SuperSpeed Golf training system

[puresurfr]

I tried it and it definitely works in a slightly faster swing, not sure if i can make that move when there is a golf ball in front of me but for swinging through the air, i like it !!!

[provx]

Small update in terms of only using the blue stick. I have been working exclusively with the blue stick for a month with both left and right handed swings. I only do step through and normal swings, nothing off the knee or a running start. Today my average speed right handed was 135. This is a higher average with the blue stick than what i was achieving this summer using all 3 sticks. I still have yet to hit 140 on the ssr with the blue stick, but all my swings where clustered between 131-138, with the majority being 134-137. This is very encouraging as i was usually in the 129-134 range this summer on blue, only my best swings this summer where 135+

[ddetts]

Well the inevitable finally happened I guess ?

[ZAP]

Oh my goodness! That would be one of my fears. Especially swinging all out.

and.....

I want to hear more about using just the blue stick. How many swings each way?

[Timefor9]

Not that this will make it better, but thought I'd commiserate. I'm a +1 handicap and I've been using the sticks for 10-ish months. I broke my first SSR within a month and luckily my credit card covered a replacement (free). I caught the radar square doing the step swing left handed and the unit exploded. Then a few months ago hit the (replaced) SSR swinging lefty again, but outside of the 90 day replacement period for my credit card. The screen is damaged but the rest of the unit seems okay. The SSR company hasn't returned my multiple emails requesting a quote for sending a replacement screen, so I've been swinging without the SSR. I definitely miss the instant feedback, but can't seem to bring myself to spend $100 on another radar. If I do, one major takeaway is I have no control over the low point of my left handed swing, and to not use the radar for those swings.

[ddetts]

I've had mine over a year now, so I'm not getting it covered. Definitely not getting a new one right away!

[Left Rough]

Great update. I am going to try the blue and green sticks only and see if I can get another speed breakthrough (up about 7 mph driver swing) as I've plateaued right around where you started (blue in the high 120's to ~135 max).

I've been doing a protocol someone posted earlier with great results but will modify to the following to eliminate the red stick.

Kneeling: Medium Left 4, Medium Right 4, Light Left 4, Light Right 4

1/2 Kneel: Medium Left 4, Medium Right 4, Light Left 4, Light Right 4

Standing: Medium Left 4, Medium Right 4, Light Left 4, Light Right 4

Happy Gilmore: Medium Right 4, Light Right 4

Standing: Driver Right 4

Total 60 swings

If I can squeeze out another 5 mph on the driver (to ~125) I'd be more than thrilled!

 

 

 

[bluedot]

Yes, very much so.

[GolfChannel]

Building on this, my own personal journey has confirmed that middle stick only produces far better gains in terms of the SuperSpeed system. Today for example, was my first day back to using middle stick only for a full 6-week protocol (using SS golf protocol 2). I just finished a full 6-week 3-stick protocol using all three sticks over Winter Break. I had been stuck at 117 with the driver post protocol doing the SuperSpeed prescribed methodology. Today I hit 126 with my driver post protocol using middle stick only in the protocol itself. When I used all 3 sticks and their protocols I could barely break 120 using the light stick let alone my actual driver.

For me the issue with all of this is effective transference. SuperSpeed isn't the golf swing, so if none of this equates to actual swing speed gains with a ball teed up then it's just an exercise. An exercise which is going to teach really bad habits.

I know that the TPI guys are pushing a totally different way to get speed. There is the using middle stick only and training smartly method, not doing a 15-minute non-stop protocol with no rest and a high possibility of injury, but using training speed for other sports entirely to see better speed transference in golf itself. For example, using different weighted baseballs to train speed (ie: can you think of any pitcher who can't hit the ball a country mile?).

I have no preference for any method, I just want to know which method is the most effective use of my valuable free time to gain speed on the actual course.

[clevited]

Maybe you have seen my posts on my thoughts about this before, if so I apologize for repeating myself. So many new people pop on here and I just want to help if I can.

I really think the superspeed golf system is a good thing doing it their way, or even doing it the way your are doing it. The idea is to train your muscles to fire fast, and or train your body to swing more efficiently. There is always the possibility of gaining poor habits when going after speed, it just is what it is.

If a person wants to maintain as good of habits as they can, they should swing the clubs at an object and hit them. I was suggesting swinging at a tee or a foam golf ball on a tee for a while, but I think what would be most ideal is swinging at a small towel with an X drawn on it could be even better (it will absorb your impact and not hurt your hands and stuff so much, needs to not be too heavy, similar to golf ball weight if possible). If you do it this way, I think your gains will be seen more when swinging your driver. There will be no ball mental block preventing your maximum speed.

I think the opposite side swings are very smart even though I don't necessarily believe they increase speed significantly. It is good to keep your body in balance otherwise you overdevelop one side of your body and it can cause you back problems down the road.

