Better Fitness Means Better Golf For Your Game! with GolfFit App RichardBerle

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Benny Castell from Maples, Florida.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I play it.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Teresa Bay, Welcome to Golf Smarter. I'm Jeff Smith from Padoca, Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I play at Rolling Hills Golf Course.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
This is Golf Smarter number oney eleven.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I met a lot of golfers that are really fit,
but they're not golf fit. They're strong, they can lift
a lot of weight, they can run really far, but
when you actually ask them to do a shoulder.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Turn, they're highly restricted to experience.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
What real golf fitness can do to how you feel
when you get to a golf course is really what
will keep you doing this program for as long as
you choose to. And so I would say, just try
a five minute mobility workout. Try something that feels very doable.
Don't over exert yourself. You don't have to. If you

(00:51):
do a five minute workout for two weeks, you will
feel completely different if you're coming at it from not
having worked out at all. The bar has set so
much lower for success than people are accustomed to believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
As we have these Instagram programs like sixty.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Days, You're going to look like this, and that's just
setting people up for failure. That's not the way a
professional athlete would approach their fitness if they were injured
and they were coming back. They're not starting to kill themselves.
They're starting to get themselves to move up incrementally through
the process of getting fit by the start of the
season or by the time that they're ready to get started.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
We have this phrase where we.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Want people to adapt an athlete's mindset in their fitness.
Athletes train smart, they just don't train hard, and we
think we have a smart system.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Better fitness means better golf for your game. With the
golfit app creator Richard Burrow, this.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great
golf minds to help you lower your score and raise
your golf IQ.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to Golf Smarter podcast. Richard.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Oh, Fred, great to talk to you and great to
meet you. This is going to be fun. We had
a short chat before we started recording.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Nothing that anybody's going to miss, but.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
It's really great to hear about your story. And we
come from similar geographic areas at the very least, but
we both have the entrepreneurial spirit, which I'm really excited
to talk to you about. And I've spent a lot
of time on golf Smarter advocating fitness, mobility, flexibility, and

(02:41):
that it really your body is really the most important
tool in your bag. And you have found you've created
something that can help all of us tell us about
golf fit.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
I couldn't agree more like, you know, your body's the
most valuable and sometimes underutilized piece of equipment you have,
and I agree with you. I don't think I've met
many golfers or any golfers that I can think of,
who wouldn't benefit from a focused golf fitness.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Plan.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
So golf it was born from just a myriad of
different influences, you know, a long term relationship with golf,
with fitness, a frustration over why personal training was so
expensive and sort of out of reach. A desire to
democratize this knowledge that existed that was you know, was

(03:44):
currently like you can find a very expensive, you know,
coach or trainer or so forth. But the idea was
always that what can we do to bring this knowledge
this base And it went a lot further after we started,
but to people, to all golfers everywhere since everybody could
benefit from it. I sustained a pretty bad wrist injury

(04:07):
about three years ago. I began to go to different
facilities that were, you know, intended to help me, you know,
get better. And whenever I would get better for a
little while from laying off, I'd go back out to
the golf course and I would reinjure it. And it
just became this cycle. And of course you start thinking
about surgery. You start thinking about all these not very

(04:29):
attractive alternatives. And one day I was looking at some
video of my swing and I noticed that, boy, my
wrist was was early extending. And I had to keep
doing that because I had really developed a lack of
hip mobility that was drastically impeding my ability to move

(04:49):
through my from my right side to my left side.
And that was kind of a moment where I thought
to myself, hmm, that might be the answer to my
wrist injury. And as a turn out, it was. As
I began to develop my hip mobility, I was able
to clear my hips out of the way and therefore
my hands could stay in front.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
And that was that was really a moment for me. Golf.
It was really it came and I was in a garage.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
I was going through this identity crisis about having built
one business and wanting to know what I wanted to
do with the rest of my career. I had what
my wife refers to as a Peloton moment, when I
come up with a great idea that seldom, if ever
goes any place.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
But I was on the bike and I thought, come on, Richard,
think about this. What do you want to do?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
And I said, I want to I want to do
something with golf and I wanted to do something with fitness.
And I put those two words together golf fit, and
that was really the beginning of this entire venture.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted
to do.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
I wanted to create this amazing golf fitness content. Unlike
what's currently of aailable, which is a lot of workouts
that here's a list of ten exercises to do right,
or here's do these ex reps. In this I wanted
to create really high quality, highly produced, quality workouts, similar

