Latest / PlayBetter's Golf Tech Weekly / #9: Dr. Sasho MacKenzie, Co-Founder of The Stack System
Transcript
- PlayBetter: You know, I saw an opening in golf. Had some products, you know, kind of hacked together from Home Depot and I was using them on tour players initially. I I teamed up with Marty Jertson at Ping. Matt Fitzpatrick was the first person to use the actual design. We also track our top 5,000 stackers. The average speed gains for a top 5,000 is 15.1 miles per hour. These are regular golfers. If there's 5,000 people out there that can gain that much speed, well, why not us? Welcome back to Play Better's Golf Tech Weekly. I'm Mark Schiforigin joined by Daniel Fitzpatrick and Daniel, today we're talking speed, specifically the stack. Can speed training systems like the stack help regular golfers unlock speed or is this something meant really for just elite players? That's what we're going to dive into today. We've got a very special guest in Dr. Sasho McKenzie, co-founder of the stack, who'll join us here in just a minute. Before we get to Sasha Daniel, why don't you give us a little bit of a lowdown on what the stack is? Yeah, thanks mark. So the stack system really is a all-around training system at the end of the day It is paired with launch monitors that we sell at play better comm which we'll get into that a little bit later on in the show which compatible range find ⁓ Excuse me launch monitors will provide you with some data as you go through your speed training systems ⁓ but it really is an all around training ⁓ device and application. It helps you gain speed, it helps you dial in your wedges, it helps you understand your putting. ⁓ It's really a product that has evolved over the last few years and it's used by tour players. ⁓ As you can see, they have some weighted, almost like donut looking weights that go on to a golf club like stick. So you kind of choose based on the app what it tells you. You swing your play driver throughout the system. It's a really, really intuitive speed training and again, all around ⁓ training system that helps better your golf game and help you hit longer shots, which in the last few years, golf has really evolved into chasing distance and understanding how that equates to lower scores. So really excited to get into how this system was developed. how it's different for every single golfer and it allows you to go through a warmup and foundation to where it designs a training system for each individual golfer. It's truly unique and amazing and it's easy to see once you use it why it's so popular. Yeah, I agree. You and I have both been using it. We'll talk a bit about our experiences. ⁓ But just as you say, I think the thing that jumps out to me initially is the simplicity. and the customizability. So really it asks of you that you show up and you put in your best effort and that you stay consistent. ⁓ And if you're willing to do that, you will in fact gain speed. The app and the program does everything else for you. It recommends for you exactly your program that you're going to follow, mine being different from Daniel's. And ⁓ it's incredibly powerful, incredibly insightful. If you want to study and go deep on the science, you certainly have that opportunity. But if you just want to gain speed, ⁓ this is about as set it and forget it as could be, so long as you're willing to ⁓ put in the work. ⁓ Let's get into it with the man himself. We are joined by Dr. Sasho McKenzie. He has been called the savant of speed, ⁓ truly one of the most ⁓ respected minds in golf. biomechanics and performance. Sasho, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure to join you. Great. Well, Sasho, course, is the co-founder of the stack. ⁓ I guess, Sasho, before we kind of move down the road here as to how this might help the golfers that might be listening, ⁓ let's go back a bit and talk something of the origin story, kind of how we got here. Maybe a brief. bit about your background ⁓ and how you were uniquely qualified to have developed a program like this. I guess what I'm curious to know is kind of the ⁓ original problem that you were trying to solve when you started to look into the stack and ⁓ went through that development process. Sure. It's really a merger of two of my backgrounds. I've kind of multiple lives. One of them was a track and field coach. I'm as a track athlete and then also you know my life in the golf industry. I have a PhD in biomechanics, focuses on golf, but I spent just as much time training sprinters and teaching them how to do Olympic lifting and getting them faster. And when I started working with golf professionals, it was mostly around speed and was mostly around changing their mechanics. So it would be an acute intervention, hey let's help you swing better. I started thinking about that in terms of how I would handle a sprinter and if I wanted to make a sprinter faster, yeah, I would work on the mechanics, but I would spend more time with them training. One example is overload and over speed training where you get them to run a little bit faster than they can normally with some help and you get them to run a little bit with a little bit more force than they normally would apply by having them have extra resistance. I saw an opening in golf, there was products out there that had you swinging heavier and lighter stuff, but it was really a very different philosophy than the approach that was taken in track and field where we really want to fine tune the loads that the athlete is experiencing. I started to do some very fundamental research in my lab here ⁓ and at PING and a few other places to say, you know, what's too heavy? What's too light? How often should we train? Can we mix overload and overspeed? ⁓ and then had some products, you know, kind of hacked together from Home Depot and I was using them on tour players initially. ⁓ Jason Dave, for example, Graham McDowell, Podrick Harrington, they all kind of use some, you know, precursors. Matt Fitzpatrick was the first person to use the actual design version that, you know, I teamed up with Marty Jertson at Ping, he's the other co-founder who I was like, look, I want the club to do this. And he designed an amazing piece of hardware. allows us to get very high precision