Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Unlocking Advanced Ball Striking Techniques: John Sing on Revolutionizing Your Golf Game
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Unlock the secrets of Advanced Ball Striking (ABS) with John Sing, a remarkable golfer who has turned his mid-range handicap into a sub-par game through this revolutionary technique. Join us as John shares his transformative journey, revealing how ABS has simplified his golf swing and reduced his emotional attachment to ball flight outcomes. With insights from golf masters John Erickson and Bradley Hughes, this episode promises to provide you with a fresh perspective on refining your golf skills and reaching new heights in your game.
Discover the power of repetitive drills and the importance of building internal knowledge and kinesthetic awareness through ABS. Learn how to develop a deeper connection with your game by awakening your inner coach and trusting your body's natural movements. This episode explores how golfers can improve their techniques by focusing on movement practices separate from hitting the ball, leading to a more intuitive and consistent performance on the course.
Uncover the intricate relationship between golf swing mechanics and equipment setup as we discuss the influence of vintage clubs and customized gear on your swing. John Sing shares engaging personal anecdotes, illustrating how these insights have enriched his understanding of the game. Embrace the mind-body connection in golf, shifting from analytical to intuitive play, and learn how historical greats like Hogan and Sneed adapted their techniques. Whether you're an ABS enthusiast or curious about enhancing your golf experience, join us for an engaging exploration of advanced ball striking techniques and community support.
Please go to www.advancedballstriking.com
www.bradleyhughesgolf.com
To find Justin Tang, please email him justin@elitegolfswing.com
To find Jesse Perryman, text him (831)275-8804
A BIG THANK YOU TO JumboMax grips AND TAYLORMADE for their INCREDIBLE support !
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another edition. For the next two weeks we're going back into ABS, advanced Ball Striking. This week we have a man by the name of John Singon, and anybody who has listened to this podcast knows I'm a longtime student of John Erickson and Bradley Hughes. In my opinion, I think it's some of the finest instruction in the world. It's tangible, it's palpable and it's going to be absolutely exemplified through the words of my guest, and his name is John Singh. John is also a fellow advanced ball striking student and he shares his story in his journey in this conversation uh, tremendously. He shares it with great detail his golf journey and where he has come from prior to finding abs, which we hold short for advanced ball striking to where he is now. And he has traveled a long distance, from somebody who was a mid-range candy cap for the majority of his life to breaking par for the first time for nine holes through the teachings and the study and the execution of the principles in advanced ball striking. In my opinion, advanced ball striking is such an easy way to learn the golf swing because it requires working on movements and a lot of these movements are away from hitting a golf ball and I've said it time and time again that sometimes you have to separate what you see in the air versus what you're working on individually. It's very difficult to make changes on the range when you're doing it through the lens of hitting golf balls, because it's hard to separate the emotion and or the attachment of good and bad. So when you're looking at a ball, you're after you've hit a ball and you're looking at it, you're it's, you're still judging the ball flight. So in advanced ball striking, along with bradley hughes I'm including bradley in this because he is a major, major part of this umbrella you do a lot of the movements away from hitting a golf ball and I'm finding that that relaxes the ego a bit so that the movements are done with singular focus and you're not distracted by hitting a golf ball. I believe it's very powerful, it's an easy way to learn and john absolutely uh says it in spades. So anybody who is interested please go to advancedballstrikingcom. All one word and then you google brad. He has several different websites that you can partake in and get equal golf affirming information. That's very powerful and it will definitely help your game. It's helped mine. We have a great adage within the community it's 100% success rate if you apply yourself. I found that to be true. The people that are a part of the community that have come on the podcast found that to be true, and you'll hear it through the words of John.
Speaker 1:Next week we've got a special one with John Erickson and the current reigning USGA senior amateur champion, lewis Brown, who's also an advanced ball striking student and a longtime friend of John's. So that'll be coming in next week, but this week, enjoy John, enjoy his story. I certainly did, and sorry for the long winded intro. And also, too, I wanted to announce an exciting partnership with the flag hunters podcast and jumbo max grips. So we're going to be coming out with a unique code through the podcast to get yourself a decent discount on Jumbo Max Grips, and that is going to be coming down the line a little bit, a little bit more information coming down the pike with that as well. So also, too, before I forget, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. I love reading the comments. It gives me good platforms, it lets me know what you all want me to study and bring about, and whoever that is. So thanks again. Please rate, review and subscribe and have a great week, you all, and enjoy john's story cheers.
Speaker 1:So Hello and welcome to the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman and I'm flying solo today. Justin's too busy on the other side of the world in Singapore, probably on the lesson tee helping another phenom out. But we're going to start something here. A little bit phenom out, but we're going to start something here a little bit. Well, not necessarily new, but those who are, who listen long-time listeners to the podcast, follow the podcast know that I'm I am a student, an active participant and a big fan of advanced ball striking, so I figured we'd do what we did a couple years ago. We're going to get some ABS students on and we're going to talk about their journey, talk about how they found it, their journey and everything that encompasses advanced ball striking and how it's benefited them. And we have one of the great ABS students on right now. His name is John Singh. John, welcome to the pod, my friend. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me. I don't know if I'm one of the great students of ABS, but I'm certainly one of the students of ABS that's very dedicated to this and it's a great thing to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just before we started today, john and I talked yesterday and we had a good conversation about it and you know, there's so many different methodologies out there. There's so many people.
Speaker 2:And with the Internet I mean, there's like thousands, if not millions of them out there.
Speaker 1:You've got a lot of golf instruction out there. You got a lot of golf instruction out there and sometimes you just you're just like where in the flying heck do you start? What's true, what isn't, you know? I mean, my goodness, you got a gentleman saying this, you have a lady saying that. Are they saying the same things, are they? I mean, there's there's a lot of big time confusion. I'm sorry, say that one more time. My little dog was barking again. That's, that's all right. You know, there's so much confusion out there. There's a lot of confusion with, uh, methodologies. There's so much on the internet, there's so much on the socials and uh, it's hard to kind of sift through all of that. How, how did you do it, john? How'd you sift through all of it and find, uh, the holy grail at the end of the rainbow, the pot of?
Speaker 2:you know, and I think, uh, uh, you know, and this you know podcast, this particular one is for all of us, like the all of us average golfers out there, all all of us who know we wish we were blessed with superhuman eye-hand coordination, but we're like most normal people, but we really want to enjoy this game and I do think that, at least for myself. One thing about golf is it helps a little bit if you're willing to try to understand a little bit about what's really going on, willing to try to understand a little bit about what's really going on. And you have to just look at all this different information with an eye, ask good questions of good people and then really start to sort it out for yourself. Now, in the particular case of with all this information, without a doubt having some good instructors or some fellow students or a community where you can get some good information, start to bounce things back and forth and everybody's going to sort out for themselves how some people want to do it. Some people got to be really analytical, other people are very feel-oriented, some people learn things by visual, other people learn things auditorially. You feel it. So we all have to find our own way, but the good news is is that I think what we're all looking for is a methodology that does a couple of things Not only gives us the knowledge that we need to know, but also gives us the physical path to get there, because knowing how to do it is not the same thing as physically being able to do it and being able to realize that. Okay, well, I know what I need to do, but how am I going to actually learn to get my body to do these kinds of kinds of things? And I think you know, to make a long story short, I mean our host here, jesse Perriman.