I don't think there is any substitution for actually hitting a ball as hard as you can over and over and over again and going after new PRs for ball speed, swing speed, and distance. You kill so many birds with one stone if you have the ability to hit balls. I don't live in an area with year round golf and I made all my gains doing just that each summer. Swinging a club you get the same speed gains and you get to learn to control it at the same time. You also get to show off broken clubheads (and have a good reason to buy a new club) as you get faster and faster. Hitting hundreds of range balls as hard as you can is guaranteed to destroy some drivers over time. I went through 4 or 5. Buy used lol.

 

[puresurfr]

I think i was maximized to begin with, im pretty much one of those guys who has gained absolutely nothing in terms of gains, im currently looking at -3% over 6 weeks. The weight room stuff has been about 9 months and super speed workouts and grip strength workouts have been 6 weeks and 2 weeks respectively. I always knew i had weak hands but the grippers confirmed it. Perhaps this is the weakest link in my kinetic chain.

Im doing SuperSpeed Protocol 1, Medicine Ball slams, battle ropes, plyometric bounding, power lifting, stretching, Captains of Crush hand grippers, etc..... Basically im working my ass off !

I have increased my speed with the sticks approximately 10% and my driver speed through the air without a ball is also about 11% faster, however my swing speed with the ball there is slower than ever and my ball speed is down about 8mph. Im swinging as hard as i can and don't even think about a ball there or where its going, i decided to just swing max and if i connect, that will be great. perhaps u can't teach old dogs new tricks.......the guys in my foursome who i mortally outdrive from 10-30 yards are all flying it past me right now, i certainly hope sooner or later i can at least get back to my starting speed.

[clevited]

The hand strength thing is interesting and something I always wondered about. I have no idea what mine is, but it might be one of the weakest links when trying to swing fast. Perhaps the body is willing but the hands unable and you naturally throttle things. I swing a driver in the 120s and all I know about my hand strength is I can compress one of those 100 lb hand spring thingies with very little trouble. I am not sure if that is anything special though, doubtful.

Edit: @puresurfr are you getting crappy ball flight maybe? Just bad contact like heel strikes or something? That can drop your ball speed way down and cause a lot of back spin thus shortening your distance a lot.

[puresurfr]

There are 10 grippers available from Captains of Crush which is supposedly the standard for measuring grip strength. They are Guide/Sport/Trainer/0.5/1.0/1.5/2.0/2.5/3.0/4.0

The trainer is 100lbs and the 1.0 is 140lbs. To have a certifiable strong grip, it is 3.0 ( 280lbs ) for men and 2.0 ( 195lbs ) for women. Im barely closing a 1.0 right now and that is on a good day. In terms of powerlifting, i have advanced/elite strength but in terms of grip strength, i have less than novice strength. Im hoping its as simple as increasing grip strength because all my other levers are strong.

If i get to 280lb grip strength and the swing is still stupid slow, im out of options.

[CardsChamps11]

I've broken one of these twice before. I'm on my third one. When you're truly swinging all out, this can happen.

[clevited]

Wow, yeah not sure what I could do, maybe I will find out someday. 100 lbs is very easy for me but not sure what that means for sure. Maybe I can do 140? I would be curious to know what long drive guys have for grip strength.

Edit: @puresurfr just ordered 140 lb and 195 lb ones. Will see if I can close either. Might tell you what you need to get to in order to be in the 120s if you aren't already. Would be fun to see if there is a correlation to grip strength and swing speed.

[ddetts]

I was performing the step swings - apparently my step was angled a little bit toward the unit and not completely perpendicular to it!

[puresurfr]

My issue may be that im extremely sore when im at the range. These workouts are really taxing me fully. The plyometrics and Superspeed and powerlifting routines basically wipe me out. I tried to close my easiest gripper this morning and it was not easy, haha and the 1.0 was out of the question. Im hoping to get a real speed reading whenim fresh and the temperature is warmer. Not giving up now but not expecting any giant breakthroughs. It was fun watching the numbers increase with the sticks, but im a bit disappointed it didn't transfer over to actual ball speed and carry distance.

Im hitting the ball extremely solid with a strong flight, im pleased about the contact and ball flight

[bluedot]

So here goes:

The guy that I am working with, who is in the current issue of Golf Digest, has done studies on this with his clients AND has written a paper that is a meta analysis of the studies done in baseball and cricket as well as golf. ALL show the same thing, which is that the best gains are with the a weight that is similar to what you will actually use, and with a LOT less swings. In my "speed" workout, I do 5 swings three times with the blue club ONLY, and there are a couple of other things in between sets, so there's probably 5 minutes between sets. The MOST he has somebody do is 10 swings, with at least three minutes apart.