loading, 30 different weight options. And that's kind of the origin story. We've got this great solution that combines hardware and app technology that takes my brain and my programming that I've come up with and puts it into the app for everyone to take advantage of. Yeah. Yeah, that's really, really cool, Sasho. And it's certainly unique ⁓ that you were able to grasp the attention of tour players so quickly, it seems. ⁓ Was there something specific that Matt was looking for? Was he simply just chasing distance that got him hooked into the stack system? Or was it something else that drew him toward you for that help? No, it was definitely distance. I don't like the phrase chasing distance. ⁓ You know, to me it's a skill like everything else. It's like, would you say I'm going to go chase, you know, my approach play? No, I'm going to work on it and earn it and then be better at it. It's a skill. You need it. Chasing is kind of a negative term and implies that, you know, maybe you could catch it and lose it, but no. You work at it, you get better at it and it's skill and you own it. So, you know, was really, he was an elite player already. He was 19th and strokes gained off the tee. but he wasn't long enough to reliably contend at majors. ⁓ He would have long irons into holes and other players would have wedges and it just puts too much pressure on the rest of your game. ⁓ So yeah, worked on his biomechanics, but the training with the stack allows you to get those reps in. Not only are you doing the conditioning, it's a gym workout, but you get to work on your swing mechanics at the same time. ⁓ which is awesome and he gained ⁓ you anyone from one twelve to vote one twenty two at his at his peak when you should be no at that season when he won the u.s. which is massive for a tour player you know it completely changes game and it you know it's it's sticking ⁓ he just ⁓ when he won last week i think ⁓ was one nineteen and his on eighteen he had a one eighty two ball speed ⁓ a couple weeks ago right when he when he won in Tampa. yeah. Yeah, it's certainly cool just to kind of remember those times because ⁓ if you remember, Sasha, at that time I was working with FlightScope and we were doing some work with Matt a little bit. We touched on that last week in our Tech on Tour segment, And, ⁓ you know, he was doing everything he could to really enhance that par-5 scoring the way I remember it. He was really trying to dial in not only the tee shots, but like you said, trying to get to where he could get it closer to the hole on his second and even his wedge shots into the green. So it's cool to kind of see two different areas or two companies per se kind of come full circle and see why, like you said, he was working around the clock. mean, when we would go see him on the driving range. We were, and not that it's a bad thing, we were like waiting for him to get out of the gym because he was doing so much fitness training at that time too to bulk up a little bit. It was really impressive just to see how hard he worked to earn that remarkable victory, which was the same location he won the U.S. Amateur if I believe when he was a junior player. How much earlier than when he won that 22 U.S. Open had he started working with the stack, Sasho? It was a couple of years. ⁓ you know, initially it was just a biomechanical intervention. And then after a few months, we got the stack involved. And, know, it was a bit of a case study. He saw some immediate improvement ⁓ over the course of the first winter. He had averaging 1.25 strokes per round off the tee at the Masters. So was best driver at the Masters that year, which was the goal. And then took a little bit of a break and actually saw strokes gained off the tee go down. So we were tracking both his stack stimulus, like how much volume he's putting in and what his tournament driving performance is. you know, initially the time was like, oh, maybe it's hurting my approach play. Approach play didn't change. Driving got worse. So we hop back on it. That would have been in the fall of 2021. And then you know, he was a regular stacker for the again for the next, you know, essentially year. And resulted in winning the US Open. Yeah, really cool. Let's talk about a bit a bit more about the kind of the science behind the stack and maybe specifically ⁓ what the common user may not understand or even misconceptions that they might have about speed training. Sasha, can you just kind of walk through some of those fundamentals of ⁓ what the stack delivers and maybe what people going into it might not entirely understand about what this program is. Well, you know, we make it so you don't have to understand anything about the science. We just tell you, hey, there's an image pops up, load this weight on, you load the weight on, we tell you how to swing, rest timer pops up, take another swing, and it's just, you know, we even then have a workout schedule that tells you when you should work out next. So there's no thinking involved, ⁓ but the science is quite remarkable. So a lot of the science requires doing some complicated measurements to figure out what the overload stimulus should be. So we're kind of mapping everything around your driver. So I want to know, Mark, when you swing your driver, what are the forces and torques you experience? And we want to have the correct loading on the stack to have the forces and torques you experience be slightly higher. So it's not enough to say, ⁓ let's go 15 % heavier. Well, that doesn't mean that the loads are 15 % heavier. If I put, you know, a hundred grams on the end of your driver, do the forces go up by a hundred grams? Do they go up by, do they double? Do they, we don't know. You have to do that, scientific research to make sure that you're getting the appropriate loading and the same for overspeed. So, um, and, and, and you know, what's great about the app is that we track everybody's swing. know your age. We know your sex. We know how many programs you've done. We know the weight you're swinging, the speed you're swinging at, if you're following the rest times. We have about 40 people onboarding every day. And so we're constantly tracking and iterating. So the app's programming is in this infinity loop of