Fitness Myths That Will Surprise Every Golfer! featuring Chris Finn of Par4Success

GS#1016 September 9, 2025 This week on the Golf Smarter Podcast, Chris Finn returns to delve into the myths surrounding golf fitness. Chris is a Titliest Performance Institute Certified Medical Professional, a Certified Preceision Nutrition Coach and Golf Digest Top 50 Golf Fitness Professional. We explore a recent study on the impact of footwear on golf performance, emphasizing the significance of spikes and proper shoe fit in enhancing club head speed and overall performance. Chris also discusses the evolution of golf shoe design, emphasizing the balance between performance and comfort. He explains how the biomechanics of the foot influence shoe design and performance. The discussion shifts to the importance of the body in golf performance, highlighting how mobility and strength training can optimize a golfer's capabilities. Chris provides insights into how golfers can maintain their performance as they age and offers resources for improving golf fitness and performance. Learn more at par4success.com  and check out Chris' podcast "Golf Fitness Bomb Squad". 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi. This is Brian down in Houston, Texas, and I'll
play at Melrose Golf Course. This is Golf Smarter, all right.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is Craig Marrow from Flower Mound, Texas. I play
at two or eighteen Dallas. It's a simulation of eighteen
great American golf holes including Sawgrass seventeen, the Island Green,
and Amen Corner eleven, twelve, and thirteen. This is Golf
Smarter Episode ten sixteen, Wow, one thousand and sixteen. Good

(00:32):
job Bread.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Just doing those mobility exercises gets rid of a lot
of pain for them. They immediately will start to like, oh,
I'm turning more, I'm not sore after I play the
round of golf. Particularly like guys who are good players
when they were younger. They understand the movement they're supposed
to do mentally, but physically they can't do it. You
give that guy mobility and his hip back, and his
buddies are like, oh my god, what'd you do not

(00:54):
to mention his balls going farther than their's. Now that's
literally just level one. Then you move up. Level two
is how do we get you stronger, whether it's squat
type movements or hinge type movements which are like a kettlebelt,
deadlifts or bandeded lifts. How do we get your hips stronger?
Bridges would be the simplest example of that. How do
we strengthen basically like the backside of your legs, your button,
your ham strings. Those are your two lower body and
then you're also working getting stronger in your upper body,

(01:15):
whether it's with dumbells or barbell or cables, whatever it
may be. Those are the big ones that we really
want to see get stronger with. And then you get
to power. Power is how quickly can I get it
from the bottom to the top. So if you can
move fifty pounds but it takes you a minute, that
is less powerful than if you can move fifty pounds
the same distance in one second. That's where the explosiveness
comes from. And so those are kind of the big
three categories. So during that fifteen minutes a day, because

(01:39):
you're assessing, you know exactly it is what you get
rid of all the extra noise and you're solely focusing
on what is the low hanging fruit for you at
that moment.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Fitness myths that will surprise every level of golfer With
Chris Finn of power for success. This is Golf Smarter,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf

(02:12):
Smarter podcast. Chris.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
It's a pleasure to be here, Fred. I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Uh, you know, you've been on a bunch of times
and we've done this for years now, but now you're
a podcaster.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, you know, I was inspired there. There has been inspiration.
It took me a lot of a lot of years
to get up the gusto to uh, to have the
you know, the courage to start my own thing. But yeah,
I think I'm not gonna lie. I've I've learned a lot.
I've been on a number of podcasts and it is interesting,
you know, podcaster to podcasters, you go on different shows

(02:45):
and there's different levels of preparation that people do. There's
different levels of quality that people have. You know, some
people are in a room with like dogs going off
and ye other people are recording. It's finny you see
the different soft where people use this to make sure
that you don't catch any lag or anything. And you're
definitely I mean you're over a thousand episodes at this point,

(03:07):
I believe. So, uh, you've done this a few times,
not your first rodeo, and uh, you definitely were one
of the first ones that I was around. I was like, oh,
that's how the professionals.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Do it, smoking mirrors, my friend smoking mirrors.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, so I think, yeah, I'm excited we have our
you know, the golf Inness Bomb Squad is one that
we're uh or I think we're only like eight hundred
episodes or plus behind you. So, but it's been fun
because it's uh, you know we have we do on Wednesdays,
we typically will have a guest, so we'll have somebody
on that we were kind of talk shop and whether
it's in the instructional world or the fitness world or

(03:45):
whatever it may be. So that's kind of fun because
it's an interview. And then on the second one we
do we do I do two every week. We do
kind of a shorter kind of it is, so we
do a shorter kind of you know, ten to twenty
minute kind of quick hit episodisode on a specific topic.
So that's usually just me diving in deep on you know,
whether it's something cool that I saw on a client

(04:07):
or a question that somebody's had. So it's cool. It
has a little bit of variance for me. And then
it also gives me a platform that if I want
to go off on a you know, on a soapbox,
you know, I talked to a computer for twenty minutes
and then see what people think.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
So yeah, I you know, I've never other than that
one episode, after my little bonus episode after the Masters,
I've never been able to just sit down and talk
for twenty minutes like that on this show, mainly because
I have too many questions and I want to get
experts on like yourself, who can just do the talking

(04:41):
for me and I can just ask ask a lot
more and do follow ups. When you keep saying we
do this show, it's not just you, it is me.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
That's just my vernacular. Anything at parpass, I say, we.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
As a group produce a podcast.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Correct. I I'm just the talking head. I go on
and talk and then you know, our team does the voice.
I don't. I don't know how to how to edit
or like that's I have a great team and they
helped me do all that. And I will say.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Really smart, I really smart, because a lot of people
disappear when they have to start doing all the ends.
I don't like.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I saw what it was early and I was like, ah,
I have my I have my circle of competence. This
is not it and I am not doing this. This
will not go well. But I also I have such
a newfound respect for the interviewer. It's it's funny. And
now when I go on as like like in this scenario,
it's like, oh, this will be fun. Just get to
talk and hang out and you know, when you're the