(06:15):
to like a Peloton or an Apple, but specifically for golfers.
So we went into that business of creating this content,
and we went through several shoots. We made a bunch
of mistakes. We finally developed what we think are eighty
of the best full length workouts that golfers could select from.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
And so we published those.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
But then I realized we needed to go deeper because
finding a big catalog of workouts is not necessarily that
helpful to people. What they really need to know is
what specifically should I do for my game? So then
we begin and began on the personalization trajectory of how
can we interact with a golfer the way that somebody

(07:01):
would interact with a personal trainer. What are you feeling
like this week? What issues are you dealing with, how
are you how is your motivation? And things of that nature.
And so now that we're able to gather that information,
we're now able to produce a personalized workout for golfers
each week, so that it's based on your schedule, your

(07:25):
golf history, your fitness history, your relationship with fitness.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
And that's sort of what I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
It was going to get, you know, the most traction,
and then we then I discovered something that was even
more interesting to me than all that, and that is
why is there an industry that accepts this seventy percent
failure rate, i e. The fitness industry. What is this
failure rate all about? Why are people? Why are so
many people starting with the intention of getting in better

(07:55):
shape and then stop it even though they know how
important and it is that they do it. So that's
taking me down? Is this path of just remarkable exploration
into behavioral science. And I'm now working with one of
the top fitness behavioral scientists, woman by the name of

(08:17):
Michelle Seeger. She wrote a great book called No Sweat.
And what she's done is she spent her life understanding
why some people succeed and others don't when they embark
on a fitness program. And what we've been able to
do now is start to build that in to the
golf fit ethos, Like we are all about trying to

(08:38):
understand how to keep people from falling off because it's unnecessary,
you don't need to. It has a lot to do
with changing people's belief systems around fitness. They're incorrect. They've
been built by people that are in the business of
getting you to sign up on January one and hopefully
not come to the gym ever again. Like that's that's

(09:02):
the model, and it's to me it's it's not a
it's not a model that I would ever believe in.
I want our subscribers doing the workouts. I want to
keep them doing the workouts. And that's that's the business.
So you know, so we've kind of taken this trajectory
of first it was content, now it's personalization.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
And really the the underlying.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Is how do we get people to keep exercising and
continue to exercise for their for their lifetime and golf.
Getting better at golf, as you know, as a as
an avoca is probably the most motivating thing we can do,
but there needs to be more goal. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
it will make you better at golf. There's absolutely no doubt.

(09:46):
All the studies show that fitness will make you better
at golf. Just look at Maury McElroy to know what
supreme fitness looks like on the seventy third hole. When
you've just walked Augusta for four days, five days and
you can still execute at the level that he is.
That is that is the epitome of golf fitness. And

(10:08):
so so that's that's the story of Golf Fit and
and that's what we've been pursuing for the last uh
you know, period of time to get.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Us to where we are now, and where were you before.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
I'm curious because it seems like this is a your
your peloton moment, This is your idea that came later
in life, so you had.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
To it had been brewing for these things.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, it had been brewing for for for years, this
idea of what could be done around fitness. But I
started a flooring company in California a number of years
ago and have had you know, a fair amount of
success in it and learned, you know, that was kind

(10:59):
of my like entrepreneurial you know, teeth cutting, where I
learned that there were ways to be successful and there
were ways to not be successful.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
And and I figured out.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
What do you mean by's a flooring company?

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Is this?

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Rechail is the largest supplier of flooring to people that
own apartments. And I've worked with all of the major
property management companies throughout California and we've built that into
a fairly sizable organization with over one hundred and fifty

(11:36):
installers that work for us on a daily basis, and
and uh, you know, we do that and and I
love it. It's been a it's been a tremendous experience
to grow a business from the ground up and to
deal with you know, running to the mailbox to see
if we got checks in, to cover to cover payroll,
and you know, learning all of the things that that

(11:57):
you've got to learn.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
I mean, one of the things I realize.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Is that I think a lot of people when they're
going into a business don't accept the reality that there's
no way that they're going to know everything. They think
they can know everything, But part of growing a business
or building a business is really learning how not to
do it along the way. And absolutely and the quicker

(12:21):
people are to react to that and to implement the
changes that will prevent that from happening again, in my mind.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Not just increases the likelihood of success.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
And frankly, you know, when I stepped into this business,
I didn't know production design, I didn't I mean production,
I didn't know digital marketing. I didn't know a lot
of the things about this. And people would, you know,
often say you know what's driving you? And honestly, the
drive here is because I see the fundamental existential crisis