progress. So we know what is the best rest time. We know should you be swinging at 110 % of your driver's speed or at 108 % of your driver's speed? Should you do... ⁓ have the sense before lights that's ⁓ you know through an innovative process you know we've got millions and millions of swings thousands and thousands of completed programs ⁓ we literally have this down to a science ⁓ but you don't need to think about any of that ⁓ the app just ⁓ does everything for you and we got super fun stuff like we track your personal best with every week so it's very common as you to know that ⁓ when you're training you'll use new weights depending on where you're at in your training. maybe you have 145 grams today for your over speed set, but it's 165 the next workout. And so you get a chance to set a record with that new weight. The app cheers for you when you do that. ⁓ We've got lots of engaging things like you can see your percentiles for each weight. How do you compare to folks that are your age and your sex? And so you can see. You can set personal best scores, internal motivation, or if you want some external motivation to see how you're comparing to other folks. ⁓ It's all baked into the app. Yeah, it really does make it incredibly straightforward and simple and very personalized. And just as you said, ⁓ all you really have to do is get started, enter your information, and commit to proper training, ⁓ meaning that you are going to be asked to swing that stack or in some cases your driver. ⁓ as fast as you can while still staying on balance. Sasho, did I summarize that correctly? That would be full intent. Yeah, so we ease folks into the training. ⁓ The first thing you do is a baseline session where you swing your driver, swing a bunch of different stack weights. We get your force velocity profile, which that's how... you know how well does mark swing heavy stuff how well does he swing light stuff relative to his driver we curate a program a philosophy for your training will be like and then you're done with the driver until the progress check ⁓ yep and ⁓ you know that that the workouts take about fifteen to twenty minutes you can do two to three of them a week ⁓ depending on your schedule after you finish your workout we give you a nice little workout window in the app so you pick it up what works best for my schedule maybe i'm doing a lot of Peloton stuff, I'm running a marathon, I'm busy. So you've got this three day workout window, you decide which of those three days you wanna work out in. If you're retired and you're feeling super energized and getting lots of recovery, you can train every other day. But then you decide, you know what, that's a bit too much. ⁓ Then you can go two days off or even three days off. But the key is you don't wanna go to, you know, don't wanna take seven days off, that is gonna hurt you. But really, you know, 45 minutes ⁓ a week is what we're looking at. You can even sync with your calendar. That's how I have it set up. So the next workout is Thursday, and it's going to tell me ⁓ when to get started. Yeah. Yeah. We got this cool, we call it habit stacking. anybody's familiar with Atomic Habits, where when you schedule your workout, there's a location and also a habit stacker. So you can say, going to stack. It really makes it ⁓ easier to to adhere to exercise or any kind of training if you state when you're gonna work out, where you're gonna work out, and what you're doing before or after you work out. That kind of imprints it in your brain and you're more likely to do it, which is the big part of ⁓ any training program. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool and I enjoy that aspect, like you're saying, Sasha, where we don't have to think about the science thing. It's super simple and... sometimes you don't even realize the gains you're making until you get down towards the end of session. You're like, whoa, I've really kind of started swinging this pretty fast. It's pretty cool. But I mean, us as consumer golfers or amateur golfers, I like to call it we're all in this Amazon mindset where we're all very impatient for things. what would you say a typical timeline to get real results is? mean, is this something where it takes you know ten workouts to see major result i mean obviously can be different depending on each golfer but at an average pace like what what would you say you'd like be looking at just to see some some improvement or see some real results from the system it most would see some some speed increases after ten workouts for sure our shortest program is eighteen sessions so about six weeks and on average for you know there's there's a rain somewhere between four to six miles per hour average speed gains over that first six weeks program. the average stacker, know, this is stackings for life should be speed training for life. It's a skill just like putting. you know, so most stackers over the course of a year, if they train consistently, the average is 10.1 miles per hour. And then we also track our top 5,000 stackers and the average speed gains for a top 5,000. is 15.1 miles per hour. So, and I use 5,000 because these are regular golfers like the four of us on this podcast. know, if there's 5,000 people out there that can gain that much speed, well, why not us? We're not talking about elite athletes or anything special about these people. They're just regular golfers. Some of them are scratch. Some of them are 15 handicappers, but ⁓ it's possible to gain a lot of speed. And over 800 of those individuals are above the age of 60. ⁓ So we have people who routinely say, you know, I'm hitting the ball further, ⁓ you know, end of my life. You know, one of my favorite stackers is Ben Crane. We've been working together now on his speed for two or three years, and he's currently ranked fourth in driving distance on the Champions Tour. So he's hitting the ball further now, ⁓ you know, at 50 then. than ever has. Hopefully touch him 180 ball speed in competition. Let's talk about how some of that speed gain translates to yardage. ⁓ For a user that might gain five miles per hour of club head speed, ⁓ what kind of ⁓ yield might that produce? Yeah, it's about, for the driver, it's about 2.7 yards, so three easy math. So five miles