Speaker 2:He's the one at fault for me getting involved with advanced ball striking, because you know, I've been playing. Just by way of introduction, I've been playing golf since I was a teenager. I was a baseball player in high school and I was a pretty small guy, so I started playing golf and you know, I'm 65 and a half years old right now and the thing about this great game is, all through all that, self-learning and junior golf programs, and then you know playing uh, my friends and everything, and, being somewhat serious about it, you can always still find great things to learn, and I, you know. I mean, my handicap was like I don't know, at one point when I was in my 20s high 20s I'd probably I don't know maybe like a six or seven or something like that. I'm certainly not that way now, because I'm not, I don't have the same body as I did, but, um, in december of 2022, if I remember right.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm in my garage working and I'm listening to podcasts and youtube beams to me, jesse perriman's flag hunters, and I started listening to him talking about this and it really just started to hit something very specific, which is what's really going on inside the body and underneath all of the positions, underneath all the different methodologies. And I had been with Lynn Blake. Lynn Blake has been a great teacher of mine, really. In 19, what was it? 2019, 2020, I hooked up with them and really for the first time in my life, really understood what the golf swing looks like externally and what you're supposed to really try to do. But the golfing machine doesn't really tell you and most methodologies, in my opinion, they tell you a lot of things around what you're to try to achieve, but they don't really tell you how are you supposed to do that inside of your body, how? What does it actually require to you in terms of repetitions in order to get there? I mean, it's not just like one bucket of balls and one and done. And that's where I think advanced ball striking for all handicaps whether you're just starting out or whether you're a very advanced player and you really want to take your game to the next level it really brings something to the table that in my investigation you know I'm a 40-year software engineer, work for IBM. I've done a lot of big projects with big organizations. I know a little bit about what it takes to get big organizations and small organizations to try to make big changes. It's still the same with people.
Speaker 2:It got to basically figure out a way to just boil it down to a step-by-step set of procedures that a lot of different people can work on, can work together as a community and find out what works for you, and that takes some knowledge. So that's a little bit long way around. You got to understand the golf swing. Advanced ball striking doesn't presuppose to tell you everything. It kind of says you're a decent student, you've been studying to do your homework and now let's kind of take and give you the unified field theory that underpins all these things. So you can have different methodologies, regardless of whether you're a Ledbetter person or whether you're a Bush-Harmon person, whether you're an Andrew Rice person you can do all those things, things. But underneath it advanced ball striking, in my opinion, really I noticed that it laid a set of fundamentals underneath all of those that allowed all of those to pin together, and so you can keep on doing what you're doing, but at a whole new level. And in my experience, this is the other thing For a lot of years and I've been with Lynn Blake, for you know, seeing him for about three or four years. So, yeah, I'm improving some.
Speaker 2:But a year and a half worth of advanced ball striking underneath it is things that happened to me, just never happened before. You know, I had never, ever done things like reeled off. You know, eight out of nine greens hitting eight out of nine greens in a row. I'd never had a situation in my life. You know what was it? Earlier this year, first time in my life, I shot a round under par. Now that's a mid-handicapper. I keep on getting better and I'll tell you the thing that advanced ball striking has done.
Speaker 2:It's not that my good shots are better, because actually they're not. I could hit good shots, I just wouldn't necessarily hit them consistently. It's that because of the advanced ball striking things that it gave me an ability to teach inside of my body, my bad shots are a lot better than they were. I miss it a lot better places. I don't miss them and I know why. If I miss something, I know why I miss something. It better places I don't. I don't miss them, I don't, and I know why. If I miss something, I know why I miss something. It's not like it's a mystery and let's go back and look for you know the, the tip of the week to try to go get lost in that particular tip. It's like, okay, I know what happens, I know why it happens.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to doing some drills. Because here's the other thing over the course of a year and a half I mean I've got a little spreadsheet, I've been keeping track I have probably done, in terms of repetitions of these advanced ball striking drills, I don't know somewhere in the range of, I don't know, maybe getting close to 7,000, 8,000 reps, something like that, and I would start to notice every single time I keep doing the reps, I keep on finding new things in the same basics that I started with. The basics keep getting better. I could start finding things that I never would have done if I hadn't been doing reps. And this I tell there's one other crazy thing if I hadn't been doing reps. And I tell there's one other crazy thing In the year and a half that I've been doing it, the total number of range balls that I've hit baskets of range balls I'm going to guess I've probably hit less than 100.
Speaker 2:And that's in a year and like because I'm doing the drills most of the time. So then, whenever I actually get to the point of going and doing a bucket of range balls and then actually going out and playing on the course, my body knows something that it didn't have before because I've done enough repetitions without a ball. So my body's got oh, I got a second pattern that I can call on and let's try this one Very long way around. Jesse, hope that was helpful to everybody, but you know, that's the kind of nutshell gives me a little bit of my thoughts. So now let's dive into a little more and see where we want to take this.
Speaker 1:Well, I just by the way, that's a great explanation, john. I couldn't have thought of it better than better myself. You mentioned about there's something internally being built. Yes, so you know, I'm going to clarify that and comment on that. Let's talk about the drills themselves.
Speaker 1:I can go back when I started working with Bradley in March of 2020, to where I'm at today, and I went out and played golf today. I hadn't really been, uh, basically my season's over, but I'm going to start working on another set of drills and that's for a little bit later in the conversation. But I don't hit golf balls and I was able to go out today. I hadn't really touched a club in a week and I was able to go out and hit some good shots and keep myself in the ballgame. But I know intuitively now, after doing repetition upon repetition of these drills, where the internal pressures have been built, where they continue to be built and what the manifestation of those internal pressures are on the golf club and how I feel it kinesthetically. And I think that what you just said and what I added on to it is a common thread in the advanced ball striking community. For those students who have been at it for a while. We're coming up with the same things. They just might have different manifestations, but I find it interesting that by doing the drills and doing this methodology, we don't necessarily have to bang on John's line or Bradley's line, john Erickson or Bradley Hughes trying to figure out hey pro, hey John, I'm going to send you a video. What am I doing wrong? It's because of going through the drills, we're awakening our inner coach, our inner teacher. We have an intuitive and a deep kinesthetic sense of what's happening, and I don't really know of any other methodology that teaches that way from the inside out, with the explanations that have I've resonated, with all the explanations.
