The Impact of Golf Shoes on Swing Speed and Ground Reaction Forces

Join Mike Napoleon PGA, Dr Tyler Standifird and Robert Winskowicz (Owner of Sqairz) to learn about the impact your golf shoes can have on performance.

This webinar focused on reviewing data collected Dr. Tyler Standifird’s Lab at Utah Valley University where golfers went through a series of tests on various golf shoes and measured the impact on ground reaction forces.

[Music] [Applause] hi everybody welcome to another Super Speed golf webinar we appreciate you spending some time with us this evening uh as always we have our good friend Dr Tyler standerford with us and we have a special guest um Bob wintz from squares golf um Bob you know really great to see you and thanks for joining us today Mike it’s great to be here with you and Tyler so thank you very much for the invite appreciate it yeah you’re welcome I mean we always Tyler and I I think and I won’t speak for you completely but you can add too I mean we’re looking always for the you know new cool stuff that’s out there in the World of Golf and anytime we find um products that are coming out that are really looking at data and evidence to be able to make a better performance type product and in this case in in a shoe I think it’s really cool so um you know today we’re going to kind of look through uh some overview of some of the things that we do with the ground I think Tyler we’re going to probably look at some of the uh kind of anatomy of the foot and the way that works and we really haven’t talked as much about how the foot affects ground reaction force as much as we’ve just talked about ground reaction force but I go through some of that and some common things that we see and then look at some testing that we did um with these shoes now for everybody that’s in attendance um this video will be available at the end we’re going to go through short presentation here first um if you have any questions please type them in the Q&A panel uh at the bottom of your Zoom client and we will uh get to those questions here at the end and we’ll be happy to answer as many as as you have so I’d say without further Ado I’m going to go ahead and get this all rolling um so here we go all right I think that looks good yeah so I mean this is the question of the day and I think we have some of the best experts in the industry here to help answer it um is really you know do golf shoes affect Ground Force production affect performance and in that how do they really affect that and what are some of the other things that may affect it Tyler you want to just walk everybody through the overview of what we look at a lot when we talk about Ground Force obviously if you are more interested in ground reaction forces please uh hop on to um another webinar that Tyler and I did all about Ground Force so this is kind of just a a brief overview yeah and I think it’s important to just set up a couple of things that I think we’re going to be talking about a little bit today and especially how it relates to Footwear and so when we talk about ground reaction force I think the big thing that we see a lot about uh you know out in social media or the common taglines right is is just how big is that ground reaction force we call that the magnitude of the ground reaction force you know can you produce you know two times your body weight and vertical force or whatever that might might be again just how hard is that golfer pushing against the ground the other thing that we care about is is What’s called the line of action of the ground reaction force while the the lifting or the vertical tends to get the Lion Share of of the interest and attention it’s important to understand that we generate forces in all sorts of different directions especially during a golf swing uh towards and away from the target towards and away from the ball and so that line of action is really key and then that last piece of the puzzle is the point of application where are you actually pushing on the foot um you know where is that relative to the back of your foot the middle of of your foot or the outside and uh this is something that we’re really interested in where does that golfer push and again how does the Footwear maybe help that golfer push in specific locations um now when we get into ground reaction force uh we talk in terms of what we call the kinetic sequence so this is just what is the order of these forces and torqus that are creating the motion in the golf swing so the very first force that we see Peak is the lateral Force this is the one that’s directed either towards the Target or away from the target we like to see this peak very very first in the golf swing this is that thing that’s pointed towards the target at this point and it’s going to really help that golfer get that really nice shift of the center of mass shift of that Force forwards the Lead Foot once they’ve done that now they can kind of create what we see with those rotational torqu so this is where we can see that horizont Al plane rotation that really powerful rotation that we see in golfers uh and then the very last force that we see Peak is that vertical Force that’s that last point in the swing where that golfer is just pushing as hard as they possibly can what we hope to see is that all these forces are peing prior to impact with the golf uh ball and what we see in a lot of amateur golfers is that the magnitude of their forces are too low