per hour, you're going to gain 15 yards of distance. I'll take it. Yeah, absolutely. absolutely. Yeah. Also, I mean, as Daniel kind of touched on in the intro, ⁓ you know, the data is becoming ⁓ just ever more irrefutable that the longer we can hit the ball, the better chance we have at scoring our best. But I do think that it's important to kind of talk about accuracy because I think that potentially it's a misconception. I'd to hear what you have to say about it, Sasho. People may have some reticence towards speed training for reasons of fear that it might compromise accuracy. Do you have any comment on that or potentially even ⁓ any data that might back up ⁓ either for or against that point? Yeah, most people become more accurate and it's built fundamentally into the philosophy. So what we want to do is increase your potential speed, your maximum potential, and actually have you play at a lower percentage of that maximum. So, know, Mark, let's say right now your club head speed on the course is 90 miles an hour and your maximum, if I put a gun to your head, is 95. That's as fast as you can swing right now. Right? So you're at about... You're my profile. I see. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're at about 95%. That's where you're playing at. Right? And you're swinging at 90 miles an hour on the course. Well, I would like you to train with the stack system. Let's raise your ceiling from 95 to 105. Okay. So you've gained 10 miles per hour in your max swing potential, but now I want you to play at 95. So your on course playing has gone from 90 to 95. You've gained about 15 yards, but you're actually now swinging at only 90 % of your maximum. you were at 95. So you're actually swinging easier with less effort at a higher speed. And this is the reason why we see most people ⁓ improve their level of accuracy is because their swing is actually under more control. The misconception is that I do not want folks swinging harder on the course, right? It might look like they're swinging faster, but it should feel like less effort. ⁓ know, it's some of the fastest folks on tour. are some of the smoothest swingers, know, Jake Knapp right now, Gary Woodland, like these guys are in the upper 120s club head speed and they look like pretty comfortable, you know? Right? The reality is Gary, someone like Gary Woodland could probably swing at, you know, 135, 140 if he actually went max, but he's playing, you know, comfortably at 128. Amazing. I would argue that ⁓ in my experience, using the stack and working on speed actually increases my fluidity of my swing. And so I'm somebody that's traditionally struggled with sequencing. And so one thing that I've realized when I'm using the stack is ⁓ I start to intuitively understand that for me to swing it as fast as I can, I need to get my hip moving, which is something that sometimes I get frozen. I don't do that. And so it actually trains my body to swing the club as intended, which ⁓ really should translate to more accuracy, not less, ⁓ even before applying the breaks that you just said. Yeah. In general, faster swings are better swings mechanically. ⁓ And in the app, we have this feature called the Learning Library. There's over 60 videos where we just focus on drills and tips for good swing mechanics. They also happen to be associated with more clubhead speed. ⁓ know, most people would look at folks on the PGA Tour and be envious of their swing mechanics overall for good golf swings. You know, those also happen to be some of the fastest swings. Right? ⁓ So there's an association. And you can use, if you're a beginning golfer, the stack system is awesome for ingraining positive swing mechanics without getting the negative feedback of wacky ball flight. You know? You see it all the time working with individuals. My daughter's a good example. She has a really strong grip, had a really strong grip. ⁓ And you know, when she fully released, she would hook it. But it's very uncomfortable. Hey, you know, let's get a more neutral grip. Let's try that swing, hit a ball with your driver, hits it bad because it feels funny. I'm not doing that again. That's terrible. I'm going go back to the way that's working. But with the stack, can work on, hey, try a new hand placement on the grip. try a new alignment, try a different position at the top, swing more into out. You can work on these things, work on the overall movement pattern of your body without getting the negative feedback of the odd miss hit. So you can ingrain these positive habits. Daniel, you've used the stack, I know, prior to your most recent use. Give us a bit about your history with the product in your current sessions. Definitely. So I mean, I kind of started stacking or being a stacker, you know, probably about four or five years ago, maybe kind of when the product just started out. And obviously, like we mentioned, I was was working with the FlightScope team and we were doing some testing for integration and even just testing the product alone because, you know, a colleague at the time of mine, Alex had had just raved about it and talked about how easy and simple it was with the app integration. ⁓ And it really blew my mind first off, just as you've experienced now, Mark, ⁓ how easy it is first off to connect to the launch monitor, how it inputs all of the speed data from each swing automatically. ⁓ It makes things really user friendly. ⁓ But I immediately saw some pretty impressive improvements. ⁓ The biggest thing for me was that At first, was thinking, I feel like I swing the club harder than that. It truly, it takes time to kind of learn how to swing a club without hitting the golf ball. ⁓ And the nice thing about the software or the app is there's like instructional videos as you go through with Sasho here that he kind of, number one, he helps you warm up, make sure that you're not going to injure yourself, which is certainly important. number think we have the most watched warm up video of all time for any sport ever. Yeah, I believe it. It's important, though. It's important because even even as a younger guy, you know, I mean, I have back issues. So I certainly always try to even use some of that warm up even before I'm playing, ⁓ you know, even just throwing a couple