(12:53):
that this country's facing with obesity and people not committing
to working out and not stay working out, and I
ask myself why, and I feel it's unnecessary. I feel
like people can develop a mindset that keeps them engaged
and they'll live healthier lives. They'll play better golf, they'll

(13:15):
have more experiences with grandchildren, and and you know, they'll
achieve more in their d one career, They'll achieve more
in whatever they do. They'll you know, to me, fitness
is one of those keys to living a healthy and
successful life. So if we can do it by golf,

(13:36):
then that, to me is the perfect way to do it.
My love for golf is as deep as as you
know anybody's that there is, and so that kind of
was the trajectory of bringing me to be in this business.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now, how's your game?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
My game has never been better. I can honestly tell
you that because of the fitness that I've been doing
over the last couple of years. I have a really
dear friend of mine, a guy that I jokingly say
I started golfit for because I watched him kind of
age and he was to me, he's aging out of
the game prematurely. He's not out of the game, but

(14:14):
he's not He's not as limber, he's not as flexible.
He's not and so far. And so he and I
were playing on Saturday and.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
I hit a particularly get shot at It was number
six at Riviera and pin was back left and and
you know, so you kind of had to get it
up there, and I hit it off the back hill
and it kind of rolled back off the hill and
landed like three feet away. And he looks at me,
he goes, I don't understand something. Everybody else that I
know is getting worse as they get older. You're getting better.

(14:46):
And I was like, I don't know how to say
this anymore clearly, Jeff. It's it's it's just the fitness.
It's being able to move my body in ways that
I haven't been able to before, and to have the strength,
the rotational power, the mobility, the core. Those things are

(15:08):
all allowing me to ay practice more. That's a big
piece of it, right, Like if you don't feel well,
you can't practice. If you can't practice, it's.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Really hard to be good at this, at this game. Right.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
So I'm able to hit you know, balls, you know,
pretty decently on the range for a period of time.
I feel strong on the back nine as I do
on the front nine. Because my endurance is there. I
have opened up my hips like like we talked about,
and by opening up my hips, I'm getting more clubhead speed,

(15:43):
so I'm hitting the ball further than I've ever hit it.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
So my game is pretty good.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
That's awesome. Come on you index these days.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
It's somewhere around like three to two or something.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow at Rivieria. Yeah, yeah, nice, you play a lot? Well,
isn't that interesting? How you know?

Speaker 4 (16:04):
People like they want more obviously they want more distance,
they want more accuracy, blah blah blah blah blah, but
they're not doing anything with their body to make it
work out. And really, you know, if you want more distance,
it's not going to be a ball, it's not going
to be a club. Sure that could work, you know,
on a couple of yards here and there, but until

(16:27):
your body is in supreme golf shape, none of those
things are going to work. I think it's we're being
sometimes we're being sold a bill of goods. As far
as you know what we're listening on advertising from from
the major manufacturers who don't care about you that much.

(16:47):
They care about their bottom line, as they should, but
there's they're telling us things that aren't necessarily go to
help as much as they blame. I hate to say this,
I see friends rapidly, but I can imagine.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
So we'll tread nightly around this subject. But you know, I,
for a long time I used to say like, I've
never seen a golferget better from new equipment. I've just
never seen it happen like a new putter in the bag,
a new driver in the back, because it's still the
same person on the other end swinging the club. I
have definitely seen people get better as they've improved their fitness,

(17:27):
as they've improved their ability to move and to as
they build strength, as they you know, are able to
generate more speed. You know, I walk up it down
a driving range these days, and I don't really look
at the swing.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
I look at the body of the person.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Swinging the club, and I think too much, Oh my god,
if you could just if you could just do this.
And here's the interesting thing that I've discovered, and we
talked about this a little bit. It's really about adjusting
people's expectations from what they want fitness to be versus

(18:05):
what it really is. And if you think about it
as why so many people quit it's because they go
in with this unrealistic expectation, this horrible phrase, no pain,
no gain, and they come crashing down and they stop.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
It's like they're set up for failure.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
And what I would say to people, a lot of
people who are just starting out in any kind of
fitness program, give me thirty days of five minutes of
mobility and that's it.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Just do that.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
And if you can't do all thirty days, do fifteen
of them. But understand that that is success. That is
you meeting yourself where you are. Our program is designed
to meet you where you are and to build from there.
And if you keep those two lines, reality and expectations