and the timing of their forces are too late meaning they’re not actually able to utilize the ground to create energy transfer to the club and then the ball and so we want to move these forces earlier we want to make them bigger um and and what we’re going to talk about today is how can the anatomy of the foot how can the actual shoe the golfer wearing uh influence the timings and magnitudes of these forces awesome thanks so I really appreciate that you know before we get into more of the the weeds here which obviously we have a lot of fun with I think it’s important for everybody to know kind of some of the background that we’re coming from I mean I’m coming from that golf Coach side you know we owned an academy for a long time that that did very thorough physical assessments and I think one of the things that we looked at that many people did not is we looked very carefully at how those golfers feet actually functioned you know I think that’s something that’s incredibly important you know Kyle Shay who’s one of the other owners of super speed ran all that like health and wellness and physical side you one of the first things that he would do with any player that we had had come in was actually have them take their shoes off walk across the room look at how their foot functioned and then couple that also with you know what types of shoes they might be wearing which are either going to be helping or hindering them Tyler why don’t you talk a little bit you know for a second I mean you did a lot of your research history in in outside of golf too right yeah for sure my very first project as a master student was on the Barefoot style shoe the shoe that allowed that person to really spread out the for foot or the front of the foot really allow their toes to work the way that they’re supposed to so that was my very first research study and since that time Mike I’ve looked at how Footwear influences um you know weightlifting movements in the gym uh for sure running biomechanics is something that I’ve looked at a lot kicking soccer balls and and what I tended to find over probably the decade of doing that type of research related to shoes was that shoes matter in all of these sports right I can give a a runner a specific pair of shoes and they’re going to alter the way they interact with the ground again for Better or For Worse and so I want to find that thing that can maybe match up with their foot style and and their own running mechanics but it was just something Mike that I I felt like as I looked at the World of Golf I thought man there are some real opportunities here to dive a little bit deeper than just hey that’s a cool looking shoe I’m going to put it on my foot because all of my previous research shows that that it does make a difference in these other sports and when you look at the forces that golfers cre create they create a lot of force and they create it really quickly and so I wanted to kind of dive into that more deeply absolutely well I bet Bob that you also kind of saw an opportunity where you know there were some things lacking in Performance Footwear in golf I mean what kind of gave you the idea to come up with a more performance-driven golf shoe you know most of the the impetus behind why we designed the shoe was we were seeing a complete shift from yesterday’s type of golf Footwear which was that leathered structured shoe with the metal cleats and it felt like there was a tremendous jump to this lightweight sneaker-like shoe that had no structure to it whatsoever and the research that we did uh told us or let us down a path that there were two or three very important points number one is a golf shoe needs structure because of the forces that you create and and Mike you you said it perfectly earlier is that a shoe can either help you or it can hurt you and most people most golfers out there really never think of of of the golf shoe as quote a an important piece of equipment it’s like an accessory and so what we tried to create was a shoe with more structure something that had a traction pattern that was associated with the movements in golf but one of the key factors is allowing the toes to sit naturally because we all know that once you angle the toes to the center of the shoe the foot starts losing mobility and your sense of balance and stability ultimately stability uh is hindered so you know while going through the design process we kept these in mind and the last thing was trying to widen the Bas and of the ball of the foot ever so slightly and in doing so we can have measurably more balance and stability so we just set out to build a better mouse trap and we were driven by the fact of the lack of structure the lack of cleats in in that new type of golf Footwear well I think it’s really exciting I also always applaud any company that’s willing to let us get our hands on some stuff and just absolutely do everything we could dream up to try to you know prove you wrong so um what I think is pretty cool is when you actually do find this stuff that that that really works so yeah um well let’s move in and actually look a little bit at some of the things that we typically will see or look at with a lot of our players when it comes to the way their foot functions you know obviously ankle Mobility is a big deal the ankle is supposed to be a mobile joint in your body meaning that it moves in all three planes of motion um that’s not always something that every player