
they're probably going to have all the top players have
teams of people around them, their physio, theirs, trainers and
stuff like that. So I would say, you know, in
the last fifteen years, I've spent as much time with
physios and trainers and on that world and in that
(02:08):
world as I have with golf instructors. So you're always
trying to talk with the player's team, you know, what
is their body doing, what can they do? What can't
they do, you know, and you get a good idea
of what they're working with. I think every golfer has
their own kind of DNA or signature with what they
(02:29):
do with regards to their golf swing. And you're also,
i think trying to figure out what the player does
naturally as well, because I don't ever want to take
something away from a player that they do naturally and
replace it. And I think it's easy to do that, right.
It's easy to look at what a player does physically
and say, oh, okay, well we've got to fix that.
(02:50):
But that might be where they're generating power, where they're
generating their consistency and stuff. So I think you want
to you know, at the elite level, you're looking at everything,
but then you know, just at the regular you're teaching
golf lessons to regular people. I think the biggest change
in meeting Greg Rose and Dave Phillips from the Titleist
(03:12):
Performance Institute, you know, twenty years ago, is when I
look at a player now and they're hitting shots and
they're doing something wrong if they've got a fault in
their golf swang, unless it's a concept problem that they
don't know what they're supposed to be doing. Most of
(03:32):
the time, it's going to be physical. And I just
twenty years ago, you just didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Think of that.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
You didn't think, Okay, why is this player coming over
the top? Well, just tell them to stop coming over
the top, because coming over the top is bad and
all that stuff. Now, when I look at players, I think, okay,
there's unless they don't know they're not supposed to be
doing this. There's going to be a physical reason as
to why. And then you just kind of go about
(04:00):
connecting the dots for the player and saying, listen, this
is what you're trying to do in your golf swing.
This is what you're doing in your golf swing. Most
of the time they're going to say, oh, I'm not
trying to do that. I didn't know I was trying
to do that, or I didn't know I was doing that,
And so in that respect, you're able to then say
to the player, listen, it's.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You, but it's not you, right right.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So I think that's powerful for the player to know, oh, okay,
I'm not physically able to do some of the things
I'm trying to do in my golf swing. So and
then I think it allows me as the instructor to
then say, okay, listen, there's a couple of different tracks
we can go down. If you want to work on,
you know, fixing some of the physical issues that your
(04:47):
body has, this is a direction you could go and
these are people that you could work with. But if
you don't have time to do that, then the things
that you're trying to do in your golf swing you're
not going to be able to. So we need to
try and go down a different road with the way
that we're going to have you hit the.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Golf ball one, especially with the amateur, that time is
sometimes the issue.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, the time crunch for the average golfer. You know,
I think everybody listening to this podcast game would somewhat
improve with a consistent, dynamic warm up, with a consistent
set of movement patterns in a gym setting or a
(05:34):
non gym setting, but just some dynamic movements that you
kind of know are going to help what you do.
You know, golf from must but the average golfer gets
to the golf course fifteen to twenty minutes, they go
to the driving range, some bullshit, they do some bullshit,
toe touch sketches, that, you know, and kind of move
(05:54):
their arms and stuff like that, and then they start
hitting golf balls and they get ramped up to full
speed quite quickly. There's no other sport in the world
where that happens, right, there's just even if you're going
to go play a pickup basketball game in your thirties,
you're probably going to do some sort of stretching. And
if you think about it, look at how many people
(06:17):
that play recreational sports, still play pickup basketball, still play
whatever that blow their acls out, that blow their hamstrings out,
that blow their achilles out. Why because they're not physically
able to do the exercise and the movements that they're
(06:39):
trying to and they don't have the proper warm up
to do that right. They don't have the proper stretching
the warm up. So golf is no different. And I
think that's one of the problems that we've got is
you know, golf isn't I think by a lot of
people taken not so much seriously, but just a fifteen
(06:59):
twenty minute dynamic warm up before you hit golf balls
to get your body moving, sprinting, jumping, moving, It would
wake up the body parts that we're going to ask
you to use in the golf. I mean, I think
people forget it's a dynamic The golf swinger is a
dynamic movement pattern that's over in about second half to
(07:22):
two seconds. And if you look at all of the
body parts that you're trying to coordinate in a very
very small time window. You know, two feet, two legs,
you know your hips, then you've got your chest, You've
got two arms, two hands. You've got all of these
body parts that in a very small time window and movement,
(07:47):
and we're having you, as the athlete and as the golfer,
do that from a completely static position. So you have
to start the motion to begin with. There's no momentum,
there's no reaction, there's no running to where the ball
is going, and there's no throwing to where someone is running.
The ball is on the ground, we put you to
(08:10):
the side of it and we say, all right, get
it in the air and move from no. I gave
golf lessons once to a guy that had sold his
semiconductor company to the US government and just made you know,
billions of dollars, and he wanted to learn how to
play golf. And when I tell you. He had no
athletic ability. He was just a scientist. He had no
(08:32):
athletic ability at all, and golf was very difficult for him.
