#73 - Sasho MacKenzie PhD - Wedge Play Distance Contorol

Welcome back to the FitforGov podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Sashel Mackenzie. Frequent listeners of the show will be familiar with Sashel, as he has appeared twice before. This episode is gonna be a little bit different. We are going to focus on wedge play. Sashel is co-creator of the stack system, which starts with speed training, went to putting as well. And the most recent edition they have is their excellent wedge feature. Sashel is one of the world's leading golf biomechanists and with that, he has exceptional knowledge on all things golf. He's also a brilliant golfer himself having a plus three handicap. I'm looking forward to hearing from Sashel and trying to learn what we can do to improve our wedge play. If you haven't tried the FitforGov app, know as the perfect time to start. There's still plenty of time this winter to get your game in shape for spring. Simply go to the App Store, download FitforGov and start your seven day free trial. The first thing you'll go through is a program match or feature, which will help you find the most appropriate program on the app free. From there, just click Start, and you'll be guided through your first workout and you can start making progress. Now to the episode with Sashel. Hey, Sashel, how's it going? - Hello. - Good, how are you doing? - Yeah, I'm very good. Sashel, congratulations, I'm in order. - All right. - Can you guess? - I don't know, I don't know, I can't guess. - You are the first guest in FitforGov podcast history to make three appearances on the show. - Oh, X. - Yeah, so we have a hatrick ball sent out in the post. - I look forward to seeing that. - So usually we cover speed and fitness training related topics. Today we're gonna delve into something a little bit different and that is wedge play. So as I mentioned in the intro, you are the co-creator of the stack system, which started with speed training, both hardware in terms of a training shaft with weights, then delved into a putting game, built into putting game analytics, built into the stack app. And now there is a stack wedge feature in the app, along with a stack radar. I'd use it quite a bit, I love it. We've been back and forth talking about essentially how it works and it's been really enjoyable. I think it's been a big hit from what I can see online and from interacting with some of my app subscribers that use it. Can you explain exactly what stack wedge is and how it works? - Yeah, absolutely. So maybe before I get into it, the stack started as stacking the weights on the end of the club. And then Marty and I are both golf nuts and we decided, okay, well, people are gonna, it's a subscription and how do we add more value? What do we want? What would we want if we're practicing? So we added putting, I think it's the best putting solution for practicing it there and then you get some great insights. And then we added this radar, we didn't have a radar, so that's kind of, okay, by the stack speed training system, oh, we need a radar. So we're like, well, maybe we should probably offer a radar and the reason why we came up with wedges was again, this kind of added value concept like, hey, if you need the radar for speed training, what else can we use this for? And it's just very nice that a key area of the game that you need to work on, your distance control with your wedges is a problem that we can solve with the radar. So from 140 yards and in, our radar, when paired with our software, does a very good job of predicting carry under kind of the constrained set of circumstances we have with stack wedge. So we're now stacking your skills, not just stacking the weights on the other stack. So the question was, what is stack wedge, right? That was, yeah, what is it? How does it work? And then I think we can touch on too because it's important how exactly the radar and the app work together to get you accurate carry distances and why it works well for a particular yardage range, like why we aren't hitting five irons, 200 yards with it or whatever. Awesome. Yeah, so stack wedging is about improving your distance control, specifically on shots from 30 yards to 140 yards. And for those that don't know, that is by far the most important thing with distance shots. You know, like shots that are inside 140 yards, if we look at our error ellipse, if you have, you know, pick a five handy capper, you know, we tend to, we tend to be, not your beginning golfer type product, anybody great for you, but we tend to be focused. There's a lot of single digit handy capers, folks that are trying to break 80. If you have them hit a whole bunch of 30 yarders, 50 yarders, 80 yarders and you look at their ellipse. And in fact, the better you get the more this is true, it's very long but very narrow, right? It's, if you're hitting that 60 yard shot, it's, you're not going to miss the green left or right. You're not going to miss the, you know, the flag 40 feet, left or 40 feet right. You're very rarely, but you're going to have a lot of distance control issues. That's where the error is involved. That's, if you, if you get better at 60 yards, it's closing that, that gap in terms of, of distance. So that's really what, what we want to practice and that's what we target with, with, with stack wedge. And so, okay, well, how do we do that? How do we go about, you know, optimizing practice? And that's what I'm all about. I want, you know, what's the least amount of time I can put into something, make it as fun as possible and get the most gains. So, we've got two main modes, like putting. We've got a, a premiere mode, which has all kinds of cool logic in it, which I'll talk mostly about, but we also have creative. So, what I say about premiere, you're like, "Ah, it's not me, I'm not buying what you're selling." You can go into creative, and I know you use this quite a bit, Mike, and you can create whatever combine you want, right? And so, like putting, it's based on, you know, a certain number of parameters, if you're setting up a combine. Okay, how many targets do you want? Right, I'd like to have eight different targets in this particular combine. Okay, and you set the yardages, 20, 46 yards, 102 yards, and then you associate that with a club, and we run a baseline that applies to both the premiere, I should say that first, both the premiere and the creative, where we figure out how far you hit each of your wedges, or each of your clubs inside 140 yards. My nine-year-old goes all the way up to his six iron, right? Basically, step one is you get your stack radar, you either go to the range, grass or mat, or hit an even to a net off grass or mat, and basically, session one, the guides you through hit X number of balls with these clubs, starting with your highest-lofted wedge, until we get to a club that's right around 140. So, it could be four clubs or five clubs for some people, and like you said, maybe more for shorter hitters, or juniors. - Yep, and within that, we also have, as you'll recall, you can set your max desired carry. We recommend 140 to get the most use of everything, but you're like, no, I just only want to go up to 110. No problem. You can set that in them, that's the constraints for when you're using the wedge. I mean, you can redo that at any point, right? You can be like, oh, I'm carrying the ball further now, or maybe you're carrying it shorter, I'll do a new baseline session. It really takes maybe 15 minutes, right? And then when we give you a target distance, or you select a target distance, we can automatically associate a club with that. And the logic we use is, let's say, your most comfortable full swing carry with your 54 degree wedge is 110 yards. We go up to three yards beyond that. We'll still recommend the 54 in the app, 'cause that's kind of how you would impractice play it. You're like, well, I normally hit this 100 yards. If it's 103, you'll probably say, yeah, I got a little bit more to get it to go 103. - Hard just hit it a hot. - Hard just hit that distance. - And just leave yourself a putt from a few feet short. - There you go, yeah, it's, yeah, exactly. And so with the premier mode, what I wanted to do was create these very constrained practice sessions, so folks don't have to think, right? So you complete the baseline, you go, hey, let's do a premier session. And it takes like two seconds to get into it. It's like the app and the radar are so low friction. Start wedging, turn on the radar. We have a nice little, if you use the warm up feature, where you can just hit free shots just so you're getting warmed up. And we tell you what the combine is coming up, so you can kind of warm up to those shots. And it will give you the carry distance as you go. And one of the premises behind the premier is that we're constantly adjusting the level of difficulty of the combine to the player's skill level. So the better you get, the more challenging the combine. So as you know, if you're familiar with challenge point theory, an extreme example that I like to use, if someone's just learning to play golf and they're just learning to hit shots around the green, if I drop the ball in deep rough and stepped on it, and I said, oh, let's learn how to chip. There would be no level of success. It would be very frustrating, they would quit. They couldn't get any balls on the green. It would be impossible. Or if you put them all in hard packs and like, all right, let's go, it's too much. Challenge levels too high, it can't succeed. And if I took a tour player and I teed everything up, you know, and had a bowl-shaped green with the flag in the middle. I was like, all right, let's, you know, on zero concentration. There's nothing to keep them engaged. Right. And so we have some parameters that I've set up that determine the level of difficulty and it's things like the number of targets. So the more targets you have in a combine, the more challenging it is. The fewer shots in a row to a target in a given round, the more challenging it is. So, you know, the most challenging combine would be 10 targets in a random order. We can also randomize or go in a ladder, sending or descending. 