Avoid Golf Lessons Using the Right Training Aids featuring Martin Chuck

want my golf ball to start? Where's my start line from there? It's why do I want my ball to curve? If I'm gonna play a little fade or a draw, I mean, I'm going to visualize that. So if I wanted to start somewhere, that's one thing. I can aim the face as best I can to start the ball there. If I need to curve it, I need a clubhead path go in a slightly different place than more my face starts it, because you need a differential between face

and path the curve the ball. And as a golfer, to become a good golfer, you have to learn how to take conscious thought through the right experience and repetitions, so it jumps the fence into subconscious. So that communication isn't smoke signals, and it's not even old analog phone that it's high speed fiber optic. Because when the communication from brain to body become high speed fiber optic, now people can say they're really not thinking about something because

their consciousness know they're thinking. It's so fast that they look and react. That's rubbish. You play that way because the consciousness one from slow calculated into some conscious look and react behavior that's trained in.

buil the ball up. It's a six inch ball, and that ball fits below your elbows, between your elbows and wrists, and when you can manage that triangle of your forearms while in your golf swing, a lot of good things happen. So you know, there's been products out there in the past, and you know, all I think I did was invents a little bit better mouse trap, because there's been some good products in the past, but the problem was if you weren't good at it, the ball dropped and you'd

be chasing it around or you know. So I thought, well, I'm going to make something that somebody can stuff in their golf bag that's pretty durable, that they can blow up when they want to use it, you know, deflate when they don't put in their bag, and then it goes between your forms or also you can use it as a lot of people will use it under one arm or the other, which is a you know, a classic connection drill that coaches have been trying to get people to do for years of their arms that don't

run off their bodies so much. So it's just a simple thing, and you know, the poleasing thing about it is it's been picked up by a lot of tour players and it's been fun. Like Darren Clark, you know, Ryder Cup captain major winner, sent me a video of him using it, you know, at royal Port Rush, his club in Northern Ireland, and it's on vine, you know, which is another apvocant keep track to all these apps. Nowadays there's there's Darren Clark using it, and then a

lovely gallon the LPGA tour Beatrice Riccari uses it. She's been a great proponent of it, and then Charles Howell uses it, and a bunch of tour players do it, and honestly, I haven't reached out to get him away. They've found it and they've ordered it and they they use it. So you know, I'm monitored that they considered a training aid worthy of use and I'm excited to you know, help help out with that kind of level of player. Want to get better.

pretty effective player in that aspect. If you're very flexible, like a lot of the younger people and professionals are, you know, you can take this and pretty much hit full shots with it. So most players fred are stuck with a whole mentality you know, you've got to keep your head down, stay down, stay down, stay down. So they've got that that's almost that infliction to such a degree that their arms and their body don't work together.

And when that happens, their elbows separate too much, and then they don't have a decent radius of their golf swing. The combination of arms in club is a unit. Well, the ball smart ball helps keep your forearms, sort it together so that it's easier for you to maintain that swinging radius and you'll have a little bit more success and reliability hitting a golf ball.

the late seventies and eighties. You know, it helps with that feeling, the the awareness of forearms sting a in a proximity to one another, made famous by Ben Hogan in the fifties in his great book You know, So it helps with elements that coaches have tried to get people to understand for years, and it's it's just a it's a simple product. I mean, it really is. It's you know, like I said, I'm not very smart, and therefore it's a pretty simple product. But I'm glad it helps people.

of a circle. So when you have anything like when you have connection awareness, you realize pretty quickly that the only thing successful can be a rotational motion that produces a straight shot, you know, via good contact and trying to guide something down the line actually destroys speed and

destroys control. So getting those things under check with something like a connection connection exercise, whether it be just a towel across your chest and you're holding with both arms, you know, that tends to be kind of cumbersome and awkward, whereas the smart ball, when it's deflated, feels it's a thin little bladder really, and it fits in your arm quite comfortably, and it's just again, it's a simple way for you to practice. And when you relax and your

arm comes away, it doesn't fall on the ground. You're not picking it up. It just kind of hangs from the lanyard that's around your neck, as it does when you're using it blown up between your forearms.