But he said something that's always stuck with me. And
this has got to be over twenty years ago. You know,
we were taking a break. You know, he's putting on
band aids, his hands are covered in blisters, he's frustrated,
and he said, the hardest thing about golf for me
(08:53):
is I'm starting at zero energy. And it was something
that was a throwaway comment to him, but it was
very profound. We put you in this position as a
golfer and say, okay, now move the golf club and
move your body and control it. And I think it's
very hard for players to do that. And I think
(09:15):
it's very hard for people to do that given that
they have no idea what their body can and can't
do from a golf standpoint.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, and I think it's severely underappreciated by the average
golfer of you know, if you can't move, or if
those sequences are not consistent, then the ability for consistent
face control is going to be.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That much harder.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I think one of the most interesting things that I've
seen is when we look at it kinematically, when we
look at guys who don't have the rotary mobility, and
you look at ten swings kinematically, it's literally a different
seek sweekens every single time.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And then as you start to and you start to.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
See more rotary mobility be achieved, there starts to be
a little bit more consistency in that movement. And then,
you know, I always joke that the game of golf
is hard enough. Never mind if you have no idea
what the heck your body is going to be doing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Well, I mean, if you think about it. I mean,
I remember we were at a seminar once, a TPI
seminar early on, and we were talking about, you know,
how to describe how the body works. And I think
it was Gray Cook that said, the body operates and
functions in an alternating pattern of stable and mobile joints. Right,
(10:19):
so your foot is stable, your ankle is mobile. Right,
your ankor your elbow is stable, it can only kind
of go in one direction. Your shoulder hyper mobile. So
these constant alternating patterns of stable mobile joints, you know,
as you know, and I went through this, I had
back surgery and had a micro disecto me in twenty
eleven very limited internal hip rotation. The problem wasn't my back,
(10:44):
The problem was something above and below the chain. But
if you think about the way, so something that happens
when you get injured is something that's supposed to be mobile,
it isn't moving. So something that's supposed to be stable
and not move has to start moving. So in my case,
with my hips being really really tight and very little
(11:06):
internal rotation, my lower back had to start taking a
lot of torque and movement, and it's not designed to
do that. But the golf swing is the same way, right,
If you think about the golf swing through impact, the
golf club can't move itself, right. The golf club is
an inanimate object that us, the player, have to pick
(11:27):
up and move. It doesn't have a mind of its own.
So the golf club as you're swinging it through impact,
should really be stable if other parts of your body
are working in the right way. But if the other
parts of your body are not working in the right way,
then the golf club will have to start to become very, very,
(11:50):
very very mobile. Your hands have to become very very
active in the I think in the over twenty years,
the two decades that I've been teaching profeestional golfers, I
haven't had one say to me, I need to get
my hands more active in golf slump. Yeah, I need
to find a way to get more hand action through impact.
(12:12):
Everybody that I work with has said to me, Listen,
I've got to try and find a way to get
my body to keep moving and slow my hands down
and to match up the movement pattern of matching up
what my hands and my arms and my golf club
are doing and matching that to my body which is
rotating hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
But I think you said something early on about just
everybody has kind of unique patterns and Greg on a
while back, and he's talking about on the physical side,
how he looks at golfers as physically people will have
kind of a superpower and his goal is to not
take away the superpower in an effort to help the problem.
I mean, do you see a similar thing in the
(12:53):
golf side of things in terms of certain moves that
you kind of alluded.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
To it earlier. But I wanted to kind of ask
you from the Star.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Is everybody is trying to you know, I mean, right now,
the big rage is to shallow everything out right, you know,
to get the club laying down, laying down, laying down.
You know, when my dad started working with Dustin Johnson,
you know, fifteen over fifteen years ago, everyone said that
the left wrist of being in that bode tons of
(13:24):
flat at the top, and everybody said, oh, you've got
to fix that, You've got to change that. Brooks Kepta
had the same thing. Brooks has always played from a
little bit of a shut position. But I think we
know enough now about the body and we can measure
enough to where if you can rotate, you can move,
you can offset some of this stuff. I do think
(13:44):
that some of the moves, if you're trying to make
a move that is based off of someone else's model
or someone else's golf swing, you need to have a
very good understanding is to what it is that those
players can do physically and what you can do physically.
(14:06):
I think it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
To the widest gap between amateurs conceptually and what pros.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, and I just think that the average golfer learns
visually because they watch so much golf on television and
obviously with social media, now, you know, you can. You know,
there are tons of YouTube videos of everybody's golf swing
and high speed and high motion, and you can break
down all the golf swings. But if you are going
(14:35):
to go down that rabbit hole and say, okay, I
want to swing the golf club like this person, you
better have a good understanding of first of all, what
they do, why they swing the golf club that way,
But you also need to have a very good understanding
as to what you do what he's going. I mean,
if you talk to Greg and Dave, you know, at
(14:56):
TPI they're seeing tons of players now who are getting
you know, blowing out their knees, blowing out their hips,
blowing out their wrists, blowing out their shoulders, trying to
do some of these moves that we see on social
that are you know, these extreme shallow it out moves
that look great and sound great, and you know the
(15:20):
videos always are accompanied by someone going straight to the
ball speed and pushing it. But if your body can't
sustain some of those moves, you're you're going to get hurt.