(05:40):
interview work like the research you got to do. And
because that was some of the things I noticed going
on other podcasts was how much of a better experience
it was when the person that was interviewing you had
done research or you know, I had a guy we
record an episode earlier today and being able to hey, man,
I saw that you had this great tweet that you
had and it was you know, and being to set
them up to then kind of dive into there and

(06:02):
just it just the conversation and goes so much better there.
It's such a skill set that I had no idea
about until Yeah, go on a show with you and
it's like, oh, he actually like looked at what I do.
Like that makes my job as the interviewee much easier.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Absolutely. And I you know, I tell people a lot.
I'm like, listen, this is your soapbox. I'm not here
to do a gotcha. This is not sixty minutes, right,
I just want to have you, you know, sell your wares,
showcase your expertise, and I'll just keep listening. And I
know my wife, you know, she wrote a book and

(06:41):
it was published in twenty twenty three, and she's been
on a lot of podcasts. And actually I learned how
to do interviews by being her recording engineer because she
was a talk show host. So that's how I learned
how to do this and kind of develop my own
skills over these twenty years of doing this. But she
will be on pot Guess a lot where they do

(07:01):
pre interviews. I'm like, what's that. You know, It's like,
why are you wasting people's time by doing pre interviews.
I don't know if you do that or not, but
for me, it's like, let's chat for three or four
minutes before we start recording and then let it rip.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Well, I find that's some of the best content too.
It's when it's just kind of off the cuff, and
you find I always find it's issuing, and I'm obviously
there's a lot of the we have a lot of
like the top teachers on and I always joked to
our listeners, I'm like, you guys all know this. This
is totally selfish on my part. I'm a golf junkie,
and every question I ask is probably at least in

(07:38):
part for me. But but you know, when you have
those discussions, yeah, I mean, you have these discussions there
and then there's this like aha moment. I've never once
had a moment where I was like, oh man, I
wish we weren't recording. I've had tons of moments where
I was like, oh, I should hit records sooner.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Absolutely absolutely. But when you have as much which recording
experiences I do have been doing this for my pretty
much my whole life, you have also the horror stories
of it wasn't recording, Oh my god. Or the one
time when I was interviewing Carlton Fisk at spring training
during baseball spring training and we did this great interview

(08:18):
and I sat on the mic court and it unplugged.
The thing was just twenty minutes of air.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Oh gosh, my, so my horror story. There's been two.
I had. One one was the hard part I've had,
the only one. The bad one I've had is like
we had a thunderstorm going on here in North Carolina
while we were recording, and like the internet was super
in and out, and then you're trying to have an
interview with someone and there's lag and it's it's just

(08:47):
it was awful. And it was I think it was
Michael Breed, like it was like a big name, and
it was like, oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing.
I like can't really hear or interact. So that that
was That was a bad one. The although I will
say the worst one I require will record in the
single the solo episodes Ideal record in batches, and I

(09:07):
recorded four, so they're like twenty minute. I mean, it's
hour and a half and I'm just kind of go, go, go,
go go.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
That's exhausting.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I made the mistake of not checking that the it
had selected the right mic. It had somehow like auto
selected to a different mic, and so then I I so,
you know, I finish, and I get a text from
the guy does the podcast. He goes, hey, man, did
you have your audio on? And I go no, I

(09:39):
had to go back and do four podcasts. I just
talked for an hour and a half to myself and
did it unscripted and did not record a single word.
Fred It was I was like, oh, I wanted to
run through a window.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
I was like, this is all just like, Okay, my
career as a podcaster is complete.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
It was like, hey, guys, I think we're maybe just
do one episode a week. We don't need these anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Oh my gosh. Oh. The thing that I've learned that
I think has helped me through with the podcast is
as long as you're a good listener, right when you're
interviewing somebody, and if you have a list of questions
that you feel like you have to get to, you're
going to miss all this great stuff because they're going

(10:26):
to be saying something and you just can just wait
for them to finish and then say keep going. You know, yeah,
what does that mean? Can you explain that to me?
And I found that's always worked really well for me.
And talk about being self serving. I started this podcast
to get free golf lessons, right, just like I'll just
interview experts and see what happens that's worked.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
I think some of my favorites have been, you know,
particularly the to your point. I'll have a number of
top one hundred instructors on and I've kind of have
my bullet points of things that I want to talk
about based on what their YouTube videos or topics or
philosophies have been around. But inevitably I get to I
asked the first question. I think we had a like

(11:11):
Adam Young came on, a great instructor out of Las Vegas,
does a lot of online stuff, and started ham on.
I had like a hole list of I mean, fred
I prepped right, I'm like, I'm going to be ready.
I asked them the first question, and I just realized
we're both absolute nerds, and it just goes nowhere where

(11:32):
I had planned, and it was the greatest episode of
just going into the weeds. And he's pulling up videos
on his computer and sharing his screen and we're talking
through different Oh yeah, this is what I see physically,
this is what he sees instructionally, and I think it
just to your point, I think when you can go
those directions, that to me is one of my favorite
things about doing the podcast. Is I inevitably in every

(11:55):
guest I have on, I learn, whether it's from a
fitness person, whether it's from a medical person or a
you know, instructor, or whatever, whoever it may be. It's
there's there's always a learning, and that's I never will
get off a podcast like, oh man, all right, that
was a waste of time. Uh actually has a lie
that happened once but more than once more and then