(18:58):
closer in line, you are building the trajectory for long
term success. It's when they become very divergent that I
see people are quitting. They're getting frustrated. So everything we're
doing about golfit is designed to bring people into a
connection with Hey, this is what success looks like. It

(19:22):
means if I do it three days a week. But
let's say, for example, we give you a personalized workout
and on Wednesday you've got to do a forty minute
rotational power because you're a level three stud and that's
what we gave you. But let's say that day you
had something come up with, your kids, got a terrible
night's sleep, your boss, you know, yelled at you about

(19:44):
something that wasn't your fault. And we know the science
tells us that your energy is going to be completely
different than what it might feel like on a day
when those things didn't happen. So what we're trying to
get people to understand is it's not a failure that
you don't do that forty minute workout. It's a success

(20:05):
if you take a five minute walk, right, if you
just keep moving your body.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
It's really all about movement, right.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
We're all we're all in this race to you know,
stave off atrophy and in the end it wins. But
for the for as long as we can or we
want our bodies to be moving as.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Much as possible.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
So what I love about what we're doing and what
some of the people that are helping us do is
we're really understanding how do we how do we help
people to succeed in their fitness goals, And by doing that,
we can build a way in which people feel supported

(20:46):
where right now they don't. And so we're building community.
We're building a way for people to feel like they're involved.
And you know, we talked at some point about how
golf is this amazing community based event which we see
fewer and fewer of in our lives, where people get together,
they're part of a team, they're part of a club.

(21:07):
We talked about Eric Lang and random golf club, which
is not a club. It's just a bunch of people
who have a shared interest over a particular topic. Is that,
in my mind, is just one of the beauties of
golf is that you can pull that many people over
a very positive activity. Right, It's go outside, it's being nature,

(21:28):
it's play, it's laugh it's compete, it's all these things
that in life are just good things to have in
your life.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
This conversation looking at you, talking to my senses. You
don't use golf carts when you're playing golf. You are
a walking, a walking golfer.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
There's another thing I feel better about than carrying my
own bag at sixty three for eighteen holes.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
That you carry your bag too, Yeah, my back wouldn't
allow that for eighteen holes. Yeah. Northern California we have
a lot of up and down right, and just yeah,
my back.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Would not allow that.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's one of the great.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
It's one of the great walking walking courses, and I'll
admit there are times where somebody cares it for me.
I'm not gonna lie, but I love to walk the course.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
I love walking golf because, you know, like when I'm
in a golf cart, it feels like I hit the ball,
I go to the ball, I hit the ball, I
go to the ball, and I can't remember anything about
the golf course. Yeah, unless I've taken a couple of pictures.
It's like, yeah, I kind of remember. But I played
with the guy recently. He says, I remember every single
golf shot I've ever taken. And I said, and he

(22:47):
looks at me. He goes, and I remember, and I
remember every shot you took in this round.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
I'm like, I don't, how do you do that?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
And we kind of can't do that.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
No, but I kind of figured out if you've played
a course a number of times, then it's easier to
remember your golf shots. If you're playing course for a
first time, it's like, no, idea, Okay, can you remember
your golf shots on every round?

Speaker 2 (23:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
One of the things I love to do is remember
the one from yesterday, and I'll go through it in
my mind oftentimes like I just trying to go yeah, yeah, right,
and I'm like, you know what I do?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
What was my tendency? What do I need to work
on that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I'm not overly statistical about looking at my golf game,
I'm not. I am excited though, because over the next
several months, we've got conversations with people that the wearables company,
Garmen and some of the other companies to see if
we can start extracting data from people's wearables to even

(23:53):
more better refine their they're programming for them. We're also
building the same type of thing a video. If we
can see somebody swing on video, we could we could
analyze it and provide workouts based on that as well.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
But yeah, I think walking in a golf course is
a great pleasure.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
Yeah, let's talk about more about your your app.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
It's an app, right, Golf, It is an app.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Golf it is a is a we'd call it a
platform sitting. The platform that you can do either you know, uh,
directly on the on your browser or through the app.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Both have the same functionality.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
Okay, okay, and let's break down some of the programs
that you you offer. Is it like, are the workouts
like uh a series an ongoing series of programs that
you can follow from day to day to day or

(24:55):
is it you like, find one that you like and
just do it every day? How does it work from
the consumer standpoint as far as our daily workouts if
we can?