And we see that a lot. You know, we see
players come in and say, hey, listen, you know I
was out for six months or six weeks or something
(15:43):
because I got hurt doing this, and I think it's
important for everybody listening. You know, golf is not a
team sport. You are the only player on your team.
So if you get injured and you go down for
I tell my juniors this all the time. You go
down for three months, four months with a vacu injury,
we don't sub somebody else in. Yeah, you're on the
(16:04):
bench for four months, you know. And we are seeing
so many overuse injuries with our juniors now because so
many juniors the parents are taking them out of other
sports and just putting them into one kind of specific movement,
which is golf. I mean, that's the worst scenario for me.
(16:27):
A sixteen year old, the sixteen year old kid who
take a lesson, they've only been playing golf since they
were eleven. They're very reluctant to be coached, They're very
reluctant to any sort of change, and they are injured
on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I'm glad you're going here. I wanted to. I wanted
to actually go this route with you anyway as well.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Like I know, you had no account on your pod
recently and just kind of as you're as you're seeing
the the future of the appose you've been in this
two decades you're you've kind of been you'll probably through
one of the biggest changes techn like technology wise of
the video camera to now like to now that everybody's
got the phone and now the fourth and then there's
sports plates and there's three D Like what are you
kind of let's let's go down this road where you're
(17:13):
talking about the juniors, because we're seeing the same thing.
I mean, the clubheads be increases we've seen even in
the last five years since all the knowledge of understanding
speed and how to train it. It's wild what we're
seeing with our kids and juniors. Well, how are you
seeing that changing? And where are you seeing that kind
of going? And concerns everybody inside of it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, I mean I think we are definitely in the
speed era of golf. You know, it's rare that you
see a junior now that is, you know, a senior
in high school that isn't kind of pushing the one
eighties in ball speed Now, I mean that's pretty normal.
Those used to kind of be outliers. Whereas you see
(17:54):
that on a regular basis. I think a lot of
that has to do with fitness. I think a lot
of it has to do with we can measure now,
but at the end of the day, the only numbers
that matter are the numbers that you put on a scorecard,
right your ball speed numbers. I mean, you know there
are so many players right now, you know that have
(18:14):
some crazy, crazy speeds. You know, Gordon Sergeant. You know,
at the collegiate level there's a couple of South Africans
that are trying to play that have tons of speed.
But do they win every week? Are they winning five
times a year? Are they winning six times a year?
Are they winning every time? No? So I mean I
think that there's a balance. There's there's an art to
(18:38):
playing golf, there's an art to practicing golf, but the
only thing that matters is playing golf and speed. Yes,
speed is great. I mean, you it helps to have speed,
but you have to be able to not crash the car.
So everybody wants a fast car, but you got to
be able to get it around the track without crashing, perc.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So, like we have a I guy Ryan Gerard, and
he's been a rally kid, he's been with us since
high school.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
You had a good year, you know, kept qualifying and whatnot.
Was doing well. He's on Corn. Back to Corn for
right now though.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
But I had conversations with him, and we were talking
about club at speed and you know, basically just saying, hey, man,
are you good with where you're at? And he had
a very kind of I thought was a profound or
interesting insight. And he said, he said, look, my ball
speeds between one seventy six one seventy eight. He said,
if I go to to one eighty or more, for me,
my dispersion gets to the point where I can't play.
He's like, I'm good enough here. So as long as
(19:30):
we can just maintain that. If we can build a
buffer where I'm more healthy, that's all I care about.
I thought that was very profound. He eats, you know,
early twenties. Do you kind of approach that similarly with
your play with your players?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I mean, I think that if you look at what
Bryson did, I mean, Bryson went down. I mean, Bryson
went the ultimate distance rabbit hole. You know, we were
locked down in the pandemic. You know, he completely I
remember that first tournament back when the PJ tour started
at Colonial. You know, Bryson looked like he ate Bryson.
(20:01):
He looked like he looked like a high school linebacker
that was injured, right, and you know, he looks kind
of puffy, didn't look jacked, He looked kind of big.
He looked like a like a high school athlete that
you know, blew his acl out that you could tell
had worked out but had kind of and then you know,
it was just hitting. You just couldn't believe how far
(20:22):
he was hitting the ball, and you know, all the
stuff and he wins the US Open and all of this,
but I think he realized that it's hard to play
at that speed because the miss is so far off line.
And you know, that is one thing that I think
that there is a rabbit hole that you can go
(20:45):
down that to gain more speed. What's it going to
do to your iron game? What's it going to do
to the other aspects of your game that are scoring?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So how do you approach that with your players?