(12:19):
we had to work on our screening process and who
we let on the podcast. But uh, that was an awkward email.
Hey man, we lost your we lost the episode recording. Uh,
we we're not going to do it turned into like
a like a whole sales pitches, like there was no
value add content at all.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Well, let me just let me just say to you
that there have been episodes that I've finished going, Okay,
that was really a waste of my time, that that
was useless information. I didn't get anything from that, And
I'll publish it and get emails going. That was one
of the best episodes you've ever done. Yeah, that was
so so just don't beat yourself up. Just get the

(12:54):
content out there.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, no, it's a it's it's been a fun learning
experience where expert two years, two years in, we're in
the we're getting close to two hundred. It's just been
it's been fun. It's and I love I love also
having you know, you've had me on a couple of times.
You've been generous to do that, and I always find
it's fun having people back on and then you know, hey,

(13:16):
last time we talked, this is where you were at.
Where are you at now? And yeah, it's been fun
to do that. And I will say my interviewing has
definitely I listened to the first couple episodes, I was like,
oh gosh, that was terrible. And then I'm sure I'll
say the same thing. And you know, a year from now,
i'll listen to what I'm doing now I'm like, god,

(13:37):
you were terrible, Chris. But that's how we get better.
And that's the fun part of it, right.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Okay, I just got to tap on the shoulder talk
about golf man? What are you doing? Okay, I'm sorry,
it's like, don't are about your podcast? Enough? All right,
Well you should just check it out though it's called
The Golf Fitness Bomb Squad. And enough of that. Let's
talk about us. Let's talk about let's get some golf

(14:10):
stuff going on here. You guys have done some research
recently about golf fitness, and that's what we're here to
talk about today. And they're apparently we as golfers living
in a series of myths about what is relevant and

(14:32):
what is important as far as golf fitness. What have
you learned? I am so interested in hearing about this.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, So I think one of the most interesting things
that we found recently Fred was and actually it was
it was just like on a whim this one. It
was pretty funny. We had a person, a client, who
had flown in we do. We do weekend events now
in addition to the regular training we do, and so
they had flown in and they brought their golf sheep

(15:00):
and you know, they were like, hey, I brought my
golf shoes. I didn't want to wear spikes like the
ones that I normally play with, so I just brought
these like comfortable ones. Then he's I don't know why
it stuck out to me. He said, you know, it
doesn't matter anyway, It's just whatever whatever's on my feet.
I thought myself, I feel like it does matter because
I feel like i've looked at this before, and so

(15:23):
you know, we went through the weekend. It was fine,
and then so you know, the next week I came
in and I said to my team, I said, guys,
I want to do an experiment. And they're like, sure,
Chris has another great idea, right, So usually they're all stale,
they're all stupid and don't mean turned into anything I was.
I was like, what I want to do is I
want to I want to go on the because we
have two sets of force plates and our simulators here,

(15:44):
it's like I want I'm curious based on what's like
my if I'm on a stable or unstable surface, just
how much of a difference does it make in terms
of how much force I can produce. So I said, well,
we're gonna do We're gonna take these. You know, if
you guys have if you've seen like a blue eric pad,
and there's like these big blue phone pads that you'll
see at the gym about you know, maybe two inches

(16:05):
thick and they're just foam. You'll see them a lot
in like rehab centers for balance and those sorts of things.
So we take two of them, we put them on
the forest plates and I do. So one of the
big predictors of club at speed is your vertical leap,
So how much force you can produce while you do
a jump. Right, So if you're standing, you kind of
dip down and jump as high as you can. So
I put those the pads down and I we turn

(16:27):
on this the force plates, I do the jump, and
the way you measure is you can measure how much
force is put out, right, So there's about nine hundred
to just it's about nine hundred watts of forces put out.
So then you're like, all right, and now get rid
of the phone and let's do it again. And so
we throw it on and I do the same jump,

(16:48):
same nothing different, and it doubles the amount of force
that puts that's put out.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, okay, I mean, if you're on a two inch
Poham pad, going to lose a lot of your power,
aren't you, because you're not really pushing off the ground.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Correct, Well, so you're pushing off an unstable surface. So
the analogy I would use is think of if you
could push one hundred pounds of force into the ground, right,
and but now you have to take you know, energy,
the equivalent to maybe twenty pounds of that to make
sure you don't fall over to balance. Now you can
only push eighty pounds in right, so you'll have less
energy to produce the force because you're using a lot

(17:28):
of your energy to balance. And you know, rule one
of the body is don't let Chris or Fred fall over, right,
stay up right?

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, so's and for me it's you know, as I
get older.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
It becomes more important, exactly right, So you know, and
so so we do that, and you know, we're like, Okay,
that's cool. But if we're filming this whole thing, we
have a YouTube video that we're eventually going to put
out at some point. But you know, I'm like, all right,
that's cool. But who cares, right, because you know the
golfer I had, you know, there's members in here all
the time, and I'm like, guys, this is amazing. You

(18:01):
see this, And the average golfer looks me, They're like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Right, let me ask you this. Did you do this in?
What were the shoes that you were wearing, just wearing
golf shoes, were wearing.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Just regular kind of comfortable sneakers. Right, So basically, what
I think of the Eric's pad is like an exaggeration
of an unstable surface versus a stable surface. So if
we're talking, if we tie this circles back to golf shoes,
a comfortable golf shoe like kind of casual, no spikes,
maybe just a couple of little nubs on the bottom,
versus you know, your traditional kind of hard, hard, basic.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Spike less shoes have been all the rage over the
last you know, fifteen years or so.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Correct, Yeah, and so, and if you look at the
tour the tour players, over eighty percent of them wear spikes,
but I look at the amateurs, it's basically flips or
almost eighty percent of them don't wear spikes, right, So,
so basically what that is is that's an exaggeration of Hey,
if I'm on a non spikeless shoe and an eRx
pad versus a spiked shoe, which I'm jumping on the