can do very well but the mobility of the ankle is definitely one that’s important and the the foot does go through a significant amount of motion you know during the golf swing you know Tyler why don’t you talk a little more in detail there but I know we get points where we’re certainly going into ersion inversion we have dorsiflex in the swing lots of different things there right yeah and and one of the big things that I’ve looked at a lot is is that golfer setting up that first Force we talk about the first Force peaking which is the lateral force and the motion that we really need a golfer to be able to do at the ankle is e verion now ersion if you look down at your foot that’s like taking the total outside border of your foot and being able to kind of get that up a little bit off the ground and almost kind of pin down the inside of your foot have the real connection point coming from there what that does is it allows you to create a ground reaction force that’s pointed more towards the target golfers who really struggle with that capacity to Evert sometimes it’s really hard for them they tend to just kind of roll to the outside of that foot and then the this is really the key mic because again some players May roll a little bit to the outside but then they have the capacity to recover and get back to that everted position but many of the golfers that we test they just can’t do that they get in that position they don’t have that ever mobility and it can cause all sorts of issues with the way they generate that lateral Force very early in the swing for sure and we think that one’s incredibly important I mean that’s one of the screens that’s going into our app which I will on a side note say is officially getting into Alpha phase now where we’re testing a bunch of that stuff in housee we’re very excited that that’s going to be coming out here very soon um but yeah I mean we’re going to have everybody that goes through that test their ankle ersion inversion to see where that fall you know moving towards stability I think stability is kind of a misunderstood thing sometimes like that doesn’t mean that we’re trying to lock your ankle in place it basically means how strong are the muscles around that ankle and how functional are those muscles when we’re trying to do things that apply a lot of force like lateral force in the in the trail side or things like that um you know PNF is also big deal we I like to talk about that one in golf all the time it’s because I think it has a very close link to consistency we don’t need to belabor it now but you know basically that’s that system of signal going back and forth from your brain being able to tell you how you balance in space and that’s another big deal when we start to talk about uh balance in the Gulf swing so I’ve got a fun little thing for everybody to try here at home real quick you know if you’re sitting at your desk or watching this or standing up see if you can actually get all five of your toes to separate and you know I I think it’s kind of an interesting little test CU you know when we did this at our Academy for about 10 years worth of study we found that about 5% of the people that we tested still had this amount of toe function which actually allows them to spread all of their toes out and then being able to move them all while they’re extended so everybody just try that at home you don’t have to tell us if you can do it or not but this is actually one of the biggest correlations I’ve ever seen and I would love to a study on this one sometime Tyler like the quality of ground reaction forces based on toe function I think would be a pretty amazing medical study to look at now obviously not everyone’s going to have this full toe function we’re always looking for ways to get more of this toe function going um I also want to show you guys some of the common things that we see that are wrong I mean we’ll see players that have very flat arches that can OB viously cause some issues with the way the the ankle functions we can see those lack of mobilities where there’s a limited amount of ersion or inversion or dorsa flexion we’ll see things like halis valgus where you have that big toe that starts to get bent in a lot and then get some pain in that joint in your toe that is obviously something that is going to affect your ability especially if it was on your lead foot I mean that’s exactly where we’re pushing through the ground to try to generate torque and vertical for Force do we think if there’s a ton of pain right there we’re going to have an issue maxing out that Force absolutely right so those are just some of the common things that we’ll see and again these aren’t things that are completely limiting to your ability to play golf but they certainly um are have an effect on on what’s going on and you know I think one of the biggest reasons that these type of things exist have have to do with the shoes we wear right I mean I think whether you’re talking about you know men’s dress shoes that have a very pointed toe and actually kind of you know Bunch your toes in toward the front I mean I I think it goes without saying we can talk about you know high heels and a lot of women’s shoes I can tell you that this is an epidemic on the LPGA Tour as far as foot function goes even some of the most powerful players that we uh we look at you know toe function is something that just isn’t looked at that much we’ve had to implement all kinds