What happens when you combine an expert's perspective, hard-hitting facts, and an undying love for the game of golf? You get a riveting podcast episode that's sure to captivate every golfer and sports enthusiast out there. Join us as we sit down with the brilliant Ryan Holley, a force plate specialist whose passion for golf and technology has transformed the lives of golfers around the world.
This episode is not just about golf, it's an exploration of the complexities of skill acquisition, the evolving relationship between coaches and players, and the role of technology in modern sports. Through heartwarming stories and insightful discussions, we take a deep dive into Ryan's incredible journey in golf performance, the astounding victory of Nick Taylor at the Canadian Open, and how Ryan utilizes force plate technology to revolutionize players' performance.
Reserve your spot on the green as we navigate the intricacies of coaching high-level players, the conceptual shift in golf techniques, and the modernization of the golf swing. Get an insider's look at how Ryan breaks down technical language, making complex concepts digestible and easy to implement. We'll also touch on the importance of cognitive function training, precision breathing, and the future of golf sport shaped by technological advancements. This conversation will leave you with a renewed perspective on golf, a deeper understanding of the game, and a thirst for more. So, grab your clubs and join us for a thrilling ride on the fairway!
What happens when you combine an expert's perspective, hard-hitting facts, and an undying love for the game of golf? You get a riveting podcast episode that's sure to captivate every golfer and sports enthusiast out there. Join us as we sit down with the brilliant Ryan Holley, a force plate specialist whose passion for golf and technology has transformed the lives of golfers around the world.
This episode is not just about golf, it's an exploration of the complexities of skill acquisition, the evolving relationship between coaches and players, and the role of technology in modern sports. Through heartwarming stories and insightful discussions, we take a deep dive into Ryan's incredible journey in golf performance, the astounding victory of Nick Taylor at the Canadian Open, and how Ryan utilizes force plate technology to revolutionize players' performance.
Reserve your spot on the green as we navigate the intricacies of coaching high-level players, the conceptual shift in golf techniques, and the modernization of the golf swing. Get an insider's look at how Ryan breaks down technical language, making complex concepts digestible and easy to implement. We'll also touch on the importance of cognitive function training, precision breathing, and the future of golf sport shaped by technological advancements. This conversation will leave you with a renewed perspective on golf, a deeper understanding of the game, and a thirst for more. So, grab your clubs and join us for a thrilling ride on the fairway!
Hello and welcome to the Measure Golf Podcast. This is the very first episode formerly the Force Plate Guy podcast and the reason for the rebrand is we are trying to move past the world of talking solely about ground reaction forces, force plates and all that fun stuff, and we want to continue to take a deeper dive into the golf swing, golf performance and how we get there and connect the two. So, with that being said, measure Golf kind of serves that purpose in terms of being more holistic in its approach to golf performance. So that's why you're seeing a slight change in name, with it going from the Force Plate Guy to the Measure Golf Podcast.
Speaker 1:And in our inaugural episode we are very, very lucky because we have a very special guest. His name is Ryan Holly and he, I think, is a Canadian version of myself. I think that somehow I was actually probably born in Canada and somehow we were separated at the hospital, but we have found one another and he is definitely a force plate extraordinaire. I would go as far as to call him a force plate guy as well. He definitely has had tremendous success helping people identify, you know, solutions to their problems by being able to help them understand how their body is moving and how forces and torques are being exchanged between the body and the ground. So the really cool thing about Ryan and one of the biggest reasons I wanted to have him on is because not only has he had amazing success, but he also shares a very similar journey to myself in terms of why he believes in ground reaction forces and teaching from that perspective, and also where he's been able to really find some application and help some of the best players in the world, including Nick Taylor, tony Thiena, jj Spahn and a few others.
Speaker 1:And if all that isn't interesting enough, it turns out he's also a mega Pearl Jam fan, as am I, so I any friend of Eddie is a friend of mine, so I'm always happy to maybe, you know digress a little into a Pearl Jam tangent at some point in the podcast if it really breaks down. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome our good friend, mr Nick Holly. What's going on?
Speaker 2:my man. Hey, good man, what's, what's happening? Good to be on and yeah, good to be on and talk it up a little bit.
Speaker 1:Nick Holly. You're not Nick Holly, you're Ryan Holly. Sorry about that.
Speaker 2:I'll go buy anything, man, that's all right.
Speaker 1:I've only got half the Starbucks in me so far. Sorry, man.
Speaker 2:No worries, no worries. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm excited, I'm happy for you for the rebrand and looking forward to hearing kind of some of your future guests and see what's going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's really exciting times, you know, it's been a great year. You know, and if we're going to kind of look back at the year, you know, I think we would be remiss to not talk about probably one of the most popular stories on the PGA tour this year. I think something happened up in Canada. What was that? You know Canada, so we as Americans aren't always paying attention.
Speaker 2:Man to steal the next line. I think I just blacked out, I'm not quite sure. You know it was an amazing story up here, for sure you know, having Nick win the National Open for the first time in 69 years. And you know I talked to some folks down at the US Open the following week and you know chatting to some folks from the Canadian golf scene down there. We all agreed it was like it was awesome to watch him win, like it was amazing. It was great for him, great for the country, but the style and the way that he won that golf tournament?
Speaker 2:I don't remember a better finish. I can't remember a better finish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you won that golf, I mean your championship for sure.
Speaker 2:And I mean it was just. I mean I've seen that highlight I don't know a couple of hundred times by now, probably up here, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face, right. And I mean, like you know, obviously, like I don't do putting or anything with Nick, but just to you know, just to have that small involvement in that in that moment, I mean it's something that for my career I even, like I'll always remember, it's definitely the highlight for me. You know, watching, watching that puck go in, which, funny enough, I did in a parking lot construction, parking lot in Edmonton, on my phone.
Speaker 2:I happened to be at a really nice private club in Edmonton for a couple of days and I was wrapping up my day as Nick was finishing packing up all my gears, tommy's coming down the stretch, and it was the first day that this clubhouse, new clubhouse, had been opened at this golf course. So they had been done this like two year reno project and they had just started serving food. That morning that I was there they had no TVs in the building. So I was like, okay, I got to go find a bar or restaurant or something and I get out onto the road and the playoff is starting, so I just pull into a construction zone thinking it's going to be like a one whole playoff. Well, four holes later and I'm still there watching on my phone and it was. It was awesome.
Speaker 1:It was awesome, did you? Did you kind of sit there awestruck and watch, or did you did you kind of like lose it a little bit, like what? What was the emotions like having to sit there and watch it on your phone? It was like what we through sitting in your car watching this four hole playoff because I got to like I would be going nuts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it was. It was nerve wracking for sure. I put the phone on, do not disturb. I think I texted about two people back during that, during that 45 minute window or whatever. It was Nerve wracking, I mean. I just reacted, I mean blacked out, basically, but like my hat came off and threw it across the car and it was. It was awesome.
Speaker 2:But to be 100% honest, I was way more nervous for him when he was coming down the stretch of the waste management open back in early February, like on Super Bowl Sunday, because it was earlier on in our relationship and I wasn't as sure that he had what I wanted him to have at his knockoff tournament. So I was a lot more nervous there. I knew that he was going to do his job, quote unquote coming down the stretch of the open. I knew he was fine. I knew he knew what I wanted him to do. I knew he was playing really good golf.
Speaker 2:We had had a session the Friday before he left for Toronto in which we talked about that he was ready to win that he. His golf swing was as good as it's ever been. It was as repeatable as it's ever been. His movement pattern was spot on to what I wanted it to be and we knew that something good was coming. And he shot 75 on the Thursday.
Speaker 2:And you know we had a text conversation that night and I was like you know, throw like, but you know what the hell? And he basically said he's like, listen, I made a couple of messes. He's like if a couple of pats go in, we're going to be in good shape. And sure enough, he goes like 21 under par over his next, like 54 holds or something like that, sets a course record and wins the open. But yeah, it was, it was, it was super fun. I mean, I know that you know, working with good players, oftentimes we're going to feel stressed that they maybe don't. You know, I think, having being a little bit closer to that level of golf now, I appreciate how good those guys are way more because they are human, because they are human beings. They battle trauma like the rest of us, right? Like you know, for me I'm not the best driver of the golf ball, not because my technical skill set is bad, but because I'm, I don't play golf.
Speaker 1:I play like once.
Speaker 2:I play like once a week and man like yeah, like up in my brain is like not, not worth it.
Speaker 1:So one of the one of the guests I got coming up for the podcast is Dr Allison Kurt, and that's exactly what she handled right at the DMD yard training. And it's helping people with these small keys that they don't really realize, that they're kind of wrapping around themselves when they play a golf. And you know it is, man, it's stressful and and the thing that I don't think a lot of people realize is, you know, there were periods of time where the guy in the red shirt was walking around golf courses and people were telling him he was a bum. They used to call the gallery you should call a tiger a bum. Like, hey, man, you didn't win this last week. Like you suck, like what's wrong with you, why aren't you winning? Like the expectation for these guys is just it, nobody can achieve enough.