10 targets, random order, one shot per round. So you hit one to 36. Then you grab another club and hit one to 132. Then another club, that's the most difficult level. Let's complete chaos, a lot of variable practice. That would be someone who's tour player doing really well in the stack wedging. And then that would be something like level 95. There's a hundred levels. And then level five would be very blocked. Two targets, one round. You're gonna hit 10 shots in a row to 40 yards and 10 shots in a row to 80 yards, right? And as you go through and practice, you can move up and down, as I'm sure you know, for whatever reason, I know right away, I take two weeks off. And all of a sudden I'm sliding back down into the 60s or 70s for challenge level. And when I get into a good groove, like right now I have my PB, I got to level 90. Yeah, and it's tough to stay there, you know? So if you're Scotty Sheffler, you could probably stay in the high 90s all the time. But you have to be, you have to be really dialed. And so that's the, you know, the practice component to maximize your improvement. But then we've, I really wanted to make it fun. You know, so if you watch, there's lots of very simple games out there that folks get addicted to and play a lot. Like I'm not a big, you know, games person on the phone, but I travel a lot. See, I look around everybody's playing like Candy Crush or I mean, sure, all these. But there's a lot of very simple games that give people a hit of dopamine and they're like, wow, this is so fun, you know? And so that's what I wanted to do with stack wedging. Layer stuff in that makes it addictive, that makes it engaging, and you really enjoy going in the session. So I also, so because of that, I added a point system. That's what makes, if you look, if you play any video game, there's points associated. You go play pinball and you're like, what's your high score? But I needed the points to be extremely relevant to how well you're doing. And in golf, the best performance measurement is Stroke's game. And it's very different than how most combines are set up. A lot of combines are like, hey, here's a 10 foot circle. If you get it inside the 10 foot circle, it's 10 points. If you get it inside the 5 foot circle, it's 15 points, right? And it's very digital. And that's not the way golf is. If you hit a shot, if you have a 60-yard shot and you hit it two within 20 feet, or you hit it two within 10 feet, or five feet, those are very different things. You know, going from 20 feet to 10 feet, it seems like a bigger improvement, but it's not. Going from 10 to five, that's really an impact. - Because the likelihood of making the pot. - One point, first two points. - 10 feet to three feet. That boom, all of a sudden, it's a guarantee birdie. So if you and I are playing a match and your average proximity's 20 feet and you hit everyone to 20 feet, maybe I missed the green a bunch, but if I hit four shots to two feet, I'm beating you. Those are four birdies, right? You're making one or two of those 20 photos for birdie. So we need the points to reflect that. So we got to use Stroke's Gained. Okay, and that's exactly how Stroke's Gained works. It gets hyper inflated the closer you get to the hole. It's like, wow, that's a much, much better shot. But the problem with Stroke's Gained is, for you and I, for everybody, an excellent shot is zero points, right? And a very good shot might be minus point zero too. There's nothing intuitive or fun about that. - Yeah. - So what I did was. - That's if you're comparing to the tour baseline. - That's if you're comparing to the tour. But even I'm very familiar with Stroke's Gained, and I'm aware of it, it's just if I looked, if I hit one shot and it said, "Oh, you gained point zero four." I'd be like, that doesn't seem great. Oh, you gained point four. It's still Desmos, like, it's like, but one is super way better than the other one. So we have to get rid of negatives, right? No one wants to score any points in a video game. And have it mean something good. So I always ask people, what's the most Stroke's Gained you can lose in a shot and golf? - Two. - Two, oh be off the tee. So let's add two to the Stroke's Gained that right away eliminates any negatives and then just multiply by a hundred. So now your baseline tour player number becomes 200 points. So if I had a shot and it was zero Stroke's Gained, I would add two and then multiply by 100. And this gives you a very nice number to compare to. What's also cool about that is that it scales with the yardage. So as you know, if you're doing stack wedging, if you hit it to a yard from 40 yards, it's not worth as many points as if you hit it to a yard for an 80 yard target. - And it shouldn't. - The baseline is better shot. - It's expected outcome because you're closer to the whole or further away from the whole changes. - Exactly. And to me, that was a huge benefit to making it enjoyable. You can hit this amazing shot and you get rewarded with amazing number of points, right? It's exactly how golf works. And we track your best score and your average score in the combine, this is in Premiere. And we do it, it kind of resets every five rounds. And that's, so you can constantly, as you're getting better, we'll say, as you get to the end of the particular combine, it'll be like critical shot. If you can hit this shot to within a certain yardage or score this many points, you're gonna beat your average, right? This five session running average. It's super motivating and you feel instant pressure. And then, so maybe you have two shots left and then the second last shot, yes, you beat your average. Well, then maybe you're gonna get the, hey, you can beat your best score, right? All of a sudden, so now it's like, okay. So we're keeping track of that and we show you a probability that you'll do it, right? What's the probability that you're gonna beat that score? So we've gamified it in that sense. So it's addictive to come back to. And we also have the practice grit. So you have to keep a certain number of sessions, you have to complete a certain number of sessions each week to keep your practice grit at 100%. So it's very engaging. The scoring is intuitive, it matches golf. And then the insights are really cool. I think there's some general insights that a lot of people wouldn't know about. I'll talk about, but you can go to, insights by club, right? And it will show you things like, hey, what's your average proximity? Do you have any bias with those clubs? You can do insights by distance, which is really cool. So we break down the categories 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 50 to 60. We'll show the bias as you have there. That's an important one. So oh, I leave everything, you know, from 60 yards to 90 yards short. Well, you need to be able to address that. And then we also show your absolute distance error, right? So that's just basically, I don't care whether you missed it short or long. How much did you miss it by? And then we'll kind of average up that over all the shots in that distance range. This is a fascinating one for me. My average error in just absolute distance, my distance control with my pitching wedge to, you know, let's say the target's between 1340 yards is tighter than with my 58 degree to 70 yards. Yeah. And it's true over and over again. It's actually those, even though I'm, you know, I'm practicing a lot and it's getting better. So now some people might think, oh, there goes the, you know, you shouldn't lay up to your specific yardage, just, you know, hit it as far as you can. That's assuming if I could drop it and there was no wind, right? I was very confident in the yardage, I would do that. If someone said to me, do you want to drop a ball at 70 yards or at 130 yards or 135 yards, it was just very like a very fun pitching wedge distance for me, very comfortable with it. It's where my score tends, I would, I would go with 135 yards. Really? I've got thousands and thousands of shots. Log, there is, there is no question, my ability to hit a very precise ball speed number. Now, the caveat is if there's a lot of wind, right? Some other things that can affect the ball flight, then you've got longer time in the air for things to, you know, go wrong. But if there's no wind, then 100%, I'm probably going to have better distance control at an absolute sense. And you're quite good with your partial wedges from 70 yards, right, or roughly, it's not like that's a big problem area for you. No, I know, you know, exactly. I just, I test myself all the time against very good players, you know, hang around some tour players. I know what they're, and that tends to be a strength in my game. You know, I think my average combined score right now is 207, it's really good. So, which is, yeah, but a little bit better. The reason they say that is because for some people, those mid-range yardages, you know, are a clear kind of weakness and almost nightmare scenario where they, they don't want that shot distance under any circumstances, but that's, that's not what we're talking about here. What's also interesting about that is, and it was something I was going to bring up later, that's the value of having your personalized stats because that flies in the face of big data sets where the biggest thing in Stroke's game basically is that the closer you are to the whole, would all else being equal, the easier it is to get the ball close to the whole, or into the whole right less strokes. And now, the caveat here is that if I'm to 90 out, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna lay up, there's water or bunkers around the green, I am still gonna try to get that close though because I don't have the ability to make sure that I'm at 131.42, you could be 126, depending on how you strike it. And then you could be 64 or 78. And if you pull all of those shots together over many rounds, just hit it, just be closer, be closer for your wet shot. - Just be closer. - 100%, but if, but, it's not windy and I get to drop it, I am probably on, like the data doesn't lie, I'm thousands of shots in and I don't know if this is gonna show up in the camera or not, but this is my, let's see if I can get that. It might be a little fun to be. - Yeah, it's a little bit pixelated, but yeah, you can see the four points. - Yeah, it's perfect now. - So you can see from, like in this particular, right now 100 to 109 is as good as 40 or 49. - Yes, and 70 to 79 is the worst. And this is like over, we also keep track of, I'll slide up here. This is for this