weights on there and swinging it around a little bit before I play. ⁓ But it really is remarkable how if you're someone who's new to speed training, the app helps you. And it walks you through, we're gonna swing this maybe as hard as we can, but also still keeping our balance or with full intent, like you mentioned, Sasha. It really is nice to have that guidance for people because we don't always have an instructor nearby or someone there to guide us through these things. So it helps us learn and advance at a quicker pace, in my opinion. So obviously, like I said, I used it for a little bit and saw some immediate gains and then you know, for some reason or another kind of stopped doing it, you know, life got in the way and just, you know, I've recently gotten back into it and man, I love, I've already seen where it's like you said, it's making me more fluid, but also allowing me to learn that I can swing a little freer and still hit the ball straight. And geez, we were, you know, different, different product, but we've been doing some stuff with the Arcos products. I hit a 300 yard three wood this morning on the course. touched that before. It's remarkable how fast some of these results are coming back, but it's like you said, Sasha, I mean, it's not like I'm swinging out of my shoes to do this. I'm just going at it. What I feel like is the same controlled golf swing, but I'm already seeing some distance gains and ⁓ it's remarkable to feel that and it's addicting. It makes me want to get out there as soon as we're done recording and do a session over my lunch break or something here. and start progressing, but I know I've gotta wait till Thursday and get into that workout window so I can maximize my potential there. Yeah. I also wanted to comment on the ⁓ emphasis on the proper warmup, I think is really, really key here and something that really struck me. ⁓ You know, this is a very serious product. Again, it asks you to show up and to be consistent and to give your best effort. ⁓ And if you're willing to do that, you're going to get results. ⁓ One of those kind of components of showing up and giving your best is to be ⁓ correctly and properly warmed up. And just as Sasha said, they have a 16 minute video. It's Sasha himself walking you through a very detailed warmup and a really good one too. ⁓ And I have to say, honestly, as somebody that probably is ⁓ similar to most golfers, you know, I may, grab a second club, I swing it around a few times as if I'm in the on-duck circle before I'm at a baseball game, and then I consider myself ready to go. And ⁓ that's not enough, it really isn't. And this program, it kind of reinforces that, and it almost is like a secondary benefit in that I wonder how many golfers would realize how much better their body could feel, how much faster they could swing the club. and how much better they could play for longer if they would engage and commit to a correct warmup. I don't even hit wedges without doing the exact warmup that's in the speed training side of the stackup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's why you're a doctor. ⁓ yeah, that's, it really is huge. As Sasho said, after that, ⁓ You don't have to think at all. If you're interested in studying more or learning more, you can dive a little bit deeper. ⁓ But really, ⁓ all the work is done for you, which is really the brilliance of the product. It's also very intuitive. It flows very naturally, one screen to the next. ⁓ It's all very automatic. ⁓ And we've only talked so far about speed training. ⁓ Sasho, tell us a little bit more about maybe some of the more recent developments with the stack. Yeah, we have, ⁓ you know, we're basically trying to add value to the folks that have, you know, entrusted us with gaining speed. So as part of your stack membership, you get stack putting and stack wedging and the learning library. So, you know, my accumulation of 20 years in the golf industry, I've put dozens and dozens of videos in there to help folks with their swing. The putting, ⁓ I think is the best way to practice. your putting. also I've got a, I spent a long time studying putting, a lot of research with Ping. I've got my own research on, you know, heads up versus heads down putting, put a lot of thought into putting. And the, the result of that is this stack putting practice app. We've got three modes. The, can do on-course stats, but the best mode is the premier mode where we guide you through 18 holes. ⁓ the 18 lengths of pots that are the most important. ⁓ and it, It's a real easy way to interface with inputting ⁓ the result of the pots in your misreads. So it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to go through these 18 holes and you get amazing insights. You know, if you've got a speed bias, if you've got a direction bias, you can run statistics to see, you can set up a little mini experiment for yourself where you can see, hey, do I putt better heads up or heads down with a line in a ball, not a line in the ball? Should I switch to a mallet putter? run sessions with the mallet, run sessions with the blade, you know, if you're going to try to game a new putter, hit a statistical comparison button, boom, and we'll show you what the results are. Literally, I teach quantitative research methods at university here, and there's legitimate stats analysis that will tell you if you putt's definitely better with one or the other putters. ⁓ And more recently, we've launched ⁓ wedging, ⁓ which was a way, you know, we've got a great little radar, the stack radar. Bluetooth to the app and we're like, okay folks need this for speed training. ⁓ Let's squeeze as much of this as we can. We do a very good job of tracking ball speed within about a half mile per hour of ⁓ Mevo Plus actually, which is a fantastic radar or the Mevo Gen 2, they're very similar. ⁓ So we're great at tracking ball speed and if we know the club you're hitting, ⁓ then that allows us to do a decent job at predicting distance. And we have some tuners in there that if you tend to launch it a little lower, you can adjust that. If your ball speed's a little higher based on the ball you're playing, you can adjust that so we can quickly fine tune to get pretty good estimates of your carry distance. And