Speaker 1:Because you know sports media in the 24 hour news cycle, man, like they're constantly wanting to anoint the next jack, the next tiger, and you know they build these guys up, man, and we all know it's the same thing that just happened with Colorado, right, we build these guys to the hill and then we love to tear it down the minute that they can't live up to it and it's. We're constantly moving the golf. And if you look at the end of the PGA Tour season right since we're still talking about kind of this great year that we just witnessed I mean if you look at the level of performance, I mean, dude, you could choose 63 and lose, as Xander Shoffley. I mean that's pretty wild man. You go to the Tour Championship Sunday 63 and don't walk away with a trophy. Like what level are these guys at, man? I mean it's absurd.
Speaker 2:Right, right For sure. I mean like Hoplin shooting 28 at the on the back of these, like I mean like it's insane, I really it's absolutely crazy. But that's how good these guys are getting. Not only is the technique getting better, which I think is I think I can say that as a blanket statement we don't have as many homemade moves on PGA Tour driving ranges as we used to, and if they are homemade moves, players really understand, whether that you call them matchups or complimentary moves or whatever whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 2:They understand how their body moves in space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to ask you a question Because I think you know this, like I know this right you get out there on a tour range, right, and let's say you're working with somebody and maybe the relationship's kind of new and maybe you're kind of new to their team and environment. Or let's say that you know they're playing well and you've been with them for a little while. Like it's amazing how many phone numbers I don't recognize I get text messages from that day or that night. You get the same thing out there. I mean I'm sure after Nick I bet you got all like they're very curious and I don't think that they get enough credit for being willing to really self evaluate and critique themselves and try to turn over every stone to find that you know tenth of a stroke that they're missing.
Speaker 2:For sure. I mean, I get it on a smaller level because I have not been on a pj tour range. Because of what I do, it is done in a not allowed to style setting but in a vacuum. If I have to be on a tour site, I'm not sure that player is ready to play that week, typically speaking, because I'm not a coach, right. So you know you'll see coaches like Joe Mayo over and in Europe this weekend for the Ryder Cup. Joe's a really smart guy, Obviously working with Holland in some beautiful ways, and he's there to check up and make sure and whatnot. Because I don't do that stuff, I don't really hang out on Ranges. However, the best marketing you know is how well your players play.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so yeah like definitely phone calls and text messages from some really good players after the fact. I mean, I'm blessed in. So in the lower mainland of BC I would say I've worked with 80% of the plus handy like competitive plus handicap players in the lower mainland and that's just simply because you know, I get a plus four or plus five who win some golf tournaments and people are like man, that dude's smashing it further or he's hitting it better than I've ever seen him. What's he doing?
Speaker 1:Who's talking about that. That being said, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's well said, right, and you know, I think that the reason that obviously you have an established way of doing things and have been at this a long time. But you know, I think one of the other things that really draws better players to both you and me is the fact that we do have the force plate technology right and I think a lot of people who are better players, when you go and look at them swing a golf club like you kind of alluded to earlier. You're not seeing a lot of weird movement patterns out of those guys. Like generally your better players kind of look like you know better players and they kind of move well and swing well and the ball doesn't curve much and all of those things right. So you know, I think that the interesting thing is that for most of these guys I'm going to even say up to a five, you know, I think that when they go and get a quote unquote normal golf lesson from a normal guy that either works at the club or hangs out at the range or whatever the case may be, you know generally that better player is apprehensive, as they should be, because they're a better player and like they found some stuff that works right. So they're always on guard. And then, you know, depending on the level of expertise of that coach, you know they don't want to mess with that guy very much because the last thing they want to do is mess up a good player. So I think that those guys really have a difficult time finding coaching to get better from that five level, you know, down to a plus or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:So I think that where we really have a massive advantage is that we're able to show people things that can't be seen with the naked eye, and I know that you know, just like you know people always like want to. You know they always say that when people kind of copy you, it's a form of flattery, right. But there's a lot of people who see, you know, hashtag golf biomechanics and hashtag ground reaction forces, and the next thing, you know they're saying that they're a ground reaction force expert, yet they don't have anything to measure pressure or force. So I mean it's invisible, right. So I think that's what really sets us apart. So, you know, what do you think about the force plates?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, like I've never been scared to implement change with players, regardless of their level of play, because it's not my opinion. When it's my opinion, I'm terrified. When I was quote, unquote you know, as you say, a normal coach, so working out on a driving range with you know, I remember wheeling a cart that had a computer and a camera.
Speaker 1:Was it a JC video? By chance it sure was. Oh, the yellow briefcase.
Speaker 2:You know, drawing the lines on the screen and all that kind of jazz. I mean, like you know, that was my best guess, like it was better than guessing, but it was certainly still a guessing, right, obviously, 2d versus 3D and all the issues that we run into with video and frame a reference for the player and all that kind of stuff. We run into all those problems and that I'm terrified. I'm like that's why I don't do online instruction until I've seen somebody on plates. I get all these. I get tons of requests of players hey, can you take a look at this? Do you know what this like? What should I do? Like I have no idea. I don't know enough about the player. I don't know enough about their ball flight, I don't have measurable, I don't have how they move. I don't know, and you know I have good ideas.
Speaker 2:But, like you'll know this, like you know, when I see a player, I try to make a guess at what I'm gonna see before I look at the data. I'm gonna see heavy verticals. Am I gonna see good horizontals? What am I gonna see? I get it right like 60% of the time, maybe. Yeah, that's just not good enough to work with video. It's just not right. Sometimes, like you know, when you know, when we talk about a player who has heavy verticals and they get out of those verticals pretty quickly, we typically will see the leg straight. Right, the lead leg will tend to straighten. Even the trail leg will straighten up. But not always. I've had players who keep it bent and like push it off the ground in a bent fashion. So I'm not suggesting that I can't get anything right on video, I'm just suggesting that it's not where I'm most comfortable.
Speaker 1:Right, so again to your better player.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Let's try this right Like, look man, I'll throw you out on a range with zero technology and I'll take my chances. I got faith in you and, like you said, you might not get it right on the first try, but you've got enough. You've got enough tools at your disposal to where, if, if we work at this long enough, we're going to get it right.
Speaker 2:So I have, I just want to make sure it's just going to take time.
Speaker 1:The masses that we're clarifying here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure we don't have to have technology to coach. But here's the differentiator, I think, and we are obviously on the spectrum somewhere way high or way low, whichever way you look at it because the two of us represent two guys that were willing to invest a substantial amount of money and when I say substantial I mean like the cost of two Trackman to buy some force plates, and you know we also have a launch monitor. You know we also have, you know, whatever other tools we've invested in to actually try to get a better understanding of this. So when you say that it's a guess in those things, I think we need to keep in mind that everybody is guessing, like if they say they're not, they're absolutely lying, because everybody is guessing. The difference between what we're trying to say is that we would like to control as many variables as possible within our guesses.
Speaker 2:And I would like to get it right as quick as I can.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's where, like you know, to your point of being out on a driving range with a player, yeah, I can make good change. I you know I shouldn't, I shouldn't slight myself like that, but I don't know if I'm going to get it right the first time. I don't know if that feels going to be right the first time. I know that. You know if we're trying to solve whatever the problem is right, that the ball flight problem, I know what, typically, what graph needs to move where and when I see that graph move, I don't care about the result and that's the problem.
Speaker 2:On the driver range, right, like I had a player in pretty good player yesterday and he hit like a complete shank and hit my quad. Okay, so it's, you know a foot ahead of the player and you know a foot to the right or a couple of feet to the right and he and he's a the four or five handicap, pretty decent ball striker and he had just the straight up toe shank. Well, he was an early extender who I got him into a little bit better downswing position. That learned behavior kicked in and he early extended and he hit it like literally 50 millimeters off the toe. Okay, now on the range.
Speaker 2:He's so embarrassed now for the next 15 or like 10, 15 minutes, now I'm going to have a hard time getting him to do anything else. But when I can show him data that says hey man, I know the results sucked, here's why the results sucked, but look at all the stuff I asked you to do. That was actually way, way, way better. Well, within a couple of shots he's back to flushing. Now on the range, I can't. I can't gain that same level of confidence from that player because I don't have the evidence to suggest hey, I know you hit the worst shot you've hit in 20 years, right, but you did a lot of stuff really, really well.
Speaker 1:The 100% agree, like I really really do. I mean, I teach indoors. I prefer to teach indoors. I've taught a lot of lessons outdoors. I still teach outdoors from time to time and the thing you know, the thing I like about the indoor teaching is that there's a couple of things.
Speaker 1:The first is that within my space you know, I think people don't realize in a simulator you are kind of fixed in terms of your aim because you're trying to hit the middle of the screen. So the thing that is really interesting to me is how many people come in and every one of their balls starts right down Broadway, right down the middle right, and then curves to the right and they're like that's weird, I don't miss shots to the right and I go. Well, that's because you aim left at the range, right. Sure thing. That's why, because you have target oriented right. So, long story short, you know, I like the fact that people can actually learn their ball flight a little easier because they can't just manipulate their alignments to their target.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I really love that it kind of really goes nicely with what you just said is you know, I have a lot of players come in and I'm gonna go the opposite way with your story, right, you said you had a guy come in, get nervous shanks. It hits the quad, right, we've had that happen, of course. But here's another good story, right? What about the guy that comes in and is just putting on a flush show, like just striping everything? Right, like you're like?