particular, this is a number of shots that I've had at, it's gonna get blurry right now. This is the number of shots at each distance, right? - So it's not like you had five, 10 shots. Yeah, I've got like hundreds. And that's the other thing the app does is we constantly, every combine is new, it feels fresh because you're jumping around in levels. So it's like a new experience every day. The combines take, you know, I prefer to do the one that's 24 to 30 balls. - Yeah, so they take 10 to 15 minutes and I'll just do more of them, you know, if I want to. But we make sure that we're filling in consistently across the full range of distances that you've picked. So for me, it's 30 to 140. So we're constantly, you never get a bias of, oh, I've only practiced this distance, right? We're constantly filling that in. Yeah, so I don't know, that's the data. I would not drop 75 yards for me as like, and I can feel it, I get over there and we'll get into about what we're trying to practice with wedging, but yeah. So I'm gonna give a quick summary of just how easy it is and what my experience of using the app is because it's so simple and then go into, there's one other thing I want to touch on in the scoring. So I do mine in my backyard and I have a mat and a net which makes it really simple. I don't need to go to the range and by balls. And it's literally as simple as putting the radar down about a yard behind the ball, opening the stack app. Start with a warm up, get comfortable. And then as soon as you start session, it's as simple as a number flashes up on the screen. You try and carry the ball at number. Your point that the radar measures the carry, it automatically inputs it into the app and spits out your score. And then it just moves you onto the next distance. Or you might have a few shots from one carry, but for example, I might start with 50, get three shots, immediately get a score for each of them. It will tell me, go to 110. I'll hit my couple of shots from 110, get my score. So there's no waiting and there's no manual entry. That's what I love. You're just hitting your shots, switching clubs. And it's so, so simple. One thing that I think is worth mentioning in the points, this came up in, so I had a discord channel with fit for valve app users that were doing a winter challenge and one of the sections in that discord was just golf practice and play basically. And it essentially turned into a stack wedge thread. One of the things, well people kept talking about their average points in their combine over time. And they were saying, oh, my average points, it might have went up, let's say, two sessions in a row. And then it might drop down a little bit. And they might have been slightly disappointed. And what I was trying to explain to them is, don't just look at your points, look at your challenge level because if we're using, let's say, I don't know, let's say if a five handicap or seven handicap is trying to break 180 points in their session, I'm trying to break 200 points in my session. But if I've improved my last three sessions in a row and my challenge level goes from 50 to 75, me getting 200 points at 75 is much better performance than me getting 200 at 50. So it's almost a challenge level. You wanna keep an eye on as much as your average combine score. - Yes, what we've been doing, you're 100% right now, a lot of people are saying, you know, can you spit out a handicap? And what we wanted to do is instead of guessing, and we did this with putting as well, now that we've got, you know, millions of swings, we know the person's handicap, right? They enter that into the stack up. And now we can see how the challenge level plays with the points. And so now we're ready to use that algorithm to give you a handicap, right? 'Cause you're right, it's not just the points. It's what was your challenge level, which makes sense. You could set up a really hard golf course, right? And of course, you wouldn't score as well as somebody else. Yeah. - And then the last thing that was finally getting into the, I guess it's quite granular, but something that's worth remembering too, so that we don't expect to be tour level wedge play on the course, is that there is a difference between matching a tour level proximity to the whole that's been taken from them in tournament play when they have one shot versus if you're on a mat on the range or into the net, and you're hitting five in a row. So it's a great baseline, but it's important to remember, if you hit 200 points in a session, which is the tour average, it's not quite the case, you shouldn't expect to be tour average wedge play on the course, or you shouldn't expect your distance error to be the exact same as what it is in your stack wedging. Use that as your baseline for your practice improvement and sure it will transfer to the course, but it's gonna be a different set of numbers, essentially. - Yes, that's a very good point. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think we've covered how stack wedges works pretty well. So yeah, oh, can I make a comment about, because this is something that I don't think a lot of people know about, is that instead of setting up all these very specific ways you can use it, we've got Premiere, which is awesome. My kids use it all the time, they're addicted to it. Right, I've got all sorts, I think you could use whatever launch monitor they want, but they always start out with doing two stack sessions, stack wedge sessions, and then we move on, and maybe we'll do some stuff with an actual full-on simulator ball flight, but creative. So you can, literally, if there's a pattern of shots or way you want to hit shots inside 140 yards, you can set up that session in creative. And a lot of people will say, "Well, I just want to hit balls." They do that in warm up. I feel very strongly that if you're just whacking balls, it's a missed opportunity. If you're a tour player and you got eight hours a day, maybe, but that's the irony, is that they would never do that. But if you're just mindlessly whacking balls without an objective, without tracking what you're doing, why are you doing it? And so here's a specific way you can use creative, 'cause I think this may be, we'll expand people's vision of what they can do with it. So somebody say, "Well, I like to use the clock system, right?" And there's no, can't you put like a clock system combine in there? I'm like, "Yeah, but then somebody else is gonna have a more specific way to do it, or a different way, "and I'd have 72 different things in there." But here's what you do. So for those folks that aren't familiar with the clock system, let's say you've got four wedges. I think it was popularized by Pellister, maybe even somebody before that. But the idea is you've got like a nine o'clock, 12 o'clock different positions on the clock with your arm or the club, different levels of turn. And let's say you have three levels of turn, four wedges, three times four gives you 12 different distance shots you can hit. I don't particularly describe to that, but let's just assume that's the case, right? Okay, well, what I would get you to do is, let's say you're gonna do the clock positions with just your lob wedge. That's what you wanna work on. Okay, so you can go in, create the combine, clock system with lob wedge. That's what you'd name it. And so with your lob wedge, if you've got three clock positions, you go three targets, take a guess. You must have some guess at how far you carry the ball with those three positions, right? With those three types of swings. 60, 80, 100 yards. Okay, and then you decide how many shots per round. You wanna do more block practice. So six shots per round, two rounds. So you'll hit six shots in a row to the nine, from the nine o'clock, then six shots in a row, right? And just ignore the yardage the first time. You just concentrate on doing your, you know, whatever clock position swing that is. Then when you're done the combine, we'll show you your bias. It'll be like, oh, I was trying to hit it, you know, the target said 60 yards, but when I do this swing, it goes 65 on average. No problem, then just go in and edit the combine, change the targets to whatever, just add on the bias. 65, 78, and there you go. Now you can just, if that's what you wanna do, then there's your clock position for your lob wedge, go in and practice it. And you can practice it over and over again and see how you're doing with that particular combine. The great thing about creative is you get a target score as well as an overall combine score, and we will track your best in average for both. So it's like you're constantly in a competition to see if you can improve. So that's, I just wanted to point out. There's two ways that I really like to use the creative mode. One is if I'm just working on something in wedge technique, let's just say for example, I've been struggling with tinshots in the last couple of rounds and I'm thinking, there's some mechanic stuff I wanna work on here, maybe take some video. I don't really wanna do this in a pressurized game. I'll still turn on the staff radar and start to warm up. And every few shots, I'll switch clubs, I'll slightly change the intent, and you're still getting a feel for, okay, with my 60 degree, as I'm going through these field drills, it's carrying like 55 to 60. So that's my effort level. I might do five balls doing that with my 54. And I'm like, okay, that's 80. So yes, I'm primarily working on my mechanics, but why not get the feedback of how far those balls are carrying, because those wedge distances are off-speed shots anyway. It's not like I'm hitting a half-speed A-dire in which isn't really realistic on the course, and getting carry feedback on it going 97 yards. It's like, no, I'm going to be hitting my sand wedge and lob wedge from 50 to 90 all the time. And then the other one was hitting wedges of, let's say, 30 to 70 or 80 yards, which is where I've set up most of my creative. It uses almost no energy. So if I've maybe played golf or worked out, and I don't really, like, if I've done a hard workout, let's say 2 p.m., and it's starting to get direct at maybe 430, I might not want to hit my pitching wedge at full speed into the net. I might swing might be great, because I'm tired, but I can clip 50 to 70 yards, and it's way easier. There's no fatigue and no risk of injury. - It