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, So for the get there for the when when
you go to the.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Website, you're going to be asked to if you want
to get your first week's workout, and you'll you'll go
and you'll answer several questions for us, and those questions
will allow us to generate a personalized workout for you. So, Fred,
you want to work on a slice that you have,
or you want to gain more distance, you do your

(25:32):
workout your We've sort of judged that you're somewhere around
the level two out of one, two and three. So
here's five. Here's a total of five workouts, three that
we suggest you do for sure, and then two that
we're going to call optional. So if you want to
add them in or you want to substitute them because

(25:52):
you're not feeling up to doing the levels that we
gave you, then you do that. So as you're doing those,
we're going to be sort of monitoring behind the scenes
in terms of how well you're doing, if you're getting
through them all the way, and all an attempt to
gather data so that when we send you an email

(26:12):
at the end of the week saying we want to
check in and see how you did. We noticed that
there were some workouts that you seem to really like,
others that that you didn't like so much. Give us
some feedback on those, will refine it, and then we'll
send you your new out workouts for the following week.
And so that will just be a perpetual process in

(26:33):
which you will continue to get, you know, workouts that
are really geared to what you want to accomplish in
your golf game. Everybody's got a different body, everybody's got
different goals, everybody's got a different swing. So there shouldn't
be no such thing as like a generic golf workout.
It's just it's you know, what I should be doing

(26:56):
and what you should be doing, and what my twenty
seven year old son, who had also be a co
founder of golf Fit is doing.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Our two different are all different.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
So where we think Golfit is really unique is that
we have now been able to harness the ability to
make each workout feel as though it is a personalized
trainer that is looking at you, your swing, your body,
getting feedback from you, and giving you the workout that

(27:28):
will be most beneficial.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
I've for years I've been doing programs on a daily
trying to do a daily basis of you know, fifteen
to twenty minutes each morning at the very least. And
then now that I've had physical therapy going for the
last year and a half, I had that before I
start my program on my app and.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
The various apps, even if they have.

Speaker 4 (27:53):
The name golf where golfers in it, I found that
what ends up happening is they just become this basic,
low level yoga program and I'm like, okay, wait a minute,
is this what I've been trying to get to from
the start. And I have to say that in just

(28:15):
a few weeks that I've tried golf Fit, It's like, Oh,
they really are talking to golfers. They really are addressing
things that I've been struggling with and haven't been helped.
And you've had oh yeah, no, high praise on that,
but I also have noticed that you don't have just

(28:36):
a trainer there. I've now been through multiple trainers who
are all very good, and again they all seem to
be golfers, so they get it.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, that's great feedback. I couldn't be happier.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
That was a very important thing throughout all the programming
was you know, what's the through line to golf?

Speaker 2 (28:58):
What's the through line to golf?

Speaker 3 (29:00):
And I agree, And why I love doing the workouts
is because when I do them, when I go to
the golf course, it's those particular exercises that increase my
confidence as I'm you know, getting a little bit tired
on a golf course, or I have to get a

(29:20):
particularly difficult shot, or you know, I've got a chip shot,
and all of a sudden, I feel like, oh my
my core is really engaged in a way that it
wouldn't have been had I not been working on it right,
because I think a lot of our inconsistencies can really
be traced back to our lack of stability, and our
lack of stability comes from just the lack of strength.

(29:45):
And so you know, golf is the sport where you
have to do the same thing over and over again,
and there's fatigue that sets in, and if you're walking,
it's going to be even more. We look forward to
helping people and guiding them on you know, their nutrition
and their hydration and the other facets that go into
you know, really being prepared for a golf a golf day.

(30:09):
In my case, I've got a two week program that
I built for myself out of golf Fit, which is
preparing me for a tournament in coming up in a
week from now, where I've said, Okay, let me, let's
talk about my let's talk about my nutrition, let's talk
about my fitness.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I made a mistake the day before yesterday.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
I did a workout that was too hard, and I
felt it on the golf course yesterday and I was like, no, self,
you know you can't you can't ignore what you've learned
about what a day before around should look like, what
a morning should look like. So I think there's all
different ways in which we can explore how we're going

(30:50):
to be able to help golfers play play better golf.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
What do you mean you had a workout that was
too hard? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Are there differently Level three?