Speaker 1:man, you don't need a golf lesson you need to go and like play on a Monday, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like you can call for it quickly but like this is another opportunity, right, because what we can do within the force plates or whatever other piece of technology but, you know, we're obviously talking force plates here but what we're able to do, man is we can dig in and actually look at how that player created the movement to stripe that shot, right.
Speaker 1:And then what we can do is we can actually, in my opinion, start looking at, you know, the overall pattern of the shot that this player creates, and it's like, yeah, you know what. You absolutely flush it 20 out of a hundred times with that particular pattern, and that's pretty good, right. The problem, though, is that your magnitude on the mishits is huge, and you, like, make a double or triple and make a real mess of the hole, right. So I think that's where the plate really set us apart, because instead of being forced into just looking at oh, that was a good shot, I guess the swing was pretty good Now we can actually dig a little bit deeper and see, hey, did they kind of time that one up well and get kind of lucky with the delivery of the club, or did they actually move in a kind of efficient and effective way?
Speaker 2:Right, I mean I use the plates and other technology too, like 3D technology, for benchmarking performance. If I've got a player who's like, yeah man, I'm super stoked with the way I'm playing, like you know, whether they're a mini tour player or, like you know, nick is an example or whatever you know, I need to know, okay, when that player is playing really, really well, when they're leading you know when they're leading the tour and approach green strokes gained, okay, that week. What were they doing? Were they 30% on a horizontal wideleaf but or were they 22%? And then when they come back in, I want to look at that and say, hey, you had a really tough week last week. Let's take a look and see where that kind of key performance indicator is. Is it higher or lower? Let's maybe feel like we can get it back to that number that we know works really well for you. And it's astonishing at like you know that disease of more that Pat Riley talks about. Right, it's like more is not always better.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So in the case of, like you know, in our world, like verticals, everybody wants more and more verticals. It's like cool, but oftentimes we're going to see that get way too shallow. With a seven iron, I don't want you to be at 220% of your body weight, even though you can create it. I don't want it because it gets that club moving in an upward fashion too quickly and you tend to like hit some thin, stanky ones, right? Okay, cool, I know that you're going to operate way better at 190%.
Speaker 2:Let's get the feelings of how to do that, and knowing where a player performs their best is as important for good players as making change for your. You know the players that need that change and how to understand. You know how human performance and human movement works, right? So that benchmarking aspect, I think, is really underrated. I mean, we do the same thing with, like, a track man or a quad, right? Like you know, with your track man. You know that if a player is playing really well, you know, maybe, that that face to path relationship always stays within one degree, and then they come in and I was really struggling. Okay, well, face to path is super variable, isn't it? They need five shots. We're seeing a three degree separation from your highest, your lowest. It's tough to play golf that way at your level. A 10 handicap might be really stoked with a three degree.
Speaker 2:And they come in and they come in at an eight degree difference. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:We always know, if we know when that player is playing. Really well we can, we really do know what's happening A with club delivery, b with ball flight and C with the human movement. Right, and we can just try to scale that player back to where they are.
Speaker 1:The thing that I think is really, you know, a tough, a tough go for guys like us is, you know, we get into the weeds, and I mean we really haven't yet, but you know, when we get into the weeds, you know the language definitely.
Speaker 1:It definitely changes right and it definitely gets a little more technical and a little bit more medical grade, let's call it so. You know, I think a lot of people think that a lot of the concepts that we're trying to explain to people are very technical and difficult to understand and learn. But in fairness to that person, I would argue that the reason that we have to have this technology isn't because we can't see this or figure this out, like we talked about earlier. Rather it's to kind of include the player and be able to show them. You know, I think it's powerful stuff, man, being able to show somebody just their pressure shift and like I know that there's force plate users out there that just talk on the smack about, you know, pressure mats. But I think there's a lot of good that you can learn out of just a pressure mat, right, I think that there's undevaluable information there. You know where does the pivot go. You can figure that out on a pressure mat.
Speaker 2:So you know like.
Speaker 1:I think that you know, a lot of times people think that, to your point, like it's just we're gonna give them more information and more things to think about. And the one thing that I am 100% certain of, 100% certain of, is when people play well, they think less, not more.
Speaker 2:There's a definite. There's definite correlation to how blank you can leave your mind and how well you can play, for sure. But we don't want to let that let's call automation skill get in the way of skill acquisition, right? So, like the analogy that I always use to talk to players about this, because everybody wants automation of skill, like me, right? Like everybody, and I'm like you know, for people who have kids out there or young enough to remember when they learned how to drive, your parents did not just hand you the keys to the car and say see ya, you had to go to driving school and then you had to pass a written test, and then you had to pass a driver's test. And at least you know, I grew up in Ontario you couldn't have a drink in your system until you were 22. You had to have another licensed driver in the car. For a year you weren't allowed on major highways. Why? Because you're stupid, you don't know what you're doing, right? You have no idea. You have to. You have to take in all that stimuli. You have to anticipate what other drivers are doing. You have to drive your own car. You have to do all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Now, is that hyper technical, maybe. I mean, it could be life and death situations on the road, right, so it's pretty important stuff. Eventually, though, you and I can hop in our car, do a conference call it, eat a sandwich, drink a coffee, listen to a podcast, shut our brain off completely and arrive at our destination with a harm 99.9% of the time, and that's skill automation, right. We have to learn it, though. So, you know, I try to get to people where it's like yeah, conscious thoughts are really great. Idea on the range 100%. I want every rep to be as consciously focused as humanly possible. I want you to be videoing your golf swing, because once we're on, force plays and we know, okay, this is what it's kind of supposed to look like. Okay, that's the box we're operating in. Don't be scared of conscious thought. You can't learn a skill by thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Or.
Speaker 2:I can't watch a YouTube video on how to fix my radiator in my car and then be like, oh, I know how to fix the radiator, I don't know how to fix the radiator, right, I can't even get my car up off the ground. I can't barely change the flat tire for God's sake, let alone fix my rat. So, like you know, I can watch all the content I want, but the application of that and then the automation of that is like wildly, wildly different, right, right, so you know. And to your point about like complicated terms, it's like, yeah, like it's complicated information. My job is to make it easy, though, right, that's my job, it's to understand the feels, the drills, all that kind of stuff. But you know, I tend to use really complicated language.
Speaker 1:I tend to make professors. And the whole time I was in college. By the way, it took me about eight years to get an undergrad degree the real smart guy here. But my buddy got his dental or is a doctorate degree when I got my undergrad. We went to school at the same time, but long story short, I had you had.
Speaker 2:You had more fun, though, Michael. You had more fun.
Speaker 1:I definitely had more fun. Yeah, thank for it now. But anyway, long story short, I had two professors that really left a lasting impact on me and it was funny because you would go to the lecture and these guys would make this stuff look so simple. I mean it was just like, oh my God, like this is probably what I should do with my life, because this makes so much sense. And then you would like go, you know, leave the class, go get something to go back to. Well, I didn't, but most people go back to the library and study and you crack the book, man, and it might as well be written and Mandarin, because it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:And it's just amazing at how people that truly you know, have the knowledge right. You know, that's a big part, like we're talking about. Like you got to have good concepts to work with, so you have to have the knowledge base, but then you also have to have this thing called the application right, and you've got to be able to do something with that knowledge. And then, when you really get the good stuff, you wind up with wisdom right, when you're able to put those two things together kind of harmoniously, you get some wisdom and then that leads to mastery of that skill. Like you're talking about being able to drive, to work and do all these things and nothing ever happens because it's on autopilot and you're good at doing this.
Speaker 1:But those two guys really had mastery of the subject. They had real life experience. You know they hadn't just watched a bunch of content, read a few books and got a t-shirt right, like they had lived that side with it. You know they had done everything there was and they really had mastery. And what made the masters, like I just described, was being able to take something that I didn't know anything about and make it seem like it was like my right hand. You know what I mean. Like they just really have the ability to take really massive amounts of complex information and just distill it down to like, hey, it's real simple, do this Right. And your point. You know I think that a lot of people are shocked. But they'll come in for a golf lesson with me and like they get a 60 question evaluation before they even show up.
Speaker 1:Right, like I got, there's a lot of stuff I need to know, and if you're working on my program, then you're doing some precision breathing work with Neuropeak Pro, right? We're making sure that we're learning how to control that because obviously, like, you can't outthink a parasympathetic response, right? So we got a camera, especially for young people. It's really important. We're also doing cognitive function training with our clients, meaning that they're doing this visual adjustment, doing this training online, because your eyes have nine cognitive skills they're responsible for.