takes virtually no war. - Exactly. - You know, I mean, you're like three, three or four swamplaments. - Yeah, exactly. The other really fun thing that I've done with my 15 year old is, you go, okay, it's 90 yards, but it's really into the wind or something, or you want to flight one down. Well, I'll set up opposing targets, just two targets in the combine. They're both 90 yards, but one's with the 58, and one's with the pitching one, right? So, because that's sometimes like, yeah, right? And then you get a feel for both clubs, and sometimes, or even more closer together, which is realistic, is it your 60 or 56? Some people will hit most of their distance shots with a 56, some with a 60. Hey, find out. Which one, which one do you see? - Probably the first one I had for later was that. There's one other point that I wanted to get your opinion on, or bring about this type of practice. And I think it's relevant, but I'd love to get. Your opinion is that, okay, we can use stack wedging to focus from 30 to 140, right? So, once we get outside, let's say 90, or definitely 100, that's getting pretty close to like full swing mechanics, full swing stuff. Give or take a few yards, depending on who the person is. And definitely when we get outside, like 120 to 140, like that's just a swing, picking the right club. I think if you're doing a lot of this type of training, there has to be good transfer to your nine iron, your eight iron, your seven iron. It's not a case of, oh, but if I'm doing all this stack wedging, what about my irons? Yeah, sure, you probably won't see a whole lot in your four iron, five iron, six iron, maybe. But your eight and nine iron, I think you'll almost see a linear transfer essentially. I'll just add 12 yards to each club, basically. Yeah, and it goes beyond that. So that's a very, I'm glad you brought that up. I've seen it in my own game. I've all the mini tour guys that I work with that use this. High volume of their practice now is doing stack wedges for this exact, for this exact region. There is a massive amount of transfer. So from a very, you know, mind usher, you could say, you know, Ping's got some great data out there. They just combed through a lot of the arcos data and it was like, how many shots do you hit with from each club as handicap changes or from each yardage? And so somebody might say, well, if you're a scratch handicap or you're, you know, you're only hitting four shots around from, you know, 80 to 30 yards. That's not going to really move the needle in your score. You know, you're hitting 14 drivers. And so, yeah, but it's still important. So the strokes are so hard to shave if you're down low. But, but I fully believe after going through this, like I'm a huge believer in, in, in, in temple practice. Stack wedge aside, you know, like with, with my young golfers or golfers that, you know, or trying to, like, let's just hit a lot of three quarter seven irons. Because it can be, even if it's just a seven iron, a full seven iron, it's fatiguing. You know, it's tough to hit 157 irons and not feel wrecked, you know? - Your swing gets worse. - Because there's a lot. - I mean, a hundred percent mind us. - Once you go over, I'm like, I would say that we're better conditioned to hit golf balls than a lot of golfers from our training backgrounds and golf backgrounds. And there's people can maybe disagree with this assessment. But I think after a reasonably small volume of golf balls, like I would say 30 to 40 swings for sure, your practice starts to get worse. Like you start, you start to revert back to old tendencies once you get tired. It's, it's no longer, I would say like really focused practice. It kinda turns into, let's finish the balls that I bought in this bucket, in my opinion. - No, that's where I'm at too. And this is, you know, that to me, that's the value of doing these low effort shots. I'd still, I'm still a believer in high number of reps, 'cause it's a very precise movement. But there's a trade off there. You can't get high quality reps without getting the fatigue. And then, you know, really the potential for injury. If you're, if you're taking a lot of divots and it's high speed, that's hard on the body. - Hit my hands. It's tough, like, yep, and to get that, you can still work on that precision of contact, even though you're not at full effort, right? So I can easily hit 90, go through three stack combines in a half an hour. And there's, you know, it's great. I get, I get to work on all of the, you know, real fundamentals of a golf swing, you know, like precision of contact. I like my little shift. There's still, you know, still some pressure changes. Feeling a good release, you know? But mostly the precision of contact. That's why I want my kids hitting a lot of balls, is, you know, can you, can you nip these things? Can you hit ball, you know, ball first, end the mat? And it's so awesome to get all those reps in with stack wedging. The other thing that I think a lot of people forget, and I've sort of, I guess, realized this through practicing maybe swing changes, but also by practicing wedges like this, there's nothing wrong with it. It's probably a good thing when you're doing stack wedges a lot and you're hitting a lot of these knockdown and three quarter kind of off speed shots, you can hit that shot with a nine iron and an eight iron. There's enough, there's enough loft on the club where if it's windy or if it's a back flag or if, for whatever reason, your strike isn't great that day, you can just set up to your eight iron, the exact same way you set up to your pitching wedge when you're taking 10 yards off it and just do the same thing. No, probably won't work well with a six iron or a five iron if you don't have much speed because it won't launch or get up in the air, but with the shorter iron, it's a, it's a kind of good weapon to have in the toolbox and it's almost a way of making things more simple. Like, practice filtered down into other clubs. There's just great transfer. - Yep, 100%. And I would like to add that, you know, I will be a bit negative here for a second, but realistic, okay? So the stack rate are compared with the app. We've done some pretty innovative things to give very accurate carry numbers, but we need to know the club you're hitting. So, you know, and that, like you said, that pops up automatically after the baseline. We're like, "Hey, we'll say 46 yards with your 58." And we make the assumption that, you know, if you're hitting a 58 degree that this thing's launching at about 26 and a half, launch angle, and that you've made clean contact, okay? And then we're gonna give you a really good carry number. Now, that sounds like a lot of limitations. They are big limitations if you're trying to use it to play simulator golf and you're trying to get a score in a hole, right? - Yeah. - You know, 'cause if you blade it or chunk it, our carry is gonna be off. But in someone will say, "Well, that's not good feedback." If you're doing stack wedges. It doesn't matter. This is what exactly. When I, you clearly visualize that. - If I chunked it, I don't care if it was 30 yards or 30 yards, I'm pitching again. - I don't even wanna look at it. I do not, all I look at is the points that I've lost, right? So I chunk it and I already know what I did wrong. I didn't shift or I released too soon or whatever it was and I chunked it. There's my feedback. I wanna know the carry numbers when I hit it cleanly. That was a good shot. What was that carry number? Okay, I wanna repeat that feeling. And we are really dialed at predicting those carry numbers. Ball speed with clean contact. If we know the club you're hitting is the number one. It's like, predicts 99% of carry distance if we're inside 140 yards. And we've also got at the start of the app. I don't know if you've had to use this. But Ben Crane, an awesome friend of the stack and he's just trackman religiously. He's done some testing from the early parts of it and he's like, oh, the carry numbers seem to be off a little bit and because of his feedback I was like, all right, we got to improve the algorithms. So this was like before we released it. And I'm like, send me your trackman data, right? 'Cause mine was matching, right? And oh, he's launching his 60 degree at like 23, 24, right? And so four, and there's these interesting relationships that might make sense. If you are hitting it low, like lower than we're anticipating, launching it lower than we're anticipating, then we're going to, at let's say a 30 yard shot, we're gonna overread how far it goes, right? You're hitting it low. So it's his or only carrying 25. We're gonna say 30, but then it kind of crosses at about 70 yards, everything kind of washes out, 65, 70, but now the lower launching one will go further at 100 yards. So we'll say, oh, this thing went 90 and he'll be like, no, it went 102, right? So all I did was build in at the start. If you have a trackman, you spend one session calibrating or if you're just like, nah, these yardages seem like they're off. And if they're systematically low on the short ones and far on the long ones, then we have this launch angle adjustment. I've seen a, yeah, you just calibrate to yourself. You're like, oh, I tend to launch it low. I tend to launch it high and you can move it one or two degrees, that's plenty. And then we also have a ball speed adjuster. So that's more like a systematic, you're like, all my carries seem to be systematically short throughout the bag. Could be the range ball as you're playing. Could be, you know, limited flight range balls or something where the smash factors really low, make that adjustment. And then it just stays or we can also change for temperature and altitude. So we've got all these ways. If you feel like there's some issues with the carry numbers we're getting. We're very reliable. Our ball speeds tend to be within about a half mile per hour of track man. So like, but shot after shot, you get the same shot. We're gonna give you the same carry. If you need to adjust that, just change those and forget about it. And the range ball difference isn't anywhere near as noticeable as with longer clubs or with the driver, right? For four ball speed. No, right, exactly. In fact, this is a feature of the system. I think a positive feature. So if you go out to the range and you're playing crappy range balls, you got to