we've created these really gamified wedge combines. where every shot is scored with a strokes gained algorithm that I created. But instead of using actual stroke gain, which is weird numbers like, oh, great shot, you've gained 0.04 strokes. So that's not very fun. So I've converted them into points. Put you on the spot, Daniel, what's the most number of strokes you can lose on a shot in golf? Or Mark, using strokes gained. I'll help you out. If you hit it OB, you lose two strokes. Right? that's, that, is because you lose a stroke for the distance plus the penalty. ⁓ so minus two, no one likes negative numbers. So we calculate the strokes game for the shot and stack wedge. Then we add two. So that gets rid of any potential negative numbers. Hopefully you don't hit one OB in wedging, but it's, it's a general, it's a general equation. ⁓ and then you multiply by a hundred. So 200 points is like zero strokes gained. ⁓ but it's much more friendly numbers to work with, but. like strokes gained, ⁓ the further you are away from the target, the more potential points you can get. ⁓ And then the points exponentially ramp up, the closer you get to the target for each shot. So going from 16 feet to eight feet, that's pretty good, but your odds of making a birdie don't go up exponentially. If you go from eight feet to two feet, now you're guaranteed a birdie so that those that the the points really ramp up so it's it's realistic ⁓ in that scenario which here for if you make a good shot we track your performance over time ⁓ it's it's it's the best way to work on your ⁓ your distance wedges for sure daniel you've gotten ⁓ gotten down with the wedge ⁓ training program ⁓ and i know you already saw results tells about it please yeah i need to Definitely do it again this week after my last few rounds. I know my my grit score is certainly ⁓ Tumbled a little bit as of late, ⁓ but yeah, no leading up to our When we first got you know our devices and everything you know, did a few of the the wedging system the system or the ⁓ the wedging portion of the app and and did a few sessions and Man, it took a few swings hitting in because I have a net in my backyard So it took a few sessions just to get used to hitting distances that it was calling for but wow did it turn my wedging game into a weapon pretty quickly. We play in a pretty regular group on Saturday mornings and my wedges are usually typically a pretty strong part of my game but there was a couple guys in the group who told me they're about to cut my hands off because of easily I was getting up and down from random yardages, the 30 to 50 to 60 yard shots here and there and. ⁓ Just making them look easy and just finding those you know those distances where you need to land the ball and You know the stack radar, you know, it's been it's been an absolute tool to use it know that not all the radar or even the launch model products are capable of doing that as far as I'm concerned Sasha but there really is a nice pairing partner to get with that stack system because it unlocks everything and I can promise you it's it's something I'm going to get right back into with the wedging because I short game as we all know, you can dial it in but it'll go away faster than it came to you. So it's something you have to continuously keep working on or else you see those results tumble down the hill really fast. Yeah. ⁓ Sasho, Daniel hits on a point of the compatibility integration with so many different launch monitors really makes this very accessible product. ⁓ Gosh, most of the radar-based launch monitors at least they come to my mind and the ones that play better cells, ⁓ can work with the stack and work very, very seamlessly. ⁓ Folks, you fire this up, the integration is as simple and basic as Bluetooth connectivity gets. It really is entirely straightforward. And just for experimental sake, ⁓ I experimented with ⁓ manually inputting numbers just to see what that process was like. I happen to be doing some testing with the ⁓ new ShotScope LM-1, which I don't think is onboarded yet. Maybe it'll get there at some point, but it's a radar-based unit that has a ⁓ speed training ⁓ mode. And so ⁓ I went ahead and did a stack session using it. And I actually found ⁓ manually inputting my speed distances after each one of my swings to be ⁓ very simple. ⁓ not a big deal at all. When you go through a speed training program, it typically asks for 15 seconds of rest time between swings, again, so that you're reloaded and ready to give that best intent. ⁓ You're often asked to ⁓ eight swings per set, and then you're gonna be changing weights. That seems to be somewhat of a common workout that I've encountered. ⁓ But in those 15 seconds, to simply punch in my ⁓ my speed and then hit save, it's almost just as seamless, just as easy really. So point being that if you've got a radar-based launch monitor that reads clubhead speed, you're in. Yeah, exactly. And we also have a hands-free mode where you can just talk it out. And some of the radars speak out the speeds. for example, like a ⁓ swing caddy or a track man will. And so our app is listening. if the radar you're using will talk out the speed, our app hears it, so you don't have to do anything. Yeah, yeah, pretty slick. Pretty slick. ⁓ Definitely ⁓ a great product, undeniably a great product to ⁓ gain speed, to gain some touch consistency with both your wedges and your putters. And I think, interestingly, a lifelong product that can help you stay sharp, just as Daniel mentioned, Sasha, just as you mentioned. I think we're, or at least I'm in that honeymoon phase right now of seeing gains and being very excited and motivated by ⁓ kind of the big opportunity and potential that's in front of me. But I can see where, you know, potentially at some point I plateau and this becomes ⁓ not just ⁓ a game stabilizing kind of system, but also a fitness system as well. Yeah, hopefully you don't plateau. plateau too soon, Mark. I hope not. hope not. You have potential for a few years of gains for sure. Yeah. You don't know what kind of limitations I'm dealing with here, but they're substantial. Well, especially with that attitude. Thank you. Thank you. ⁓ Yeah, Sasho, it's been great. Great to have you. Really do appreciate you joining us. ⁓ Such an awesome product. ⁓ One that I think is a bit of a no-brainer, honestly, for ⁓ most golfers. Maybe that's one thing we should kind of touch on in closing. ⁓ Are there ⁓ people that ought not to get into the stack ⁓ or because of its customization options, ⁓ is it something that's really intended for every type of golfer? Yeah, it's definitely intended for every type of golfer. ⁓ You know, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't want to commit. 