Speaker 1:So, like, a hardware test in terms of what your opto ophthalmologist does is not really useful for this setting. But, like, I've seen people come in and like it doesn't matter whether they have a range finder or not. Their depth perception is so poor that they just have no idea how far the target is away and you can't make them believe it because that's what they see. So being able to fix those like it's a holistic approach. That's what I'm getting at, right, it's not sure for sure. Like, hey, the club does X, the ball does Y. This is, you know, we're not trying to make these broad assumptions.
Speaker 2:Right, and I mean for what you do. I mean, you know we talked a little bit about this but like you're a coach, right, you take your fully responsible for that player's performance Right. So, and again, those things are awesome because, like you know, I know for myself as a player, I struggle with that perception. You know, I'll play with my buddies, we'll go on a golf trip every year and I'll play with my buddies and we'll find an, a dog leg to the right, and I'm like I'm just going to roast it at that tree and turn it over. And yeah, it draws everywhere. And I'll hit it at that tree and it won't draw. And it's like 50 yards out of bounds. They're like why are we hitting it over there? I'm like what's like 300 yards? I can't fly it.
Speaker 2:There's not exactly right and my depth perception like suck. So I like I use my rangefinder from everywhere, everywhere outside of 30 yards, and I get made fun of for that. But like I know the difference between 30 yard carry distance with a lot of wedge and 35.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm not going to know 32 and 34, but I'm going to coach you up right here. You ready? I love the fact you're different, and this is me talking to a player right now. Dude, I don't care if you have to use that rangefinder from the friend. You do you right, because the one thing that I will tell you and and you're being kind, you spend probably more time around tour players than I do, but one thing I am convinced of, man, is there is not one single player on the PGA tour who is anywhere near normal Every one of these guys is at least who clicks off standard deviation, like every one of them Like. And I say do you like?
Speaker 1:you know, if your depth perception sucks, you better use that rangefinder, because I would rather look like a nerd out there using my rangefinder and winning the trophy than looking like a nerd out there using my rangefinder, not winning the trophy.
Speaker 2:So make 100% right, like I'm a big basketball fan and like to Malcolm Gladwell's point like why didn't in Chak or any of these terrible free throw shooters? Like you, honest, like throw it under him Like it's an ego thing, right, and you know you put your ego aside if you want ultimate performance.
Speaker 1:Somebody. I heard this stat somewhere, I don't know. I don't know if it's true or not, but this is the internet, so it doesn't matter. Like I heard this stat that like something, like they think like 30% of like homicide murders happen because somebody didn't want to be in polite, like the person that ends up murdered, like knew something was up before, like the actual situation, but like hey, leave me alone you know what I mean and make a scene early enough.
Speaker 1:They let it go too far. Yeah, you don't want to be like people, don't want to stick out. Man, you're exactly right Like everybody for sure wants to be part of the tribe.
Speaker 2:That's right. I mean, we have a herd mentality right, and that sometimes serves us pretty well and sometimes, like, really hurts us. And you know to your point about, you know, using a rangefinder or all these other coaching ideas. I'm lucky man, I don't have to deal with any of that, right, my job is easy. My job is like hey, what's what's the technical, what's the technical part of the equation that I'm missing, right?
Speaker 2:So, like in the case of Nick, it was, hey, I had two or three shots a day. They double crossed and nobody can tell me why I do it. I was like, oh man, like licking my chops at this, like this is really great. And we basically had to find a needle in a haystack that is invisible through the eye and we said, okay, well, like here's, you know, can we see it's a little under playing? Yeah, can we see that? Like in TGM kind of terminology, are we running out a little bit of right arm a little too soon? Yeah, okay, cool, but why? Right, anybody can probably see that. But why are we? Why are we behaving that?
Speaker 1:way Going another level deep right, right.
Speaker 2:And we, we looked at it and we're like, okay, like this is why. And all of a sudden, like boom, like you know, he came in here hitting zero path, with a slightly closed face, trying to trying to fade it. Like well, there's a double cross, bro. Like I don't know why, nobody can tell you this. Let's find out why we square that up.
Speaker 1:He was basically trying to manage that through dynamic lie.
Speaker 2:Basically right. And he was he. He hits slightly up on it, pretty square and with a slightly closed face, and I'm like, well, there's your recipe for 20 yards left, like all day. And he would aim left, left, edge and hit it in the left graph. And he told me he's like you know, he's like I think it cost me like a couple hundred grand a year and his best year on tour was just a shade under two million. He made just a shade over seven million this year. So I was like I don't know if it's costing you a couple hundred grand, it would cost me a few million a year.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, like you know, for my relationship with any player, whether it is a good player here, whether it's Nick, whether it's a Mackenzie tour player, it doesn't matter who it is, it's all about how can that player accomplish what they want right? And for a coach, you have to start to set the tone of what that player needs. You have to set the expectation, you have to set the game plan, you have to set okay this is why I think this and you need to buy in from the player. Fortunately for me, to some degree, I don't do any of that. I let the coach and the player come to that conclusion and I try to give them the technical know how to hit the golf shot they want.
Speaker 2:So if I get a player who wants to turn it over both directions off the tee, they need to know. Okay, here's my anatomical structure, here's my movement pattern, here's whatever you know. To me it's a lot of neck tilt, eye line, ball position type of stuff pretty easy stuff. Now, do I always like that that player is going to want to turn it over both ways? I subscribe to a little bit of the decade philosophy where I'd rather see players hit it one direction off the tee. I don't always like it, but it's my job.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to play man.
Speaker 2:I don't want to coach and the player get they want and you know, I always say like if I told, if I told Bubba Watson, you can move in five more times on live but you could only hit one ball flight, You'd tell me to take a hike. If I told DJ, you could win five more times when, another 50 million on lift tour, but he needed to learn how to turn over the driver, He'd be like I'm out, See you later. Right it, just, it just isn't going to happen. So there's there's player. Than if I told Tiger, hey, you have to hit this one specific golf shot, I probably would have limited Tiger.
Speaker 2:No, not all of us have Tigers skillset, right. Not all of us have Tigers feel on the innate ability to create and see curvature. So for some of us it's way better the math works out in Scott's point, like Scott Cross's point, but the math works out better to hit one standard golf shot and play through their strategy, not through shape. But that's not my job. It's not my, it's not my job to tell a player what they should do. It's my job to tell them how to do what they want to do and let the chips fall where they will. You know where, where, where you're definitely a little bit more responsible for all the other stuff.
Speaker 1:Well it's, it's different, right and like. I want to be fully transparent and I want to give you credit because you kind of help me understand and shape. You know how my working with you know, let's say, tour players you know better players, tour players, whether it be corn fairy, pga tour, lpga, whatever right when I work with a lot of the tour players, as a matter of fact, I don't have anybody that I'm the primary coach for on the tour right now. I don't have one single player that I'm the primary coach for and, I'll be honest, I kind of have backed out of that role because, to your point, you know, if you're going to be a full-time coach on the PGA tour in my opinion, and you're going to wear the coach's hat and you're going to be the service provider and find the people to support, because it's not a one-man job anymore, there's just too many variables that you're trying to control. So if you're going to be that person, you need to be with that player pretty much full-time.
Speaker 1:And I have other interests and I have other things I do. So I've kind of taken the plumber model out there on tour right to where you know I'm a very good plumber and my tools cost a lot of money for me to get them out of the truck. So here's the deal Like you're going to pay me like the best plumber in town because I like to believe I am, but you're going to pay me to fix the leak. You're not going to pay me every time it doesn't leak. So I don't work off percentages, I don't do any of that stuff. And like you said, man, like I show up and like the coach is already there, right, the players are already there. They're already screaming and yelling at each other and can't figure out why whatever's happening is happening, right.
Speaker 1:And then like I'm kind of like the peacemaker, right, and I go hey, neither one of you are wrong, you're saying the same thing. But like let's look at it from this perspective and see if this doesn't kind of jive with what you guys are trying to say, right, and it's like, oh my God, like now there's some harmony, Now we can actually get you know back to like playing golf but we can get some work done.
Speaker 2:If we can come on the same page, we can actually work right. But when you're reading two different books, like it's not, you can't have the same conversation. You need to be reading the same book on the same page to actually start to have that conversation with a player. You know and you know. For me it's all about that, that role that we fill right. So for me, like I never wanted to be Greg Popovich or Phil Jackson, it's too much stress man. There's too many variables that go into playing really high level golf. You know you're nutrition. So the couple of years that I spent on the Mackenzie tour or the Canadian tour back then doing tour support for their players, where I met, like Tony and JJ and Hugo Leon and a bunch of really great players, I would be as a single guy. I would be out maybe late on a Thursday night at a restaurant or an establishment and I would see guys out there closing down the bar who play on Friday morning and I'm like man like aren't you going to play early tomorrow?
Speaker 2:And they're like, ah man, I shot 74 today, like I'm done. I'm like that's weird, can't you go shoot 66 tomorrow and make a cut and make a paycheck, right? So we have, like, how to travel as a professional, we have how to eat, we have all. We have short game and all the different variables that go in expectation, management, fitness, all this different stuff that goes into playing golf. I got to be honest.
