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
Tempo: The Forgotten Key to Better Golf
John Novosel from Tour Tempo joins us to discuss how discovering the consistent 3-to-1 tempo ratio in professional golf swings revolutionized understanding of what makes great players successful. He explains how this measurable, quantifiable element can be easily adopted by amateur golfers to drastically improve their game without complex swing changes.
• Tour Tempo methodology identifies the precise timing ratios (frames of video) found in professional golf swings
• The 3-to-1 ratio (backswing to downswing) appears consistently among top players like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy
• "Low and slow" backswing is actually counterproductive compared to the faster tempos pros use
• Proper tempo helps eliminate swing thoughts and gets golfers out of their analytical left brain into their athletic right brain
• The concept of one-to-one ratio from backswing to finish creates natural rhythm throughout the entire swing
• Tempo training improves ground reaction forces and connection to the ground
• Using resistance (through tools like the Speedball) helps develop proper bracing at impact for maximum energy transfer
• For aging golfers, maintaining swing speed requires proper tempo, mobility work, and strategic strength training
• Tour Tempo app provides audible tones to guide your swing tempo in real time
Check out Tour Tempo at tourtempo.com or on Instagram at @tourtempo. Download the Tour Tempo Total Game app or the free Tour Tempo Frame Counter app to discover your current tempo and start making improvements immediately.
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another great conversation that Justin Tang and I. Justin, one of the great instructors in the Orient, who is based at the Tanimere Golf Club in Singapore, and our guest this week is a man by the name of John Novosel. John is the owner of the Tour Tempo methodology. It was started by his father a few years ago and the methodology is based on finding quantifiable tempos within the world's best golf swings, and then we can actually apply this methodology and technology to our own motions. So I liken it to a metrodome. It's like a metrodome for our golf swings and it's something that is not talked about as far as in mainstream golf instruction and improvement, that there are actually consistencies from the world's best, that we can actually find ourselves and figure out what, what beats, that our golf swing can resonate with and that we can work on.
Speaker 1:I myself, I do have the Tour Tempo app. I have gone out and experimented with it and it's phenomenal. It really gets you to allow your body a little bit more fluidity and less angst as far as your left brain. Going in there and working on it and controlling it, I have found a lot of surprising discoveries while using the tones, and that is my connection to the ground improved. My connection to the ground improved, stability in my lower body improved, the depth of my backswing improved all with just following these tones. So John really explains it in the main body of this conversation and I certainly do not want to impede with this long-winded intro. You can find John at wwwtourtempocom and he frequently posts on Instagram and his Instagram handle is at tourtempo, and enjoy this conversation because it's really enlightening.
Speaker 1:And enjoy this conversation because it's really enlightening and I just enjoyed the same way that you, the listener, would, with eyes wide open and ears wide open and the information is sound and it's very interesting and extremely intriguing and something that, for those of us who listen to this podcast, that are the better player that you may want to consider as a tool in your tool belt, a resource that can absolutely get you out of your head and more in your body mind, so to speak, so in your right brain, and I found that to be the case for me and other people that I know that have used Tour Tempo, used the app and have used the tones not only in your long game but also in your short game and putting as well, works very, very well with your wedges, with your short game and with putting. So, without further ado, thanks again for listening. Please rate, review and subscribe, and I will make sure to have all of the connecting information in the show notes. And have a great week, everyone cheers. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1:This is Jesse Perryman of the Flag Hunters Podcast, along with my partner, my brother from another mother lead one of the master instructors in all of Asia out of the Tanimera Golf Club. His name is Justin Tang, and our guest today is somebody I've been a fan of for a long time. I've been familiar with his work. His name is John Novosel from Tour Tempo. John, thanks, pal for coming on, justin, always.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on. Thanks Jesse, thanks John. Such a pleasure to have a guy of your experience come on to share with our listener base what you and your dad have discovered. Can we have a quick, really brief intro on how you and your dad discovered Tour Tempo?
Speaker 3:Sure thing, thanks for having me on. I think the long and short of the discovery of Tour Tempo is that my dad never set out to figure this out, he just happened to stumble upon it. We were doing an infomercial. For those of you under the age of 40, you may not know what that is, but that was for the Golf Channel infomercial. For those of you under the age of 40, you may not know what that is, but that was for the Golf Channel and we were looking at video and we happened to notice Jan Stevenson's swing. She's a former US Open champion and she took it back in about nine-tenths of a second, but we happened to notice it was 27 frames and then she came down on her downswing in nine frames. So she had this thing that we kind of looked at was 27.9.
Speaker 3:We didn't think that was any big deal because the current paradigm from tempo was uh, hey, everyone's got their own tempo, you should swing how you're supposed to swing and it's all based on you. And then we saw that tiger's tempo and the 97 masters, when he won by like 50 shots, was 27 in the backswing and nine on the downswing. And all of a sudden we thought, uh-oh or hello, something's going on here and we started looking and it wasn't just the 27-9, which is the three to one ratio, it was also. We were seeing guys like Nick Price or even Ernie Els. At the time was 24-8. And so we were seeing these faster swings and this three to one ratio and all of a sudden tempo. Wasn't this weird thing? It was that was hard to describe by words, like such a slow or smooth. It was now something that was tangible and you could reach out and touch it and feel it and try it, and it was faster and it was more of this ratio that was involved.
Speaker 2:So there are two things at play here, right, john? We've got tempo, which is the, I guess, overall speed, and then there is also rhythm, which is a ratio, the ratio of the time it takes for you to complete your downswing versus the backswing I like that.