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yes, So we have levels one, two, and three, and
I decided I wanted to do a rotational power workout.
Now the golf game came up after I had set
my calendar for the week, and so I did the
rotational power If I had to do it over again,
I would have substituted that out for a Level two

(31:30):
full body mobility workout or even two Level one workouts,
maybe on my hips and on my back, and then
maybe the morning yesterday morning, I would have just done
the pre round mobility workouts that we do, which are
just you know, five to seven minutes, you know, before

(31:52):
I play. So I think it's just being smarter and
learning what my body needs and what it responds to
and to not being regimented, and what success looks like
like being able to back off of that Level three
workout and not feel badly about it is such a
huge part of the psychology of succeeding at fitness. You

(32:15):
need to adapt. You need to be able to say
to yourself, what is my body telling me right now?
And that could even be mid workout, like you could
be doing the workout and suddenly you get to something
that you know. There's two things I really try to
stress with people is that you know this is all suggestive.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Right. If it doesn't feel body, it doesn't feel right
for your body. Stop.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
The single most important thing that people can do to
control getting injured is to not do something that hurts
them Again. That whole no pain, no gain thing set
more people on the wrong course than I could ever imagine.
But you need to listen to your body, and you

(33:00):
need to be willing to adapt. This is a lifelong
relationship you've got with your with your your body, and
it will be very good to you if you treat
it with with respect. At least, that's what I'm finding
in my life. Like it'll it'll, it'll hang in there,
it'll stay younger, it'll stay more, you know, it'll stay stronger.

(33:22):
But if I go out and do something that I
know is gonna gonna you know, do something to my back,
it's going to let me know. And as I get older,
it's going to let me know even more. Uh, And
the recovery time can sometimes, you know, be longer. So
see a lot of guys talk about injuries. I think
injuries oftentimes can be brought back to something in the

(33:43):
body like my wrist or you know, back injuries. We
start to compensate for our physical limitations in our swing.
We start doing it enough times and before we know it,
we have an injury to our hip because we've made
some sort of adjustment.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
That is.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
That is not dealing with the root, the root cause,
the root issue. So we're about getting to the root,
the root issue, which is you know, hit, back, shoulder, mobility,
you know strength. Of course, so many back problems are
from lack of core strength. You know, let's address the
real issue, which is that your back is not properly

(34:24):
supported in your golf swing, which is a you know,
it's a fair, it's a dynamic move.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
People will underestimate how much golf requires a.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know, a synchronicity of of of strength and agility
and balance and speed and all these things go into
a golf swing. And then we we think our body
doesn't need to get properly trained to do that in
order to do it well X number of times, And
I think, I think what we've what we've built here
is a way for people to take advantage of that,

(34:54):
you know, that fact that it really makes a difference.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Interesting, how did you find all these trainers that were
knowledgeable about golf fitness and then did you shoot this
all in the southern California area or did you travel
around to find them?

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (35:13):
No, they were all either based in California or came in.
You know, our top trainer is a gentleman by the
name of Sheldon Roberts, who's one of the top fifty
Golf Digest Fitness trainers. He did all of our programming,
he does most of the videos. I'm sure you've done

(35:34):
some of his. He was a guy that you know
I went. Let me tell you it was one of
the more challenging things to do was to find trainers
to do this because we asked a lot of them.
We asked them to be golf knowledgeable, We asked them
to be you know, great trainers. We asked them to
be charismatic on camera. We asked them to be you know,

(35:57):
interesting and engaging and motivating. So it's a tall bar
that you've got to find and tell me.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Insert here, let me insert here.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
You get an a for getting all those on the
checklist and exceeding with them.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
We we worked really hard. I've seen other programs out
there where yeah, the knowledge is there, but you don't
really want to hang out with this person for a
half an hour and do workouts. And we also, much
to our our trainers you know, displeasure, we also insisted
that they do the whole workout, you know, in real
time while they're there their training.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
They don't just get to sit there and tell people
what to do.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
So you kind of feel like you're working out with
Sheldon trainer, I mean Sheldon Roberts or or you know,
Jenny or Brett, all of whom bring their own unique
set of experiences to golf Fit and hopefully that comes through.
And and it's attempt to make sure that everybody finds
their person or persons that they relate to, that they

(37:03):
you know, relate to their their training style, their rhythm,
and all those types of factors that.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
We look for when we engage with with anybody.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
Do you recommend that these workouts be done in the morning, midday, afternoon,
the first thing when you wake up, or just before
you go to bed. How what's the best time?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Does it or does it make any There's an old
adage and.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Fitness that says, you know, the best workout to do
is the one you will.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Do, And so I don't really care if you want
to wake up at two in the morning and do
your workout. That's fine, doesn't make any difference to me,
as long as you just you know, you figure out
how to get through. And this is where I think
we're going to really be able to help people is