Speaker 2:To me it has always felt disingenuous to tell somebody who can be 17 under par on the 71st hole what they should be doing from a game plan, from a, because I've never been that guy. Right, I'm a. I'm a two handicap, one or two handicap. I'm a pretty decent player. I've never been really great. I'm probably better now than I have been in a long time since I was a kid.
Speaker 2:And the fact of the matter is it's like it just doesn't make sense for me to tell a PGA to a player how they should be doing, what they should be thinking, all that kind of stuff. I just I would be literally recycling other people's ideas and what they told me Right, like what Mark Blackburn says and what and what good nutritionists say and all this different stuff, and it's always felt a little disingenuous Do I have a really good idea of how to technically move the golf all the way that they want to? I'm pretty sure I do. I can do. I can do that with some really good comp. Yeah. So I want to be the nerd in the background who teaches, like Ben Simmons, how to shoot. I don't want to have to do game plan, setting picks for players to run off of and how to scheme defenses and how to do all this stuff. I just want to be the nerd who teaches Ben Simmons how to shoot.
Speaker 1:Honestly, that's my ultimate dream job.
Speaker 2:by the way, I that's like I would love to do that.
Speaker 1:I think it's hilarious to hear you say this, because I really hope that there are a lot of my friends and colleagues listening to this episode in particular, man, because I've been getting roughed up. Man because, like there for a minute, you know, there was a lot of opportunity coming my way and there was a lot of, like you know, pretty good players coming through the door and all that stuff and well known names and what have you. And like all of a sudden, like it was almost like somebody turned off the spigot and all my boys are like dude, is everything okay? Like are you not? Are you not doing what? And I'm like, yeah, man, I just don't know if that's for me.
Speaker 1:You know, it's your point, man, it's like I couldn't have said it more exactly Like I'm playing, you know probably about a three right now, because I'm playing very much. Three or four probably I can play pretty well. You know, I'm probably I am hitting it as far as I've ever hit it. Like all those things are good, I'm playing better. But to your point, man, it's like when you're out there and you're kind of like responsible for you know, let's say, a 22 to 30 year old and you know you're trying to tell them how to beat the world and you've never beat the world yourself. It's like, you know, like there's a lot of rah, rah and and I've kind of made some peace with it in a couple of moments to where it's like he hasn't been here either. So you know, at least two heads put together is better than one, and you know, that's kind of how I've. I guess I've made my peace with it from time to time.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think what you said on the backside of that is just brilliant, man, because the people who are really good and you brought up some great people. Mark Blackburn, unbelievable man. The success that that guy's having on at the tour level I mean, he's got four people in the Ryder Cup. Man, it's unreal Right.
Speaker 2:But he doesn't do it by himself, right, and I don't know I don't know Mark personally. I've seen him speak a bunch of times that I don't know Mark personally, but I know that he's not doing it himself. I know that he uses fitness guys. I know that there's other people on Max's team and whoever's team, right, I had a conversation with Craig Davies, who's a tour athletics guy based out of Orlando, and we were talking about Nick and I was saying, hey, I'm having a real problem getting him to perform this task that I want him to do because we're chasing a little bit of ball speed over the off season. And I was like you know, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want to do. How do, how do we relate? That's what you're doing? What have you seen from that athlete that says, hey, like, maybe that's a good idea, maybe it's not. And he informed me on some like, some, some tendon durability that Nick doesn't have, some explosiveness that he doesn't kind of currently lack. So Craig put him on an eight week program. He's like I think you'll be able to see an improvement in what you want come six or eight weeks, as long as Nick does the work. So my conversation with Nick was I we're going to continue to chase the consistency, the ball striking side of things. But you need to do Craig's work and then we're going to go revisit this come eight weeks from now. Absolutely, and that's how teams work right.
Speaker 2:I don't know what Craig knows. I don't know what Joe Mayo knows, and Joe is doing some great work on putting a bunch of stuff out online that he's been doing with Hoblin lately and I think it's really great for coaches to understand right. But you know, I don't know what those guys know and I'm not interested in knowing what those guys know. I don't want to know how to do every single thing. I want to know how to do one thing really, really, really well.
Speaker 2:And when I narrow that focus down for myself, I got just a lot better at what I do. You know, trying to learn, trying to keep up on putting, you know, trying to like I'm behind, I don't know, it doesn't pay walls or so. So trying to keep up on, like Phil Kenyans putting stuff and then looking at all the aim point stuff I do that for my own game, but trying to like, maintain all of those things is literally a full-time job. I could literally spend eight hours a day online consuming information right Now. It might make me a better coach, it might make me more knowledgeable across the board, but not really interested. And I got to make money, so I got to work at some point. I can't just consume information, right. I can't just go to school for this stuff.
Speaker 1:And now you're going to do that. Yeah, like now, it's not all fun and game.
Speaker 2:No, I mean. So narrowing the focus allows me to say, okay, well, I need to keep up to date on. You know what you're talking about and what Scott Lynn is talking about and what Steve Furlonger is talking about and what Biomechanics like Mark Bull are talking about. Right, I need to keep up on that stuff. The rest of it, I mean, do I look at Joe's stuff for my own game? Yeah, do I teach it to pay? I haven't taught a short game lesson in years. I don't do any of that stuff. So for me it's like I'll still try to keep up to date on what's happening in the world. But my focus is like crazy, crazy narrow and it allows me to just get to the nuts and bolts of what I can do and I can tell a player like, listen, I can't help you, and that's okay. Right, it took me a while to come to grips with that, but it's okay that I can't help.
Speaker 1:Maturity, right, it's just maturity, that's all it is For sure. You know, I think so. You know, I mean, I think it shows that, you know, you get to a point, man, and you just kind of realize, like you know, I at least spent money. You know, I at least spent most of my younger life trying to be the one guy left standing on top of the mountain and you just, you kind of realize that that's a young man's dream, right. And it's kind of not true, because you know, I think the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary is incredible on Netflix.
Speaker 1:Whether you're an Arnold fan or not, I think it's incredible. The man's like had four full, it's unreal what he's accomplished in his life, but like he is very adamant at the end of it, basically like don't call me a self-made man, I'm not self-made Like I had a lot of. You know what I mean. And it's true, right. Because you know, I don't think that. You know I don't think a Rory, let's say you know there could be a young, you know, 16, 17, 18 year old Rory out there probably is, there's probably 20 of them, maybe more, but they're out there, right. And if those guys unfortunately don't get the right kind of help and learn to develop the skills that are needed to play at the highest of levels, not just the skill itself to play, but the other skills you have to surround with that, I mean it's they just never develop and they never get to the point where they can shoot that 66 and make a paycheck and, like you know, they just never learn how to be a professional.
Speaker 2:For sure. I've got a guy who came and saw me about a month ago and he's 17, just turned 17. He's a plus five. He has 18 hole in ones. Check that out Like that's insane to me. I don't have a single one. My wife reminds me of that every time because she has one. But I had this kid and he's never taken a golf lesson. He's like I just played with good players. I kind of mimic. He has kind of a self made move.
Speaker 2:We talked about, okay, what makes it good, what makes it maybe not as repeatable as we'd like to see, but as a plus five it's pretty darn repeatable. And he was like you know what, what should be the next step, speed. I was like, okay, well, here's the guy that I would recommend in the lower mainland for like coaching. Here's the guy that I would recommend to go see for putting. Here's the guy that I would recommend to go see short game. Here's the guy I would recommend to go see about like your mental performance Right.
Speaker 2:Here's the guy that I would go talk to about nutrition. Here's your physiotherapist. It was six different people here here and I sent out emails introducing and linking them all up and it's like these guys can help you. Right, I can do this little sliver of information for you and here are the six names that I think are kind of the best that you can get to readily available in our area. Or, you know, I the one guy for putting I definitely told him to fly out somewhere and I said here is the crew of guys that I would absolutely trust, and not because they're all PGA tour coaches or anything like that because they're really smart, they're probably not on the list and all that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's for sure. There's aren't the people.
Speaker 2:Right, and, and. And. You know I'm looking for smart, passionate people who I know can help, who will definitely stay within their stream. Right, you know, I want a player to go to a club fitter who's not going to recommend. Oh, you know, you're only two up, so I'd like to see you more. Well, there's a reason that players to five up.
Speaker 1:That's going to be great for you.
Speaker 2:Right and then when I tow hook it's a thousand RPM going dead ass left. I'm like there's a reason that players two up. He hits more fairways at two upper, keeps it in front of them more often at two up. I want him to do it. I don't need a fitter telling him oh you know, if you want to five up, you'd spend it less than you hit it further Right, not the goal. So I want, I want a team around players that are going to stick in their lane and not not. Not that other people can't have different disciplines, but the guys that I'm looking for are going to do very specific things really accurately for a player Right.