Speaker 3:I would. I would put it a slightly different way and I love the. I love that you're bringing up, uh, tempo and rhythm as two different things, because they are. So here's what I've kind of come to the conclusion over all these years is tempo is elapsed, time period, final the end? That's the definition. So what I found is that you don't get to have your own tempo, you get rhythm within the tempo. That's where you see the differences Fred Couples, tiger, you name the golfer Jake Knapp, that's where you see maybe your own personal rhythm, but the tempo really remains a constant for these tour professionals of this, three to one in about a second, from takeaway to impact of this three-to-one in about a second, from takeaway to impact.
Speaker 2:Are you saying that tempo?
Speaker 3:relates to a person's individual personality. I'm actually saying the opposite. I'm saying that your personality should not necessarily correlate to your tempo. Here's the question I have for any coach out there. Let's say you've got an NBA player or a spr sprinter and they kind of walk so and talk slow. Should they on the basketball court or on the track? Should they run slow and jump slow? Nope, um, so you've got to do what the sport requires.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm getting at is you got to do what the sport requires of you, right, and golf these days is requiring more speed and power, and tempo is one way to do it. Tempo is also a way to sort of get weird of all these weird moves. If you think of a guy like macko grady we all love his swing there's not a lot of extraneous movement that makes the tempo actually go faster. So, um, tempo I look at as a time thing, rhythm. Rhythm is more of the, the signature within it, and and that that, I see, is something that may correlate to your, your personality, but the tempo itself is something that we really need to try. Let's try this to our tempo, first and foremost.
Speaker 2:So do we need to be exact in the tempo that we choose, or is it good enough to be in the ballpark in the zip code, so to speak?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is a great question and it's absolutely fine to be within the zip code. You don't need to be perfect. It's like a lot of things in golf you don't have to have a perfectly straight left arm, you don't have to have a perfectly this or that. Let's do one definition for the listeners. When I say 21.7, what I'm referring to is frames of video. There's 30 frames in one second. So 21 frames going back, that's about two thirds of a second. Seven coming down, that's about a fifth of a second somewhere in there. So if you're 22.7 or 22-7, that's fine, or it doesn't need to be perfect, just within. Let's say, you're 36-12 or 36-10. Those are almost three to one, but it's taking so much time to get to impact.
Speaker 2:I think that's the type of person that's going to see these instant results with tour tempo, because when you do, when you go faster, uh, from takeaway to impact, you'll typically pick up speed with the club as well I recall a study or an analysis that you and your dad did of some players who's who basically, uh, started leaking oil on the back nine and you took videos of them and said, hey look, tempo's off, or they came back from or they started to overhaul their swings and then you saw that the tempo was just out of sync. Could you talk about the predictive abilities of to a tempo?
Speaker 3:absolutely. Let's take a guy uh, let's tiger in his prime. Uh, you know he's mainly been 21-7. Back in the year 2000 when he was really when it was unbelievable, he was 24-8. Tiger never really veered. Once he locked into a tempo, it pretty much on all full swings that was the tempo. It never veered off. And what you'll see, with good players they can actually get almost too careful and get slow. And there's these extra frames, so to speak, and average golfers think they get too quick. Right, and they're not as consistent. But usually when an average golfer thinks they get too quick, they actually got real slow on the takeaway and then they have to get quick in transition and so that's why you see a lot of guys that put speed in early and that's why it doesn't look rushed at the top. Think of a Fred Couples or a Jake Knapp or even Rory. There's a lot of speed early so you don't have to rush at the top and that's a huge way to look at this and feel this.
Speaker 2:Hang on. So are you saying that low and slow is not a good thing on the back swing? So are you saying that low and slow is not a good thing on the back swing?
Speaker 3:I absolutely am. For most golfers, low and slow is not going to be helpful. It's going to get you thinking too much, it's going to get you a lot of tension that we don't want and it's going to get you careful. There's this illusion with low and slow that you're going to be more accurate, but again, go back to Rory. Watch the takeaway. He's the best driver in the game. It's nothing in his swing is slow, it's moving, it's rhythmical, it's going. He fits the pattern perfectly. The other unbelievable example just watch it on TV now Ludwig Oberg. He gets up there and just rips it back, rips it through, and he hits it incredible. So I think low and slow is an illusion, and what you've got to do, though, is find the right tempo for you, and that's why, in the Tour Tempo universe and the Tour Tempo app, we've got five different tempos to choose from. That really will help you pick the right one for you.
Speaker 2:I suppose it's like throwing a ball right If you're throwing it to first base, your back swing need not be as fast as if you were throwing to second base, which is a bit further. Would that be a good analogy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean think about the requirement of the action right. The more speed and power, the further you need to throw an object or hit it, you're going to see more speed in the tempo of the of the entire thing as well. So, yeah, that's a good analogy and that's why you'll see, with the short game and let's say maybe 100 yards, and in it's a slightly different tempo, it's more two to one than three to one so it's it.
Speaker 2:We should not be telling usain bolt not to run so fast because he might veer off the lane. Just doesn't make sense. So would you say that 12 tempo is a low-hanging fruit and could just be the one thing that helps our listeners change five other things in their swing?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yes. The reason it's so low-hanging is that you can take a quality of the greatest players of all time and the greatest players currently, such as Rory, tiger, ludwig, all these guys. You can take that quality. They have their tempo and you can try it and go and do it and use it and feel it. Right now you can get the Tour Tempo app, go to the driving range, start trying this. You know what you can't have. You can't have Rory's body or Jake Knapp's body or any of these guys' bodies or their physical attributes or their speed and those types of things or their quick hips, so those things are so hard to take from a Tour Pro.
Speaker 3:But you can take that tempo. Go work on it right now. Find the one that's right for you, try it and it is very low-hanging fruit. Now will it cure five different things mechanically sometimes yes, sometimes all these weird things are doing it'll cure, sometimes it won't. So the one thing it will cure you on is thinking during the shot, because that is gone, because there's no time to think while you're listening to these tones.