tell your high end launch monitor. You got to adjust it. Otherwise, you get terrible carry readings. Like, you know, if you could measure a launch in Spain and all these things, but with the shorter shots, all you need is ball speed and an estimated launch angle. Right. And if it's like in my range, bad balls got wind. There's holes and like slopes and stuff in the range. So if I'm trying to hit like, okay, I want to practice my 50 yarders or 40 yarders, 'cause that's what you do. You go in the course, you laser. And you go, I want to carry this 50 yards. But practicing that, just watching where the balls land, you're like, I don't know. You set up the, I don't even want a ball flight when I'm doing these with the shitty balls and some wind. I just, you know, set up the radar on my phone. I hit it and it's like, yeah, that would have gone 43 yards. Great, I don't know where, you know. Boom, hit it 90 yards. The thing couldn't have went 80 on my range, 'cause of the wind or the no dimples. But it's going off of ball speed and an expected spin and launch if you make good contact with a decent golf ball. Perfect. So Sasha, that is Stack Wedges Explained. That's part one of this, of this wedge contest. So like to summarize like a very brief overview, essentially Stack Wedges is a really well designed gamified way to practice your wedges. We also need to improve our ability to hit wedges. People can't just, unless they're already maybe at least quite good or very good at hitting their wedges solidly. They can't just swing, hope the wedge goes 60 yards, hope it goes 80 yards. If they're plating and chunking half of their shots, their distance control problem is not regulating their speed. It's making good contact, which I think, you know, every golfer can basically understand. Something I'd like to dig into a little bit is, so with this 30 to 140 yard range, there's a couple of different types of shots. So like I would say, 30 to 40 is a very low energy, low speed shot. And like there's wiggle room on these. I would say 40 to 80 is around about the middle zone, definitely 50 to 80. And I think once we start getting maybe outside 80, but definitely outside 90, you're more into, you're just picking the right club and making a swing then for the most part, I would say. It's very near full swing. So what I think is the most interesting and probably the most problematic for the majority of golfers and you happen to bring it up is, I think that middle zone is a very interesting spot to dig into, like I think 30 to 40. It's almost not quite, but it's almost greenside pitching, especially if you're closer to 30. If you get, I think if you get, like you can't hit a greenside pitch from 50 yards, you can't do it from 65 yards. If I get to 92 yards, I'm probably just going to make a full swing with my highest lofted wedge or a knockdown swing with my second lofted wedge. But from that like 50 to 80 ish range, that's kind of in between, that's almost this gray zone or middle zone. I'm not interested here, you touched on it is, I think a lot of people do try to avoid it. And there's a lot of people are kind of in fear when they get into this area. Can you just say, like if you think that is correct, it is sort of almost a slightly different type of shot and potentially technique to the longer ones and the shorter ones. And then obviously with your biomechanics, knowledge and understanding, what is the difference here? Like obviously there's a different amount of time available. The sequence thing is a little bit different. We're starting to merge between shark and long game. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on these distances, maybe why they can be challenging and things we can do to try and improve them basically. - I 100% agree. I've tried, let's approach it from this angle. First before we get into the, maybe the biomechanical techniques and talk just feels or intense. What are we trying to do with these shots? And I think that transition zone is pretty critical. So for me, and there's probably no right or wrong answers here. I don't, there's no science on it. And so I'll fully, usually I only speak to data - So there is no science on this problem, essentially. - Yeah, there's not, no, there's not. Like for example, is the clock system better than some other method? And there are a few other methods out there. The ways of, okay, well, let's just have, I know my 60, 80, 40, 60 and 80 yard shots. And then I just go a little bit easier, heavier or harder between, it's that one system versus the clock system. Personally, for me, my philosophy is, I like to, four shots up to 70 yards with my 58 degree wedge. And this is what I teach people is, I like to feel that the effort level that I'm putting in to the club stays the same. And I need a defined effort here. But the length of backswing increases. So it's like, I'm pushing on the club with the kind of a similar level of force, but because I've lengthened the swing, I get more speed. Does that make sense? And I like a very slow, kind of softer tempo as opposed to like fast, hard driving, you know, so if we're to think full swing stuff, but more like Ernie L's, less like John, right? For full swing, that's what I'm trying, you know, I don't like rushed, I like, if you've ever curled, I like the feeling of, you know, you gradually get to the speed you needed impact, and you're not, you don't have a flash of speed at the bottom, right? Which I think is different now, a lot of people approach it, because there's plenty of videos on the internet that are encouraging not taking too long a backswing and then making sure you accelerate through. Like that's been a common tip, I think, for these type of shots. Right. And so, you know, there is a little bit of data, not science, science means you've run an experiment, you have an answer, but empirical data that I'm basing my hypothesis on. And this is going to give people some yippy thoughts. So, from doing stack wedges, you know that if you're hitting a 45 yard shy, you need to carry a 45 yards. And you do 48, you don't get very many stack points. Three yards, that basically is the line where you go. I got a really decent chance at a birdie, so I got no chance, right? That's kind of like eight feet, you're 50/50, but now you're kind of 12 feet, boom, things start to drop off big time. So, you go, okay, I tried to carry it 45. How come that went 48 yards? And you go, well, let's break it down. The number one thing is ball speed. One mile per hour of ball speed is going to give you three yards. Right, and we're looking at a smash factor of around one, you know, we're hitting shots a little over one. So, you need to be able to resolve your club head speed. If you want to be a very good, like, you know, scratch player, single handicap, you got to be able to resolve your club head speed into third of model per hour increments. That's the getting, that's the getting exact carry though. That's the get it on the bottom. Right, if you're off by two miles per hour, you're not making a birdie. That, you know, like your odds are making a birdie. So, if you're trying, if you need to, if you're trying to carry this thing, 45 yards, and you need 40, you know, three miles per hour of ball speed, and you only get, you get 41 or 45, no birdie. You got it, you're basically probably going to two putt. So, what I'm trying to say to people is that the number one thing in your technique for these shots is having a technique that can give you very precise control over your club head speed. That's, that's a non-negotiable. And in my mind, then I look, I want to look at a sport or sports or clues to what type of movements allow you to be super precise with a speed when you could be asked to have a range of speeds, 'cause I might need 30. I might need 64. I might need, what can I do so I can be precise at hitting that number? It's very different than the full shot where I have one swing and I just know what that ball speed is and I kind of just go with it, right? It's all of a sudden we need to generate all, very precisely all these different speeds. It's more similar to putting in that regard. So, in my mind, you want a technique that doesn't have flashes of speed, right? Where speed is changing very rapidly near the ball. I like to have the sensation and I think it's beneficial to have the sensation where you get up to that club at speed but you are just kind of riding along with the speed through impact. A lot like curling. Maybe a lot of your westerners don't curl but it's worth taking a look at is where you need crazy precise speed, right? With curling. You never see them shove the rock at the end, right? They've got this very long run up where they gradually apply force to the curling stone to the rock. And then, well, yeah, is that rock going the exact speed I need? And then I let it go, right? Versus say someone who's chipping motion looks like a Gary Woodland downswing with lots of added downcock and you see a big release of speed at the end. And there are some clues. Like someone like Stricker has very precise wedge control. He didn't have a ton of changing wrist angles. That's just, that's an extreme version of it. But like a mimuli, amazing driver swing. You don't see many people with that technique that are really good pictures of the golf balls. It's not an absolute, right? Because with these things, you know, it's just we're trying to figure out what's the most, give us the highest probability to be able to execute on the speed. But here's the problem with that. You get to this transition zone. So for me, when I get to around 80 yards, I've kind of run out of runway in terms of backswing length, where it's like, okay, I'm starting to get into a fuller kind of turn. Well, I'm not going to look like John Daley if I'm trying to hit this thing, 90 yards. So now I need to add a little more effort, right? And these are kind of blending together. But then that's in my brain where I go, okay, I've kind of, now my backs, I can't get much more for my backswing length. So let's just notch it up to, you know, a little bit more effort in terms of how much speed I'm trying to generate. And for me, I think that's, it's in that range where if I don't practice, it's in that transition where, you know, I need to be able to recognize, okay, I'm trying to go 85 instead of 70. It's a bit of backs, add a backswing length, but a little bit of, a little bit of effort, you know. I'd almost take it back one step from that sash out for a lot of the listeners and see why you're in, why you're putting his there, right? So if we take, like you use the 45 yard shot as an example, or let's say if we use 65, right? For a lot of people, and to be honest, myself included, if I have 45 yards, one off shot and the golf course, and I clip it really nice and I carry it, let's say, and it goes 48 yards and I have nine feet for birdie. I'm pretty happy with that, to be perfectly honest, like sure. Sure, it would have been great if I had a four footer instead of a nine footer. The way I would view that is, to be honest, I know it's not correct in stroke's game terms, but I'd view both of them as very successful shots. Like I clipped it really well, pretty much to the distance. Same if it was 65, and if I have a 15 footer, but I hit the shot really well, I'd be like, that was a good wedge shot. Sure, I'd prefer if the next one was six feet. So what I'm almost getting at more is for a lot of people, I think, precisely controlling the speed isn't their problem. It's, why am I hitting the ground two inches behind it? On one hole? Yes. And why am I hitting the middle of the ball on the next hole in this middle zone? Like what's going on in the mechanics and sequencing from that point of view is kind of more where I was gearing that question. 