(19:02):
ground because there's there's my balance is going to be
connected there. So so then we're all right, let's swing
a golf club and see if this actually means anything.
So bring the golf pads, you know, put them back,
or the eRx pads we put them on the force plates.
Swing club ed speed it's like one O seven, one
O seven, one o eight. Right, take get rid of

(19:23):
the force this the phone pads. Guess what the club
ed speed was greater significantly one six It was like
one it was almost one sixteen.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Wow, so that is significant.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
That's almost it's over twenty yards almost. We're getting towards
thirty yards. So that's obviously an exaggeration, right because you're
sitting on a two inch pad. So then if you
if you you know, bringing this truly like a golf
shoe differential what we've then because then we start testing
the actual shoes because now I'm like, okay, now I'm
very curious when you actually test a golf shoe. It

(20:01):
can be up to up to ten yards three miles
an hour difference if the shoe does not match your
foot and if if you have not like a spike
versus no spike. So there's two elements. There's an external
element and an internal element. So I think of the
external is spike or no spike, right, so that's going
to connect you to the ground. On the external side.

(20:22):
The other element is you know.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Some people spikes, the spikes will connect you to the.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Ground, correct, yep. So having a spike will connect you
to the ground. That will increase the amount of ground
force you can create, which then obviously increases club at speed.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
So that's that alone is like three miles an hour.
Then if you go and you look at the actual
type of shoe on the inside, based on your foot.
So if you have a flat foot, that's what's technically
what's called a hypermobile, So it's basically you don't have
an arch, so it just collapses. If you get into
a shoe that's going to give you a little bit
more support, give you a little bit more of an arch.

(20:56):
It actually gives you better connection to the ground that
can increase so that can that will increase the amount
of force you can produce even more so for more
speed Versus if you have a very high arch that's
called our rigid foot doesn't collapse at all. Getting a
shoe that actually promotes a little bit more mobility to
promote a little bit more connection to the ground will

(21:17):
also increase your club speed because it increases the amount
of connection you have, which increases the amount of force
that you can produce. So there's an internal element and
an external element to the shoe. We're not even talking
about the fitness element that then adds on top of that.
This is like just simply you know, people talk about
the ball roll back and the impact. Literally just getting
the right shoe totally erases any ball roll back, like

(21:40):
it's ten yards immediately right there. And I think it's
such an overlooked element when we're talking about performance or
fitness for golfers. What is the footworth that they are
or are not wearing. So it was just a fun
study that we did and it was like the one
out of one hundred where I was like, ah, that
actually showed something. It exaggerated it. And then when we
tested it in an actual golf shoe with spikes versus

(22:03):
not with spikes, it actually carried over as well too.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
So for the average golfer. How do I translate that information?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
So, for the average golfer, wearing spikes will increase your
club as speed, or I should say this, wearing spikes
will increase the amount of force you can produce into
the ground. So if you produce the force at the
wrong time, you may not see an increasing club as speed.
So meaning if we think of a professional golfer swinging
a golf club, they are going to produce the max

(22:32):
amount of force. Think of like a vertical like drive
into their lead leg from the top of the swing
until left arm lead arm is parallel to the ground
on their downswing. Right an amateur golfer is going to
typically produce all that force too late, so add impact
or after impact. And when we look at ground forces,

(22:56):
the amount of vertical force you can produce into the ground,
amount you can push into the ground if you're gonna jump,
particularly into your lead leg, the amount that you can produce,
and assuming you do that at the right time, has
a direct connection to drive. It causes kliphet speed to
go up. So having the better connection through footwear is
going to give you the opportunity to produce more force.

(23:17):
There obviously is the caveat You got to produce it
at the right time. There's a skill element there. But
the other piece physically in terms of what that means
for you, just the golfer listening right now, if you
go out and buy say you're wearing a casual shoe
right now, and you go out and you're like, all right,
I listened to this guy. He said to go get
shoes that connect me to the ground. With spikes in them.

(23:38):
If you go buy spiked shoes but you don't have
the hip mobility to actually clear into your lead hip right, well,
now you're just gonna wreck. You're gonna like wrench up
your knee or your back because your foot is now
planted and your hip doesn't move. So and typically what
you'll see in these guys this you know, if this

(23:59):
is you, if this describes you listening right now, what
you're seeing in your spikeliss shoe is as you swing
through through impact, your lead foot will spin out right.
It basically releases to really because your hip isn't giving
you anything, so it's going to release from there because
your knee joint is not a rotary joint. So it's
in a very interesting discussion because I think it's irrelevant

(24:21):
for a lot of things. When it comes to speed
and performance as a golfer, we want the quick fix,
So we're going to go do the speed training. We're
going to go buy the speed training thing. We're going
to go buy the new driver. Don't just you know,
I'm gonna go buy the new shoe that's going to
connect me to the ground quicker. But if you don't
have the physical capabilities to stay safe while adding the
speed that can lead to injury. And I think that's

(24:44):
always the caveat that I'm always preaching about, is adding
speed is easy. Right if you're solely said, I don't
care about getting hurt, I just want to swing faster. Great,
do speed training, get a really long club forty eight
inch shaft, and get your foot connected to the ground.
But if you don't have the physical prerequisites basically to

(25:06):
allow that to be done safely, then you do potentially
bring an injury risk. For sure.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Is this information scientific or anecdotal? I mean, you did
your test, but it's you, it's you know, one test.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, so yes, it's scientific. So I'm not the only
one who's done it. So there was actually a lot
of research back. This is probably five to ten years ago,
done by foot Joy, foot Joy and body tracks. This
is before force plates were really widely available. It was
a it was called a pressure plate, so they were
trying to improve pressure ratings. I know Squares Golf Shoes

(25:47):
has done a ton of research on this, so it's
it's not unique to me. This is a brand agnostic
kind of science. Nerd just looking at how can I
help somebody increase club at speed. What are all the
different levers I can pull for somebody? And so it
is you know, and then we've have sense run this
obviously internally with all of the different golfers that come

(26:10):
in and hey, what's your clubhead speed?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
You?