Well for the right end of golfer. See, he didn't and this is another thing, kind of going back to geometry. He didn't want the hands chasing the target line. He wanted the hands working on a concentric hand path. So back up and in down to a low line, back up and in. Well, well, my daughter said to me, she said, hey, Daddy, you can do something with this in golf. And it was a fleeting comment and a fleeting thought, and then she ran off to go chase

the dog or something. I mean, it was literally that fast. So I thought of myself, you know what I could, So I grabbed her little Chino because she once she gets onto something new, it's like, hey, what happened to that? She didn't even think about it. So I kind of took her little chapstick badge reel and modified it a bit, and then I sent it off to my designer friends and we made it into a multifunctional badge reel that can connect to your thumb, to your belt, to your

to your to your placard on your shirt. Basically, if you want to monitor your right elbow extension, your bending, left arm, your how your hand path is, how the the flippiness of the shaft relative to your hands. I mean,

we can connect this thing anywhere. So as an awareness device, I've been testing it in my golf school for you know, a couple of months now, and people love the thing because, you know, for example, if you're a if you if you flip it a little bit, Let's say you chip and you know, you hit pitch shots and you're trying to educate your hands, and you know you're trying to have just really simple, solid, you know, impact hands that

are transported by pivot. Well, if you if you attach the sammy to midway down the shaft and then attach it via its little kind of gator clip to your left shirt sleeve. Now you have this string running down and it's pretty easy to see if that's strings, you know, waving around inappropriately compared to what a good player is going to do. So it's just a feedback device. If you want to. You can use it on your left arm, you can use it on your right arm, bisk, you

can attach it anywhere. The hardest thing for me to do now with this product that's going to be coming out about ninety days is to make the video short enough because there's so many applications to use the thing. So I'm excited about I think I've got one tour player that uses it all the time, Buddy, I coach, and you know it helps him with his backswing with

you know. So again it's just these little products that come up with our you know, I teach every day all day long, and so I'm always wondering, you know, what can I do in the short term to inspire some feeling for this person so that they've got something to benchmark through their awareness for And thus, you know, this new product is Sammy. And then I've got another

one come with Fred. I've got about three or four things coming down the road here to add to the touristri touristrik or product line.

on what your issue is. And you know, it's just a very simple little kind of tube deal that that will help people understand, you know, what their left arm's doing. You know, whether it's bending, whether it isn't, where it's bending, where it isn't. And you know, so those products are coming soon, so it'll be.

arm straight. That's not the point of it. The point is for you to feel the awareness of when you bend it. A good swing, a left arm will eventually bend, there's no question. But I want somebody to be able to move their arms relative to their body and have the awareness of where these issues happen. So if they have that awareness, it's amazing. As we get older, you know, I'll come back to the whole head down thing, because that's to me, the biggest poison in golf is that

as we age. You know, I'm forty six. You know, we don't have the same mobility we once had when we were seven. So if I talked some keen seven year old and I was a coach, and I said, okay, young Martin, you keep your head down, son, and you just keep your head down. That seven year old's got the mobility to go and hit a golf ball, and he's like a rubber band and he's gumby, and he can have he can move the structure of his farms

and arms and body long enough to hit really good shots. Well, use you age that mobility unless you work on it every single day, Like say a tour player who hits three hundred balls a day or two hundred balls a day or five hundred balls a day and practices you know seven, you know they're going to play five six rounds a week depending on the week. They're going to keep building in this mobility because they do it all the time. Well, if you take a golf of twenty

five or thirty or forty or fifty. Good luck with that mobility. Okay, So a better person to mimic to play good golf is more like Anika Sorenstam, my personal favorite golfer, because you know, she's basically not even looking at a golf ball when she hits it. Now, I'm not here to say don't look at a golf ball when you hit it. I'm here to say, have the awareness of a motion that can pass through a golf ball and then not act like calipers on a break disc and slow things down to where arms and club

and everything kind of lose the swinging rhythm. Well with the power sleep you kind of it's a it's an instant wareness. You know right away, you know where I wear it all the time. I love it. You know right away where the issue happens. And therefore you know you can you can target the relaxation needed the you can target when you need to kind of release your eyes from the ground, which is basically follow the golf ball. But once you have it on, it's easy for people

to go, oh boy, I feel a sudden tug here. Okay, well I'm going to find that tug. I'm going to ease up on that little hitchy part that clearly can't be helping me. So once again, all my stuff is there to provide a feedback for the person to learn a little faster, all.

I have recently discovered for myself that if I slow my swing down consciously, and whether it's slowing it down or just making a smoother, you know, stroke through the ball, like especially with my driver, I'm going, okay, I only want to hit the ball one hundred and fifty yards right when I go on the driving range, and I can hit the ball regularly to twenty five two thirty, And that's based on statistics I pull off of game golf, not what's in my head, because of course I think

I hit it two seventy five.

more fairways. And to me, what I find happening is the more fairways I hit, the more pars I'm getting because I'm getting greens in regulation because I don't have to be you know, try to be creative, right, how can and I take that rhythm and slower rhythm with all my clubs, and you know, because I can now I'm getting a point like whoa. I really tried to swing hard on that and the ball did not cooperate at all. I'm finding just better ball flight. I'm finding

straighter shots. I'm hitting my targets better.

You know, to me, the ball's not going to go anywhere, you know, just sitting there. And frankly, I don't really stare at it. It's more like just a casual observation from my eyes. But my inside feelings are really in my hands that see. I don't ever ground the golf club.