Speaker 2:Why would I want Rory's body? I want John Daly's body man.
Speaker 3:You can't have John Daly's body either. Nobody's getting that body. But guess what? He's always been toward tempo, even with that long swing. He's 24-8, and he's got that long swing and I love you bringing that up. But who's going to have all that leverage in his swing? You're probably not. But you can try that tempo and see how it works for you. How about Bubba Watson? I guess it would be the same. He actually is also 24-8.
Speaker 3:The guys on tour with those longer swings it takes longer to do it. The long drive guys with the long swings actually still do it super fast, so they go longer and less time. And that's one of my keys when I'm working with my students. It's an absolute, guaranteed, 100% ironclad deal I make with people. If I get you more load in the backswing and we do it in less time, you're going to increase blood bed speed period. Final the end. Now, it's not the easiest thing to do but it can be done, like lifting the left heel, those types of things. But you're absolutely going to gain speed with a longer, faster backswing, for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, this might be a bit more advanced. So, instead of using a 1-to-3 ratio, how about if you use a 1-to-2 ratio or a 1-to-4 ratio during training? How does that affect your baseline tempo and your club head speed?
Speaker 3:that is an interesting question. I've never really, uh, done a great experiment with it. I do know that when you go from the two to one tones of the short game and then you go to three to one, immediately feels a lot faster on the downswing Because, let's say, you're using the 2010 tones for your short game and then you go to 21.7. So about the same length or the same time in the backswing, it's 30% faster on the downswing. So you definitely feel that big difference. I've never really done the four to one. I will tell you that sometimes I'll go to, let's say, 21 seven. After I've been doing it. I've done it for a long time now. It's feeling kind of normal. If you will, sometimes I'll use 24 eight.
Speaker 2:Then when I go to 21 seven, it makes it feel super fast and okay, could you talk a little bit about the difference in tempo for the long game and the short game?
Speaker 3:sure, sure thing, and I think it might be helpful for everybody out there just to hear some of these, what I'm talking about from the app. So this is going to be what I'm going to play for you that from the app, the 21-7 tones, and this is currently like rory mcroy, rory mcroy, levig oberg tiger in his heyday. So this is three tones one to start your swing, one for the top of the swing and one for impact. It sounds like this um, um phone, start off impact. So that's how quick that is and, like I said earlier, you don't have time for a lot of thinking because you're doing that, because you've got to respond to those. Now I'm going to play the same amount of backswing, but the short game, 2-1. Bump, bump, bump. Start top impact. So way more time on that downswing.
Speaker 2:I much prefer the first edition you got a guy that goes 21, 7. It was like listening to a soundtrack, yeah, and I think, if I recall it used to run for like two to three minutes so you could get through like five, six balls, like quite absolutely yep and it. What I felt, uh it did for me back then, was it made the swing very much reactive. You were reacting to some things, almost like playing soccer or basketball, where you react to a stimulus and you're right, you can't think about anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's no thinking there. I love what you're saying getting reactive. So, as soon as you play these tones, all of a sudden we're accessing a different part of your brain than that, Because think of most golfers they're typically going to be very left brain. They've watched a ton of YouTube videos, read a ton of stuff. That's not the brain that you actually play golf with. Right, the brain that you play sports with is that reactive and I'm going to call it the right brain. If you will, we call it the right brain. If you will, we call it the subconscious self-two, whatever you want to call it. But you're right, we need to be more reactive. Well, as soon as you do these tones, you've got to get into a reactive state because you've got to respond now to the tones as they're playing, and that's a huge thing for golfers, because the ball is not going to move and you need to figure out how can I make this reactive?
Speaker 2:And it's one way to do it is with Stuart Tempo. Before we go to the next segment, can you share a little bit about some of the dramatic changes you have seen with your students using Stuart Tempo?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. One that comes to mind is a young man. I've just been working with His name's Gunnar. He's here in Lawrence, kansas and he was in the low to mid 160s. I usually look at ball speed because it's a very objective number and his tempo was about in the 30-10 range. We recently got him more 24-8. He's now touching 180 and cruising at about 174.
Speaker 3:And so we did a few other things with the swing as well. We lengthened it a little bit and things like that. But the tempo it was just amazing to see that that the tempo and putting some energy into the backswing, that puts energy into the system. One of the guys from the original book, his tempo was 44.11. So we'd almost taken two full seconds to swing from takeaway to impact and he started hitting his irons. You know he got I think we got him even to 27, 9, 24, 8, but he started hitting 20 to 30 yards further with his irons and I'll never forget the voice message he left my dad and I, which was hey, I can't score because I'm air mailing greens now by. You know, 20 to 30 yards, which is a good problem to have less world problems yeah, but yeah, exactly, that's a big time first world problem, um.
Speaker 3:But when I get a student or see someone with that slow backswing um, and they look like a person, that's, they got any athleticism, any athleticism at all, I get excited. I start looking my chops because I know when we get them to 24, 8 or 21, 7, we're going to start to see those results come right away.
Speaker 2:So if you have a long swing or your swing doesn't change in length but your timing goes down, then something else would have changed you would have increased the force and the acceleration profile of your swing.
