Spring tune up exercises with the PRO-HEAD Trainer

Posted Monday, April 22, 2013 by dave

If you are going to do some early season swing exercises, you might as well help develop the proper muscle memory for keeping your head steady and maintaining your spine angle.  Here is a 30 second video that shows how you can use the PRO-HEAD Trainer to help improve your swing.

Early season exercising with the PRO-HEAD Trainer.

RankMark tests the PRO-HEAD Trainer

Posted Friday, March 15, 2013 by Bob Doyle

The highly reputable Golf Club and Golf Product Testing firm, founded by Charlie Mandel, saw the PRO-HEAD Trainer at the PGA Show and tested it. Here is the link to his article. http://www.rankmark.com/golf-articles/pro-head-golf-trainer/

A New Product From PRO-HEAD Golf

Posted Saturday, March 2, 2013 by Bob Doyle

Have you been thinking about trying an oversized putter grip like the FATSO or JUMBO? To do so you will have to remove (cut off) the existing grip on your putter and replace it with the new oversized grip at a cost of from $20 to $30 or more. Suppose now that you don’t like the new grip. You will have to remove it and have a new grip installed on your putter.

Oops! This experiment just cost you $30 or more.

We recently found a patented BigGrip that you can install yourself on your favorite putter that has a standard or mid-size grip. It is very easy to do; takes all of a minute or two, using a built in zipper. It costs less than $15 including shipping.

If you like it…..continue to use it. Or you can now buy the more expensive oversized grips with confidence. If you don’t like it, simply remove it in seconds and you are back to your original grip. You can even return it to us for a $5 credit toward the 100%PURESTROKE Putting Aid which sells for $19.95.

Go to www.pro-head.com to read more

Why the PRO-HEAD Trainer May Be the Best Golf Training Aid Available to Improve Your Golf Swing

Posted Sunday, January 6, 2013 by Bob Doyle

There are over 400 golf training aids available on the market today, each one addressing some aspect of the golf swing. Golf swing training aids range from thumb and grip aids, to plane aids, to tempo aids, to impact aids, release and follow through aids and every other aspect of the golf swing. Many of those training aids focus on putting.

The golf swing has many moving parts and many different aspects to it so it is understandable that there can be so many available aids. All but two of the aspects can be argued and are opinions of the Golf Pro, Instructor or Inventor of the aid. The two irrefutable aspects are: 1. The golfer’s head MUST stay behind the ball through impact; 2. The golfer MUST maintain her/his spine angle throughout the swing. Only the PRO-HEAD Trainer focuses on those two aspects. And the PRO-HEAD Trainer can even be used to address head movement during putting and chipping.

PGA Golf Professional and former Tour Champion, Jake Zastko has been teaching golf for over 50 years. Jake says that the biggest problem he has observed in all his years of teaching is that the golfer’s head comes up and out of the shot. The golfer does not keep the head behind the ball through impact.

PGA Instructor Jack Grout recognized this flaw in Jack Nicklaus’ swing when young Jack was 10 years old. It seemed that no matter how many times Grout told Jack to stop bobbing his head, young Jack could not keep his head steady or behind the ball through impact. One day, out of complete frustration, Grout grabbed Nicklaus by his curly blonde hair with his extended right arm and hand, and forced young Jack to hit balls for three hours. Young Jack cried from the pain of the hair pulling. But he got the message and Nicklaus went on to become perhaps the best golfer ever. Users of the PRO-HEAD Trainer have referred to the swing aid as a “mechanical Jack Grout.”

Physiologists and psychiatrists tell us that the brain receives information and retains such information from three sources: 1. Visually, a person reads data or watches video or observes physical examples of the new information. 2. Auditory, a person hears information or instruction. 3. Kineticly, a person touches or is touched (tactile feedback) or repeats movements until the movement or skill is retained. Such tactile feedback is extremely valuable for kinetic learning which ultimately leads to muscle memory. Although young Nicklaus was shown his swing flaw (visually); was told about his flaw (auditory feedback); it was not until he received tactile feedback (kinetic learning) did Jack Nicklaus learn to keep his head steady and behind the ball through impact.

Some people can visually learn by reading a book, a golf tip, or from watching their swing on video, or being emulated by an Instructor or coach. Hence the plethora of golf books, magazines, videos, DVD’s and swing tips readily available to golfers who want to improve their swings. Similarly by hearing about their swing fault from a Golf Pro or Instructor, golfers can learn to improve their swings. They can also hear and see their flaw from a good teaching Pro, which is why Teaching Pros and swing coaches are valuable and plentiful. And why almost every touring Pro today has her/his own personal swing coach.