100%. That's where I was, and that's where I was going. I, but you know, this kind of, we could have a philosophical discussion about what you should bring up first. I could have easily brought up that first. To me, that is the eventual end goal of what we want to be practicing. Is, is, as we get better and better, what is the foundational thing? I want to have a technique that I can be precise with my speed at. But then, as you point out, the real ones that are really going to inflate the scores, I bladed it, I chunked it. Right? How, is there a technique that can give me a more precise contact? Right. Again, can I have my low point really precise? And, you know, there are some, I would call them, you know, fundamentals. I think I, you need to have Shaftling, right? There's, there's, there's very, I can't think of any really good ball strikers that don't have the hands leading the club head at impact. I think if you are pulling something, the center mass is trailing, that allows you to be more precise. You have more control over that thing, whatever it is, club head, bell hop cart, you know. So, I use this example and I think there's a reason why putter heads have the center mass behind the Shaft. It's kind of self correcting. If you're pushing something, the air gets exaggerated, right? If you and I are having a race down a hallway with a bell hop cart, you're pushing it and I'm pulling it, you know what a bell hop cart is, you know, the thing you load, yeah. I'm winning. As soon as you go get offline, right? All of a sudden that cart gets more and more offline if you're trying to push it. If I'm pulling it and it goes offline, it gets centered out. Ping at one point, their entire Shaft line had the Shaft bent so that the hands were forced to be leading. You familiar with DS, the DS to try and hand the wedges. So, every, there was a period of time, I don't want them to spend some time in the early 70s, where every Ping Shaft was bent. And then the USGA said, oh, that's illegal. There's been a long history between the USG and the RNA. But yeah, barely recovered from that one, good thing they did. So, to me, that's a fundamental. You have to have the hands leading the club head. And to me, that means that you're gonna have Shaftling, right? There's a reason why it seems like okay, if we want to launch the ball at 27, 28 degrees, when we're hitting these shots, it seems like if we, you know, then good players are typically like 25 to 30, roughly on these shots. Right, that 27 is kinda right in the middle of the distribution. Well, why are we grabbing a 60 degree lob wedge to do that? Right, why not just grab my eight iron, you know, and have no Shaftling? That tells you that there's something about having Shaftling, you're gonna deloft it. So, right, that allows a more precise contact. - And I can go this over. - It's so weird, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, no, no, no, that's all right. And angle of attack. But here's the, we're gonna go real sciencey here. If you look, again, this is not experimental. Right, it's, you know, like it's not science because we haven't conducted an experiment to get a result. Right? I'd love to, but there's date and empirical thoughts so you can reason out to say, oh, develop an hypothesis. Settle difference that matters not to probably people that are listening to this. But to me, if I say science, you know, would say, that means that someone ran an experiment, tested two conditions and came up with a result. To me, that's science giving us, you know, evidence. So you mentioned angle of attack, right? And I agree, you, you, you, it's very, very difficult to hit a golf ball with positive angle of attack cleanly. I mean, you have to go through the big goal first. There's no way to hit up in the ball. And if you're doing that, that's really gonna mess up contact. So you want to be hitting that ball with the descending blow. That's, you know, why you have the ball a little bit back in your stance. You know, that's why I think it's super important to see a little shift towards the target. You know, I like a little bit. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Kwan's drills. I love to see a little, I'll call it flow and rhythm. We don't, that's a whole other separate podcast. But I do like to see a little bit of, you know, movement towards the target. I don't just like staying there, you know, if it's a really short shot, sure, post up on your lead side, hit your shot. But I, I, I, you have to have, you know, your center of mass moving ahead of the ball, your hands ahead of the ball. That's gonna ball back in the stance. Anything that's gonna promote a descending angle of attack. And if you think about, let's go deep for a second. I'll ask you a question, Mike. Do you wanna see the hands moving down at impact or up at impact if you're hitting a pit shot? I'm not my hands moving off, but the club head to be moving down. Exactly. Now, there are two things that can go into making a club head move down. It's either the linear motion of the center of mass. So if the center of, if the center of mass is going down, that's gonna cause the club head to go down. And we decided we wanted that, right? If I want the center of mass to go down, that means my hands are gonna be going down. I don't want that. I want my hands going up. That's gonna create a, maybe a little bit of a flatter spot for the club head at the bottom. This is a, you know, a good way to demonstrate that. If this, if this is following an arc, right? And maybe I'll try to show my phone. And there's the surface. There we go. And if this is gonna bottom out back here, right? I can move my hands up and that can stay the same level. But see how my, my hand, as that's rotating, my hand has to move up and that club can follow very closely to the ground. It makes sense. But I want my hand kind of moving up. If my hands are going down, that club's just gonna, gonna dig, okay? So two things can contribute kinematically from a motion perspective to angle of attack. We could have the hands moving down. That would create the club head to go down. But we want the hands to be moving up. So we get a little bit of a flatter spot. It's not be flat to the ground either. It can be flat. You know, Chris Coleman, I talked a lot about this. It can be flat in a 3D sense. So you can still have a flatter motion, a more consistent motion, but still have the angle of attack being down, okay? But if the hands are moving up, and we want the club head to be moving down, if we wanted to have that contributing to our angle of attack, we need shaft lean. If this club is rotating, okay? And I've got some angular velocity. The angular velocity, as soon as I pass the bottom, any angular velocity is gonna contribute to a positive angle of attack. So if, does that make sense? If I'm perfectly vertical, then this rotation of the shaft contributes nothing, neither up or down to angle of attack. This is, as an aside, I shouldn't say this, but this was one of the reasons why a lot of tour players got into trouble trying to go into a positive angle of attack with the driver. They tried to do it instead of the John Romway, which is pull the hands up, and still have a little bit of shaft lean, they said, oh, I want to make contact with the ball out here, and have the rotation of the shaft, hands could kind of even be moving down, and have that rotation of the shaft contribute to positive angle of attack. That's a, that's a no bueno. You want to have the hands moving up, contribute more to getting that positive angle of attack, while the hands are still leading the shaft a little bit, maybe you get to straight. You don't want to be, you know, that, hitting up on it, pulling the handle up, having your body raise up, not by flipping it up, right? So if we want to have a negative angle of attack, we need to have shaft lean. The shaft lean itself doesn't contribute to a negative angle of attack. There needs to be angular motion. So if there's no, if this club, if I wasn't, if I was just moving this linearly, right? Then that's not contributed. There's no negative angle of attack there. In fact, I could have shaft lean move my hands up and have positive angle of attack. The combination of the shaft lean plus the fact that it's rotating, those two things create the negative angle of attack that allows that more precise contact without the ground getting in the way. So you need the shaft lean, right? And that's part of the reason why you see a 60 degree being used to launch the ball at 25 degrees as opposed to someone grabbing their seven iron. If you grab their seven iron and you're trying to launch it at that, now you need to have the shaft vertical, okay? And now you've got that situation where you can't benefit from that angle of attack to try and get more precise contact. Yeah, and kind of typical on those shots would be like a really good player might have a 60 degree wedge or a 58 degree wedge. They might have 10 to 14 degrees of shaft lean, is that fair to say? Like they turn a 60 degree into a 48 or a 46? Yep, maybe even a bit more. Roughly like four to eights down. Would that be the range you'd say an angle of attack? Yep, could it is for a 60 yarder? Yeah. Yep. So what I think is interesting here where my brain goes is you talked about to get good at these shots, there needs to be a precise way to control speed. But to a certain extent, how good you are controlling speed is useless if you're hitting the ground or you're hitting the middle of the ball. 100%. Do you think people almost trying to get overly precise with their speed control at potentially changing the speed through the swing? I, oh crap, this is gonna land seven yard short. I hope this doesn't go seven yards long. They're changing speed, late in the swing and that's damaging their low point precision. Maybe, or is there something else? Like is there something else in the time that's available, the sequencing needed? Because what I think is interesting when I agree with, like I can see why it happens, I think there's a lot of golfers who's low point control their ability to strike the ball cleanly from, let's just say, 70 yards or 50 to 80 is worse than swinging an eight iron at their regular speed. And it's almost counter-intuitive. I don't know. 