(37:54):
I've coined this rate called winning the moment, right. Winning
the moment is the moment we all have during the
day when we have a workout schedule and we start
the negotiation process. All right, I've got this to do,
I've got dinner plans, I've got you know, I don't
feel good, I feel tired in all these senses.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
So there comes this moment on an our day.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
And anybody who tells me they don't face this moment,
I think or is a very rare class of fitness
people where you start to negotiate your way out of
the workout because it's hard, it's going to be strenuous.
And so what we're trying to get people to realize
is that there's a decisive moment that happens when you

(38:39):
make the decision to do what's good for you rather
than what might just feel.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Better in the moment.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
So why while we're building this, we're thinking about how
do we support you in that moment, How do we
get you to take the action that will start to
build the habit, so the.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Benefits that you're feeling, which need to be immediate, You
can't build a fitness program.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
A lot of fitness programs are built on you're going
to lose weight in in you know, six months from now.
Science tells us that that's not a need. That's not
enough immediate gratification for people to continue the workout. They
will lose their motivation. What people will do is if
at the end of that workout, they reassess how they're

(39:29):
feeling and they say, wow, I actually feel pretty good,
Like my body feels good, I'm standing up a little
bit taller. Maybe I don't feel like eating as much
to tonight, or maybe you know, my wife wants to
go for a walk. I feel like I'm energized, I've
got I've got some blood flowing. So to your question

(39:50):
of when to do them, it's it's whatever is most
likely going to be the time where you're going to
win that moment, And if that's first thing in the morning,
wake up and do it first thing in the morning.
If it's if that's not practical for you find that
the other thing we do is we encourage people to
think about these these fitness events, these these workouts as

(40:14):
similar to what they do to all their other events
on their calendar, and to put them on their calendar.
For example, smart when when when you and I had
this meeting, you and I both put it on a
calendar and there was really nothing that was going to
stand in our way of making that appointment for all
the reasons that that you know, pride, you know, how

(40:35):
we live our lives, what what what's meaningful to us?

Speaker 2 (40:38):
You know, being on time and so forth.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
We find that if people put their their their workouts
on a calendar, they identify them as non negotiable events,
right like like this one was non negotiable, They're more
likely to do them.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
And if we can get people.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
Treating their workouts like that, it also the decision fatigue
out of it. Right when am I going to work out?
Am I going to work out at four? Am I
going to work out at five? And suddenly suddenly a
day's gone by and I didn't work out at all?
Why because it wasn't on my calendar And a lot
of us live by by our calendar. So there there

(41:17):
are these sort of you know, levers that we have
identified that we can help people pull that will increase
their likelihood of success.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
Interesting and are the workouts varying in length or are
they a specific you've like, our goal is to make
each ten twenty minutes whatever.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
There's you know, there's ten minute workouts, there's the five
minute pre rounds, then there's ten to fifteen minute mobility.
Sometimes we'll ask you to do two of those or
just do one of those in a day. Then the
full body strengths tend to go between twenty minutes and
forty minutes. I don't think we have anything that's really
longer than in forty minutes, but you know, they're great

(42:02):
forty minute workouts. I love to exert my body like that.
What I'll tell you, though, is I don't want to
do that every day, and I don't need to do
it every day. I think that's the other thing I
wish people would realize is that, you know, anything you
do in the course of the day to move your

(42:22):
body is better than doing nothing at all, right, right,
It's really just that simple of an equation. The more
you can do sometimes the better you'll feel. But just
doing something is what's vital.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
And what you say.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
You said something in there that I think is a
great hook to get people really interested and started. You
talked about pre round workouts. Tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, So we get to the golf course and we
all tend to just sort of go up to the
driving range, grab a bucket of balls, and start doing
the same the same action that we are are going
to do for the rest of the day, without doing
anything to activate those muscles in a way that would
really prepare them for going. It's like, you know, if

(43:14):
an NBA player just, you know, just he did nothing
but just start shooting, right. He didn't he didn't warm
up his body, he didn't jog at all, he didn't,
you know, kind of make.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
It way, dude. Those guys are in their twenties, you and.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
All the more reason.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
Yeah, they can wake up and just go right onto
the court and play in the twenties. And it's like,
oh he's tired, Oh shut up, I'm sorry, Go ahead.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Yeah, I mean all the more reason to you know,
when I go to the golf course, if I have
ten minutes, I'm going to spend five minutes on getting
my body moving, and because the muscle memory for the
golf swing is there, hitting twenty more balls is not
going to make any difference. I always want to hit balls,