45 minutes per week, you know, so if you just want to show up on Saturday and play one round of golf and do zero practice and don't do anything in the gym and you're not motivated then yeah, probably save yourself some time the stack isn't for you but you know, the majority of golfers would like to put in a little bit of time and see the the fruits of their labor. So there's certainly no limits in terms of your handicap ⁓ or how many rounds per week you want to play if you've got 45 minutes this is you know increasing your speed is probably the number one way to lower your handicap well said well said ⁓ daniel anything for sasha before we let him go just one other thing ⁓ i know we we didn't mention it here but ⁓ from my understanding sasha were also ⁓ dipping out of golf a little bit we also are are looking at a new baseball product is that correct as well yeah we've got you know we we ⁓ you know i did some consulting work with the Dodgers ⁓ way back in the day, five years ago now started working in baseball a bit just on swing mechanics. Some of the coaches started using the golf system and we're like, you know, I don't have this for baseball. So that was kind of the start to it. So we engineered a completely separate product and now we've got just over 20 MLB teams ⁓ using it. StackBaseball.com if you want to check it out. We're in a lot of retail spots exporting goods in the States, but it's an amazing product. Same concept, but it's in a batch shape. And actually, it has a sensor in the knob, so you don't even need a radar to swing with it. It's a pretty sweet product. That's very cool. Very, very cool. Well PlayBetter doesn't sell the baseball product as of yet, but you can get your your stack system for golf as well as the stack launch monitor from PlayBetter.com. You've got the option to buy just the stack, which would be the stick and the weights, or the the stack with the radar, which I believe saves you a hundred bucks if you buy that package together. Probably the smart way to go. ⁓ As I said before this really is a product where if you're just willing to show up and you're willing to put in the work You are going to gain speed Sasha was that too bold of a statement to make? Nope, okay. All right. There you go. Yeah Wonderful really appreciate you joining. He is dr. Sasha McKenzie co-founder of the stack ⁓ Easily one of the coolest and most effective training aids in golf Sasha. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on Appreciate it. All right, well that was fantastic. Daniel ⁓ definitely has me motivated ⁓ to train even harder or do even more and stay committed to it. ⁓ You're seeing results, what about you? Yeah, it's really cool to learn the science and history behind the device and it's kind of weird to say this, but like a lot of really impressive products. You know, kind of started out with him just fiddling around with some stuff he found at Home Depot and then the design has been perfected and it's incredible to see how it's come to fruition. It is a really cool product. I mean, it's as simple as being to be stored in your golf bag. You know, like we've talked about, it's not just a speed training and a wedge training and putting training device. They have actual warmups that you can do before you're around to golf. So that way, like you were talking about, you can be activated and ready to go. ⁓ I can't tell you enough, you even as a 34 year old golfer There's times where if I don't do any type of warm-up It's like I'm feeling tight and stiff and you know, you might feel like ⁓ I played so terrible on the front nine Why did I play so much better on the back? Well, you finally loosened up and started, you know swinging the club like you're supposed to These warm-up sessions within the app you can do them right there on the driving range and unlock that capability before you even get out to the golf course. And that alone will lead to lower scores. But yeah, just honestly, you know, even in the experience and what I already knew about the stack system, I just learned so much about it. It was cool, ⁓ really remarkable and appreciative to have Sasho join us today. That was awesome. That was really awesome. Great point, again, regarding ⁓ just the benefit of using it pre-round, not to mention all the work that you have available to do. Throughout the week, but you know if you're if you're playing and you can you ⁓ do one of the warm-up sessions? ⁓ Just as you said Daniel most likely that alone is going to benefit your scorecard ⁓ the other thing that I did want to point out ⁓ is ⁓ You know, it's a it's a golf club ⁓ Size and functionality, but it's shorter than a golf club ⁓ Certainly shorter than your driver and so another just kind of side benefit that makes this so sustainable ⁓ is that you can swing it in tighter spaces than you would your driver. And so even indoors, if you don't have high ceilings, you're still going to be able to complete your stack workouts. ⁓ If you're traveling, it's something that you could bring with you. Just as you said, you can put it in your golf bag. The weights come in a small little case, ⁓ very simple transport. ⁓ And so I guess the point is there's very little excuses available to you as to why you're not getting your training completed. ⁓ I'll have remember that down the road. I almost got a little nervous when, because Sasha was looking at our data, I'm thinking, ⁓ man, I should have been training more here. Right, right. Yeah. Well, great stuff. Yeah. So ⁓ check out the stack at playbetter.com. ⁓ Daniel available for questions. ⁓ Somebody that's now used it himself and certainly plans to continue to use it himself. ⁓ Let's move on to Play Better's technology on tour. I'm very excited to talk about Gary Woodland, winner of the Texas Children's