Speaker 1 (26:12):
If you have good hip mobility, you pass your four
rotational mobility centers which we've talked about on the show before,
and we have the home assessment that people do and hey,
you pass that, this is an option for you. We
can get you in a better shoe and this is
a like quick immediate clubhead speed boost and if you
have good mobility, we were able to do that safely.

(26:33):
So I think the the one caveat it will increase
your force production. Now if you do it at the
right time, Yeah, it depends on the person, right and
then then that's another discussion of training and those sorts
of things. But yeah, if you improve your connection to
the ground, you will increase the amount of produce a

(26:53):
force you can produce that as a kind of causational
In terms of scientific I've.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Had multiple guests on who are shoe manufacturers and inventors,
including Robert from Squares. He was I think this was
like the first podcast that he was on, so I've
been with him since the beginning, and I've always been fascinated.
And I don't remember who exactly told me, but I
think it was Squares. It said, if you can twist

(27:20):
your shoe in your hand, that's a bad golf shoe.
You need a very sturdy golf shoe. From the fitness
side of that, Does that hold up? Do you agree
with that?

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah? I think everything is on a continuum, right, So
I think if you had at its core, yes, that
is accurate. I think there's varying levels of that based
on what the foot is, right, And that's where there's
different styles of shoes, right. There's going to be some
that are more rigid, there'll be some that are have
a little bit more flexibility. But yeah, if you can

(27:56):
rotate it back and back and forth, and the ultimate
goal of that shoe is to produce as much is
a performance driving shoe, to produce as much force as possible,
which then drives as much speed as possible. One hundred
percent yes, right, And I think that's always the challenge
with that shoe companies will have is they have to
balance that scientific fact with comfort, right, which is why

(28:21):
the spikeless just kind of I want to wear it
to the grocery store. Shoe has been become so popular, right,
and so you know, in a perfect world, yeah, that's
what every shoe would look like. But people want to
they want to look stylish, they want it to be comfortable.
The amateur will generally prioritize comfort and look over the

(28:46):
performance side, but they'll go up by the new driver,
you know, every year, right, because they're going to gain
twenty yards every single year.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
And we know that's not true unless you work on
your speed. So do this. And if you don't know
this answered, that's okay. But it's like, does the squares
shoe that squared off toe and the rigid bottom is

(29:14):
in fact? Is that a better shoe? I mean you
got guys like Nick Faldo and John Daley saying, oh yeah,
I swear by these. Is that a better golf shoe?

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I mean, I think the toe box design that they've done. Now,
I haven't actually researched these at this point, I had them.
We actually are doing some stuff where they actually are
sending us some to do some research on them, which
I think is really cool. Yeah, we're going to actually
we're running a study with a number of our different
of our clients trying different shoes and seeing so you know,

(29:44):
I could speak intelligently at that point. What I will say,
just based on the biomechanics of the foot and the
footwear and that toe box, it makes sense, like it
does when you look at the studies that they've had done.
It makes sense. You know. I think everything that Squares

(30:05):
as a company seems to go after his performance based right,
and so from that approach, it's right, you know, from
a style, you know, those are all other discussions of
I think, if we're strictly talking it, how do I
get the most out of a shoe as defined by
you know comfort? You know, the wider toe box is

(30:27):
going to give you more what I was talking about, Like,
if you have a rigid foot, you want a footwear
that's going to try to get more connection to the
ground so you have the ability to put more force.
The wider toe box is going to allow you to
do that versus you have a really narrow shoe. The
extreme would be think of like a woman in a
high heel, like with a like super tight and like

(30:48):
a high heel that they'd a stiletto that they would
wear to like a wedding, Like not a lot of
ground force going to come off of that toe box right,
like right that they're ripping their shoes off because their
feet are bruised and bloody at the end too, exactly
right when they're dancing starts, right, So that'd be one extreme.
You go the total opposite extreme, and that's where you
have the rigid kind of support. You have the wider

(31:08):
toe box so that you can actually drive from the
first methead all the way to the fifth met head,
you know, under the big toe to under the little toe.
So all of that is one hundred percent on point.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, And the thing is for me and I really
like the square shoes. I've liked them a lot in
the past, but since I walk the course a lot,
most of the time, my feet hurt, my ankle's hurt
wearing those and walking in those, and I've really had

(31:40):
to adjust my shoe wear and decide where I go
because you know, in northern California, we have very hilly courses.
There's a lot of elevation change, and so some shoes
just hurt at the end of the round, not just
my feet and my legs, but my back.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah. And I think this is this is getting into
my geekiness of researching shoes. And I know, I know weight,
like the weights of different shoes and stuff like. I
think if you're looking at across the shoe spectrum, you know,
if we're talking on the square specifically, like when they
came out, if you look at it was a couple
at least one hundred grams heavier their earlier shoes than

(32:25):
their their later shoes, right, And so I think that's
been the balance talking about the continuum of if you
go straight up performance, it's going to be a heavier
shoe because you have to put materials in there that
are going to give you something to push against, you know.
So I think what you've started to see, particularly as
you go through the technology and the innovation of materials

(32:46):
and all those sorts of things, I think you're going
to continue to see shoes that are going to drop
on the weight side and while being able to maintain
that on the stability side. And I think that in
my opinion, on the shoe side of things, that's where
it's going to continue to go. And looking at how
can we get this shoe as light as possible, with

(33:06):
as much connection as possible, with as much support as possible,
and and be weatherproof right and look cool and feel
comfortable right like all those other all those things. So,
but that's I think one of the things just looking
at if we take Squares as the ultimate kind of
performance focused shoe, it was heavy, you know when it