The baseball studies showed that a batter who swings a weighted bat or a bat with a donut on it BELIEVES that he then swings HIS bat faster; he does not! The takeaway is that you are training your body to swing FAST, and you swing a heavier object slower; you can't tell your body to swing fast by swinging slow. Period.

It isn't my intention to say bad things about the Super Speed folks, but the fact is that they are selling sticks, and they make more money on three sticks than one. But I don't think you'll find any data, or any TPI-like folks in the industry who think three sticks is better, heavier is better, or that 100+ swings is better.

[clevited]

Did the guy look into the muscle building aspect that a heavier club might add to the mix? I have thought about that. Perhaps you swing that one it helps build some muscle, while the lighter ones train that new muscle to fire fast rather than slow. Interesting take, and it would be fun to read his stuff. I swung all manner of different drivers over the years, some heavy, some light. It just depended on what I was playing at the time. I can't say for sure whether I gained any benefit from having different weighted clubs but according to the guy you mention it doesn't. You have any links to his stuff?

 

Also, I am not sure I can get on board with the limited reps idea. I don't know how that can be true. It took me many many reps for instance to incrementally gain to where I am today. Each swing was an effort to get to a higher number and it took a lot of swings to do that. Not sure if I would have achieved anything close to what I have if I only swung 15 times each outing, especially with the format I did which was just swing my driver and hit balls. Without the high reps, i wouldn't have gained as my experience with swinging that hard, or figured out the timing of my swing to maximize speed as well. In other words, I think my gains would have been much slower.

[GolfChannel]

I was able to translate more of the speed I generated this morning into actual club head speed with a ball. Broke the 150 ball speed barrier consistently for the first time in ages.

I made a few swing changes, so I am finally able to generate a lot of spin, which has killed me with driver. I was always super low spin and high launch. Well, launch stayed high, but spin went from 2000 to 3800.

I have a full fitting scheduled for the 24th, but hard to wait that long with ill-fitted equipment so I put the G410+ against the G410 LST with same grip, shaft, and loft. 

Great hits with the + went high and still spun too much, max drive 270, but usually around 265 on the good shots. Misses were very punishing sometimes not getting out past 240.

Great hits with the LST went 290 and my misses went 270. Fairly certain the LST has a heavier head, because I could feel it better in the swing which made consistency of tempo easier and I felt like loaded the shaft a bit better.

Before today I was averaging 260 in driving average.

Now to resist the urge to switch before the fitting...

[puresurfr]

Congrats man ! Its great to see your hard work pay off, hopefully u will be in the 160s after your fitting !

[LeftyAg]

Would love a how to on this

[bluedot]

I think there ARE benefits from swinging a heavy club or bat or whatever; the benefits just aren't speed. There's no doubt that there are strength and mobility benefits from swinging a heavy club, and those benefits can carry over on the golf course. The question then would be whether or not swinging a heavy club for a lot of reps is the optimal way to do that, and I think most trainers would say that it isn't. Very targeted workout programs do that better and faster, and very likely more safely.

As to the number of reps, I don't know what to tell you except that there are measurable dropoffs in speed as muscles fatigue, and you're back to the question of whether or not you can train your body to go fast by going slower. Again, there are almost certainly benefits to lots of reps; speed just isn't one of them, at least according to the research.

When you recount your experience, the number of reps seems to be critical to your gains, and I'm certainly in no position to dispute that. You and lots of others have reported gains from the full Super Speed protocol, and I'm a data-driven guy, so I accept that 100%. I think the key point from the research that TPI and others like my guy have done is that the same or better gains can be had with only the blue club, and with a different protocol consisting of way fewer reps and more rest in between sets.

Put another way, I don't think we'll find any research from anywhere that recommends the number of reps in the Super Speed protocols, in ANY sort of workout. You don't do that sort of reps load in weight training, or in sprints, or in anything that is high stress that I can think of. Most workout routines consist of 5 to 10 reps, (occasionally 15, but rarely) and 3 or 4 sets, whether the routine is trying to build strength, endurance, or speed. And I think in most speed workouts, the number of reps goes DOWN, not up, from workouts intended to build endurance.

Nothing that I'm saying means that you can't gain from the Super Speed program, just that there seem to be quicker and safer ways to do that. I think ANY physical therapist/personal trainer, etc. that would be shown the Super Speed protocols would have the same reaction.

[SirFuego]

I have an untested and unproven theory that a heavy implement (club or stick) CAN help speed IF you have tempo issues in your swing. However, it's not that the heavy club will make you swing faster, it's that it provides more obvious feedback on good vs bad tempo. So if you can groove a good tempo with a heavier implement, you will potentially see better gains when swinging a lighter implement if you focus not just on speed, but also maintaining that "good tempo" feeling.