Speaker 3:This guy's smart, this guy's on, it 's on it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's exactly right. So, yeah, I read your books, man. Well, think about this. You can, you can. There's two things. You can get a touch in the ground kind of effect in the golf swing. You can affect the grip and you can affect the ground right other, and you've got your body to do it. But those are the main things, two things you affect. So if you just said, where am I going to put in more force? Well, to go faster, you're probably going to put more force in the ground. You're also going to put more force in the grip, and that adds to this thing that they're now calling impulse, and this impulse is sort of the total amount of energy in the system. Well, guess what? Increasing your tempo or swinging in less time, that increases the impulse. And so when we increase these forces, good things happen. Now here's what I've found. Just like everything in life, there's a Goldilocks sweet spot for this stuff. So for me, when I originally got started with my dad, I was 27.9. I got to 21.7, saw these big increases, but as I go to 18.6, I don't gain and, as a matter of fact, my sequence gets a little off, bryson DeChambeau when he goes to 18.6, it's incredible, right? So you've got to find the Goldilocks, that bell curve of like what's the golden tempo for you within these tempos. Typically for most people it's somewhere between, you know, 21.7, 24.8, somewhere in there. But you've got to find it for you because some people can get to 18.6.
Speaker 2:Others that started really slow they're going to be more in that 27.9 range. Would it be right to think of 18.6? As the province of unicorns and you need capacity to actually function at that range.
Speaker 3:I like that. I also call it Ricky Fowler on Red Bull. You know, 18.6 is Henrik Stinson, it's Bryson, but it is a little bit unicorn-ish and occasionally, believe it or not, I actually had a student. We had to slow him down, which rarely you find. But I think the big thing you see is with all these is if I put energy in early, then I'm not rushed at the top, and that's the big game changer, sequence wise for these golfers when they're working on tempo.
Speaker 2:What is Nick Price's tempo? Out of curiosity.
Speaker 3:He was one of the fastest guys back in the day at 21.7. But now there's so many guys that swing that fast. One of the new fastest guys that I don't know if you think of it or not, but when you watch it you see it is Wyndham Clark. Wyndham Clark's swing is so fast and he's got incredible speeds. But yeah, nick Price was one of the early guys with a really fast 21-7 tempo.
Speaker 2:So we had Tour Tempo 1. We had Tour Tempo 2. Can you talk about Tour Tempo 4? We had Tour Tempo 2. Can you talk about Tour Tempo Force?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure, for sure. What led to Tour Tempo Force was conversations that I had with a physicist from Yale. He's now doing some private stuff. When you talk about smartest guy in the room, this guy is the smartest guy in the room. His name is Dr Robert Grober, and what I had been looking? Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Robert Grober and what I had been looking at.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, robert Grober. Yeah, if you do a search for Robert Grober tempo for the listeners out there you'll find one of those white papers. It's called towards a biomechanical understanding of tempo in the golf swing, and he and another guy, yasek Kulowicki, they basically backed up all the data that my dad and I had. Uh, and they did it and they showed in a lot with the laws of physics how this all worked and everything. It's pretty wild. But what grover said was if you wind a spring up okay, let's call it a harmonic oscillator, which is spring, and then you unwind it with twice the force, guess what that tempo will be?
Speaker 2:three, to one. That's right. Yeah, like I said, smart guy, so it's a Three to one.
Speaker 3:That's right, like I said, smart guy. So it's a three to one ratio. Now what I found was this, and I'm going to give you a little bit of a long story here and I'll make it as succinct as I can so we have something called the Tour Tempo Frame Counter and on your phone you can get that app. It's free and you can go in and count your frames and see what tempo you are.
Speaker 3:So I was looking at Roy McIlroy's swing and I noticed he took 22 frames to the top. And then I hit the play button and I didn't hit the. I forgot to get him at impact and went all the way to the finish. So his backswing was 22. Tell me and when I hit the impact button at his finish the wrong spot tell me what that number was. I'm just throwing this at you. I know you don't, you know you may or may not know this, but 22 back, how long was it? From the top of the backswing all the way to the finish. It's serenade in the face. I've only given you one number eight frames. No, it's 22.
Speaker 2:So so, okay, okay, the entire sequence, the entire sequence. Yeah, so he was 22-7 to impact.
Speaker 3:But he was 22 back to the top of the swing and then another 22 from the top of the swing to the full finish. So that's one-to-one. That's a one-to-one ratio. So guess what? I started looking at all the tour pros and every tour pro I looked at within a frame or two was a one-to-one ratio. And the tour pros and every tour pro I looked at within a frame or two was a one-to-one ratio. And so I called Grover and asked him like what is this? What's going on here? And he like laughed at me like I had just tried to explain some basic physics to him. But basically what he told me was if you take a pendulum and you swing it, and it's a long amplitude, and then you take one and swing it, it's a short one, guess what? Those will be the same amount of elapsed time. Okay. So a pendulum, that's right. So a pendulum has something called isochronism, means same time, okay. So what he said was is this back from takeaway to the top of your swing, that's one pendulum. And from the top of your swing all the way through to the finish, that's another pendulum. That. And from the top of your swing all the way through to the finish. That's another pendulum. That's why they're equal. So when you look at these guys on tour, the guys that look the most rhythmical, the most smooth, all those things, they've got the one-to-one ratio and, by the way, when you do the one-to-one on a full swing, it's going to be three to one to impact.
Speaker 3:So that's what the tour tempo force book is exploring that concept, and I've got drills in there and ideas of how to exploit that, especially for the short game. Because now with the short game, it's basically a pendulum motion. Pendulums are driven by gravity. Gravity never changes. So what you want to feel in your short game is sort of this even amount of energy into the backswing and the follow through. Too many people are trying to accelerate with the short game and unless the shot is super special, crazy, you don't need acceleration, you just need this. Even you don't want to decel either. You want to be more of a pendulum. So that's what the force is about and it's a. It's a really cool exploration in moving the two books along and also talking about how can I use this principle to hit the ball farther as well.