Speaker 1:Here's how I would describe you and I would describe myself very much the same way. You know I don't like the word expert, but I I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there because while I don't believe I'm an expert, I mean me and you. I mean there's not. There's Dr Scotland, there's a few guys from a couple of the other force play communities, but there's not very many of us. I mean there's like maybe 15 of us that are really getting into this every single day. So I'm going to go ahead and say that we've kind of at the at this point or the expert level with the force plate stuff as best we know it so far.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think that you have the ability, even though you don't do it, you do have the ability to triage. Just like I have the ability to triage right and like that's kind of what I want to be really good at is I want to be able to triage in the moment until I can get them to that person on the team that this is their thing and and that's really I think the art of coaching right is learning how to be a really good triage specialist, and like I still have to do my job with the force plates, like when I'm the coach in that role, to your point, like this is what I'm here to do, like this has got to be perfect always. But in those other capacities, you know, I'm definitely more of the triage guy, until we can get you to the person that's really going to be able to make the most impact.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure, right, you know, I think, for us to real quick because I do want to get to this before we run out of time today. But you know, I think the biggest thing that you probably provide with the force plates and I provide with the force plates is, I think that a lot of people probably walk away from an experience with you and from an experience with me and they probably feel like they violated a lot of the things they thought they knew or thought they should be doing. Because I think that what we really have the ability to do by showing people what can't be seen with the naked eye, is we really get them to challenge their concepts and we really get them to challenge what they think they should be doing. Right. And that's very much that conversation around feel and real. And I get frustrated at that conversation because I see people say that all the time, but I don't see a pressure mat or a force plate anywhere to be seen.
Speaker 1:And I really think, when we're talking about the differences between feel and real, we're talking about those forces and torques being exchanged between the feet and the ground, because I think that's what we feel, because it's obviously a larger force center than the one happening at the hands. So, with all that being said, I think that the reason that we're really seeing this massive conceptual change in terms of how to hit a golf ball is what we started talking about before we came on air to shoot this thing, which was you know a lot of the books, man, that people come in and quote to me every day, just like they come in and quote to you every day, even though we're in two different countries. Most of those books were written pre 1999. And a lot of things change right. We got a track man, which really helped us understand the nine ball flights a little bit better and, most importantly, we stopped playing with a ballada golf ball.
Speaker 2:For sure you know that ballada golf ball, the combination of high lofted golf clubs and a ballada golf ball still influences a huge number of golfers today. So the concept that the way that a lot of players picture the golf swing, the way they think about it, is absolutely colored by the way that they used to play or by what they consume, the way their dad taught them right? I have these couple of kids who play, or young guys who play, over at a local club that I go work at once a month or so, and their dad has taught them. And I saw one of them and then he started to play better. And then I saw the other son and he started to play better. And then, finally, the dad came in and he told me it's like I feel like you told my kids that I taught them wrong. I was like no, no, no, no, like you taught them the best you could, so, but the things that you've taught them are no longer applicable, right? So we were chatting about this a little bit. You take a high lofted golf club, you take up a lot of golf balls, so we have one thing that's going to make the golf ball go high, but we have a golf ball that isn't designed to launch high right. So for anybody out there who's not used to playing a ballada or can't remember it, that ballada used to have to sizzle close to the ground right, that old kind of out and up ball flight. So the launch angle had to be crazy, crazy down. So what do we see from a lot of that era of players? We see a lot of knee drive close to the ground. We see a lot of leg angle quote unquote leg angle, radial deviation, whatever you want to kind of talk about and we see a lot of trapping motion. Well, we play a golf ball now that's designed to be launched straight up in the air, right. We play lower lofted golf clubs, right. So now those things that we kind of color our conception or our belief about a golf swing, they kind of no longer apply.
Speaker 2:Now, that's not to say that the gym flicks of the world and whatnot were wrong. Golf my way or whatever by Jack, like it's not wrong, it's just no longer applicable. So up here we play a lot of hockey. I don't, I don't even know how to skate. I'm a terrible Canadian. But you know, talk to people, I'm a Canadian, I can't skate. I know, right, I'm a basketball and baseball guy, I don't know.
Speaker 2:So you know, when you used to play a wood stick, you had to hit the ice like an inch behind the puck, right. So you take these older school guys in the 80s and they were hitting wood sticks close to the puck. Now you take a composite stick and apparently again I'm using good hockey players as my analogy here they take a composite stick and they hit the ice about a foot behind the puck. Okay Now, so they've changed one component of the delivery system. They changed the club essentially, right. Now imagine changing the puck as well. That delivery system would have to then go through another radical kind of change. And that's where we're at with golf books. We have lower COGs, we have a stronger loss, we have different shafts and we play a golf ball that's designed to launch 180 degrees differently than what it used to be then. So the golf swing has to be modernized.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the time when I get guys kind of my age and above who played with the Ladas, it's like okay, well, we have to modernize the golf swing, which takes to your point of like myth busting A ton of. What I do is just understanding. Okay, this is what I think. Okay, you're actually doing what you think. I want to have 90% of my pressure on my lead foot when I hit the golf ball.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's not what I see from the best players in the world, but you're doing it and you're struggling because you're doing it right. You weigh more at impact than you did in any point during your downswing, body weight wise, and it's mostly concentrated on your lead foot. So really bad recipe for your back. So we see a lot more back injuries in the 80s and 90s than we do today. We'll balance that first kind of excluded.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, you're accomplishing exactly what you want to do, but your concept's off, so we have to go ahead and just modernize myth bust a couple of things Maybe. I want pressure to accelerate off that lead foot a little bit more, to get that player to work upwards a little bit more. Which pulls the handle up with shallows AOA, which launches the golf ball up in the air, and all of a sudden they go from these trappy kind of 60 foot high draws to these nice 105 foot apex flight of things that go 25 yards further. Didn't add any speed, conscious speed. We didn't add any effort to create more speed, we allow that athlete to work better.
Speaker 1:Horse plate would. In my opinion, horse plate would be absolutely worthless without a launch monitor, Like if you were just standing out on the.
Speaker 1:Well, the fun thing is is like I can't, and you know this because you do it too. But you know, literally I'm in Michigan and we have a ton of hockey guys up here and I'm always the guy complaining about left-handed hockey players. And it's like you know, when you have knives on your feet you can't create any pork or you fall on your face. These guys are massive horizontals because at your point they slap the ice way before the puck. So you know, low point doesn't really matter for those guys Like right. So, long story short, you know, it's amazing to me, like how you watch one of these guys like tee off and just smack the heck out of one with a little bit of torque for the first time in their life and a little bit of rotation, right. And then the next thing, you know it's like they look up at you and like, man, that's going to be good when we can like swing hard at that. And you look at, you know the, the pub speed.
Speaker 1:I like to look at pub speed. With these guys with ball speed you can manipulate in a lot of different ways. But you know, club speed is just raw, raw horsepower, right. And it's like you look at that and it's like, oh, it's up by a mile or so. Well, I didn't feel like I did anything, and the analogy that I always use with these guys is like, hey, if we went over to our gym here and put 200 pounds on the bench press, you know you might do it three or four times and that's great. But if I put the same exact 200 pounds on a leg press, we're going to be here for two weeks watching you do this Right. So, like you know, when you use the leg, you know I eat the ground. But when you use the legs, all of a sudden you know it the effort level let's call it really seems to drop because you're not using the smaller muscle chains, you're actually using the big ones.
Speaker 2:For sure, and you know watching players, you know the best compliment I get paid all the time is that. You know I feel like I feel more athletic.
Speaker 1:Perfect.
Speaker 2:That's the best compliments that somebody can pay me, because what they've been doing, like maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, whatever. But when we get them to move in a fashion that allows them to kind of reach their untapped potential, oftentimes it just feels more athletic, right, and I'm like well, good golf to sport, Right. We maybe haven't always talked golf as a sport and you know, I think it's really important. That's where I think the bifurcation is coming.
Speaker 1:Ryan, I'm so happy you said that because I was going to forget to get to it with you. But, like you know, I think that that is like they talk about the ball and I don't really want to get into that because that's something way above our pay grades that they don't listen to us about. But you know, I think the bifurcation of golf is here. I think it's already here, and I think what you're seeing is that the bifurcation kind of falls on the line of is golf a game or is golf a sport? And you know a lot of people that you work with. I would say probably 99.9% of the people that you work with they're playing a sport man. They're here, they're committed, they want to get better, they're paying a premium for their coaching experience because you're not cheap, nor should you be. You're very good at what you do. Your technology is very expensive, same with me.
Speaker 1:So you know they're coming into this from this sport perspective and honestly, man, I think that so much of golf has been a game for so long for so many people that they don't really realize that you could even train it in the way that you would train in a sport fashion.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think that that's really where people get a little bit confused, because I don't really think that the quote, unquote standard golf lesson from the guy on the back of the range really fits in that sport model, because at the Olympic level, when they train athletes to show up and win medals, they talk about the things we've talked about, they talk about nutrition, they talk about sleep, they talk about strain, they talk about recovery, they talk about all these things that are massively important to the human being so that the human being can perform the sport.