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Like, like, I'm sure that's at some point it's kind
of like there is a point of diminishing return.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
How do you is it different for every player that
you work with? You know, how do you kind of.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I think it's different, and I think that you're I mean,
I look at players individually across the board, right. I
think there are some generalizations and some similarities that you
can make. But every athlete and every golfer that you
meet is different. They're going to have their own self
that they bring to their golf swing, and so I
(21:33):
think everybody goes through the learning curve different. I think
it's important to figure out with players how they learn.
Are they visual learners, are they data learners? Are they
you know, feel learners? What type of learners are they?
What are you going to give them to help them
kind of get to that next level? I think there,
(21:57):
you know, we know through all of the TPI stuff,
there are speed windows, you know, speed windows for girls
and boys when they're younger. I think I think where
we see speed as a massive differentiators in the women's game.
You know, if if you've got speed, if you can
(22:17):
carry the golfel a long way. I teach a girl
on the LPGA Marina Alex Marina is you know, early thirties,
maybe five three, had some back issues. You know, Marina
carries her driver kind of two twenty five to two thirty.
So we can't really make any changes because she's had
(22:41):
some back injuries that have gotten her very close to
being out of the game, to having to retire. So
all of the natural things that we would do speed training,
you know, just throw all of that onto her. She's
out of the game if we do that, correct. So
you have to know the athlete and the player. So
when Marina came to work with me, you know, three
(23:03):
four years ago, you know, I'm able to go online
and look at you know, her stats on the LPGA website.
We can see distance wise, but as soon as you
talk to her, she's like, I can't. I can't get
any more distance because I can't. And so what what
you have to do as an instructor there is say, okay,
where is the worker around here? How can I help
(23:28):
this player increase you know, a couple of miles per
hour in ball speed maybe and hit it more solid.
So in Marina's case, you know, in an effort to
try and get more power, she was making this big
move off the golf ball, you know, to try and
make this big shoulder turn and get to her right side.
(23:49):
And that's something I think I see a lot of
players do is they know that they don't want to
stay on their left side. They know that they don't
want to have that reverse spine and that killer move.
But in Marina's case and in a lot of of
mid handicap range players, I see a lot of players
now that we can measure through force plates, is they
(24:11):
get over to their right side sometimes you know, seventy
eighty percent of their weight on their right side at
the top, but then at impact they're fifty to fifty
right because of the left because they don't have the speed.
But I also think they don't have the concept either.
They don't know that they need to be getting left.
(24:31):
So in that respect, I think one of the things
that's changed in the last you know, five years that
I think is a positive is all to talk about
ground force reactions now, you know, with the way that
we look at how people work and the ability to
get on force plates and see this, I think you
can make gains with players that don't have the type
(24:54):
of speed that elite golfers have by just having them
get left earlier. You'll get that way transferring to their
lead side earlier to offset some of the fact that
they don't have the rotational ability to rotate to get
their hips, you know, to do some of the things
(25:15):
that you know, some of the guys with a lot
of speed. You know, when you when you look at
the LPGA and you look at the PGA Tour, the
LPGA players hit it so straight because they don't have
a ton of speed. They don't have the club head
speed and the ball speed to really hit the golf
ball massively offline, whereas you know, guys like Victor Hoblin
(25:39):
and guys like John Rahm and guys you know, like
Max Hommat, They've got you know, tons of speed. When
they hit it, they.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Missed it, it's going to go off the planet.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It's going offline, so you know. And the other thing is,
you know, going back to Marina and going back to
that connection between the body and the player and speed.
Anything that I'm doing with her technique wise, the first
question I'm asking anytime we make any sort of change
technique wise is what's that doing? Back wise? How's the
(26:11):
back feeling? Where are we with the back right? And
We're talking this is like in in the middle of lessons,
and I'm constantly saying, don't bullshit me, where are we
with the back. How's the back feeling, because we just
we're trying to get you to make a little bit
of a different move, and you know, we don't want
(26:31):
to do anything that's going to compromise your body. You know,
on tour, you know, the guys Brooks and DJ, you know,
I'm constantly talking to their physios. Hey. You know, they'll say, hey,
the body's not great this week. Yeah, you know, it's
just you know, the knees bothering him, the shoulders bother them.
Back's a little sore. So we're not gonna be able
(26:52):
to hit a ton of golf balls. They're coming in
with you know, a little bit. You know, they're a
little bit under the weather. So we can't put a
ton of practice in this way, right, We can't have
a lot of range sessions. But this is something that
I don't think the average fifteen to twenty five handicapper
that's listening to this podcast has any concept of I
don't think they ever think about how their body works.
(27:16):
There are there are times where we want to practice,
but we're not going to get anything out of the practice.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, And I think that's I always think mental frameworks
are helped me a lot of it, and then thinking
of the constraint. And I think the average amateur golfer
thinks of a golf constraint in their golf game, whether
it be if you's the Mareen example, like, hey, my distance,
I need more distance. But then they don't connect the
dot that hey, I've had three back surgeries and my
hip can't rotate past you know, ten degrees of internal
rotation on the lead side, and.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I don't form up and I don't have a workout program.