Speaker 1:Um, you mentioned something other we could talk about too, about community. If anybody who's listening can go to advancedball strikingcom all one word, and you are going to find threads that date back to 2011, 2010, when, john, earlier than that, even earlier than that, 2008. I mean hundreds of 1000s of bits of information that you can take and definitely identify with, many multiple or even just one. You know the methodology and the community are primarily built around drills, and we're going to start. We'll talk about equipment too, and a how-to, particularly. You know how you're feeling that particular day. There's even options of ball positions, depending on how you feel that day, and you know what's resonating with you on the range prior to playing golf, particularly in a golf tournament. So it's a one-stop shop.
Speaker 1:And the thing that blows me away, john and I've heard it from many of the members of the community and yourself included about how this has taught you to really feel what's going on internally and how that actually makes sense of maybe what Alain Blake was trying to teach you or something that you may have heard of. You mentioned Claude Harman. Butch Harman know, oh, okay, now I understand what they're saying and and uh, my problem with modern instruction today is that there's not enough explanation of exactly what we just said. So it's it's kind of like if you're going out on the range, you're, you kind of have the sense of okay, I heard butch harman this, or I heard whoever say whatever, and you're wondering am I doing it right? I don't really feel it. And then you have to use video, and I think that there's a possibility that most people are trying to find that kinesthetic sense of oh okay, that's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let's break it down for the folks listening, because you know you were saying say, okay, that sounds great about. What are these guys really talking about? So of course, we all know we got great, we all have great technology. I mean, you know, hack motion is just incredible things you can do. The thing about it is is that, um, when, if you, if the hack motion tells you you this is the position that you're in and this is where quote the tour pro, who may or may not be using post-impact thrust, by the way, and we'll get into that is doing it and you should be doing it this way, and this is all great. I mean, it's good information. But the most important thing is understanding. Okay, if I need to kind of be in this position at this point or be following these paths, there's a you think about this. You could put your body in exactly the right position all the way through, but if you're not driving your body in the correct way to do it, I mean you might be doing it very suboptimally. You could be doing it with much slower speed, because it is a question of what does the internal body tensions, muscular forces and directions that you need to create to have the effect be those positions. It's not. Here's the position. Let's try to get my body into it. It's like what do you have to do underneath in your body? And this is what the ABS drilling methodology is about.
Speaker 2:This is what it really struck me is it starts out with a set of drills step, and it's very structured. It takes you in a series of modules eight modules, step by step, and it starts building the first step one by one, with the idea that if you don't do the first module really well, it won't matter if you're doing this, trying to do the second one, because you'll be, you won't have the strength. These modules are based upon repetition, using things like a bag and you know, just do a hitting bag. But the idea is to build up the strength in your body to be able to do the things that the positions are, because if you don't have the strength, it won't matter whether or not you're trying to get in this position. Your body can't physically perform what it is that you could be doing and yet you could easily build up to it by just being able to build upon the drill.
Speaker 2:So the drills that are part of the ABS curriculum then, step-by-step, gives you two things. It gives you a step-by-step path to build up the internal body strength and the skills to do whatever it is you try to do. That's where you add into it your knowledge of the golf swing. And the second thing is it gives you the necessary repetition so your body remembers how to do that, not on the range, but when you're out playing on the course and you don't have time to think about anything. You just got to go up there and you got a bunch of people watching you.
Speaker 2:You're like I just got to call up a feeling and go with it. And because the drills basically you've done enough repetitions you build up the strength, you have internal body feelings. You go okay, I'm going to pull up these body feelings and go with it. And now your body. You can let it free wheel because it doesn't have to go, try to figure out what to do. You've already given it the right things to do and it can focus on doing whatever the human body does magnificently to somehow get all the rest of the stuff lined up to go where you're trying to send it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so well said, John. And you know what's interesting about that is the folks that are a part of the advanced ball striking community who have done the work for many years. Everybody's golf swing is their own. You know it's not like you're seeing the same things, but if you look under the hood, yeah, you'll be able to identify the pressures and where the shaft is getting pressure coming into the hitting area and what's happening beyond.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's talk about in, in and uh for those uh to reference both mods one through three and drills one through three, with bradley's version, bradley hughes, who's also a ma, a master instructor of advanced ball striking I mean he's helping a lot of tour pros and a lot of great players out there just really get better. So they're basically the same. There's a little bit different explanation or maybe whatever. I mean it washes out at the end of the day. But so when you first join advanced ball striking and you decide, okay, I've seen enough, I've read enough, I've listened to podcasts out there about it. There's guys on tour winning. There's uh girls coming up, young ladies coming up that are bradley students that you're going to hear about. He's got guys on the champions tour. Okay, I'm ready to sign up. You sign up first. You sign up First three mods. Give us a brief rundown and then we'll talk about each one, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So mod one is basically about the wrist and the forearm rotation right down in the hitting area. So you've got a heavy bag and you basically are learning what, by the way, most of us have never learned to do, including when people start out, they absolutely have no idea that they need to have pretty good size, pretty good forearm strength and the ability to be able to basically hold a club from a cock position, from the right line, just be able to rotate it and strike into the bag. Bag doesn't lie to you very much. As soon as you hit the bag gently, you pretty much can tell whether you hit it square or whether, like, oh no, that wouldn't have worked pretty good and you're and, and, and, of course, uh, you, uh.
Speaker 2:John erickson um version is the one I I use. You know he basically explains everything. There's people that will support you. You send in a video and they'll say, yeah, that's right, we want you to kind of hit the bag this way. There's a nice set of videos that shows you how to do it, a community where you can ask tons of questions and about hey, am I doing it right?
Speaker 2:But basically the first step is it basically strengthens the forearms and you basically learn how to uncock the club from basically your right hip into the ball. And that's the foundation, because if you don't have the strength to do that, then you won't really be able to do step number two, module two which is okay, now that I kind of know how to just physically do that let's take the body tensions and let's try to strengthen the insides of your legs and your core. Let's kind of put yourself in a position where you can do more than just use your forearms, which you've built up a little bit now. So let's now add to that the body so that you can do that. You're still doing that basically from the right hip into the ball. Now, most people don't ever start that way. They're maybe well away with the driver and you're 100 miles an hour trying to figure out where to send the ball, instead of trying to help your body build a set of skills that it can say oh, I got some tools here I can use when I'm trying to strike the ball, and you do enough of these repetitions to do all of that. That you've got some strength built up.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, and most of us ABS students will say the same module three is the beautiful core of it all and these modules we will always revisit time and never forever, for the rest of our lives, because you can never get too good at these is the concept of post impact pivot thrust. Let me say that again Post impact pivot thrust. Now, what is post impact pivot thrust? The philosophy of ABS is that you want to do something known as holding shaft flex, in other words, when the club is coming through the ball, that, if you were to look at it and there's a lot of science you can do to do this the stress is actually if you could do it to the best way to do it. People like Ben Hogan, the shaft is actually bent backwards because he's still accelerating as he's coming through the ball and people say, oh well, you know, that's not the way it's supposed to work. We've seen, you know, tour pros and everybody's shaft is lean forward just a little little bit and that's just the way it works. And while that's absolutely true except the people that you would say were the premier ball striker not just the great, just really good ball strikers, which every tour pro you know is they're fantastic and they are physically hand-eye coordination or far beyond anything most of us normal people ever will be able to do. I mean, these are people that just you know. They're incredible.