Speaker 2:I remember the two drills in Tour Tempo Force, one for the short game and one for the long game, and it went something like this you set up with the shaft parallel on the backswing, or what we call in more apt terms p2, and then make, make a pitch or a wedge swing and then for the long game, you kind of want to set up on at p8 with the shaft parallel just post impact, swing it back and hit it through and that helps you feel the force profiles. That's exactly. Yeah, I've got amazing results with my amateur students who could not feel the appropriate force profiles for those two different segments, two different classes of swings, if you will.
Speaker 3:I love you described those perfectly and I like the Morad terms because it makes it easier to understand. But when you start to swing at P2 and then you go to the top, that's only going a few, your hands are only going a few feet right and the club's not going very far either. And so the energy that you took to do that, if you put that same amount of energy in the fall through which isn't a lot you get a feel now for, like what the short game is about. Same thing with what you said when you started at P8. Now you've got to really move the club because you've got to go a lot further in the backswing to get there, and so now you're feeling this extra energy in, and if you use the tones while you're doing it, now you've got guardrails to tell you if you did it fast enough or too quick. So those are fantastic drills that are in there and, like you said, it's a great way to feel the energy and the timing, the tempo that go with those.
Speaker 2:I guess you can kind of see it in things like Matt Wolfe he's got this little shimmy goes to impact. And then it in things like matt wolves he's got this little shimmy goes to impact, and then it's almost like he's at pn who rips it back and then just rips it through yeah, I love his swing.
Speaker 3:I love the energy to start the swing. Um, just, you know he rips it back to get it going. Um, my buddy, lee cox, over in england, calls it the excalibur drill, where you're trying to pull the sword out of the stone. Yeah, and I love that concept. That's very similar to starting that out front and I know when I was growing up there was teachers that actually had that drill. They just didn't combine it with the tempo, because when you start out front at P8, and you still have to meet your tempo requirement, you just need so much more energy. And for me and I want to hear what you felt I felt I had to grip it a little like put more energy into that grip. I need to use the ground a little bit more, otherwise I couldn't get the energy in is that similar?
Speaker 2:what you felt or what? What did you feel? Yes, definitely, and with that I want to talk a little bit about, uh, tempo and three words grf and three words GRF ground reaction forces. Can you talk a little bit about how tempo affects ground reaction forces and how we can use pluritempo to improve our GRF sequence?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think what we're just talking about really leads to it. If you think about that first drill, we talked about starting at P2, and then you have so much time to get back to the top because you've already started at a. You know, half the backswing is almost over. You're just not going to need as much ground force to do that. So anytime we can figure out a way to add this energy tempo wise, that affects ground force, you see an increase in the ground force. Energy tempo wise, that affects ground force. You see an increase in the ground force. The other thing I've done in my tour tempo master class and I'll get you, uh, some of those videos as well is I'm starting now to use the tones to the step, to some of the step drills you may have seen out there on instagram and whatnot I saw this email.
Speaker 3:That's why that's right, that's right, that's right that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:That drill has right.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. That drill has been incredible and that's one of those you know how it is for, like I bet you can probably do any drill with the ball solid right. As a coach you've been doing this a long, I know. For me it's hard to find something that's like really unique when you when you coach a lot and hit a lot. When the first time I ever did that drill and kind of came up with it, I was one of those aha moments because what I've found was it was hard to do.
Speaker 3:When you first try it, it's hard to time those tones up and hit a ball, and when I gave that to my first student they couldn't do it to save their lives. And the reason why is not only because it's not easy, but because their concept in their own timing and rhythm with the ground was way off. Everybody is way late with ground force, so they're late getting back, they're late getting through. The only thing most people can kind of get is the vertical, and typically they do it at the start of the backswing, which is wrong, or they do it after they've hit the ball, which again does you no good because the ball's long gone. So I was combining what I do in that ground force drill is I'm taking a modified stance in in moving my feet to the tones instead of the club head, and that is sort of the game changer in that drill. And and what could be very magical for people, basically the fret.
Speaker 2:A stair drill is a dance move.
Speaker 3:It is a dance move. Yes, yeah for sure. Um, and, and what I just mentioned earlier is when we look at tour tempo and this might be something that's good to lay a little landscape for everyone we're always looking at the club head. So when I say rory's 21 7, I mean the club head traveled in the backswing. He did that in 21 frames, because I've seen and I'm sure you've seen this too, uh as well, is that before a guy like rory or most golfers hit, there's other movements involved. Right, they start to press into the ground, they start to move, they start to shift, then the club goes, whereas with the average golfer, what you might see is that the club is the first thing to go and then the body reacts later. And so I'm I'm sure you've seen that, and so part of that ground force drill is can I get the, get this foot moving before the club does? Let's move to everything else but the club, and that's that's the key to sort of creating some leverage in something called a moment arm in the golf swing.
Speaker 2:I like how all these things, these concepts, work to help a player improve their golf swing, their motor movement, because, while it's internally focused, it's something so easy to do Swing faster, move your feet faster versus oh, let's have the face open close at the top, as the case may be, and I feel that because the app is embedded in your phone, you can just stick it in your pocket, have it run or through your AirPods, and it actually breeds some kind of practice consistency. Now think about this If you are working on your swing plane, and every time you want to practice your swing plane, you're going to take out the table or the gadget as the case, you probably do it once or twice and then that's the end of it.
Speaker 3:You're right, adherence is half the battle. You're only going to do things you'll. You know, I always hear this thing of like what's the best diet? Well, it's the one you'll stick to. And you just said I mean, actually, are we recording this? Because some of the stuff justin is saying here is unbelievable. But I like the way you. I like the way you word it. I'm liking the way you word it and the way you put it together. But this is great because you make a good point.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to take 10 contraptions out to the driving range or it's going to be hard for me to even like. How do you even know you're doing a drill right, so to speak? Uh, when you're on the driving range, whereas with the tour simpo you can have it in your pocket, you can be listening to airpods. There's so many different to do it. It's easy to video your swing, it's easy to count the frames. The concepts are simple.