I'm doing nothing to help the injuries that I've got.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Exactly, And so they almost mentally have this like brick
wall between the two and they say, well, I'm just
going to go after that constraint and try to get
more distance, and they don't make the connection of well,
I'm gonna screw up my back and I'm not going
to play the game at all.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well, the other thing that I think from a years
ago when launch monitors were first coming out, I was
out at the Titleist Performance Institute and I was sitting
in on some club fittings, and you know, when you
see your clubhead speed and your ball speed with your
driver for the first time, you know it's an eye
opening experience. And so there was a player, he was
(28:24):
probably a fifteen handicapper. He'd never been on a launch
monitor before. He was doing it, you know, a full
club fitting. And they got to the driver and they
gave him his club head speed number and his ball
speed number. And the immediate response was, Okay, how can
I make that faster? Right? And I'll never forget this.
(28:45):
Dino was the guy's name, the club fitter. He said,
rather than try and make this increase, why not do
this ten times in a row with the driver. So
whatever the clubhet speed and the ball speed was, do
it every single time, then try and increase the speed.
So when I'm looking at you know, clubhead speed and
(29:08):
ball speed numbers, I'm always looking at the ball speed
number more than I'm looking at the club speed number
the club head speed number, because I think a lot
of times you'll look at the arc of a lesson
and you'll look at the data. And if I'm able
to say to a player, listen to me, contact is everything, right,
(29:34):
I don't care about clubhead speed and ball speed. To
me is the contact of the golf ball. I think
the average golfer and everyone listening to this podcast is
hyper focused on the curvature and the direction of the
golf ball's going, and they're not hyper focused on the
quality of the contact and the quality of the strike. Right.
(29:56):
So when I when I look at speed games, a
lot of times, if we can get a player moving
better and working on something differently, the club head speed
number might drop two miles per hour, but the ball
speed number might jump five to ten miles per hour,
and they hit it fifteen yards further by swinging the
(30:19):
golf club slower. But that's because they're catching it more
in the center of the face and the movie and
they're moraviatedly, more repetitive and better. So when I'm looking
at speed games, we are always looking at you know,
certainly at the elite level. I want to know what
(30:39):
their cruise numbers are, you know, driver numbers. Cruise for
me is what they're swinging. That is my cruise thirty
five thousand feet, take the seatbelt sign off, no turbulence.
That's just what I swing at day in and day out.
And then do I have the available to have a
(31:02):
golf swing with the driver that I can go get
maybe a little bit more on my driver for a
par five so maybe go get a few more, but
what's that going to do to the dispersion? And then
also with all of the elite players building in the
fairway finder with the driver, whereas, okay, this is one
(31:22):
where the clubhet speed and the ball speed are going
to be probably you know, maybe five miles per hour
less than your cruise driver. But this is just one
that we're getting in the fairway. So we kind of
have three driver swings. We have our every day, day
in and day out driver swing. We have our fairway
finder driver swing to where hey, I know I can
(31:44):
just kind of chip bump this in the fairway. Just
have to get in and play one shot lead, gotta
make par and then build in that extra.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Our swing.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
But knowing when to.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Use those percent I think that's when we look at
our test and our database, like fifteen thousand guys, we
do two. We do two numbers, right, So we call
it gamer speed, which would be your crew speed, right,
and then we call it you're all out and we're
always looking. Hey, the only reason for the all out
for us is how big is the engine? Like, we
don't care where the ball goes, just how fast can
you move the club fall speed usually is worse with that,
(32:22):
as you pointed out, and then it's hey, what is
the what is the gamer speed or the crew speed?
And I think that's an important piece as people are improving,
you know, through their body is understanding. I think that's
where we will see almost like ladders, right, we may
see three months where hey, the the all out went
up three and four miles an hour, your crew stayed
the same. Great, that means you got more buffer. Or
(32:44):
we may see some where you know, we have some
guys that come in their crews and they're all out
are exactly the same because they just don't have conceptually
and even.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Know how to get any higher.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I think that's an important point to make and
the connection for everyone listening framework of the connection of
physicality and the instructional side and that yeah, how big
is the engine, but can you keep it on the
road in third year as well?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And also I think that I see it a lot
in junior girls. Right, the junior girls will come in,
they'll hit the golf ball incredibly straight, you know, fourteen
to fifteen year old twelve year olds just very very
straight with the driver, and they'll play in a tournament
(33:26):
with a junior golf tournament or a high school golf tournament,
and they'll be a girl who's on the basketball team
who's trying out golf, been playing golf less than a year,
and we'll play in a tournament and we'll hit it
seventy five to one hundred yards past the girl that's
been playing golf NonStop for five years and hits golf
balls five hours a day. Right.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Ok.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Two things happen. One they want to quit, or two
the parents say, okay, well, now just swing and swing faster.