(33:27):
first came out, and if you now look at it,
you know, there's there's foot joy shoes that are lighter.
There's also some that are heavier. Like there's there's other
brands out there that now you know, the Square shoes
are not the heaviest. Uh. And I think you're going
to continue to see that across the shoe spectrum, across
all those companies.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah. Are you familiar with the Afalon's affalons.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
I've heard of that. I have not like dove into
those at all.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Were those We did an episode with him, and I
like those a lot. They the bottom of him had
like I can't explain it and I'm just moving my
hand and the listeners have no idea what I'm talking about. Okay,
But the Aline and Sketchers got into the game as well,
and I'm a huge fan of Sketcher shoes, although I've

(34:14):
the I do have a pair of Sketchers for my
winter shoes, but I've never gotten the more recent ones.
Are they in it for the style of it and
just be able to get old guys to be their
test do their testimonials, you know, Ringo Star and Tony
Romo And you.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Know, I have no idea in that one. Yeah, I
think I just always try in the fitness space, in
the rehab space that's obviously where I live. I just
always try to boil it down to kind of first
principle thinking, right, and if I'm talking about performance, what
are the first principles of a footwear ground for ground
reaction forces and connection to the ground. And that's ay,

(34:55):
it needs to be connected, it needs to be stable.
You need to have you know, basic physics. Force pushed
down against, We'll get a reciprocal force back up. Right,
So if I can put if I have more to
put something against, I'll get more back up. That's why
if you go out and it's just pouring, just poured rain,
playing it's wet and soggy, you're not going to hit
it as far. You're not going to swing as fast

(35:16):
because you don't have the ground connection. And then and
then yeah, because you think about.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
It, and I always blamed it the balls not rolling.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Well there's that too. It's also going to stop and
not go anywhere. But think think of the erxpad experiment
that I just talked about, you know, to a lesser degree.
If it's super soggy, you're basically hitting off eRx pads right,
your feet are slipping a little bit, it's a little mushy,
you know. Versus if it's hard and firm, you're gonna
be able to really dive in, you drive in, and
it's going to se your foot's going to stay connected.

(35:44):
So like, those principles don't change. Obviously there's preferences in
style and comfort and all those sorts of things, and
you know, the different companies take different approaches there. But
the first principle, the foundational principles of producing speed from
a performance standpoint, don't change.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Lots of times on the show, we'll talk about with
fitness people and even equipment people, it's like, you know,
the balls, they their technology is getting better, and the clubs,
their technology is getting better. And people think that if
I get a new club or I get new balls
that I'm going to get greater distance. You may get

(36:31):
a little more. But really we come back to this
conversation that we've had so often that the most important
tool in your bag is your body, and if you
want to get greater distance, it's more about your swing speed.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Right, Yeah, I mean definitely, if you want a sustainable
difference or a distance, it's your body, right, So you know,
go buy a pair of shoes that connect to the ground.
You can swing the club faster. Go do some speed
training drills, or get a different driver your clubhets. Maybe
you can move that clubhead faster. Go take lessons and

(37:07):
get more efficient. You know, technically you can swing it faster.
At the end of the day, the engine that drives
all of that is your body. And your engine's only
as big as your engine is, right, and you're in
that engine. I think it is. A car has a
has a set of brakes that you know, that's your
your strength, that that is capable of slowing down a

(37:33):
certain speed, right, And so this is all the research
that we've done. I think one of the other myths
that you always hear is like, oh, just as you
get older, you're naturally going to lose distance, like, Okay, yes,
but the average guy. But when we look, yeah, but yeah, yeah,
and yeah, and the average guy who doesn't do the

(37:53):
right stuff. What we're seeing in our database just points
over fifteen thousand guys that we've seen change data. We've
got a number of guys that been in the dayabase
for over a decade. You're seeing guys lose if they
don't do the right things. They will lose ten miles
an hour a decade if guys are doing the right thing.
So if we look, if we compare those at the

(38:14):
you know, the control group, guys who don't do anything,
compared to the guys who've been with us for ten
plus years, those guys don't. We can't stop loss with age.
Like guy, we have one guy, he's started at seventy,
he's now eighty four. I can't. I'm not going to
stop him from losing distance. But what we've seen is
his rate of loss is eighty percent less. So instead

(38:35):
of losing ten miles an hour, he's only lost two
in the last ten years.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
That's significant, it's massive, and that's because he's working out
regularly on the correct things to work out.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, so he's got his engine right, and so he's
keeping making sure he's mobile and his hips and his
spine and his shoulder and his neck, and he's making
sure that he's strong enough to support the speeds. This
with our database at this point, it's it's just a
math equation, right. You say, hey, Fred, how fast do
you want to swing? You say, I want to swing
one hundred miles an hour. Two hundred. Great, we'll go

(39:06):
for two hundred. We have an equation for that you'd
be you'd still be thirty miles or twenty seven miles
an hour faster than the world long drive guys that
we have.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
But they're kids, you know.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Records are made to be broken. But yeah, you say, hey,
I want to swing whatever it is, two hundre miles
an hour, hundred miles an hour.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
I'd love to get to one hundred.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, So you say one hundred miles an hour, we
can say, hey, well, if you want to get there,
to do that safely, meaning you can swing one hundred
both physically your body is able to do one hundred
and five, right, so you're not redlining every single time.
Your mobility and your hip needs to be X amount
of degrees and we do it. We can do it
based on your age, because you know, at fifty versus

(39:44):
at twenty, to swing one hundred miles an hour, the
mobility requirement is different, the strength requirement is different in
terms of to do it safely. And so that's where
you can say based on your age, you know this
is these would be the degrees of mobility you need
in your join. These would be the strength numbers of
your squat movement, a hinge or a deadlift movement, a press,

(40:08):
an upper body push movement. Right, these would be that
those are that's you're breaking. So it's like how good
are your breaks? And then then there's power tests your
lower body how you know your vertical leap how much
force can you produce through your legs? And then also
your upper body push power? How much force can you
produce through upper body? You know that think of that
as like how many RPMs do you have? Right, so

(40:30):
think of a car analogy. I think of your mobility
as how good are your tires? Your strength is how
good are your breaks? And then your power output is
how big is your engine? And when you can like
a plug in hybrid, plug in hybrid, those those or
even get an electric one. All right, those testas go.
But you know, and what it's it's just a math equation.