Speaker 3:So when you go to do all this, once you get over the hump of starting on that tone, that's the only little hump there is in the tour tempo is start, dun, dun, start, you know. But once you get over that, it's a great way to practice. And, by the way way, a lot of golfers when they go to the range they're brain dead. Out there they're, they hit a ball, break, another one hit it and with tour tempo you now have got to focus sort of on okay, I've got to be aware of what's going on here to do these tones can you talk a little bit about what is the 12-tempo masterclass package?
Speaker 3:Sure thing, yeah. So what it is is we have more songs out there that we wanted to make available for people, and then also I would do a lesson with a student and then I would come up with a certain drill and that was part of that ground force drill. So it was extra drills, extra time I could spend. The videos are very long, they're very in detail and different things you can do with the tones, using them in different ways, like I said, with the ground and that type of thing. So it just takes the Tour Tempo app to a whole nother level and it does also give you extra songs and what we call tracks.
Speaker 3:So sometimes people after they listen to the bum, bum, bum you know they've heard that a million times but now we've got these songs out there that you can actually listen to in the car or whatever, that they're easily listening. And the other big thing I do in the Tour of Tempo Masterclass is I allow you to send me your swing, I will do a tempo analysis and I will. So I'll tell you your tempo and I'll tell you what tempo might work best for you. And then I will also say, hey, these three drills might be the best drills for you, and then the other bonus we put in, there is something I call the recode.
Speaker 2:So and Kelvin Miyahira was a mentor of mine, I think- you know Kelvin right, kelvin was a mentor of mine as well. Yes, I spent like five years with him.
Speaker 3:That's incredible, and Kelvin is an incredible man. And one of the things I really got from Kelvin was you have to light up muscles. You can't just think things you have to like how can I light this muscle up? So I came up with this concept called the recode, and I was using bands and medicine balls and this and that to fire muscles that I want to have fire and then use reciprocal inhibition to relax the muscles I want to relax.
Speaker 3:And so what I found is if I've got a student that can't turn or get their arms in the air, I think typically right then, and there we can get you some more range of motion. But we need to recode it by firing some muscles. We can't, I can't just move you there. I've got to take a band, make you resist against it, pull the resistance away, and now you've got more movement. So we also put recode drills within that masterclass as well. So so that, hey, maybe your tempo, we're getting a tempo dialed in, we're getting the ground force dialed in, let's get a little more range of motion so you can have more power.
Speaker 2:Put that in there as well besides, uh, electronic products, you have physical trading products as well. Can you talk a little bit about that for sure? Yeah, good, you have something called the poppet that helps you make a faster, the light popper.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so a lot, yeah, a lot. You know I mentioned my dad had passed away and he was really helpful on the product. So a lot of those products we are retooling to get back in stocks. You won't find those on the Internet available yet. The two big ones are the speedball, and that's going to be available soon. That's the product where you swing into the Velcro.
Speaker 3:I'm a real big believer, like I said, in firing muscles up, like I mentioned, and that gives you resistance at impact, it's safe on the body and it teaches you hey, I've got to overcome this at impact.
Speaker 3:And then the other product that I'm selling right now on the Tour Tempo website is called the Dragonfly and that product is again getting resistance right.
Speaker 3:And basically I basically took a towel and wrapped it on a whippy club, but my version is a lot better and I've got weight in the handle, which was one of Kelvin's ideas that I stole from him, which was one of Kelvin's ideas that I stole from him. But when you have this resistance at the end of the shaft and then you tell your brain, hey, I want to well, I call it torque the shaft, but you want to bend that shaft, you're going to start to put a lot more force into it. And then the other thing I saw with a lot of these golfers especially when they compared Rory is that from the top of the swing you've got to get going. Once the gears have connected the, everything's got to go, and so some of the drills with the dragonfly are getting the the getting it to bend as well. So we're using this resistance to increase the energy, and that's what the dragonfly does you talk about the speedball.
Speaker 2:Have you worked with a character by the name of ben jackson?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, yes, for sure, the character is the right word there. Uh, ben's an amazing guy, um, and he, he loved the speedball from day one because he saw it as a way to get resistance. Take away the golf ball so you'd free the golfer up and let the golfer really uh, get after it with no bad results, because you can't miss this thing. So the speedball is it's about the target. He hits about the size of a woman's purse made of Velcro, and then you have a golf club with a Velcro ball on the end that you swing into. And when you learn to swing through that, that impact zone if you will and handle a collision, you learn to increase your speed.
Speaker 3:The big thing I think missing from today's paradigm of speed training is impact. You see all these people swinging lightweight, this or that. There's no impact. And there's a guy named Stuart McGill out of Canada. He's the leading spine expert in the world. He's back fit pro and Stuart, he did a lot of stuff with MMA fighters and when you throw up or when a guy would throw a punch, like the best MMA fighters in the world, when they throw a punch, the body's got a huge contraction to start the fist or the leg, then the leg sort of floats in the air and right before impact and upon impact the whole body braces and what that does is sort of gives you that bruce lee one inch punch effect, whereas you're really hitting with the whole body. When you hit my speedball, or even when you hit an impact bag, you get that bracing right. If you just do a swing as hard as you can and don't hit anything, you don't get bracing, and that's a big problem for go ahead now.