But that player has never done anything to swing hard,
to swing fast at anything.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
The only thing they're trying to do is hit the
golf ball straight. So if you are going to chase speed,
there is a way and a pattern and a road
to do it, because it's going to make it's going
to change the way that you're moving. Dave Phillips told
(34:30):
me story. They had a player come out who wanted
to hit it further and played on the PGA Tour
and wanted to make some games, and so he went
out to Greg and Dave, you guys, let's get on
three D. Show me all the stuff in the gym,
show me all the the exercises and stuff like that,
And I think Greg said to him, have you ever
thought about just swing trying to swing the golf club faster?
(34:54):
And he was like, yeah, no, but all the stuff
in the gym, He's like, no, no, you can do all
of that stuff, but at the end of the day,
you have to take the object that you're holding. You
have to fundamentally swing it faster. So I think that's
one of the reasons why players struggle when they do
try and get more speed. Is all they just try
(35:15):
and do is they don't do anything fast anyway. They
don't move anything, They don't do anything in their daily
life that is ballistic in any way, right, that is
dynamic in any way. And so I think if you
are going to try and chase speed, moving the golf
(35:37):
club faster is what's correctly do. But you also have
to understand, Okay, to move the golf club faster, what
do I have to do with my body in an
effort to move this golf club faster.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, And we see it all the time, particularly you know,
guys who've lost mobility or don't have good hit mobility
for a while and then.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
We'll get them.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
You know, we'll see guys, all, okay, you got full
internal rotation of your lead hit. We'll go on the
force plates and they'll produce the same amount of vertical
force as somebody swinging ten fifteen miles an hour faster.
And you look at it and it's like, you got
to educate it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Hey man.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So you produced a lot of force, but you did
it after you hit the golf ball. So now that
you have this movement, we got to figure out. You
got to learn how to do it. And to your point,
they just conceptually have no idea how to do it
a lot of the times.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Well, and I think that's where I think the information
age that we're in through mediums like this, you know,
with podcasts. But I think, you know, from a speed standpoint,
I think it was really interesting what Bryson did. I
think Bryson brought speed training to.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
He made physics cool to the mass.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Right to the massive. Oh okay, there is a way
to train this. I mean, if you think about what
brought what Bryson was doing, you know, he was training
for long drive. They what do they get I can't
remember how many they get? What do they get? Eight?
How many do they get?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
In in insects in a.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Set, sticks in a set, So he's only trying to
catch lightning in a bottle once. Right, That's where going
back to what we were talking about before. I think
he realized that it was hard to play golf like that.
Oh yeah, And so I think what he's learned how
to do over the last yes, since he won the
(37:24):
US Open and we came out of the pandemic. I
think Bryson won, his body's going back to being somewhat
like a normal human being. His diet has gone back
to somewhat of being a normal human being, and he's
still doing a lot of the speed training. But yeah,
and and Greg and Davi at TPI had talked about
this as well, that they believe there's a rate of
(37:46):
diminishing returns with speed at the elite level, Like you know,
there's once you get to a certain level, you know.
I think it's all also as because kids are hitting
it further and further, we're seeing enormous gaps in distances.
(38:11):
They have dead zones in their club makeups to where
you know, their short iron makeup from what they're hitting
from a wedge to a nine iron, you know, you
get these kids to tell I carry a nine iron
two hundred yards, I'm like, okay, what are you doing from?
What are you hitting from one hundred and forty? What
club do you do you have in your battles?
Speaker 1 (38:33):
So what is available to you?
Speaker 3 (38:34):
And again I think you know we talked about this.
You know at the beginning. Speed is only good if
you can use it. Speed is only good if you
can apply it, and it's manageable. And so I think
that everybody wants to hit the golf ball further. The
(38:57):
easiest way to hit the golf ball further is that
the golf ball more solid consistently. And the way that
the easiest way for you to hit the golf ball
more solid consistently is one to gain better control over
how your body is moving. And the easiest way to
(39:17):
gain better control over how your body is moving is
to find out how your body moves. Go get screened
physically and have someone say, Okay, this is what your
body can do, this is what your body can't do. Obviously,
if you've had this injury in the past, it's going
to compromise this body part and this movement pattern and
(39:40):
something like that, and then you can just go into
your shots knowing Okay, that wasn't me, but it is me. Okay, yeah,
that's the shot. Because my body doesn't like to do
x Y. My body doesn't do so I've either got
(40:03):
to fix that or I've got to go in a
different direction.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
You gotta understand what it is and learn how to
and how to play with it. I think that's to me.
The body is the one. There's so many unknowns in
the game of golf. It's such a hard game. The
body is something that doesn't have to be an unknown.
It's particularly with the science and research and like, get
assessed and you're going to know exactly what you can
and can't do.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
You know, I work with Pat Perez for four years.
Pat's in his late forties. Now he's forty, you know,
forty seven, forty eight. You've got the aging process of
his age. But also when Pat was younger, he was
in a car accident. He broke his pelvis in three places.