Speaker 2:But the universal thing is if you can just flip that around and say post-impact pivot thrust is the idea that, rather than throwing the club at the ball, what you want to do is your entire body. Takes the things you learned in modules one and two. You keep rotating your body past the ball, so the club is continuing to trail behind. Nina, could you help out with my little dog, tosha there? Thank you. And the post-impact pivot thrust keeps the club behind the body. It keeps the shaft bent back to the greatest extent that you can. And you learn to do.
Speaker 2:Something that almost nobody, in my opinion, focuses on, like we do in core, is to turn the entire body and the core of the body and the arms and the hips in such a way that you're continuing to rotate. Your fastest point of rotation for the body is actually when it's pointed uh, at a point at least 45 degrees, if not further, past the ball, because the club is behind you. So post-impact pivot thrust is something that you can do, and I'm going to read something here that is on the website. This is like something John Erickson I quote the golf swing is a lot of if this, then that and this is what makes golf so difficult to analyze if you're just really trying to do it from a position standpoint or purely observational standpoint. So if you start the downswing with the body in the proper way, then you don't have to throw away your rotation early. If you hold back your torso rotation, as we teach in the models, you can save it for later when you want to rotate your body past the ball so you can strike it with that incredible authority and compression that we're after.
Speaker 2:You can do this, basically with the concept of post-impact pivot thrust. If you have post-impact pivot thrust, you can't or you won't have to hit from the top or over-accelerate with the arms and the hands. If the bulk of your torso rotation is happening post-impact, then you have a chance to fire your hands and arms that we're doing in module one and two actively through impact. If you fire your hands actively, then you must have effective post-impact pivot thrust so that you can stay ahead of those hands. And that right there, my friends, that's the thing that happens.
Speaker 2:You stop and think about it. Think about every golfer who's not quite as good as you. You all know who we're talking about. You're kind of watching them hitting balls in the range. You're playing with them and you'll notice that you can tell that the hands trying to throw the club at the ball is what not not working very well.
Speaker 2:But the real question is what do you replace it with? What do you do instead, and how can I get there? You know so anyway. So that's the module three, and then we take all those things so we help you to kind of build the ground forces and the body strength so you can do this post-impact pivot thrust. Now it just covers the surface because there's a lot of other things to go with it, but those are the core and, at least in my experience all of us we tend to keep on revisiting Module 3.
Speaker 2:Because if you do a great Module 3, and, by the way, there's tons of videos and if you really know what to look for in the great ball strikers not just the good ones, but the great ones In today's world, the Wyndham Clarks of the world, for example you look at people like the Lee Trevino's of the world, you could see and you know what to look for, all of a sudden it starts becoming really, really apparent that people like John Rahm have tremendous post-impact pivot thrust, and that's one of the reasons they are, or were, such great ball strikers, because even on their off days they could show up, get off an airplane, you know, basically just go stand on the first tee and just smoke it. And it was not necessarily just because they were great, it was because part of their fundamentals and their technique allowed them a much easier way to be able to do that. Anyway, for what it's worth, back to you, jesse, so anyway, for what it's worth.
Speaker 1:Back to you, jesse. What a great explanation. John, thanks for that. I concur with all mods one through three and one thing that mod one draw one in Bradley's version did for me, starting from the beginning is you start into impact, so you really are training. You know there's not, I'm going to go back, I'm going to hold that thought and I'm going to go to. There isn't a lot of golf instruction that is teaching proper forearm rotation, and so we'll go back to that.
Speaker 1:So drill one, mod one is actually teaching people to come from the inside and rotate the club into the hitting area with your forearm rotation. It's another added element of speed and it ties into mod three. So mods one through three are they have to be tied in together. You can't just do mod three. It won't work that way. Correct when you're building these internal pressures and really teaching the body, you're teaching the body or you're creating new neural pathways, in proper speak. Today you are greasing new grooves and you're remyelinating new neural pathways. So, in essence, you're teaching the body how to go unconscious by introducing these movements to them. It's interesting that you mentioned we just don't hit any balls, okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's nothing wrong with hitting balls, but it's actually better if you spend more time to learn teaching your body. So your body, when it does go to hit balls, it's actually got tools to work with, as opposed to. I don't know what I'm going to do now because I got a ball in front of me.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, you're just trying to find it or figure it out or work on something you heard. It's really a we'll say a CF, and those probably can decipher what that means. I don't have to say it. It's a real CF.
Speaker 1:When you go onto a range and you don't really have just there's nothing to draw from. You don't already have a set of fundamentals to draw from. So mods one through three are indeed these fundamentals. One through three are indeed these fundamentals. The thing that John and Bradley have figured out is that the interesting thing about their analysis with figuring out the world's greatest ball strikers, because they've extrapolated what the great ball strikers did. But if you look at the difference between a Sam Snead and a Julius Burroughs and an Adam Scott today, or even a Scotty Shuffler, you would think that none of them swing the same at all. And then you start throwing Jim Furyk into the mix, sergio Garcia, nick Price, nick Faldo I can go on and on, and, on, and on, and on about all of these great players Miller, barber, alan Doyle some of these people Like how do they do that?
Speaker 1:If you understand what to look for, you can see it, and then you could, and then, and then, when you can see it, and then you see all these people doing it and you now have a blueprint to do exactly what they're doing internally. Right, that's correct. Then you have see. As soon as I understand, it gave me more motivation because my understanding was deeper. Oh okay, hey, I might not be able to do it as well as they did, but I can do it as well as I can. That's, and that's really kind of the promise of advanced ball striking here. Here are the tools, kind of the promise of advanced ball striking. Here are the tools. Go, use them and you're going to come out. However, you're going to come out, whatever you're intending to come out.
Speaker 1:I've had some great messages from folks that are members of the advanced ball striking community going I can't believe it. I've done this, I've always wanted to do this. A guy never broke 80, and he shot even par. You know just, you hear these stories over and over again and you just can't believe it. And those who apply these principles I mean, we kind of have this joke going around the community going it's 100% success rate. But the funny thing is that it's not a joke. This is the truth. So if you commit to it, the thing also too, john. I wanted to get your opinion about this and I've talked to John about this. Erickson, that is it, is it? I find it very easy to learn away from hitting a golf ball.
Speaker 2:What do you think about that? I think absolutely yes, because the focus is on teaching our body to be able to not only do a specific set of movement patterns that have been proven to be successful, but it's giving your body enough proper repetitions to develop really so that you can do it to the best of your own capability. Because that's the thing. Let's be very clear this is not a quick fix.