Speaker 1:And like that's where I really think, man, that we're able to help people is to go from this very kind of cluttered and nobody cares because it's a game, to really kind of slimming down some of those thought processes and maybe making them a little bit more succinct. And to your point, if we can get the highway with less traffic in it and the system's a little more free and clear to run, hey, man, what do you know? When there's less traffic on the 105, you drive a hell of a lot faster.
Speaker 2:I don't know 100% right, and I mean to talk about it being a game or a sport, like if a player wants to treat it as a game, they want to go and have just a nice walk in a park and they want to shoot 95, man, like you don't have to train like an athlete, go ahead, go ahead. Like I'm not going to judge somebody's motivation here playing the game. Am I going to work with that player? No, because what I'm going to do isn't really applicable to them, right? And that's where, like you know, most of the time I've got sub-five handicaps in my studio because they know what I do. It's a congruent kind of thing and people will get a whole lot better. Doesn't mean I can't help a guy who shoots 95. I can't.
Speaker 1:Am I going to be interested in that if that player is?
Speaker 2:not going to be a sport.
Speaker 1:Why? Let's think of this. You help everybody. Okay, let's get that clear.
Speaker 2:You help everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know why you don't have the same success with the guy that's a 15 that you have with the guy that's a five. Let's raise it that way. Yeah, know why you don't have the same success with the 15?
Speaker 2:No, Well, I would say I have success. But what do you think?
Speaker 1:You don't have the same level of success with the 15 that you do the five For sure, right. And the reason is really simple the five knows what's up and the five is there to learn and accept what you have to say and implement change. And here's the difference the five, if you give him a drill to do, when you see him next Wednesday practicing before his lesson, he's doing the drill. And the 15 won't do the drill more than two or three swings before they declare that they got it. And like, the thing that always tracks me up is I know they're handicapped based off this alone. When they ask me after, like I said, they get this big evaluation. We do all these things. I put them on, let them warm up on Trackman. So I got those shots on Trackman. I've got sports box, I've got plates, I've got everything, dude, and we do all of it. And they're just foaming at the mouth.
Speaker 1:What's the easy answer? What's been holding me back all this time? Do they think it's one thing like everybody? Right, because it's a 15. Hey man, look at all this and what I think is actually going to be our best course of action is actually think we ought to get your posture put together. Oh, no man, no, no, no, it can't be that man. No, no, no. Let's talk like angular displacement. Dude, we don't need to talk angular displacement. We need to talk about how far forward your sternum is of your center of mass and why you can't get your facet joints in your back to let your spine extend, like that's what we actually need to do today.
Speaker 2:For sure. You cannot move the graphs on swing cat or you can't move faster or more freely from poor position, from poor anatomical structure. Man like you're sunk. You sunk your ship before you sailed out of Harvard and you have to be able to at least put the body in a functional position. Now, that doesn't mean everybody has to be in the same position. Oh, has to be functional for the athlete right. So the one that I always like to talk about and if anybody watched the Canadian Open out there, you would have seen a little bit of my fingerprints, which are actually funny enough Scott Cokes's fingerprints, my buddy Scott, I always like to give credit, I love.
Speaker 1:Scott.
Speaker 2:When Nick would address the golf ball right and he was on TV for a long time the left arm would hang as far the left humorous bones of the upper arm bone would hang as far outward as he can before he grips the golf ball, because that is an opener. It causes pronation of the lead arm after he changes direction of the golf swing, which allows him to not hit it to the left. So part of his pre-shy routine is hang that thing over. Now, if I don't do that with him, he still sneaks it left from time to time. He has to be very precise of that position of that bone in order to create the golf shot at that level.
Speaker 2:Most people have no concept of where their humorous or their upper arm bones are in their golf swing at set up and we see that all the time through outside steepening guillotine type of planes. Is that humorous that the trail arm humorous is up and out. It's internally rotated network. Now a lot of players when we see that they've actually rotated it inwards at set up. This does not work. It just straight up doesn't work. So we have to be able. Oh shit, okay, hold on. Sorry, michael, one sec, sorry. We have to make sure that that player is going to put themselves in a position that allows them to perform the task that they want Absolutely, and that's the real key.
Speaker 1:And if we don't get that?
Speaker 2:structure right, then movement doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:But that, once again, going deep and I don't mean deep in regard to this is so deep that it can't be usable. But it's called doing your job as your coach and actually understanding the puzzle that you're looking at. When it comes to and this is where it gets interesting People always say, well, if I had Tiger as a client, I'd be a great coach. And I guess if you're basing your results off your player's successes, then yeah, you would be a great coach if you were Tiger's coach. But at the end of the day, man people say that all the time, but I watch coaches all the time get with better players and freeze, because it gets harder. And the better they are, man, the harder it gets to coach them, because it's not this low hanging fruit that you could just see a mile away or from the other side of the driving range. And that's why there's guys like you and guys like myself, who are not in the lab but kind of in the lab behind the scenes, really digging and teasing all of this out. Because, to your point, man, I just don't think that you're going to be able to create the performance that we're seeing currently without really taking these deep dives with these guys and I hate to say it, but even for the guy that's a 10 listening to this, you're not going to get better through technique alone.
Speaker 1:At a certain point in golf, like the technique doesn't really like all those guys can hit it, like every one of those guys on tour can hit it, every one of those guys can nip one, every one of those guys like they can.
Speaker 1:They might not be able to do it when they need to do it under the gun, and that's what separates them out there, right, but it doesn't mean that they don't have the core competency to do it right. So, like, they all have the physical skills and the skill sets to accomplish the goals out there At a certain point. Man, like you know, I teach a lot of guys who are good players and you know they go on golf trips and have fun. But you know they're like calling me and texting me man, I play like shit today. And I'm like, well, aren't you on a golf trip? And they're like, yeah, I'm like, well, how many beers and bourbons did you have last night? Oh, you know. And it's like they don't even think to equate the fact that they're so hungover that that might, you know have a conflict on their golf.
Speaker 2:By the way, your Kentucky is showing with that bourbon. There you go, you know we you know for sure. Like you slept for four hours hungover, you got to the golf course, you didn't warm up, you hit no putts, you three putt of the first three greens because you didn't know what the speed was. You shot 84 and you're normally shooting 81. Okay, yeah, like makes sense.
Speaker 1:I'm doing the inner deviation, okay.
Speaker 2:Like, makes total sense, right? So, yeah, I mean, and that's where, like, that performance, that performance stuff is so important, right, and you know, credit to all the coaches out there who are getting the best out of their athletes, and I think there's a lot of really great coaches. From an instructor standpoint though, right, which is what I would call myself I'm not really a coach, I'm an instructor it really is just okay. When the environment changes, what changes, right? So, like, I see players who can do everything I want them to do, and then when that right to left wind kicks up, they don't trust it. But cool man, we have technology that we can actually apply wind on to see what the outcome of the golf club, the golf shot, is when that right to wind kind of comes in, right or right to left, when it comes in, and you know, we can start to say, okay, well, when that happens, you don't move the same way, because you start to get a little scared, you start to guide it. I need you to aim it here and trust exactly what you built. And you know that is, I guess, a little bit on the coaching side, but it's still on the technical bucket as far as I'm concerned because we're still trying to repeat the technical side of things.
Speaker 2:But it's oftentimes the environment that changes. And when the environment changes, whether it's you know, the breathing gets shallower, the heart rate goes up, the pressure amounts, the you know the wind changes. You know I've got water on the right, I don't want to hit it over there. When that environment changes, we have to know, okay, where am I aiming, and can I do the same thing over and over and over again, and can I get out of letting the environment dictate my movement? I need to move regardless of the environment, and if we can get the player to do that, man, I'm going to be a drunken like you're. Good to go at that point.
Speaker 1:I say it all the time, but I love the line from the departed that Jack Nicholson has I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me. I love that line.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:I've said that to a lot of players on the golf course before man, and you're exactly right. It's like you know, if you understand what you do in a simulated environment off of a flat lie, okay. And now the lie is, you know, not flat how does that affect the? Ball flight.
Speaker 2:Hey, where's the wind? How does that affect the?
Speaker 1:ball flight. Okay, well, your job is to get set up and understand how that lie is going to affect your setup and ball flight. And then to your point man, you're hitting the same shot you hit in the simulation, it's just you have to aim it different.
Speaker 1:And it's just like if you're going to sit there and you know, look at a pitch shot and try to figure out, like, do I want to open or close the face? Well, guess what, you better not line your feet quote unquote square if you're changing where the face is pointing, because, like, that's kind of important in terms of pitching and chipping and getting this ball on the target line.
Speaker 1:And it's like you know, it's just understanding, I think, what we can do with the plates. That's so much different is, I think we actually can add, in my opinion, if you think of the golf swing as being, you know, three thirds as a whole, you know, I think, that the ground reaction forces is close to two thirds of this equation, man, in terms of what we're doing with the ground, and I get it, man, we've been struggling with this third throw and I'm just, you know, round in numbers but like we've been struggling at trying to explain why this third happens the way it happened for a long, long time. But you've seen it enough and I've seen it enough to where, when you add the two thirds to the third and you can start looking at the whole freaking story, man, like people can like get better quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I mean to put a bow kind of on the on the force plate kind of a conversation is. You know when, when a player understands that their pelvis needs to move right, your pelvis has to move in your golf swing. We can. We can sway it and slide it laterally, we can thrust it forward and backwards and we can elevate it up and down. It's the only direction that can move. It cannot move in any of those directions without ground contact Right.