On that same token, though, I could see a heavy implement being hurtful to speed if you do not have a tempo problem and/or you are trying to swing it as hard as the lighter sticks.

I posted earlier in this thread about using a SKLZ Gold Flex (similar to Orange Whip) prior to SS protocols and I have great success with that because I was able to ingrain the feeling of a "slow" transition before using the lighter implements. I have a bad tendency to get quick in transition when I'm really trying to get at it, but I swing my best (and fastest) when I really force myself to slow transition down. The heavy implement really gives me the feedback I need to slow down my transition and smooth out my tempo.

Jason Glass' SS Protocol was recently posted and if you look at the protocol, he has you swing the heavy club first. However, you are not supposed to swing the heavy club as fast as you can -- you are supposed to use it to loosen up and groove a good tempo. One of his podcasts talks about that protocol.

I am very intrigued by the reduced protocol of using just the blue stick. I went to the par4success website and looked at the report outlining studies they did. On one test, using only the blue stick did better than using all three. However, in the follow up test, using all three generally outperformed the use of just the blue stick. That said, the results were not significantly different, so that does lend merit to the argument that the green and red sticks may not really be necessary. However, the sample sizes of each test were so small that it's impossible to draw any statistically significant conclusions from that. That is not a knock to par4success or anyone else that has done similar studies -- I just don't think the golf industry is big enough for there to be enough structured studies that give us statistically significant information.

I think that like many things in life, there are protocols that will work better for some people than others. Even if we do manage to find some statistically significant studies that says that one protocol is generally better than another -- there will always be people for which another protocol will work better. For all we know, there might even be merit to changing it up every so often. Perhaps if you plateau using one protocol, switching to a different protocol (more swings, less swings, green only, blue only, all three, etc.) might help to improve your gains. For the people posting up that them just using the blue stick is giving better results -- it might not be that the blue stick is a "better" protocol. It's perhaps just that it's different from what you were doing previously that your nervous system is readapting itself and you are overcoming a plateau.

I'm NOT married to any of these opinions observations I made in this thread either. They are just that -- opinions and observations. I could be right, wrong, or somewhere in between with them. So take them for what they are worth. I will continue to read this thread to see what other's have to say since I'm very open to any possibilities at this point.

 

 

[puresurfr]

After reading about this one stick strategy, ive decided to explore it a bit more. Im going to start off with the green stick because it warms me up, swinging about 80-90% for a couple sets left and right. Then ill move on to the blue stick and do a few sets @ 100% of 5 reps and then hit drivers at the range. Im still seeing gains on my sticks but my green stick speed is stuck at 122-125, I can break out of that zone, my blue stick seems stuck at 118-120, but ive seen my red stick jump to 121 and my driver without ball go to 121. Im probably plateauing but it doesn't hurt to change up the protocol ( haha after all I have lost ball speed, it cant get any worse ??? or can it ? )

[Left Rough]

 

that's crazy that the gap between your red, blue and green are so narrow. my red stick i'm usually in the 121-124 range (and driver around the same) which is right where you are at but I have no problem getting the green stick up into the 140's. not sure what to make of it other than it's quite an oddity.

[Daniel Eason]

I just made my swing stick.

Weight once finished came in at 185g + shaft 110g ish.

Went into a metal works seeking a brass bar to do some diy, noticed they also had mills/drills so asked them to craft it.

Superspeed must be making an absolute fortune based on what I've paid.

[puresurfr]

it may be because im pretty strong but slow. I can only move so fast but the extra weight doesn't slow me down much at all, in fact I think the extra weight helps me build momentum. Its easier to throw a golf ball than a ping pong ball. Perhaps that is what is happening here with me ????

On a side note, my vertical jump has been increasing steadily....when I first started out I could NOT really get off the ground but now im 1 step dunking a tennis ball. (6' tall with T-Rex arms )

[SirFuego]

Not to defend SS, but it is almost always significantly cheaper to make something yourself if your only other option is to buy it from a small company. You don't need that product to pay for initial R&D costs, other employees, marketing, travel, rent, etc. SS doesn't currently have a very deep product line either, so they need income from somewhere. That said, I used to have off-roading as a hobby where "built not bought" was a badge of honor, so I can definitely appreciate the DIY aspect of it and don't feel like I "owe" a company something when I could just build the same thing myself. I did buy a set of SS sticks for myself, but I also built a set for my kids.

That said, I wish I had a metal fab place near me that would be willing to do small one-off pieces like that for a reasonable price. The one near me is so busy with other commercial work that they don't want to waste their time with small pieces like that unless you need hundreds of them made, so I just went the epoxied washer route for my kids' SS sticks.

[puresurfr]

Most swing aids can be easily replicated but if everybody makes their own, there is very little motivation for inventors to design and market these tools to help the golf game.

 

Some may even consider this to be counterfeiting.