Speaker 2:Anybody who's here who says I'm going to, I want to buy a golf swing and going to do this and and then 10 swings, that obviously doesn't work that way in life, it doesn't work that way in golf. But if you've got a guideline with these modules for a very effective way to teach yourself your own best way to move as best as you can in the proven ways, that's going to help you hit the, hit the golf ball as well as you physically are able to do. And that may not ever be more than you know a good nine, but if you were coming from a 27 you're like, someday I'd like to just get to a single digit. It'll get you there and and but, and of course, the thing that will happen is is that, assuming you get to that nine, you'll say, oh, I'm not done, I just got to keep on going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really a thing I've theorized about it that it's probably it's got to be easier to learn, it's got to be easier to understand away from hitting a golf ball, because you know, for for me just, I would get distracted by the golf ball and then I would start becoming emotionally attached and then you know all bets are off, it's going to be, it's hard, it's going to be hard. You know, maybe some people could do it. I'm sure there's a lot of people who have done it, who have made significant and profound changes on the range yeah, let me give you the best example I can think of.
Speaker 2:So I'm doing the drills and I can know I'm. There's a lot of people who have done it, who have made significant and profound changes on the range. Yeah, let me give you the best example I can think of. So I'm doing the drills and I can know I've developed it. I know I'm doing the drills a lot better. I can feel myself being better and faster.
Speaker 2:And then I go to the range and say, okay, once a week I go to the range at least to check it out and just see how this is. And I guarantee you what happens is the first. You know, I get a little bit warm out the first five or 10, I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I've been drilling on the week and it's pretty good, I'm hitting the ball pretty good. And then here's what happens the golf ball is down there and about the 11th ball or something like that, I'm like, oh, I could feel my pattern starting to occur on that swing and that new feeling, which was so solid that I've been working on all week long. Oh, it kind of faded away a little bit. And if I go a little bit further, by the time I get into the bucket of balls a little bit further, you can feel your body is trying to correlate. Oh, okay, I'm still kind of pulling up some of the old habits, some of the new ones, and the new ones are starting to fade out. So that's the key, because what that's telling you is that your body learned how to do things really well and it lasted for about 10 or 15 or 20 swings and then, of course, it started to fade back. And see, this is the key when you're working on building in your body a certain set of motion and patterns and things like that, and you keep doing it, uh, consistently over time, all of a sudden it starts lasting an entire bucket of balls. Then all of a sudden starts lasting like longer, then starts lasting you know, a pass hole, number three on on the tee, and the next thing you know is like you get on the back. Now you're getting a little tired, it's a little hotter, it's a little cold and all of a sudden you make a swing. You go dang it. I just did that right. Where'd that come from?
Speaker 2:But the value of that came from, not from beating a bunch of balls and looking at it and trying to base it on what the ball did. It's based on your body having a correct set of motions that you can call upon so that, when you see what the ball did, you've got a set of motions in your body to say, okay, I need to fire this a little bit more, I need to pressure that a little bit more. I know I didn't quite drop it in the slot quite the way that I should have, but that becomes like something you call up, a feeling and just start doing it, as opposed to, oh, okay, I know I should do this, but I don't know how to do that right now. That's a huge difference, and so the drill basically gives you an ability to build that for yourself to whatever extent you can and want to. This is not something that one should say, oh, but am I all alone by this?
Speaker 2:Because the best way to learn how to do these things is to also use the community, interact with other people and other students and say, hey, what are you feeling? Because, just like all of us, you know it's, you can learn, learn some things by yourself, but some things are really learned best when you've got a community of people who kind of say, yeah, that was my experience, or yeah, I felt that way, or no. I've been there and you know what helped me. And so you know there's more to it than just drills and modules the community and the accumulated knowledge of what 15, some odd years of stuff, all documented on the internet. You know you buy the modules one time, you're a member for life and you have access to those modules forever. And the community that is a part of it is, you know. Whether you take advantage or not, it's up to you, but you know that kind of comes with it. It's just something to really take advantage of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's such an important thing. You know I'm going to go ahead and challenge all the instructors out there to develop a community of your students Because you know I just going on the forums I learned a lot and it really helped me when I was going through some of my times of doubt Because, you know, for me going through a process like this, still continue to go through it. But at least in the initial few months it was really valuable information for me to just say, okay, you know, so-and-so is, you know, month four, mod two and a half, maybe doing mod three, and they still they've had these successes. They're still, you know, might be struggling with this thing, but the cool thing about it is is that everybody's ascending. You know Everybody is going for their own personal North Star and that vibration really permeates through it. So it's very supportive and it's super cool.
Speaker 1:And you're going to have and, plus, john and Brad are posting on there all the time. So you have the two Jedi Masters, as I call them, uh, uh that that answer questions from the students that post all the time. So it really is uh, and you know for for two, two instructors of their caliber, for them to be on posting and answering questions. Uh, I don't know too many other instructors that do that, or if I do, please forgive me, but it's a real powerful thing.
Speaker 1:It makes it you know kind of a community, John, that I look at as we're all in this thing together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I do. I want to say this to you know where the genesis of all that came from. Check it out for yourself and just listen to John Erickson and Bradley Hughes' stories, because you know we say something. But both of those guys I mean you'll find out from their history. These guys are top-level touring professional players, top level touring professional players.
Speaker 2:And when John Erickson recounts his time on the Australian tour and he's got Sandy Vile in front of him, he's got Greg Norm going on behind him and he's hearing gunshots going off as they're hitting irons and he's like looking back and forth and going, what are these guys doing? And then he starts to say so he asked an interesting question. It's not like why does Adam Scott's swing look so perfect? It's actually that's great that Adam can look so good while he's doing it. He's like why do people who have swings like Sandy Lyle, swings like Doug Sanders, swings like Lee Trevino, swings like Jim Furyk, swings like Scotty Sheffer, with you know all the what's the? What are they doing that does? What's really important is why are they such incredibly great, consistent ball strikers? And the question that so these guys come from, that that pedigree, what it is that they basically distilled out for us is something that we can all approach in our own way. So I think that's incredibly useful, because it's not that Ben Hogan had this particular position at the backswing. It's like what was he doing through the entire sequence to the swing. Why is it that? If you've ever watched Ben Hogan swing, look at it from basically 45 degrees past the ball all the way up to the top and you'll notice that he does something very different than almost everybody in terms of where his body is in relation to the club. He's got this very interesting look where it almost looks like he's um. He's like put, pulling the club straight up to the sky, and and if you look very carefully, you'll notice that very other few people have that look. But that's perhaps had a lot to do with why his post-impact pivot thrust is arguably among the best the world has ever seen and why one of the technique reason that he could strike the ball the way that he did so.