Kinetic learning by itself, or combined with the visual and auditory knowledge, has proven to be the best approach for improving one’s golf swing. It is within this form of learning, which leads to muscle memory, that the best training techniques and training aids have focused. Here are some examples:

a. The Medicus has been voted the best training aid for years because of the tactile and kinetic feedback it affords the golfer. I tried and used the Medicus myself and whereas it helped me with my swing plane and tempo, it gave me no feedback on head movement and did not help me to correct this swing flaw.

b. Similarly with the Explanar, an $800 plastic swing aid that forces the golfer to maintain swing plane. This device offers tactile feedback to the golfer if the golfer’s swing deviates from the required plane. Again however, there is nothing to help the golfer learn to keep a steady head.

c. Swingrite is a full swing training that offers auditory feedback, a click, when the golfer releases the clubhead at the point of impact. Nothing however for a steady head.

d. SwingPerfect offers feedback through a vibrating device inserted near the grip of the club.Tactile feedback but not for any head movement.

e. SwingJacket, the InsideApproach, Perfect Release are other full swing aids that provide some kind of feedback but none of them focuses on head movement, which is the biggest single flaw of most golfers.

Steve Williams, Tiger’s former caddie, was seen on TV just prior to a PGA event, placing the grip end of a club on top of Woods’ head during a warm up session.. And popular Instructor Hank Haney has published several articles and tips using this same Jack Grout technique to help the golfer keep the head behind the ball through impact. Here is a short animation that shows what the golfer will see by swinging properly and keeping the head behind the ball through impact. Please visit http://www.proheadgolf.com to see this 7 second animation.

As Jake Zastko found, most golfers have that tendency to come up and out of their shot, It may be because they want to see where their shot went. Or they don’t want to hold up their playing partners; or lose their ball. For whatever reason to do otherwise, the golfer must learn to keep the head behind the ball through impact, as did Jack Nicklaus and as leading instructors try to teach. When this becomes a memorized aspect of one’s swing, the golfer will greatly improve her/his swing and lower their scores.The PRO-HEAD Trainer is the only training aid that focuses on helping to improve this flaw.

Watch a video of Louis Oosthuizen’s swing

Posted Saturday, September 1, 2012 by Bob Doyle

The other day I received an email that included a video of Louis Oosthuizen’s swing. The video is shown below.

Please take a look at the video and focus on Louis’ head throughout his swing. Louis averages 298 yards per drive and he weighs only 150 pounds.

Louis Oosthuizen on FlightScope

Beginning golfer shoots best round

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 by Bob Doyle

HS Sophomore Brett started playing golf about five months ago, and was able to earn a spot on his HS JV golf team. Like most new golfers, he struggled with the game. His average score was around 125. Two weeks ago, I gave him his first lesson and had him get comfortable with the PRO-HEAD Trainer. Brett was pretty flexible and was able to use the Hat attachment.

During the next week, he was able to get in a few practice nine’s but did not improve his score. The day after his second lesson, Brett played a JV match. He could not wait to tell me that he shot a 108, his best score ever. He said “it felt like a different swing, being able to keep his head steady.”

Accurate Feedback Is Important to Improving One’s Golf Swing

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by Bob Doyle

PGA Pros, Golf Instructors and Analysts use all kinds of feedback to help their students improve their golf swings. The purpose of such feedback is to help the student golfer get a mental picture and ultimately, a physical “feel” for the correct swing. The earlier in one’s career that accurate feedback is offered, the earlier will the golfer develop that “feel.”

Jack Grout grabbed young Jack Nicklaus’s hair at age 10, to hold Nicklaus’ head steady. Grout was frustrated with Nicklaus’ “bobbing head.” But Jack got the message through this tactile, physical or kinesthetic feedback. In 2010, during Tiger Woods warm up for a PGA Tournament, Steve Williams was seen on TV holding the grip end of a club to Tiger’s head, to give feedback to Tiger to keep his head steady.

Other types of feedback are offered with the help of video and with words. Video feedback can help golfers who learn best through pictures, images and photos. Visual feedback helps the student get that mental picture of a correct swing. Words of instruction also give feedback, aimed at correcting flaws in a golfer’s swing. Ultimately however, all feedback must be transmitted to the muscles of the golfer, so that the swing can be frequently repeated through “feel.”

Much is written and verbalized about terms like feel, muscle memory, motor memory, procedural memory, or even habit. All of these terms can probably be used interchangeably, according to one’s liking. But they are not memories stored in one’s muscles, but memories stored in one’s brain that are similar to the physical tasks that are repeated by one’s muscles.

All of the above terms are a form of procedural or physical memory, gained through repetition that can help golfers improve their swings and develop good and consistent swings. Some might even call this memory “habit” but that term has acquired a negative connotation; like a “bad habit.” But a good swing can also have been developed through good habits.

Whatever is your liking, feedback is required to gain a consistent and repeatable swing through repetition. The longer the repetition of the correct swing, the stronger is that memory or habit. It is for this reason that almost all of today’s top golfers started playing and getting correct feedback when they were quite young. Tiger at age 2, Hogan and Player at age 9, Nicklaus at age 10, Paula Cramer at age 10, Michelle Wie at age 8, to name a few of current and past golfing stars.

Whether it is tactile, visual, auditory or physical it is quite difficult to develop a good golf swing or to improve upon one’s golf swing without accurate feedback.