So telling him to do something with his lower body
that Dustin Johnson does is.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
It's gonna put.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Pat in the hospital because his body fundamentally can't do that.
It doesn't like to do that, and it's not able
to do that. So the workaround is an instructor. I
actually think now that the information forces us as golf instructors.
(41:08):
If you can think about it for the instructors, then
it forces you to be better. Yeah, because once you
learn what someone's body can and can't do, then if
you've got a model in your head on what you
want them to do or a position you want them
to put the golf club in, you kind of take
that stuff and throw it out the window because if
(41:29):
they can't physically put the golf club in that position,
if their body physically can't do that, if you're trying
to get them to do something as an instructor because
you want it to look a certain way or you
want the position to be a certain way. Because Mac
O'Grady put the golf club in that position, and Mac
(41:51):
talked about that, you damn that well better, No, can
my player do that?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Can this player body physically do and fit into the
mold I am trying to put them in. And I
think if you have a model, and you have a
mold that you want everybody And there are instructors out
there that have ideas and systems and models, and you know,
(42:23):
and very specific ways to swing the golf club. And
if you are someone like that, you better be one
hundred percent sure your golfer and your athlete body can
sustain your aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And what you're asking you You got to know what
you're asking them to do, be sure they can do it.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
And they've got to have an understanding as well. Because
of the Internet, you know, because of social media, the
amount of players that come in that are trying all
this crazy stuff that they saw on an Instagram video.
You know, Darren Clark talked about that a couple of
weeks ago about how he's gone down the rabbit hole
of social media stuff. So if the best players in
(43:09):
the world are doing that, the five handicapper that just
wants to break ninety for the first time, it's very
easy to do that. But I think you you want
to know what your body can do. You want to
know what your body can't do, and then you want
to know how that fits into the construct of what
(43:35):
you're trying to do with your golf swing or one
of the things that you're trying to do with your instructor.
The other thing I think is important for everyone listening
is that takes lessons it's incumbent upon you to ask
questions to the physio, to your trainer, to your golf instructor,
if you have a player, if you are working with
(43:56):
someone and you are paying then and they are telling
you to do something that you don't understand or you
don't get the concept, if you don't ask them why,
if it sounds odd, if you don't get it, and
if you keep doing it it doesn't work. That's on
you because if you ask someone their opinion, they'll give
(44:16):
it to you.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
So in a golf lesson, ask questions, say okay, help
me connect the dots here, because if the player knew
what they were doing, they wouldn't come for a golf lesson.
So they don't know. And we as golf instructors sometimes,
you know, think that our athletes and our players know
(44:41):
what we're talking about, and they don't. And so I
think when you do try to impress your player with
fancy words and fancy concepts and all this stuff. You know,
my dad used to tell me all the time, the
player doesn't care how smart you are. The player only
cares about you helping them get better. That's the only
(45:01):
reason they've come to see you. They haven't come to
listen to you, try and truss them with how smart
you are, fancy words that they don't understand a bunch
of information they are paying you to.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Say, we call an expert itis. Yeah, so you know.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
I think it's incumbent upon everyone listening that ask questions
and don't feel like you can't ask questions. If you're
in an environment as a as a as a student
with an instructor that is making you feel, you know,
dumb or simple or somewhat kind of bullied into not
asking questions, you need to get out of that and
(45:41):
just go find somebody else. You should the people that
you are paying should be able to say, Okay, let
me connect the dots for you. We are doing this
because we are trying to fix this. We are doing
this because your body can't do this. This is the
(46:02):
road we're going on, and this is the path that
we're going to take you down. I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
I think that's like turbone listening.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
That is a wonderful blueprint of what you should be
looking for in an instructor student relationship and an experience.
Like to me that that would be how I would
just I couldn't have summed it up better in terms
of what should the blueprint look like, what we're doing,
why we're doing it, and let's have an actual conversation
and make sure you understand what the heck I'm saying
to you.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I give lessons to so many players when you ask
them what they're doing in their golf swing. They can
tell you what they're they can't They don't know what
their body can and can't do, and they're trying to
do something in their golf swing, but they don't have
any understanding as to why they're just being told to
(46:54):
do it. Now, that could be their fault, that could
be the instructor's fault, that could be a combination of both.
But I think it's very easy to get lost and
get in the instruction rabbit hole because you don't really
understand what you're doing. You don't know why you're trying
(47:18):
to do what you're doing, So when it doesn't work,
that's why everybody bails out on it. Yeah, that's why
everybody goes, now, I'm just gonna try something else because
they don't have real understanding as to what they're trying
to do. They didn't really ever kind of get told
the picture, so there was no real ability for the
player to buy in.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, there's not gonna be if you' understand why you're
doing something. You're not future paced to understand where you're
going and these are the five steps we're gonna take
to get there. Yet, I mean, it's it's unreasonable to
expect to buy in.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
So the buy in as soon as you're at one
bad shot on the golf course, you just throw it
out and you go to the golf course and you
try five different things. And I think if players add
clear pictures of what they're do. I get players that
come to take golf lessons from me, and they expect
me in ninety minutes to fix things in an hour.