Speaker 2:When john erickson talks about the fact that there's a lot of people out there that say, hey, you know, I'd like to swing like ben hogan did, um, these guys john erickson and bradley hughes have really given us a way to really look inside as to how to really approach them the way that I don't think anybody else really has. Why? Because they approached it not from the physicians but from a complete set of what's the internal body pressures, what's the sequences of motion, especially post-impact, what's the equipment that they use. That's another thing we get into because I, you know, I got a set of clubs that John Erickson himself built. I bought it from another ABS student who was passing them on. I couldn't believe how heavy and flat these things were. And let me tell you there's no way I can swing these things except the way that John is teaching us how to do it. And actually I found out that if I use these clubs and I swing it the way that John is asking us to do it, it's amazing how golf takes on a whole different dimension. You don't see lightweight clubs anymore. You don't see flat lies very much anymore. You don't see stiff shafts, unless you're the kind of person who's got just huge swing speed. But the thing is, I'm 65 years old, I've got stiff shafts in my Hogan 1969 blades.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's the other fun thing. A lot of these great clubs, you know vintage clubs. There's a lot of ABS. People also happen to have found out that a lot of the great vintage clubs there's a lot of ABS. People also happen to have found out that a lot of the great vintage clubs over time whether those are McGregor's from the sixties or even the fifties, the, the Hogan's from that era, the Hagan's, the Wilson staffs, you name it it's actually a lot of fun to learn to play the game the way that people we grew up you know playing the same equipment and learning what they were doing to hit the ball.
Speaker 2:And it's also fun as heck to go walk out with your other buddies who you know got their brand new you know Taylor made whatever really expensive stuff and you hand them your you know 19, 60, 69 bounce sole Hogan blades and then you ask them to try to hit it. It's a lot of fun. But that's what I play with. My gamers are some leather grip 1960. What is it? Probably 69 or 70 Hogan bounce soles that John Erickson had built and you have to swing, use your body in a different way to swing a club like that. The result is that you actually have a different and better approach to hitting a golf ball If you want to. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a lot of fun. It's what's even more fun is hitting the ball better than you possibly could have imagined. Yes, that's the real fun part and that's what we're getting to. You. All who are listening to this podcast have heard me kind of you know, sing, sing from the fences, advanced ball striking many a time. The the equipment side. This is what what really blew me away Entering into this community.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we're going to teach you how to swing the club properly from the inside out and on top of that, we're going to give you a set of instruments that is going to help you do that. In fact, the instruments that we are going to recommend are going to force you to do that, because you know you mentioned some swing thoughts earlier, or faults, excuse me, about over accelerating. You know getting the club too steep, all of the you know isms that we do. It's you're going to. You're going to have a hard time. You can't. You literally are going to be trapped by the way these golf clubs that we recommend to you are set up. You're going to be trapped and forced into making good golf swings, and that's the one thing I didn't realize.
Speaker 1:On the equipment side, john is coming into this and I have a really great friend of mine who's a longtime one of the equipment leaders for TaylorMade, george Willett, and he talked about this a lot.
Speaker 1:I remember, you know, a decade ago, prior to me getting an advanced ball strike, and he suggests he said you're going to swing the golf club. You're going to swing the golf club according to how the golf club is set up, whether you're aware of it or not. Let me repeat that again You're going to swing the golf club how the golf club is set up, whether you're aware of it or not. So when I comprehended that, I thought to myself wow, that makes a lot of sense. Duh, it's common sense. The answer to the riddle has been in front of me the whole entire time. And then you start to build into these eternal pressures. You learn how to come into the impact area, you learn how to hit the golf ball with energies directed to hitting the golf ball and beyond, directed to hitting the golf ball and beyond. And we're going to give you some clubs that are going to force you to do that.
Speaker 1:You know that blew me away. That absolutely blew me away. So I like to tell this story. So I purchased the drills from Bradley first, so I actually met Bradley first and we're pals to this day. I said so, do you want me to bend my clubs three flat? In an email and he just wrote back. You know he's Australian, he does, he doesn't. He doesn't say much, but he just says yes. That was it. So I missed the part, though, where he had mentioned in the previous email Bend the clubs three front, three flat from where they are.
Speaker 1:My clubs were two degrees upright, so I didn't get that part. So I went three flat right out of the gate. That's five degrees of difference. So the first two weeks of hitting these golf clubs, they were just, I was just yelling for right. They were going wide right every time. But, but curiously, after a couple of weeks I started to, I started to flush them, and then they started looking better like aesthetically to my eye, and I thought to myself this is, we're on to something here. This is very powerful. Okay, this is very, very powerful. And then doing drill one, drill two, drill three, while going out and playing golf with clubs that were five degrees flatter than what I was fitted for. Five degrees, that's a lot. That's a lot, I mean a degree is a make or break in most cases. So I went out and played my first golf tournament after doing about five months of very intense drill work every day.
Speaker 1:I started during COVID, so I had all the time in the world. It was great. What a perfect time. No offense, I'm not meaning any disrespect by being insensitive toward what was going on in that time in our planet, unfortunately, but I took advantage of it the best way I could by passing the time doing the drill work and what happened, combined with setting the equipment up. Specifically, what happened to me was I went out and played my first golf tournament in 10 years, a completely different golfer. I was completely different and I didn't even know it Because I wasn't going out and beating balls. During this process, I was beating the ever-loving Jesus bejesus to death of this impact bag. I went through two impact bags in those first six months Because I beat him so bad.
Speaker 1:I so, basically, what happened was I went out and I played golf in this golf tournament, where I was hitting golf shots without the left brain, analytical part of the mind that wouldn't be necessarily even be more born by spending six months banging 500 balls a day on the range.
Speaker 1:So I went into my right brain, creative slash, present moment playing in this golf tournament without any swing thoughts for the first time in my life and I didn't even realize it.
Speaker 1:So I was able to just go out and play golf and be free and just, I mean, it was really a revelation to me what unfolded just from those two days. It really really was, and that's a common theme amongst the community, those who aspire to play competitive golf that they go out and they play golf and they find that they don't really have any swing thoughts. But there's noticeable kinesthetic feelings that are happening throughout. So, for example, I've talked to a couple of members of the community that said, yeah, if I wanted to flight the ball low, I would maybe put more pressure in my feet or maybe I would feel a little bit more pressure, you know, somewhere else in their body to trigger all of the myelinated drill work that they had done. And it shows up. So it actually I've talked to John about this too but it bypasses the left brain analytical conscious, where whether and and. It goes straight from uh, we're giving a command via kinesthetics.
Speaker 2:Um, which is where it needs to be anywhere, especially under pressure a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:A percent, so it doesn't interfere with the mind body connection. It's, it's almost, it's a different communicative level. It's hard, it's hard for me to explain it. I hopefully I've done a good job of explaining it. I mean, john, you know, because you've trained those internal pressures, but it's, it's hard for the listener that hasn't trained those internal pressures to understand it, because you've literally got to get inside and do it and then you understand.
Speaker 1:But the manifestation on the golf course which, quite frankly, somewhere along the way golf in the US primarily has lost their way. We stopped playing golf, we started playing golf swing. What, 20 years ago or whatever that you know, this golf instructional boom happened, you know. And to add to that, you know, in the early days of the Hogans, of the Bobby Joneses, of the Sam Sneeds, you didn't have this technology, they had to figure it out. You didn't have this technology, they had to figure it out, they had to figure it out. But what's interesting is that the equipment back then was shorter, heavier and a hell of a lot flatter than the standard equipment now.