Speaker 2:So if you don't brace, you basically don't transfer the force that you created from the proximal to the distal segment. So no whip cracking for you.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. But there's one other negative. That's a huge one. Your joints now have to take the brunt of all that speed instead of the object that you're hitting. So if you ask a home run hitter, hey, what's the worst feeling in baseball is swinging a mess. I'm not sure if you've ever done any bow hunting or use a crossbow, but there's a concept called dry firing. You've ever heard of that? Yeah, you're never supposed to dry fire. For the listener out there that doesn't know what that means. You never take a bow without an arrow and shoot it, because if you do, you'll destroy the bow, and so that's kind of what you're doing in golf. When you don't hit something, you're dry firing and you're, you're, you're. All that energy goes into the bow instead of the arrow. We want the energy into the arrow. So that's a huge thing. Now it's gotta be safe. You can't just hit into a brick wall, wall, and sometimes an impact bag is hard to really get yourself to. You know, kill it, so to speak.
Speaker 2:But with like the speedball or or even hitting golf balls, you can really let it, let it go lee cox, whom I've learned a lot from, also suggests this he would take a callaway head cover because he's sponsored by callaway and beat the shit out of it with the driver. That's safe for the body so for guys who don't necessarily want to lug around a speedball because it's loud when I used to train it. I used to disturb the neighbours because they go like what the hell is that?
Speaker 2:It sounds like a gunshot. Everyone says that, yeah, yeah, would swinging maybe a six iron, seven iron in the bunker work the same way Like you try to displace a lot of sand through the air? Does that work?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, it will be somewhat similar's. It's a good little thing to do. What I would do is probably build yourself up a little little ball of sand to hit into, so to speak, um and make sure the sand there's nothing in there. That would be one thing you definitely could do. Um, the other thing is we're working on a, on a softer version of the speedball, so look for that soon. Um the other, I don't know if you ever tried this. You ever tried swinging in long grass. Yeah, that works. Yeah, that works as well. You got to make sure you know you can handle the grass, obviously. Um, just anything with a safe resistance is is going to be better than just swinging in the air. May?
Speaker 2:I suggest. May I suggest something, john, if you could make your your uh speedball, uh velcro, if you could. So you hit it here, it collapses and then it retracts back. So I don't have to keep keep picking up the, the velcro every time yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I miss that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes I miss the velcro well, it depends so what we did. You hit the boom and it comes back, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I missed the velcro. Well, it depends on what we did.
Speaker 3:It comes back, yeah yeah, yeah, I like that you had one of the original ones. They were harder to stick back then oh my god we've made it. I know we've made them easier to stick because, yeah, you have somebody hit it, it goes, flies on a roof or whatever. We've made it easier. I like that. I like that. So it'd be like almost a hinge.
Speaker 2:I like that a lot yeah, and it was great stuff, yeah, yeah I will tell you that, yeah, the the dragonfly.
Speaker 3:There's not an impact, but you really are. You almost have a. The drills that I do with it, especially the speed drills at the bottom, the whole body's bracing to get that thing going and that thing is completely quiet. So I'm going to get you one of those to try because I think I think you'll really like it and, like I said, I like impact. But anything you can do that gives me resistance, that I'm bracing, that's going to work as well.
Speaker 2:Got you. Can we talk a little bit about the Sumo bar? And I think you and Kelvin did something called the woody iron bar or something. It was a huge piece of plastic, I want to say, and then all you did was to shake it, and that's right, that's right, yeah, that was a body blade, body body blade and then the tsunami bars were the other one.
Speaker 3:I think they're called um.
Speaker 3:I think if you go to Tsunami Sports you can find those. But the idea was you mentioned the word earlier proximal to distal, and so the idea is to vibrate these bars, put energy in so that the distal segments will move, but the proximal segment stays about the same. What I found with people is they can't create and brace their own proximal, so when they go like this they're moving here. You see that with golfers and so with that movement never translates to the bar and then it never translates out to the end to get it to vibrate. But what I found was and I still use my tsunami bars today especially as a warm up because it's a huge vibration to the body and it's a great way to fire up that proximal to distal, fire up that core musculature. So anything you can do that is a back and forth transferring energy and those, like I said, body blade will do it and the tsunami bars will do it as well. Those are incredible for warmup or during a speed session to really feel that proximal to distal.
Speaker 2:Lastly, I'd like to talk about eccentric training, flywheel training and your use of the Kinetics product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that product is awesome. Basically it's a flywheel. I was first introduced to it by a friend of mine, mark Paris, and it's a completely different feel of resistance and weightlifting and things like that. It was made actually I don't know if you knew this it was made for astronauts. That was the original application, because they didn't have gravity.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you're spinning a flywheel and what it allows you to do is you put the resistance in. So, whatever, the harder you go, the harder it will hit you back. The other thing I love about the flywheel is, you know, we all know squats are good, right, but golf and heavy squats are a bad combo. That's tough on your back, and so with the flywheel, with the K-Box, you can put a scrap around your waist so there's no pressure on your spine. Still get an incredible workout through the legs. I've also now been using it.
Speaker 3:Now think about this if you're doing a traditional squat, gravity is only going one way. You can sort of move side to side, but it's still gravity based. I've been using the k box and some of the other products to move sideways, and that force vector is different. There's another product I want to tell you about that I've been using, called Beyond power, and that one is awesome as well. Uh, it, it allows you to do Flywheel training. It allows you to do resistance, band training, all these different modalities built into the system. But check out Beyond power. That's another awesome one that's very portable as well.
Speaker 2:Interesting yeah, so the human body loses speed, strength and stamina in that sequence as we age. How do you manage to keep your speed at your age? I've seen videos of you still swinging the high what's 130, so I'm gonna say I just did some high 130s last weekend.
Speaker 3:I'm age 56 now. I think, like you said, your muscle, and your fast-fetched muscle specifically, starts to decline as you age, and the big thing I've had to balance as I've gotten older is volume stamina, so to speak. And so what I've learned is, for me, once a week of the speed training in a very concentrated um uh session is the way to do it. If I do it too many times per week I'm going to end up getting injured because it's a taxi on the body. But I think the key is what.