(48:10):
They expect me problems all their world problems. They don't
play golf for a living, they don't really do anything
physically on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And they only have sixty minutes a week to practice.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
And it took Tiger Woods three years to tool his
golf sway playing golf every single day, six seven hours
a day. So I also think that a lot of
times golfers somewhat have an unreal expectation of the impact
(48:43):
and how much taking a golf lesson can improve the game, right,
I mean, listen, I'm good at what I do, geting
golf lessons, but it takes some ability for a golfer
to be able to hold up there into the bargain.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I mean, especially if you just you means you look
at movement learning science. I mean the number of hours.
I mean every movements a new synapse, Like there's no
such thing as muscle memory, like the every move is
a new experience, and so you have to continue to
mold those pathways. And yeah, I mean the ten thousand
hour rules you know would be an extreme example, but like, yeah,
you got to put in time. I mean that I
(49:23):
think I think the fact is putting it concretely. Tiger
Wood's three years, and you think you can get it
in three lessons?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Like three most most people want one in one.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. But
also I.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Think the average goal for if they could spend an
hour a week, right and divide that hour into half
short game, a full slight right one hour. To me,
that is the equivalent of saying you want to lose weight.
(49:57):
That to me is the start of okay on a
treadmill and just walk for a half hour three days
a week. You don't even have to run. Just get
on a treadmill, put some speed on it. If you
want to try and lose weight, you do that three
days a week. Walk for a half hour a day,
three days a week. At some point a month later,
(50:18):
someone will say to you, if you've been working out,
you're not even doing any You're not doing CrossFit.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah, it's just moving.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
You're not to step in the right moving. So all
of a sudden, you go to a driving range and
you get golf balls for thirty minutes, and then you
go putt for fifteen minutes, and then you go chip
for fifteen minutes, right, Or you go putt for twenty
minutes and then you go chip for ten minutes. If
(50:47):
you did that religiously, you know four times a month
you would improve because you'd be creating some patterns and
some habits and some regular movement patterns that are consistent
(51:08):
and start from there. Because listen, golf is golf. There's
a time constraint, right, It's hard. People's attention spans are short,
people's lives are busy, So look at your practice time.
However much practice time, you've got to go to a
(51:28):
driving range and whatever that time is, split it between
short game false mine. You'd be if you've got twenty
minutes to hit to go to the rain, you'd be
as good as going to the punt and greens for
ten minutes and going to hit golf balls for ten minutes,
(51:50):
then just going to the driving range for twenty minutes.
That balance of you know, just creating some assistency in
the patterns I think is big.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, and I think the big thing, you know, when
you look at progress and just you know, just the
human the human state, just in starting that, you'll start
to see little wins. And we see this on the
fitness side, like we start with guy like we tell us,
if you get at least ninety minutes over the course
of a week, that's all we need. And you start
to get little wins, and then it's it's funny. You'll
get guys like that's all that all the time I got,
(52:24):
And then all of a sudden, magically, three four weeks
later they start to see progress.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Oh, you know, I can find another twenty minutes, I
can find.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Another And then it starts to snowball positively and so
I think that's that's so important. It's across you know,
not only fitness, but obviously the golf and anything in life.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah, I think that having realistic expectations from a golf standpoint,
I think is very very important. You know, eight feet,
I think is the number where it goes fifty to
fifty on the PGA Tour. Eight feet is where the
pig of the best in the world make they missed
(53:01):
as many as they may. And so the average golfer
expects to go to the golf course in every eight
for it they've got they expected to make them. They
expect to hit every fairway, they expect to hit every green,
they expect to hit every every web shot to three feet,
they expect to get every bunker shot up and down.
And you know, having you know, more realistic expectations, I
(53:21):
think is vitally important.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
I think one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
And I think for everybody listening, there's so much gold
in this episode. Rewind, re listen, probably get out of notebook.
Maybe we'll see if we can put the the AI
transcript here for everyone to so you can take notes
from that. But hey, Claude, I got thank you so much, man,
This has been an absolute awesome just mastermind session for
(53:46):
everybody listening here to get to just hear your thoughts
and how you work with people and and honestly, man,
just just really appreciate you taking the time and in
honor to have you on the pod. And I'll see
in her Lando in a little bit here, So so thanks.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
So much for coming on perfect.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, so everybody listening, go check out Son of a
Bunch of podcasts. And then Claude, you're on Instagram? What
else where else are you at? We'll put this on
the show notes. But where else?
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, Twitter and.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
You know, X or whatever all that stuff. But yeah,
just I've got, you know, on my social all my
content stuff that I've done over the years and stuff
like that, and try and put out as much content
as I can, you know, to try and help golfers
get better and enjoy golf more.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
Yeah, So we'll have all that in the show notes
for you guys, and as always, thanks hanging out with
us here on the golf in this bomb spot and
we'll catch you next time.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Thanks.
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