Speaker 1:So, going back to what we've been talking about over the last five minutes, is you're going to swing, to how your golf clubs are set up. So if you have golf clubs that are set up long, light and upright, there's going to be to how your golf clubs are set up. So if you have golf clubs that are set up long, light and upright, there's going to be consequences for that. If you have them set up our way, which is flat and my friends call my flat, like flat is you know what? I can't believe. You play clubs that are that flat and that heavy. But then you know, there I am, you know, collecting money from them yeah, and then you say oh, by the way, exactly you know it's, but you're it's.
Speaker 1:It's not a surprise that the greats that we've, that we that we've talked about, that we deify in this process, the hogans, the nelson's, the sneeds that you know, all of these great characters all the way up into the Scotty Shufflers Now they swung to how their clubs were set up. Yeah, and they figured out ways to do that. John has extrapolated those ways and put them into a very communicative, easy way to understand. And not only that, we actually have the blueprint to do it. And that still blows me away, john. I mean, it really does it still blows me away.
Speaker 2:And you know what too? It's also a lot of fun because I certainly could see where you know. You can just really study the golf swing forever, especially with today's technology. But at some point you've got to get there, try to open it up in a different direction, and part of this is exactly what ABS did for me, and part of the this is exactly what ABS did for me. What it opened up is some things because for the first time in my life, I understand oh, this is how you hit a long iron. And yes, nowadays a long iron is like a driving iron, but still it's like how? How in the heck did these people ever hit these butter knives down there? And this this is part of what ABS gave me is because I had a different set of ways of swinging a golf club and I can actually hit long irons. I mean, I don't hit them like Jack Nicklaus does, but basically I know how to hit a long iron.
Speaker 2:It blows me away that at my age I pull a three iron. A lot People are like what are you hitting? I show them three iron and people are like what are you hitting? And I show them three iron, they're like what's that? But this whole thing about kind of appreciating not only how to do it in your own golf swing but understanding the bigger picture about how does the body work, what were the great players doing in the past, what's the effect on the equipment All these things start to come, and it doesn't mean to say that your brand new set of Taylor Mades or Callaways you just bought are still absolutely perfectly fine. But if you're going to learn to teach yourself to swing a certain way, abs will teach you how to do that and you can always modify clubs or get clubs set up later on that you need to. The reason that we just have some of the older vintage clubs is because, frankly, it's a lot easier to bend older Forge Classic clubs and get them set up the way they did.
Speaker 2:And here's the other thing People say everybody wants to swing like ben hogan or pretend that they can't. But part of the issue is part of the reason that ben hogan swung the way that he did, is because he had a heavy flat clubs that were uh set up that way because that's the way that they needed to be set up for him to be swinging the way that he did. But it also goes the other way. If you try to do what ben hogan did but you're doing it with a lightweight, upright, uh, flexible, graphite shafted irons, it'll never, it'll never work. It's, it's.
Speaker 2:It'll be like a big, strong man trying to play with a very flexible, um, senior clubs and then always wondering why he can't ever, you know, uh, straighten the ball out. Because the equipment is very much interlocked with the way that you swing, which is very much interlocked with how you do it, which is also beautifully interlocked with the way that game is put together, the history of the game, all the different things that make this game great. So ABS was kind of a doorway for me into all of those things I never would have gotten into vintage clubs and my wife was just like you know, john, you don't need all those golf clubs, let me tell you.
Speaker 2:It's actually pretty fun to use the same clubs that some of these people use and be able to hit them well, and it's amazing how beautiful my favorite set goes to set. A 1958 Hogan Starburst. Fifty eight is a year older than I am and they are some of the sweetest feeling clubs you ever felt in your life. And those leather grips in the Florida, Florida heat, man, I tell you you'll never slip In a Florida afternoon. You just wear your hands, you don't need a glove.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it's really a one-stop shop for everything and it just, you know it blows me away. I mean I still laugh, you know. So, getting back to the equipment side, you know I'm using the modern equipment. I've got a set. I've got a couple sets of vintage blades too. I've got some vintage McGregors. I've got a set. I've got a couple sets of vintage blades too. I got some vintage mcgregors and I have my old apex pcs, hogan apex pcs, with the uh, with the, with the apex four shaft.
Speaker 2:that's a great shot by the way, they're great clubs I know they're I.
Speaker 1:It was so funny because I remember people used to say, oh my god, those things were so hard to hit. But once you got used to them they weren't hard to hit because they taught you to swing, swing a little bit better, a little bit more precise. But, um, you know, my, my equipment today is modern. I mean, I'm using the strixon zx7 irons they're great, by the way, um, and I've got them just set up and bent according to how I want to swing each golf club. And you know, for those who are listening for the first time, this isn't something that's unusual amongst the community, because, what I'm going to say, because we're hitting these clubs better, we're just hitting them better the way that we have them set up.
Speaker 1:So my clubs are, my forearms one degree flat. Okay, so I'm 6'2, with alligator arms I mean not alligator longs, I've got like super long arms. So I'm 6'2 and I play standard length. My forearm is one degree flat. My five and six irons are two degrees flat. My seven, eight, nine wedge are four degree flat. My five and six irons are two degrees flat. My seven, eight, nine wedge four degrees flat. Gap wedge three, sand wedge two, l wedge one. So you know when I say that and I have been progressive light, from light to heavy, so but what's it? But what's interesting is my hands. It's I guess I'm gonna try to explain it my hands are telling me what feels good because I've trained them doing the drills. So it's almost like my neuroreceptors of my hands are lighting up a little bit more.
Speaker 1:And here we go back to this non-conscious communication that's prevalent in the community. But what's interesting is when I look back and research some of how the other people had their equipment. They're fairly similar where the long errands were a little bit lighter, a little bit more upright, due to shaft droop and and however you, you know, basically assuming that you're using a steel shaft, but then they would progressively get flatter and then, and then of course you want to know, you want to favor a, a, a miss. So you know we don't. If you're a right-handed golfer, there's a lot of trouble on the left. Most greens today are sloped from back to front. Most, not all, but most are for back to front, basically for drainage purposes. But if you're using a club that's longer and lighter and a little bit more upright, good chance that you're going to miss it left, and that's where the trouble is. So effectively we set our clubs up flatter, not only to come into the entry a little bit more shallow, but also to eliminate one side of the golf course or at least minimize the damage.