Fred and my mentor George Newton taught us from the kids and the influences when we were in a little grippy junior golfers, to never ever rest the club in the ground because he wanted us to establish a peaceful grip pressure with the club in our hands, not a grip pressure with the club on the ground. Because he always said, both the clubs on the ground, at some point you're going to snatch away, to grab that golf

club to take it back. So he always wanted us mobile from the wrists with a club off the ground. You know. Jack Nicholas is a good example, and Tiger Woods, you know, the club doesn't really rest in the ground. It's always a part of his body. And then from there you have an awareness of mobility and the wrists. Well, if you're always sensing grip pressure and risk awareness, it's pretty tough to get really wonky as far as rhythm goes.

So the people that I come see me every week at the golf school, a lot of them put it on the ground. Put the club on the ground behind the ball, aim to face for them, want the ball to go, that's great. And then their first move is like they're playing flue. Their hands kind of open to a degree, they close to a degree in a way they go. And so I call this the grip and go. And the grip and go is troublesome because you can't always grip and go. You don't always have a lie

that dictates that you can do that. The ball may be sitting down in the rough, Well, you're not going to stick the club down in the grass. You have to hover it at some point. So to me, it's best to hover it always. When I say hover it, I'm not talking about a foot. I'm talking about you know, three sixteenths of an inch, some negligible amount off the ground to where your hands have a peaceful hold on the grip. Yet you have mobility awareness in your wrists.

And that to me is how people can have a rhythm awareness all the time because of their hand strength and intension doesn't change much. Pretty tough not to have rhythm.

about the ball at all. My brain's more worried about how my personal body feels at the moment, what I need in that swing, as far as what certain feels, as far as trajectory, club path, my expectations of where the ball's going to go. The visual of my of the target is burned into my head, and that's what I'm really That's where my brain's at the golf ball. Nobody's going to come move it, so I don't have to give it a great deal of attention.

a tea box just to make sure that I'm loose. Now, when I set up to hit a shot, I'm gonna tee it up, you know, make sure my feet or have a good place to stand or you know, in the fairway. You don't have that luxury, but on a tea box from tea to make sure I've got a comfortable place to stand. Then I'm gonna stand behind the ball, and this all takes just a moment, and I'm gonna look. I'm going to see where my I want my golf

ball to start. What is where's my start line? And then from there it's where's my how do I want my ball to curve? Now, if I'm gonna play little fade or a draw, I mean I'm going to visualize that there's where my ball is starting. There is how it's curving. So if I want it to start somewhere, that's one thing. I can aim the face as best

I can to start the ball there. If I need to curve it, I need a clubhead path go in a slightly different place than more my face starts it because you need a differential between face and path the curve the ball. So you go, how technical is this? Well, I mean, this is all blink stuff. It's like if I typed you a note. You know, I don't even know what I'm typing because in there it is there's the note high Fred blah blah blah, Thanks, look forward

to seeing you again, Martin. While in there's a bunch of subconscious stuff. It's only subconscious because I've trained it in and as a golfer, to become a good golfer, you have to learn how to take conscious thought through the right experience and repetitions. So it jumps the fence

into subconscious. So that communication isn't like smoke signals okay, and it's not Morse code, and it's not even old analog phone that it's you know, high speed fiber optic, because when the communication from brain to body become high speed fiber optic, now people can say they're really not thinking about something because their conscious doesn't know they're thinking. It's so fast that they look they react, and then they say, oh, it's just I just play golf because

I look and react. That's rubbish. You play that way because you've trained that your speed of the conscious is one from slow calculated into subconscious look and react behavior that's trained in like learning how to type, So anyway not to jump back to that. You know, set in, I am the face where I want the ball to go, and then from that moment the ball kind of goes away because now I'm kind of in myself what do I want to feel? Where's my balance going to go?

Now you can think, well, those are a lot of swing thoughts, but not really. They're kind of gross motor skill thoughts, and you know, I'm just trying to kind of make this overall motion in some kind of balance in a you know, the masses previous feelings of success, and hopefully it's a good shot, and if it's not, I go find it. I hit it again.

you know, avoid hitting from hitting behind the ball. And that's helped me a little bit, keeping my eyes you know, off the ball, just in front of it. What about your putter?