Speaker 3:I think the mistake for golfers when they think in these terms is they. They forget that golf is, the golf swing is very mechanical based, meaning most sprinters already have perfect form, so when they do speed work, it's all about, you know, running as fast they can, whereas conversely, most golfers have terrible form and so if they can create lag, if they can create better movements, those types of things, they're actually going to gain so much more speed than just trying to swing as hard as they can. So that would be my recommendation first for a golfer is tempo for speed first. Secondly, mechanics Then work on your body, then look at speed training. Granted, you can do all those even in the same session, but don't just try to swing as hard as you can. When you've got to, let's just say your golf swing's not, you're coming over the top and dumping it. That's not going to do well.
Speaker 3:But to answer your question specifically for me, I've tried to make sure in any time I go to the gym or whatever it might be, I add some fast twitch in there and I do it in a way that's safe. I like a medicine ball slam or if I'm feeling really good I'll do some sprinting, um, those types of things I think really help. And the other big one is mobility. So I still have a pretty long backswing You've probably seen it and yeah, so I'm real big on being mobile where the body is supposed to be mobile, meaning, you know, thoracic spine, being able to get the arms in the air, and your hips. Those would be, you know, three of the big ones.
Speaker 2:Do you engage in heavy lifting? There is a trend towards heavy lifting with uh guys like brooks, kepka, dustin johnson and rory mcgillroy yeah, I, I do think heavy lifting has got its place.
Speaker 3:I think you got to be really careful and really know what you're doing and and really have a trainer involved in those types of things. Um, but I do think the mistake I think golfers make in the gym is that let's just say and I'm going to sort of throw bands under the bus here, but I and I love bands, but if you only do band type of stuff, that's not a big enough stimulus, probably for the body. You need to get a nice stimulus. The body works on SAID specific adaptation to increase demands Right, and so it's always a nice stimulus. The body works on SAID specific adaptation to increase demands right, and so it's always about that stimulus.
Speaker 3:And it's also about how beat up are you? I don't know how you are, but we all are beat up in one way or another and you have to respect that. You have to respect your body, and so if you find a lift that you can go heavy in and it doesn't hurt you, then I go all in on that. I'll give you one quick example. There's something called a Mars bar. I don't know if you've ever seen one. It's awesome.
Speaker 2:I eat them all the time.
Speaker 3:It's not the one you can eat. It's called Mars bar. It's a guy here in Lawrence Kansas actually invented it. It's sort of a safety squat bar. But it's even better because it's hands-free and I've found I can do uh, I can do like four or 500 pounds with that thing and you know, I don't go all the way deep and I don't do anything crazy, but it's called and I do a hat field squat, so I'm using my arms to support me, okay, but I found I don't get hurt and and I found it really gives me a nice stimulus and I don't do them that often, you know, but if you find something that you're really good at and you can go heavy with that, I think that's powerful. I think that's something I don't think you should. Just look at Brooks Koepken, look at his work. I'm going, okay, I'm going to do this, this and this all heavy, because I think you'll get destroyed.
Speaker 2:Thanks for your insights on that.
Speaker 3:Where can our listeners find more about you and your products? For sure, the website is tourtempocom, and then I'm very active on Instagram and it's at tourtempo. So those would be the two main places to really really check this out. And then in the app store it's the Tour Tempo Total Game app, and then the Android it's the same total game app, and then the android it's the same tour tempo total game. Um, so you can also check the app out there. And then the free app is the uh tour tempo frame counter. That's available on ios and that's a great way to sort of get yourself uh in in on the mix. And then the books are out there tour tempo, and you mentioned tour tempo 2, and then tour tempo force 4.
Speaker 2:It's all on Amazon. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so in summary, by changing a golfer's tempo, we can pretty much change his motion in a quick and easy fashion.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right, 100%. That's sort of the whole idea. I mean, if you take nothing else from this interview, go try a faster backswing right now and just see what happens. It's going to feel crazy, but give yourself five to 10 shots just to feel it. And the other thing is is get that Tour Tempo Frame Counter app. It's free. Look and see what your tempo is, because if you're 36.12 or even 30.10 or slower I guarantee you're 36, 12, or even 30, 10 or slower I guarantee you're going to get 10, 20 yards right away by increasing your tempo.
Speaker 2:Nothing to lose, but yards to gain.
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. That's it. Any last questions for John Jesse?
Speaker 1:You asked them all already. So good, this is one of my favorite ones ever. I've done a lot of these.
Speaker 3:This was great. You've read it all, so this is one of my favorite ones ever you got. I've done a lot of these. This was great oh, you've read it.
Speaker 1:You've read it all, so this is good um, you know, I want to add one point to, to all of the, the, the hogan aficionados and the. You know, I mean just ask yourself if, nick, if, if hogan uh was dainty, or did he take a rep at it?
Speaker 3:I love it. You ended it perfectly. Here's what's really crazy about Tour de Zimpo. It's been since the beginning of time. Nobody in the Hogan era really swung. There was no low and slow back then. Right Hogan was 21-7, super fast. Sneed 24-8. All those guys from you know the early Jack Nicklaus was so fast. Even Jack in his prime was still 24-8. So I love that these guys were ripping at it and they did pretty well with terrible equipment. So yeah, they're amazing All right.
Speaker 2:Thanks, John. Can't thank you enough, John, for gracing us with your presence and sharing your wisdom and knowledge.
Speaker 3:This was a great one. I really appreciate being on and, honestly, if you could get me, I want this video. I want to put some of these clips up on the Instagram because I think there's some solid gold in this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll arrange something. Yeah, that'd be great you.