Speaker 2:So I did the analogy I use if I go up to block a spike in volleyball, I go straight up in the air. I can then not choose to turn my pelvis Right. I can swing my arms to one side and my pelvis will rotate the other direction, but that's a byproduct of my arms moving my upper body. I can't go straight up and then turn. So we picture like MJ back in the day doing his little spin moves or John Moran these days, and they do a 360 and they kind of hang in the air. They started that twerk against the ground before they left. They don't jump straight up and then turn.
Speaker 2:So if the pelvis needs to move. In the golf swing the feet have to move the pelvis. So one of the conversations I have with people all the time is in 3D especially with like a cave ass in these older school kind of systems is we would look at pelvis, thorax, lead arm and golf club and out of those three components, absolutely the pelvis moves first for most good players, right In full game golf shots. Well, what we know now is that the pelvis can't move. It's not the first thing that moves, the feet are the first thing that moves right. So we have to start to tie what we're doing against the ground for the pelvis.
Speaker 2:So I always tell people I'm like the last thing I ever want a player to do is rotate. I never wanted to have a player try to rotate. I see all kinds of like anybody out there listening that's probably in the higher handicap buckets. You're trying to rotate. That causes the steepness, that causes the out to in. That's causes a bunch of the stuff Because you're rotating too quickly at the wrong time at a sequence whatever. Instead I want to act more like a baseball player who strides into towards second base, pushes the ground towards second base, which causes rotation right. Whether we're doing that on the Y, the X, whatever, doesn't matter, but we're creating a force that causes the body to rotate. It sounds a lot like semantics, but it's not. It's not. I'm not trying to rotate, I'm causing rotation to occur. Yeah, when I get players to stop trying to rotate and focus more on what their feet do than what their pelvis does or what their chest does, we start to see more open on them like we see, with two or players.
Speaker 1:I'm on the blackboard with people constantly, man Like, constantly explaining how the foot pronates and supernates. Because you're right, that is the thing that moves first and it's amazing, man, at what. Like you said, you know I've seen some videos of some players who are obviously really good players and that left knee is so bent at impact. It's unreal and you're like that guy must be late as hell. You know what I mean. But, to your point, when you throw it on the plate, you still see that they're driving that vertical force at the right time.
Speaker 1:So it's like, okay, well, obviously that leg is still pretty well next to the ground, that left foot, and I think that you know for so many people, to your point, they're so consumed with moving the golf club and getting the golf club to quote unquote rotate around their body that they just completely lose sight of the fact that this isn't, I mean, it's just a mess in terms of what they're doing with their body and they're not really creating any of that rotation at all. They're creating that spin out. You know that we see that all the time when people try to rotate, they just spin out like crazy. But in terms of seeing any kinds of real force being applied to the ground. It's pretty minimal.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure. And you know, one thing that I'll never kind of tell people to do is where to swing the golf club from. I'm going to allow movement because when we look at that time that it takes from top to impact, we're in such a narrow window to move back off the bed. I can't move in my old kind of shitty pattern and think, okay, well, I got to move my arms in the club over here Because, yeah, you can maybe do it on the rain with no consequence. You can maybe do it by yourself out on the golf course at 6pm, playing by yourself, right.
Speaker 2:But going out to the first tee on Saturday morning with your buddies and you know the people watching behind you and all these groups up on the driver range, and all of a sudden it doesn't work anymore. You haven't found it and that's because you haven't paid attention to how you move and how that influences the golf club. You've moved the same way. You always have early, extended sliding, swaying, whatever it is, and you're moving that golf club independently. When you lose that connection and that ability, right, we get sunk. Now, if I can create movement that causes the golf club to move into the plane that I want it to move in. Well, now, when I'm standing over the golf ball, I got to think about is what I'm doing either at my feet or in my movement pattern, and then the golf club just magically finds its home, and that's a really freeing feeling for a lot of players.
Speaker 1:So it's all about movement and not the golf If you're a 15 plus and I'll be honest, I get a lot of that I get a lot of 15 plus. Still, you know, I get a lot of people that kind of you know are local people where my facility is and they don't really realize what this place is and they just kind of walk through the door and they're like I'm getting the golf lesson and they like come in and I get a good amount of that, man, and I love it. Because you know, the first thing I'm doing with a plus you know a 15 or higher is I'm taking the golf club out of their hands. It's the very first thing I do. I get rid of the golf club and I start showing them how to pivot that body right, how to create some extension in the spine.
Speaker 1:It's not a bad thing, we actually need to to create a healthy motion. Like start really showing them how to move their body, man, because what I try to help people understand is like you don't really have the training or the concept for how to move this golf club across time and space, but you do have really good concepts and really good patterns for moving your body across time and space, because you've been doing that your whole life. So, like getting people to start with what they understand in terms of how their body moves throughout the golf swing is way more advantageous to then add the golf club after they understand the body, because they feel and interpret that so much better than this golf club that they don't have any clue what the heck it's supposed to do.
Speaker 2:For sure. I'm convinced that if we called the golf swing a golf motion, everybody would be better at golf.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:Right, you wouldn't be worried about where the shaft is pitching and where the face is, and you're not thinking back here, you're thinking intrinsically or internally and you're moving to move that golf club. Instead of moving the golf club and happenstance moving the way that you kind of have ingrained in your, in your movement pattern. So you know, I, if anybody can take anything away from that start concentrating on what the body does and forget about the golf club. It behaves like a well-behaved dog. If I move, well, that dog follows right beside me. Right, I agree?
Speaker 1:And you know I've asked you before. They may go everywhere, like face to pat. Like face to pat isn't happening on its own. Like you have to create a face to path relate. Like it doesn't just like go negative or positive. Like you have to do something to create that. Like it doesn't naturally want to flip that way.
Speaker 2:And you don't have time to try to swear that thing up, man. So that's where that anatomical structures come in in our movement pattern. If we dial those things in, man, those things tighten up pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:So they do. Man. Well, look at that. Like that almost sounds like we planned this and had like a strip and like came to a nice little finish, Like that was nice we did good there.
Speaker 1:I want to really take the time to thank you, ryan. Like this has been really good man. I've really enjoyed it. I appreciate everything, the insights you shared. I don't think we gave you nearly enough credit. Like obviously the success wouldn't be incredible. That's a cool story. I think probably when they do the year end stuff, I would be shocked if the Canadian Open wasn't a top three story from the tour this year, because it was and I don't want to take anything away from Nick at all he obviously got the W but you know it was a good showing for Canadians that week. You know like that was it wasn't. You know Nick obviously winning was huge, but like it's a great showing for Team Canada.
Speaker 2:So being our mission again.
Speaker 1:Obviously I'm always pulling hard for my brother. It's just a little up north.
Speaker 1:So I want to make sure that you definitely get credit for that. Ryan does an amazing job putting stuff out there online, across social media. You can find him at Ryan Holly Golf. You can find his website Ryan Holly Golf. Definitely worth giving a follow, give a listen. Anytime he's talking about ground reaction forces, you can bet he knows what he's doing, because that is definitely the one thing that he has mastered and is an expert in and does an amazing job sharing the information with people. So, with that said, do you got any plugs you need to get in or anything, are you good?
Speaker 2:I'm not man.
Speaker 1:All good.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that and you know, hopefully this helps. You know a couple of people out there and you know start to focus on some of the stuff that they think is more in your control than what the golf club is doing Absolutely Well.
Speaker 1:The cool thing, too, is is I think we're aiming maybe at some point in the near future, ryan and myself are going to try to get our force plates together and we're going to see if we can get them to breed, because if we can get that breed we can make some money, but they're expensive to buy out, right.
Speaker 1:So we're going to see what we can do, but whether we can get them to give us little baby force plates or not, I think we're going to try to do some pretty cool events together in the near future. So if you're interested in getting on the Swing Paddle of Steel Motion plate, you can reach out to Ryan, you can reach out to myself, but we're definitely looking at trying to put together maybe some events that aren't necessarily where we generally are, so that other people also can get out so can get access to this amazing technology. So, with that said, thank you so much to Ryan for taking the time once again, and I appreciate everybody listening to this episode.
Speaker 1:As addition to the rebrand, we also will be sharing the video this season and that video will be posted to the Measured Golf YouTube channel, so you'll be able to find this entire interview with Ryan on our YouTube site. So make sure to subscribe to that page and to like this video, and please leave lots of questions down in the comments and I guarantee you that Ryan, myself or both will probably get back to you to answer your question. So thanks again to Ryan. Thanks to everybody for listening and make sure to hit that subscribe and like button Until next time. Keep that.