(44:00):
but it's an entirely different experience. After I've done five
minutes of I have to carry this band in my back.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I have my phone.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
I just put it, you know, up on one of
those little tripod things. I take the band out. I
can do it for five minutes. All the other guys
on the range look at me, is like, oh, I
should be doing that. I know I should be doing that,
but instead I'm just going to keep pounding balls and
feeling a little stiff, and then wonder why I don't
don't play as well as I think I should, Right,

(44:29):
because everybody thinks they should be better, and I think
we're really giving people a pathway, a real pathway to
get better.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
So how does the golf Smarter community get started with
golf Fit?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Well, I say, I think you know, if I was
looking at if I was out there looking for, you know,
a way to improve my game, and I was watching
the videos on YouTube, and I was, you know, doing
all this kind of stuff, I would say that if
you went to our website, and you just did a
week long trial of our of our workouts no cost.

(45:07):
Feel how your body feels different? Right, you know, do
an assessment at the beginning, how do I feel? How
do I feel at the end of this week?

Speaker 2 (45:15):
This week?

Speaker 3 (45:17):
If if you don't feel better, then I'd say keep looking.
I don't know you will feel better.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
You will.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Your body will open up, your your muscles will start expanding,
your your blood will start moving in a way that
it doesn't And when you step to that first tee
or go to the driver reage, you will notice a difference.
So just take the first indicated step, which is just
do one workout. I've got guys that are like that's

(45:44):
the other thing. They're guys that are really fit. I
need a lot of golfers that are really fit. But
they're not golf fit. They're they're strong, they're they're you know,
they can they can lift a lot of weight. They
can they can run really far, but when you actually
ask them to do you know, a shoulder turn.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
They're highly restricted.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Right, So to experience what real golf fitness can do
to how you feel when you get to a golf
course is really what will keep you doing this program,
you know, for as long as you choose to. And
so I would say, just try a workout, Try a

(46:25):
five minute mobility workout. Try something that feels very doable
for you. Don't over exert yourself. You don't have to,
like I said earlier, if you spend five minutes. If
you do a five minute workout for two weeks, you
will you will feel completely different if you're coming at
it from not having worked out at all. The bar

(46:46):
is set is so much lower for success than people
are accustomed to believe it is. We have these Instagram
programs like sixty days You're going to look like this,
and you're going to be you know, you're going to
be this and that, and that's just setting people up
for failure. That's not the way a professional athlete would

(47:07):
approach their fitness. It's not if they were injured and
they were coming back. They're not starting to kill themselves.
They're starting to get themselves to move up incrementally through
the process of getting fit by the start of the
season or by the time that they're ready to get started.
And I just think we have this phrase where we

(47:29):
want people to adapt an athlete's mindset in their fitness.
Like athletes train smart, they just don't train hard. And
we think we have a smart system.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
Oh well, perfect for Golf Smarter. So after the free
week and testing it out and you're hooked, what happens next?
What are the fees structure? And how does that tell me?

Speaker 3 (47:54):
So you can sign up for you know, get the
weekly you get everything for both both structures, so the
weekly personalization, the motivation, the emails, the text, whatever we
can do to help support you. For if you want
to do it on a monthly basis, it's twenty four
ninety five and if you want to do it for

(48:16):
a year, it's two hundred. So we you know, we
we just want you to get started and feel the benefits.
So once you start to feel the benefits, it will
be it'll be something that you know. Then you can
determine what program makes the most sense for you.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot here
and I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable, but I'm going
to ask straightforward here. I would love to get a
lot of this Golf Smarter community involved and to check
it out for themselves and please do the free week.
But if they're ready to pay up. Is there an
incentive that you can provide to the golf Smarter community

(48:59):
on the paid subscription that might work for you and
get them to go to golfit dot com.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
If if you go through the first week and you
want to sign up for a monthly, we will offer
you fifty percent off your first your first month, so
it'll it'll bring it down.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
To what is it, twelve to fifty something like that.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
And then if you then decide you want to increase
it to an annual subscription, we will offer you twenty
five percent off your annual subscription.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Oh wow, that's very generous. Well, that should be enough
incentive right there. Richard, this has been awesome, good luck
with this, and I my sense is that the flooring
business has taken care of itself that you were able
to keep going here and you didn't get rid of
that company.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
So yeah, thank you again for coming on and sharing
this information with us.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
I'm hooked, I'm in so I'm really enjoying it, and
I think that a lot of people are going to
benefit from this when they you know, again, we talk
about this a lot. Most important tool in your bag
is your body.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Agreed.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure

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