(40:51):
You say, hey, you know this is the speed I
want to be at, this is my age. Then okay,
these are the physical things that we need to train
up for. And so I think when you talk about
the other gentleman, Dennis, he's one of my favorite guys
in the world. Like, when people come in, the average
guy picks up six miles an hour in the first year, right,

(41:11):
So if you think about it, it's because they're not optimized.
So the average guy is going to pick up six
miles an hour year one, and then if he does
nothing else, he just if he doesn't gain ever again,
which they actually tend to gain about another two miles
an hour each year for the next three Let's say
they stop at six. If he loses two miles an
hour every decade, we got thirty years till he's back

(41:33):
to where he started, which is crazy. But there's this
myth that hey, once I hit fifty, it's all downhill,
or for some guys, it's once I hit thirty, I'm
all down it's.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Oh my god, I'm turning seventy.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
It just changes. Right, It's based on perspective. Right, you're
almost seventy now you're like, hey, when I was thirty, man,
I was great. Right. The guy who just turned it.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Didn't play golf until I was in my forties. That
really screwed.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
But I think that's that's a huge myth that a
lot of people have, is that this idea that when
I get older, I'm going to lose. And have yet
to meet a guy over the age of thirty who
came in one hundred percent optimized, meaning they had nothing
to gain, and we were totally in just lost prevention mode.
So you know, all those guys, everybody comes in, they

(42:21):
all can gain. And then if you just keep doing
the right stuff, like fifteen minutes a day, like it
doesn't take a lot, Guys, you can truly only lose
like two miles an hour a decade, and all your
peers are losing ten.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Tell me, give me fifteen minutes a day. What do
I need to be doing. I'd love to do. I
will do fifteen minutes a day forever.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Yeah, well, I think that's well. So that's where we
always start with the assessment. So you know, you do
you do your your mobility assessment. So I always think
of a remember the nutritional pyramid, right, and then we
realized that it didn't really makes sense and whatever. You anyway,
that's another rabbit hole cap exactly right. So like remember

(43:06):
like where carbs used to be at the bottom, right,
So that's that's think of that is you know, I
think of golf performance, think of it as like a
performance pyramid. I think of that that's your mobility, right.
So if we use the car analogy, those are your tires, right.
So the first STEPISNE is to assess your hip internal rotation,
which is your ability to rotate into your trail hip
on your takeaway and into your lead hip going through

(43:26):
impact almost seventy. We want to see that, you know,
thirty five to forty degrees both, you know, most importantly
on your lead side. Then we'd look at your shoulder rotation.
So I think of like a pitcher throwing a pitch
or a quarterback, right and then they kind of sling
their arm back. That movement needs to be you know,

(43:47):
almost seventy. We want to see that probably about five
degrees beyond spine angle. So if you think of if
you kind of have your arm up you know, elbow
shoulder height ninety degree, you know, bending your wrist or
entire in your elbow, just kind of rotate your arm
back like you're gonna throw a pitch right that forearm
should get you know, zero is if it's equal to

(44:08):
your spine angle A zero, it should get five degrees
passed when you're it's easy when you're sitting. You got
to do it when you're standing in golf posture, right,
because now you got all of a sudden because now
you have to fight gravity and you're doing it in
the specific position that you would do it when you're
when you're playing. Okay, so you gotta pass. Those are
the two big ones that everybody struggles with. There's also

(44:30):
like we look at thracic rotation, which is, you know,
give your arms crossed on your shoulders, rotating as far
as you can each direction right, getting towards seventy. We
want to see at least you know, fifty degrees each way.
You know, so if you think of if you're if
you're facing a computer screen, that'd be zero. If you
turned totally sideways, that would be ninety, right, So can
we get halfway there? So a spinning chair makes that easy. Yeah, right,

(44:55):
but that's think of that as like your base level, right,
and so that's step one. And if we don't pass there,
all we do for fifteen minutes a day is we
work on improving those areas until we start to pass them.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Are we get to what specific exercises that I should
be working on? Since you're in North Carolina.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Right, yeah, and I'm not. Yeah, So this is where
that's why we work with people. We do this people
all over the world, right, so, oh you do this remotely?
Oh yeah, ninety ninety percent of our business is remote. Yeah,
so we work with about over a thousand people around
the world. And so so this is where yeah, well,
well personally, if we get off this, we'll get you
an assessment and we'll give you all the stuff you
need to do. But you know, for everyone listening, your

(45:33):
first step is typically going to be you know, soft
tissue work, which is you know, rolling on a phone
roller using la crossball. Right, we got to get the tissue.
I was using analogy. Every muscle has a sleeve around it.
So if you're wearing a sleeve, if you raise your
arm up, your sleeve slides down your arm. Right, if
you grab the bottom of your sleeve and hold it
in tight to your chest. All of a sudden, your
arm doesn't move anywhere, right because the sleeve is restricting it.