Speaker 1:And that's something that hasn't really been talked about a lot in modern instruction. I haven't really found that. You know the equipment guys, I know talk about it, but that's one thing that was really awakened me joining this community Like whoa, okay, so everything is absolutely married together. So you're really demystifying and seeing through the modern rhetoric of oh, you know, hit this further or you can hit this further, I heard one equipment manufacturer representative say on a fitting day at my club saying well, you want to maximize your swing speed, so you want to hit as light a club as you can handle.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking to myself man, I am so glad that I am educated and I can see through this BS, because if I wasn't educated via advanced ball striking, I may have believed him and go oh okay, well, that makes sense. You know that makes sense. Well, I can swing a wiffle ball bat pretty quickly. Maybe that would translate on the golf course. Who doesn't want to hit it further. You know, golf course, who doesn't want to hit it further, who you know really who doesn't want to hit further. But that's what's being perpetuated now and, thankfully, because of the education piece within the community, you start to see through it and you know, I'm not not saying, john, and I'm sure that you would agree with this I'm not saying that we have the, the, the keys, in all of the answers.
Speaker 2:Of course, we're just really bringing out something that's really beautiful and it underpins and unifies a lot of things, regardless of the teacher and methodology of your choice, they're already on. This just makes it better. You know, that was actually one of my other and that's a valid point, you know. So, lynn blake, of course, uh, one of the uh, you know his nickname is yoda is one of the the best, uh, uh, the golfing machine.
Speaker 2:Uh, knowledgeable instructors on the planet and probably one of the best that ever will live, uh, but but I always, uh, I thought to I'm starting to down this path, what's this going to do to my studies? And all of a sudden, I started to realize that ABS opened up for me a whole set of additional tools to achieve the positions and the things that Lynn was coaching me to do. But these are ways to achieve them that had never even been brought up. I mean to give you a specific the golfing machine talks about you want to hold lag. You want to hold lag pressure on pressure point number three, which is your little finger, which your right-handed golfer is. It's coming through this way. You want to feel pressure all the way through, all the way through past the ball.
Speaker 2:And then, and of course those of you who know the golfing machine, homer Kelly would say well, mr Kelly, how do you achieve that? And he says I don't care, do whatever you need to do to achieve that. That's where he left it and that's where most golf instruction they say okay, you want to do this, but what you're kind of, what ABS to me gives you, is a very powerful set of unifying things underneath it. So, whatever is the methodology of your choice, you can strengthen it. You have additional tools to achieve that and you'll start to find, honestly, that I think that your instructors were right all along. But you have a new set of tools to be able to achieve those particular things and you don't have to, you know, leave the community in or the tribe that you're in or anything like that. What you basically got is a whole additional set of tools and the proof is in the pudding is that when you start missing the ball uh, straighter than you ever have in your life uh, then that then you know something is really going going good, your good shots will stay as good as they are, but when you start missing the ball very consistently in safe places, you're like something different is going on.
Speaker 2:And then it leaks into other parts of your game because you say, oh well, if I got some of these body tensions and pressures, I do this. Well, how would this translate into my short games? I mean, my pitching becomes a little bit better body rotationally. Do I have better kinesthetic sense of what's going on? Yes, because stop and think about it. No-transcript. So this starts to provide a bridge, because it does give you the ability to start to build requisite strengths and kinesthetic senses. That only comes through repetition, only comes through you.
Speaker 2:Having invested the time where your body senses start to turn on, you say, oh well, that means, if they're asking me to do this, that would mean that I need to be implementing these kinds of things in my body to achieve that. And all of a sudden you start to create what great players do. You just. You know, great teachers will tell a player to do something different and they'll just do it. Well, we're not like that. But it gives us the ability to approach our own version of it, because the drilling is step-by-step. Keep doing repetitions and all of a sudden you go oh, I'm better today than I was yesterday, I'm better than I was last, last week. I'm at the range and I'm holding these fundamentals longer than I used to. And all of a sudden, a year and a half or two years down the road, and you, you, you turn around and you're like what just happened to my scorecard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's so fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's cool. It's like the coolest thing ever, because there's so many people within the ABS community and I'm also including Brad and Bradley students and I've had a few of them on the pod and they're all saying the same things they wanted to get to, they had an idea of a level that they wanted to get to and they never could get there until they found the methodology. And then they got there and when they did, it was really transformative, like super. It's just. It's really hard to put some of these principles into words. Until you actually start to go through the process and you know those who are listening, who are in a process, who have gone through a process you don't know that it's a it's. It's a very consistent thing. It's like anything else. It's if you want to get your body strong and healthy, you go to the gym and you can't just go once every now and again To really see the changes. You have to give yourself consistency.
Speaker 2:You know, I really love what you said earlier in the conversation, john, about doing these same repetitions over and over and over again, sometimes months, even years, and you're discovering something new All the time, and that's the part that blows me away because I couldn't agree with you more Right, because you built up a foundation on the previous and all of a sudden your body can recognize something new because it has the previous foundation upon which to base it, and it could never have felt that previously because it didn't have the foundation to have gotten there.
Speaker 1:Right, right so yeah that just blows me away. Um, john, I gotta tell you, uh, you and I could talk all night, yeah, and what we can. We could definitely do it again. But uh, you know, I I'm gonna encourage everybody who listens to this to go on to advancedballstrikingcom, because you're going to read guys like john his story yeah, I mean your story. You're john right forum.
Speaker 1:I think it's forumadvancedballstrikingcom, to be be clear completely open lots of, lots of stuff, just just go on there, like I tell my friends, just go poke check it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just see for yourself maybe it's for you, maybe it's not exactly just go and check it out, um, because there may be some answers. I found a lot of answers on those forums to questions I've always had. Yeah, which just you know I've, I've gone, I've gone on my forum just deep dive, just a bunch, a bunch, and there's a lot of the check out the be better golf, be better golf Did a nice set last summer or so on John Erickson.
Speaker 2:That's really good. Go out and just check those out and you know, see John Erickson for yourself. Who's who's the person, get to know him and you can see Bradley I happen to have just John is the one that I've had the interaction with but get to know the individual. Like all of these messages, there's the words, there's the message, but then there's also the individual that it comes from. And when you know the individual and you feel the honesty, the humility and also the intensely humble, insightful genius that how did he come up with these things? Right, and like all things, like Einstein said, I mean, if you want to really understand something really well and explain it to something else, you have really understand something really well and explain it something else. You have to know it really well to make it appear simple. Yeah, and it it is simple, with many, many layers underneath it and it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:So check it out, yep I agree, john, I can't thank you enough for coming on. I can talk advanced ball striking all day, um, and, and and I hope that this reaches um somebody out there, and it because it's going to change your golfing life, that's for sure yeah, hey, by the way, you know, when you go on a forumlessons uh I think on a forumadvancedballstrikingcom, you can join for free and become a member uh, I mean for free.
Speaker 2:That just gives you the ability to just reply to posts and message other members and things like that, and use that as a vehicle. If you think that sounds right, you can find me there. I mean John Singh, that's my name, and you'll find me there and you'll see what my golf swing. Look at my golf swing and you say I don't want to do what that guy's doing. That's okay, fine, but if you do see something that you like message us, just reach out and say private message hey you know, I got a question about this and I'd be happy to do things like that Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, Thanks for listening everyone, and John, thanks for coming on. You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Jesse Cheers.