Houston Open this past weekend. Really, Daniel, one of the more inspirational tour wins I can remember. For those who don't know, Gary Woodland, he had a brain tumor that had to be surgically removed. It was a life-threatening situation. And all of his road to recovery and the things that he's endured ⁓ since that surgery has been very open about a lot of PTSD issues that he's been facing and just an incredible road back for him. That was nearly three years ago and this last weekend was his first win since that surgery. And so him being such a well-liked popular player on tour, his win, which was by five strokes if I'm not mistaken. ⁓ ⁓ was just very, very heartwarming. It was one that ⁓ evoked a lot of ⁓ reaction from around the golf world. Tons of top players ⁓ chiming in with their support and love and congratulations. And ⁓ just a really, really cool ⁓ story to hear. ⁓ Woodland also happens to be a Kansas Jayhawk, same as me. So rock chalk to him. And yeah. ⁓ Sasho touched on Woodland ⁓ as we were talking. ⁓ Daniel, tell us a little bit more about what we know about his tech stack. Yeah, it really was an incredible victory. And you could see how everybody in the industry, it was gravitating. It inspired hope. mean, it gave people the, even maybe not golfers, but people who went through similar surgeries or situations, it inspires hope that they can still climb back to their normal lives again. ⁓ You know props to him that that had to be the most ⁓ incredible journey to ⁓ To have it, you know come to fruition like that is incredible. So ⁓ Yeah, he definitely is ⁓ An incredible golfer and he has a very ⁓ unique approach to the game if you compare his golf swing to a lot of other tour players ⁓ you'll quickly notice that he typically swings the club a lot steeper than a lot of golfers do and You know, if you've been on a PGA Tour driving range before, or if you've talked to players or people who have, they'll tell you first and foremost, when Gary Woodland hits a ball, it just simply sounds different. And he compresses the golf ball probably more than most golfers do. And a lot of it is the way that he swings the golf club. And he does use technology to measure his progress and understand if he's, you know, hitting the proper angle of attack, one of the most important metrics in in golf statistics and analytics is understanding that you're not coming in too steep or too shallow. A lot of tour players, are very good at sweeping the golf club and especially ⁓ Fairway Woods, they sweep them so graciously. And if you do any research or watch Gary Woodland swing a golf club, there's a reason he can hit a stinger shot probably almost better than Tiger Woods can because of the way that he swings the golf club. It truly is remarkable. ⁓ But it also leads to exceptional distance. ⁓ Like Sascha was getting at, it looks effortless and if he wants to, he could really unlock some shots that go further than the eye can see. But it's incredible how he can tune it down and hit the shot that is controlled. And typically, in his past, as you look up his victories, when he wins, he wins by a margin. He's not winning by close. He's on. He is on. mean, if you look back even to his US Open victory, it was incredible. He was lapping the field, it felt like. So it really is remarkable that his approach is different, but it's clearly proven to be successful. And again, he uses a Trackman 4 to measure all of that. And that's a product that we now sell on playbetter.com. Now it is a premium product, but it is cool to say that we now offer all the products that the PGA Tour players are using. You're right, great point. If it's not a Trackman that you see on the range, it's a four-side GC quad or quad max, and we sell all of that. So Trackman 4, ⁓ Trackman IO, which is the overhead ⁓ indoor focused Trackman unit. ⁓ These are the most premium, premier products, launch monitors available in the game, the ones that the top players are using and the ones that are available at PlayBetter. ⁓ So we've got launch monitors that ⁓ go all the way from a couple hundred bucks up to ⁓ tens of thousands of dollars. ⁓ So something for everyone, ⁓ an important point to make as we talk about ⁓ all of the offerings that are available at Play Better, all with the intent of course of helping all of us play better. ⁓ Reminder that Daniel's available to consult and help with any questions that people may have navigating all of these options. ⁓ So please consider giving him a call. Please consider subscribing to our email newsletters where you'll get additional information on all of these products and how they relate to each other. We oftentimes are comparing one to another. Try to do that as objectively as we can. And of course, if you're enjoying this podcast, please do consider liking and subscribing to the channel. We really do appreciate the support. Also encourage anyone to drop a comment and maybe let us know what it is that you'd like to hear us talk about or if you have questions for us that we might be able to cover, ⁓ please hit us up. ⁓ We are gonna be talking next week, talk some masters, Daniel, ⁓ and I think we're gonna try to preview it from a more unique angle. We're gonna talk technology at Augusta National, kind of a very interesting, subtle subject as everything Augusta is, right? ⁓ That there's a lot of ⁓ neat little wrinkles and nuances to the tech that goes into both producing the masters as well as the tech that's allowed at the masters, all of it. We're gonna cover all of that. So please do tune in next week for that. Daniel, this was a good one. ⁓ I'm ready to get back in the garage and get to work. Yeah, same with you, Mark. I'm just hyped up. That was really cool conversation. And I always enjoy learning the history of these products. ⁓ to learn the science behind it. That was really cool. You know, at the end of the day, I'm glad that they hide the science from us because I think it might be a little too confusing for the general golfer, but really, really cool conversation and, you know, just feeling appreciative that, we were able to do that today. That was cool. Very cool. Well, thank you to Sasho. Daniel, thank you. Thank you to everyone watching and listening, and we will see you next week.