(45:56):
So what basically the goal of the soft tissue mobility
is to basically remove that restriction. To think of like
your arms almost duct taped to your side. We got
to rip off the duct tape and that's where we
see huge improvements and mobility. Like for like week two weeks,
all of a sudden, you go from hey, I got
ten degrees and it's cramping to I get to twenty

(46:16):
or you know, twenty five, like I've doubled it, and
that just fixing. Just doing those mobility exercises for people
gets rid of a lot of pain for them. They
immediately will start to like, oh I'm turning more, I'm
not sore after I play the round of golf, like,
oh I will you know, I wasn't able to move
my hips first, Like particularly like guys who were good

(46:37):
players when they were younger, right, and they they understand
the movement they're supposed to do mentally, but physically they
can't do it, can't do it. Right, You give that
guy mobility and his hip back, and it's like and
his buddies are like, oh my god, like, what'd you do?

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Right?

Speaker 1 (46:51):
And not not to mention his balls going farther than
there's now, but like that's that's literally just level one.
Then you move up. Level two is how do we
get you stronger? Right, So, whether it's you know, squat
type movements or hinge type movements, which are like a
you know, whether it's kettlebell swings or kettlebell deadlifts or
banded lifts, right, how do we get your hips stronger?

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Right?

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Bridges would be the simplest example of that. How do
we strengthen basically like the backside of your legs, your button,
your ham strings, right, So those are your two lower
body and then you're also working getting stronger in your
upper body, which you know, have like a bench press
type movement, whether it's with dumbells or barbell or cables,
whatever it may be. Those are the big ones that
we really want to see ge get stronger with. And

(47:32):
then you get to power, right, and power is how
much force you can produce and how fast you can
do it. So where strength is like I just if
I'm going to push fifty pounds it can take me
two minutes to get it from the bottom to the top.
I just need to move it. Power is can I
get it from the bottom of the How quickly can
I get it from the bottom to the top. Right, So,

(47:53):
if you can move fifty pounds but it takes you
a minute, that is less powerful than if you can
move fifty pounds the same distance in one set. Right,
So that's where the explosiveness comes from. And so those
are kind of the big three categories. And so during
that fifteen minutes a day, because you're assessing, you know
exactly it is what you kind of you get rid

(48:13):
of all the extra noise and you're solely focusing on
what is the low hanging fruit for you at that moment.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
When I go to the gym, I generally bypass the
weight room and go right to the pool and try
to get some swimming in. Should I be spending more
time lifting weights or if you want distance, Yes, it's
the resistance that I get from the pool without having
to create pain. Yeah, that is that helpful or not?

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Or this is all Yeah, I mean it's helpful from
the general health and wellness cardiovascular benefits to it, right,
like general well being by all means keep swimming if
you're trying to improve. And it's the same discussion around
like guys are like, well, I do cardio, you know,
I get on the elliptical and I go like, great,
there's nothing wrong with that. It's just you're moving long,

(49:06):
it's for a longer duration of time, and you're moving slowly.
Is that what you want in your golf swing?

Speaker 3 (49:14):
No?

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Right, right? So, and that's where I think you get to.
The golf is a power sport. The entire swing, like
the down swings less than a second, the entire swing.
You know, maybe not even too right, thanks John Daly?
Maybe yeah, But so I think you got to think
of how you want to train, how you want to play.
So if I want to play an explosive sport, I
want to swing faster, I'm upset that I'm losing speed, Well,

(49:37):
I probably should do stuff that would help me swing faster,
and that's going to be producing force. Right. So basically,
like think of like lifting weights. If you're lifting more
than six reps, like say, if you have a weight
that you can do fifteen times, you're not developing strength,
You're developed You're doing It's called hypertrophy, you're trying to

(49:58):
like build mass or build muscle fibers. Ultimately we want
for golf is we just want to be able to
produce a lot of force or however how much force
we need. So there's no need to do more than
five or six reps because that's kind of the physiologically
the strength range. And so if you want to you know,
if you're in an off season and you want to
do a lot of reps because you want to put
on a base or build a bigger engine, that's when

(50:19):
we would do ten fifteen reps in a set. But
that's going to make you sore, So you don't want
to do that when you're in season. When you're in season,
like our guys on tour now, they're doing three to
five reps max in a set, right, so the weight
they're using is going to be relatively heavier because they're
only lifting it three to five times. They couldn't lift
it fifteen times. But the number of repetitions they do

(50:41):
is less. That puts less stress on the nervous system muscularly,
they're not sore and allows them to perform their best.
So that it starts getting into a little bit of
the nitty gritty, but that's how you keep it short
as you say, hey, this is what I need to
work on. These are the two or three things that
I need to do. As long as working stint with that,
we just snowball wins and progress occurs.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
And you are at par four Success number four p
R number four success dot com and you're also on
Instagram and Twitter and YouTube channel to all par for.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Success, all part for success. And we actually we created
you know, parp success dot com slash golf Smarter, so
anyone listening they can grab the home assessment for free
and thank you. Yeah, and we actually if you go there,
we actually we don't do this for all the shows,
but for you for the show. For you guys listening,
it's because I like I like Fred and he's had

(51:37):
me on multiple times. Uh. We also are you have
you graced me with your presence early on. I appreciate it.
They gave me some street cred. Uh you know, but
but we also after you guys, if you go to
parpus dot com slash golf smarter, you'll get the home
assessment you just put in your email, will send it
to you and then it also gives you an option
if you want, for a free one on one console

(52:00):
one of our guys, so they'll actually go through the
assessment with you live, walk you through you know what
it means and all that sort of stuff too, if
you wanted that sort of attention as well. So awesome,
But that's that's how we keep it short and then
understanding like, hey, if your shoulder is good, we're not
gonna waste time on your shoulder, like put your hip stinks, well,
then we're gonna work on your hip, and I think
that's important.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Awesome, Chris, it was great talk to you again, and
also remember to check out the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad
your podcast, and we will of course, as always, we'll
stay in touch and we'll do this.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Again for sure. I definitely got to have you on.
We gotta got to hear the Master story to my listenership.
That's a good one.