'Cause you're thinking the green is just there. Like, I'm just flicking this onto the green and it's even inexperienced golfers. Like people who have practiced these shots, it's, I'm not talking about beginner golfers. They chunker blade one of these shots and they're thinking, I would have had a better chance of striking that solidly with my seven iron. Now they might, like it's an interesting, that's why I think it's such an interesting zone. Like, what are the challenges from that area of being precise? Yeah, I see, you know, it would be a myriad of issues. Maybe trying to be nervous about the speed control is one, I think for the, you know, moderately high handicap, 15 and above, I think it's trying to do something that you shouldn't try to do with the trajectory. So I, so many people that get that 60 degree in their hand and I think, this is a different type of swing where I think you can go a long way, my experience. And they'll look, those are the golfers that avoid it 'cause they blade and chunk it. They don't even pull the thing out their bag. And I, you know, the advice of, just hit it like a bump and run shot. You know, you're comfortable pulling out your hybrid, you know, and scooting this thing up there or your aid aren't in your pitching wedge. I see a lot of golfers who are like, I'm just getting it just my pitching wedge. And it becomes a limiting factor in how low they can go. I can think of a dozen players over the last 20 years that I've golfed in my club who just, you know, the pin is, it's a front pin, not a particularly challenging shot. Maybe they got 20 feet of green. They'll land a 10 feet on another, they got a 30 footer, right? But they're just terrified of hitting that 60, even though they got a big margin for error in the green. So even though carry doesn't have to be that precise, the pull out the pitching wedge and not, you know, without even any technique specific to their 60, they just hit it like a bump and run. But they have this expectation that I got to hit a flop shot. That's a, you know, so there's a concept issue there. So a lot of people think this thing has to launch at 35 to get it to land soft. And the reality is, even with the 60, they tried to hit it like a bump and run. They probably got a little too much flip anyway. And the thing's still launching at 35, but even the concept of trying to play it like the bump and run. The other thing, so that's one massive tip that I think people should think about. Just play your 60 like a bump and run. If you're really struggling, the other thing is having the body stop moving, right? The body stops turning and the hands keep going down and now you're chunking it. So you want some turf interaction, but you, you, this, let's say, majority of shots with the wedge, there's actually some turf interaction before the ball. I know we say we want to hit the ball first, right? But we, if you actually pinged it in a nice study on mats and on grass and, you know, I think 80% of the shots, there's, you know, still some, with good players, there's still some turf interaction. It's not like club meets ball first or some grass, maybe a little bit of nothing that's really going to disrupt club head speed, but there is some turf interaction. And you, you want to continue to move to allow, I feel like, in some cases, especially when, if you're hitting like, I'll go an extreme example, the film Michelson crazy high flop shot, right? You know, where he, where 100% he is slamming that club into the turf behind the ball. And then it's bouncing up into the bottom of the ball. Ping's got some amazing data showing how much attack angle changes between first touch and when it hits the ball. That's how he's playing that shot. If you, you can get in the way of that club motion. So the club, it's not that you're necessarily pulling the club up, right? And I've done some neat experiments with an engineer, Jimmy Harke, a ping and a few others, a ping where, put earmuffs on, blindfolded, and they can, and so first you establish a, I'm sorry, going off, it's here, it's kind of interesting. So you, you, you get this person, I'm trying to decipher what's the ground doing versus what the golfer's doing, right? So you see this club kind of really like ricocheting up in the air and it's like, well, is it the golfer pulling it up into the air? Or is it the fact that the ground is deflecting it? And in particular, I was looking at its Patrick versus Hoveland and the club was doing different things. I'm like, what's the golfer? What's the ground? So you think it's easy, but it's not easy to do. So you set up an experiment. Now this is science. This isn't, this is science. Let's run an experiment. So you get the player to hit their normal 30 yard, 50 yard shot, right? And we're having, having one where there's some, definitely some ground interaction, having these nice spinning shots. And you go, okay, let's put some ear muffs on, play your favorite tunes, noise cancelling headphones, and we're going to get you to be able to repeat the exact same shot with your eyes closed, right? So you get set up over the ball, close your eyes, tap the shoe, and you hit your shot. And you confirm that with the eyes closed and no senses, they hit the exact same shot, right? They don't know what's going on. They think it's a study about, can you hit balls with your eyes closed? And then, you know, three or four shots in, you pull everything away. The turf gets pulled away, the ball gets pulled away, there's nothing there but air. And now they're making that swing where you see that club head get deflected up through impact. And all of a sudden that the flexion is gone. You see a very consistent radius, but they, they can, so what they're doing when they keep turning, is they're just allowing that club to kick up and they're going along with it. And it's very tough to perceive, and I've done this with a few players. Ping was nice enough to, you know, to set up these studies. So that's science. You have a hypothesis, you run an experiment, two different conditions, see the results, right? So is it the ground or is it the person pulling up on the grip? Because certainly the hands are moving up, right? There's no doubt about it, but I wanted to know, are the hands moving up so violently as to cause that club head to quickly accelerate up or is it the ground? And it's the ground, but without you turning with the club, then you'd prevent that from happening, right? And that's where you'd get your chunk potentially or that's, you know, but if, and then on the other side of it, if you think, okay, well, I'm going to try to pull up too soon or keep too much speed in the hands, then you get the blade, right? So you still want to get that release. You still want to get the speed out to the club, but you want to continue moving with it. And that's where I know we've talked about this with your own wedges. That's where you see the really good wedge players. The speed stays in the club. It's not in the hands, right? The speed gets out of the hands and into the club head. And that's where you see that, like rather quick re-hinging, it's not forced, right? And they can put the club, you know, in the holster. You see that one where it's vertical, shortly after the swing, hands open up and the club drops down a little club twirl. Jordan's speed's really good at that. I don't even know where we started with that, but I went down the whole time. No, I don't care. It's like turf interaction. No, no, you're good. Just trying to dig into the challenges of this carry distance for players. Why is it so difficult for golfers to be comfortable making consistent contact from this distance? And I think trying to dig into is it because they have two concepts of what they need to do from this distance, which you did answer. I think many of them aren't aware that as the levels go up, the launch of these shots actually gets lower. And even having that is an important concept. First of all, is something that would change how a lot of golfers approach everything they do about them. If they understand a one, yeah, you actually do want a reasonably high lofted wedge. Maybe it doesn't need to be your most lofted. I would suggest from that distance, especially if you don't don't hit the ball particularly far anyway. But if you combine the fact that you want probably one of your two most lofted wedges as the club in your hand, but you're trying to hit it low with some shaft lean, I think that would go a long way to helping a lot of people with what they struggle with, with these shots. Would you agree with that? 100%, 100%. Yeah, it's the concept. What, 25, 27 degrees, that's low, you know? It's, but they, you know, and to be able to stop it, you know, with spin as opposed to stopping it with trajectory. Yeah, and, you know, it's worth making a plug about equipment. There are a lot of folks have a really nice 60 degree wedge and it has a, has a very sharp bounce, which I like. I like, you know, if you're super precise with where you're putting that club behind the ball, and depending on the conditions you have, if it's not like, you know, super soggy kind of wet conditions you play in, that can be very beneficial. But I think a lot of people who benefit going down from their 60, down to a 54 or, you know, a 56, it's probably because the soul of that club is more forgiving, right? So there's no reason why we know that in a lot of good shots and a well executed shots, when they're executed as intended, there's turf interaction before the ball. And why not have a club that's going to better allow you to execute with that little bit of turf conditions? You know, like, ping has got, there's a reason why all of their effort, you know, not all, but a large major of their efforts gone into trying to explain the five grinds they have, right? Did they suit a certain type of player with certain turf conditions? To me, that that goes, goes a long way, you know, if you don't play a T grind, if you don't have very precise contact, and you have slightly wet conditions, and you have a very, very steep angle of attack, right? Like, help yourself out. Go grab a W grind, you know, Sasha, I'm going to lean straight. Go ahead. No, that's it. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit to finish up, right? So what would be your quick, let's say, set up and motion basics for your amateur golfer who's trying to get better at this length of shots. They're in your lab, they're struggling. Water things would be like, these are the, the stock things I'd like to see in set up and basic motion concepts to get you off to a good start. Yeah, okay, let's, let's say they're hitting a 45 year job, because that's what we're using. Well, let's grab your, your 60 or your 56 or 54 something in that range, 58, ball back in stance, stance slightly open, even at, even at address, I want the hands to be a little bit forward. Depending on how bad they were, I might say, okay, let's feel most of the pressure on your lead side. And let's just keep it there. That's probably where I'd start. I want them to feel like they're not adding a lot of wrist hinge, you know, that they're feeling like that, that that that that 45 year shot, you know, they're trying to get, you know, 40 to 45 miles per hour of ball speed that that is coming from body turn, right? And that the arms motion, the hands motion, that's just to soften things out, blend, make up for some errors, if you will, in what the body's doing, but to make it a nice smooth motion, but I don't want to see the, the wrist hinge right off the bat. I don't want to see a lot of movement in the arms. I want to feel and look like it's driven by the body. And I don't want to feel like they're, they're forcing the hand, the, the arms or hands to add speed, right? As you're making the downstroke, I want to feel like there's a point where the arms start to come off the body, naturally, like you would see in a pendulum, and the wrist angles start to open up. And they're just, you know, maybe gradual, just ever so slightly encouraging that just assertively, but they're not forcing it, right? And let's see how much speed you get. Not enough. Then we go a little bit more body turn. Okay. And, and I want to, I want it to feel like the, the, the hands are, you know, naturally slowing down. I don't want you to feel like you're forcing them to stop. But just as that, that speed moves from the body to the arms to the club, that the hand slowed down and you get the speed out to the club. And I don't want to see the hands moving really fast through impact. That, that, that makes me very nervous. Like, you know, a general thought that I would give them would be, what's the least amount of effort you can put into this swing to get this ball to carry 45 yards, right? So we've talked about this where you can have efforts cancel out. If you keep a lot of speed in the body and in the hands and the hands moving very fast, then you need to apply risk torque to, to keep that club from this jackknife position. Right. So now there's a lot of effort to get that club in the same position. You kept it too much speed in the body. It's like, I've done all this effort. Now all the body, speed stays in the body and hands, body, hands moving really fast. The club had still only moving 43. It's like that to me seems more challenging to be repeatable than if you just have enough, enough speed in the body to keep it turning through impact and kind of match the speed of the club, right? I don't want to have more speed in the hands and body than I have in the club. It were the same, right? I just need enough to allow myself to continue moving with that, that grip. I don't want to be offending the shaft through impact on these precise shots. If that, that's how I would describe that. This is generic. But last one, is there any drills that you like to almost incentivize incentivize players to have these feelings? I know one you suggested to me in the past was lead arm only swings for swings of this length. So anything like that is what I'm getting at. Something the players can just mess around with to get a sensation for the type of motion, the type of forces you're talking about here. I'm a big believer that the trail hand causes a lot of grief in these, these, these short shots when it's with the lead hand, you know, but, but I like to try. It's very difficult. Did you see someone who's launching the ball really high in scoopy, right? You're like, all right, let's hit some lead hand only pitch shots. It is very difficult to be scoopy, right? This is where you're forced. Your wrist muscles aren't strong enough to overpower that hand speed. So if you have a super fast hand with one hand in the club, you're going to top it. It is going to feel terrible. So you're almost forced to be like, okay, the club wants to release. I need to let it release. And that's how I'm going to get my club head speed. I can't be both driving my hand forward towards the target or down and applying a torque to overcome that jackknifeing effect. So that those one arm swings really give you the sensation of, I don't have effort to spare here. I can only generate so much. I better use it wisely and proportion to correctly in the body and the club to get the club head speed that I need. So I love that. And you're going to see immediately lower trajectories from from most people. The hands are going to naturally be leading that trail end is where you can get the scoopy action where it's like, oh, I'll help. And boom, it can really, you know, and you see the ball launch of 40 degrees or a lot of chunks come from that trail hand being too active too soon early release. I'll help. Yeah, let me, let me find the skull can come dry. I'm sure people are going towards the ground. And then they decide, late, let's make sure we missed the ground. Right hand kicks in to get the club elevated and you've middle of the ball. Sasha, I really enjoyed that. Thank you for your knowledge. Where can people find the stack system? Stack system dot com. Yep. And we do have if you, if you're not into speed training, just get the radar. And we have, you can do like a wedge in putting only subscription. But if you, if you're, you know, who's not into speed training, Mike. It really is, you know, it really is a great deal. We've got a new accelerator program, kids, like it's a really valuable to value play. If you've got someone that has crappy range balls, you want to get the most into your practice. You don't have a lot of money for really high-end launch monitor. You know, it's $209 great package deal. It's a great way to get into some very sophisticated practice at a, at a pretty low price point. Do you know what I use it? Have my kids use it every day. We've got all these one monitor you want sitting around. And it's just too easy to put down into it. You're so hyper focused. I feel like, you know, DJ, when he was working on, they'd be like, oh, I'm going to use to track them. But I'm going to show us the carry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would have been, do you remember that? Have you ever heard Claude Harmer and talking about that? He would have been all over the. He loves it. He loved it. Right. Yeah, perfect. Sasha, thank you very much. I think we'll have to see what questions come in about this episode, maybe do a review. And then we've already talked about, but maybe in a few weeks time or something, when you've mentally recovered from the questions I put you through on this one. I am interested in doing another one on Clubhead Speed, something that I got a lot of questions about. And it kind of ties in perfectly is I think there's so many mutual fit for golf app users and stack users, like combining their workouts and their training. But the stack has been out long enough now where a lot of them have kind of, you know, gone great gains, but it's getting much harder to make progress. And what? So a lot of people see that as a bad thing. But I actually think that's where things get almost more fun and more interesting because yeah, that's that's when there's more thinking and problem solving involved. And hopefully where we can help more people. Yeah, I got lots of thoughts on that. Maybe we could tie in some, I've got some pretty interesting thoughts with again, two technical questions that I take that back on ground reaction forces and speeds. Maybe we can love those together. Perfect. Have an AC. Thanks, Mike. I hope you enjoyed the episode with Sasha and you can use some of his information to improve your wedge play. Before I leave you go, I wanted to read you a quick email that I received from a fit for golf app user named John a couple of weeks ago. I might just letting you know I started fit for golf about four years ago at age 52 and had a clubhead speed of 100 miles per hour tops. I am now 57 and have a clubhead speed of 114 mile per hour at cruising speed. This was all due to your program being religious about it all season long with very little speed training. I've only hit driver from time to time and never done any dedicated speed training. Just want to say thanks. You can get access to the exact same programs that John used by downloading the fit for golf now in the app store and starting your seven day free trial. Go through program matcher find the best program for you and get started.