in that lack of trust becomes you know, comes a flinch. Now, if you are listening to this out there and you do have a hard time putting and you don't trust your stroke, I want you to tee up some golf balls on the putting green. I know that sounds crazy, but tee them up half an inch and then just stroke them off of a high tee and hover the putter there naturally, Because I think the ground plays a

role in this. I mean people that quote stub their putt, you know that actually can hit the ground when they pot accidentally they quote stub it. Well, you know there's there's a there's a subconscious fear that let's take that fear away. Now. I'm not saying that you hover the putter or an inch off the ground and you pot. That's not it. But we use the expression lady bug

at the golf school, meaning that in all shots. We want to we want you to gently set the club on the back of a ladybug that don't kill her, just set it down there. So there's a dimension between the bottom of the club and the grass, and it's a little dimension, and you can tap her and you can wake her up, but don't squish her. And then from that radius, from that dimension you've established, go ahead and putt, and go ahead and chip, and go ahead

and hit your shots. Now, if you watch me hit balls, read, you wouldn't go well, Martin's covering the club because it's a tiny dimension now if you looked really closely. And besides, I'm not static either. I mean I'm not just standing there. I'm always kind of moving around and moving my feet and waggling and feeling rhythm before I initiate my swing with rhythm, you know, And even in putting them ever

standing there statically, there's always a rhythm to it. I look at react, I go with that look and react is very specific. It's trained in. It's a it's something I practice when I when I when I do practice now, which isn't often, but it's I believe that the routine and rhythm of the routine is a critical thing that people really have to be aware of.

weren't good thing. I'd be painful for their mother. But the point is, through tremendous practice, right, you become one with something and not tremendous and it's the right kind of practice. So off, it's the same way you become one after, you know, with certain behaviors, whether they're good or bad. And I see people that come to the golfschool,

they stand there rigidly over a golf ball. We teach kind of a kind of a walk in pattern that's rhythmical that I think the golf swing starts, you know, way before you take it back. It starts me. You know. I use this expression read, plan, do and review. So there reading the plan part. You know, we walk up to a shot, Well what do we have? You figure your art as you're reading. Okay, you're looking at the lie and then you're planning your strategy. Right you walk in.

There's the dow component. There's a swing part of it, right, and the review component, which is a big part of what George Newson taught us kids was you know, he always called it the three second rule, meaning that we couldn't get mad at herself for three seconds. We had to kind of stand there for a moment trying to have some feedback for what we just did, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent, and then then possibly learn from that swing rather than hitting you know, slumper shoulders

and throw club or whatever. Then he'd be upset with us. So there's always a read plan doing a review at any golf shot for a person that wants to play high level golf or any kind of decent golf.

It's like, yeah, it's been around for a while, but there's a lot of people who are still especially when I have it out of the driving range with me, that it's like, you know, you might want to look, you want to try this thing. Tell us a little bit about the history, tell us what the value of a tourist striker.

And what I found was that, you know, I find a good player hits a shot and it's like wow, okay, that sounds different. That produces a divot, you know, small divt after impact and the ball kind of goes far and they don't look like they're swinging that hard. And you know what's the secret sauce there, Well, they they move the golf club differently than the person who's having you know, the hard time. Well, through teaching, I realized that if I really well, I really don't need the

bottom couple of grooves on a golf club. And I'm talking about the off a card path even And in fact, if you're bored out of your mind, go to my YouTube channel and posted a video I'm hitting a tour striker off a card path and the ball's going airborne. Fine, And because it's not about hitting down so much when golf, everybody's down. When you swing at a golf ball, there's going to be a down. You don't swing up at a golf ball. I shouldn't say that. Some people do.

But every circle's got an element of down, every circle's got an element of up. Well, in golf, since it's an incline circular game, it's got it down and out, and it's got it up and in. Well, if we can get your down and out in the right place, then you're going to play some pretty good golf. And if we can get your down and out in the right place, you know there's gonna be some element of a clubhead trailing behind a handle a little bit. And

that is what's called for chafflin. So you know when people are standing there trying to hoist the ball off the ground because they think that they have to. It's their job to get it up, and a normal golf club can let them have some limited success doing that.

I decided to be mean and take away that limited success because if somebody wants to hang back and hoist a golf ball off the ground, they're never going to get that amazing compressed feeling that good players get all the time, and they're never going to get the distance

that they deserve for their you know, physical talents. So by taking away the bottom grooves basically really right raising the leading edge basically you know, more than almost an inch off the ground, the players forced to learn how to use the tool differently, and then forcing them to do that it might inspire something, you know, for them

to think about how they move the club differently. And that's the whole purpose of it, so that they have for chaplain, so they can have you know, somewhat a shallow downwards strike and they can strengthen the loft on the face rather than weaken the strike loft. So I mean, that's the whole genesis behind the Tour Striker. And it's been a great it's been a great ride. I mean, it's been hard to believe now. It's uh, you know, it's been seven years since since that's been out, and

that's crazy. We've sold a lot of them all over the world, and you know, and it's put me on the map as a coach. Was just cool and it's fun.

So a slice a shot that is something that goes a path that gets over the top and wipes across the tiret line is usually going to spin the ball and create a slice. We all know that over the top swing. That's nothing new. So how are we going to fix that? Well, I want you to consider this. When we stand erect and we bend over, we've got a dress angle, a dressed body postured. I want you out there to learn.