of different fixes for a lot of these things that come out and you know these are things that I hope that you know people can avoid but you know we’ll have players that where we need to get an orthotic involved that sort of adds some structure back to the foot when it’s in in a medically you know issued situation or some of those um you can actually get these on Amazon these little like toes spreader devices that uh can help an awful lot with some of those other issues now obviously we could talk all day about physical ISS issues that could definitely affect I think that’s a little beyond the scope I just wanted to throw a few of those in Tyler I mean you’ve probably seen a lot of you’ve probably done some work with Orthotics right yeah I’ve done orthotic testing again kind of the the Barefoot muscle strengthening testing um you know and and I think what we need to understand is that there’s things that we can do that can help our golf game that will also actually help our life and I think this kind of falls under one of those categories Mike where it’s like you know we’re can can have their place for sure but I would love to see more people wake up their feet have their feet especially their toes function the way they’re meant to uh I literally just uh listened to like a two and a half hour podcast with a foot specialist Dr Court Courtney Conley who’s a doctor to Chiropractics who specializes in a lot of this stuff and it’s and there’s just so much to be had there after it I was the same as you Mike where I’m like man I want to take every golfer through toes spreader training and foot strength training um and then push them to look at what happens to their ground reaction forces without any um other changes because it it I’m confident that it would make a huge difference I feel like more and more what I’m seeing as far as functional training goes is to get people working out training walking doing things like that in a shoe that actually forces their foot to activate so more of a Barefoot style shoe and then whenever they’re playing it or you know performing a specific sport getting a shoe that also then complement and enhances some of the performance aspects of what’s going on I mean we see that in running shoes all the time right now I mean would you really want to wear a running shoe to play golf I think it would cause some issues for a lot of people but when you’re running right Tyler like this would this helps out a lot yeah and I loved what you said there right it’s this really Elite level Runners they have all the foot function that they need on their own in a Barefoot kind of style situation but when they run they utilize the technologies that we have right whether that’s carbon fiber insolid plates or or motion control whatever again it matches their gate it matches the forces that they need but they do it with a really strong foot and now they have Elite level performance yeah and I think that’s the kind of the one of the themes that I think is going to go on here is that you know we’re not saying that you know any type of shoe is going to magically fix everything about your foot but I think if you can get into a program where you’re working on foot function you’re working on how your toes spread and then you’re taking advantage of something that enhances that performance a little bit I think it’s a really good deal you know same thing can be looked at when you look at like weightlifting shoes right I mean there you have like the opposite of a running shoe you have a very flat platform shoe so that you have maximum ground contact when you’ve got hundreds of pounds over your head um that’s one we can get into for a long time too I think other ones like soccer would be another one where you see a lot of performance iing especially with like the way Spike placement goes way toward the outside of the shoe and those you’re getting a lot of lateral type motion and thing and things in in that sport but just another good example I would say of how other sports have tried to optimize the performance aspect of a shoe to benefit the athletes all right well I see a lot of questions coming in here about you know especially the toebox area of these Square shoes so Bob that’s the first one we start to look at you know what you guys have done with these shoes in order to offer something that’s a you know platform for performance in golf you know let’s talk a little bit first about that that toe box area of that shoe yeah so one of the uh the areas that the science let us down was to open up the toe box as much as possible so the toes could sit naturally and we played around with a a whole host of designs uh about seven years ago and and you know the more we looked at it the more that you know the geometry of the shoe was established now it’s not perfectly square toe box it’s got a 70 millimeter radius but from the middle of a ball of your foot all the way to the end of the toe of the shoe is where we increased the space inside the shoe brands like Hoka Ultra have followed suit in the running business you know they’ve got they’re opening up the toe box and and I see it now in a lot of different sports of people opening up the toe Buck because the more you angle them to the center of the shoe uh the less balance you’ll have now we all know in the World of Golf and pretty much in any sport is that pressure always precedes motion now a lot of golfers can’t put their arms around that you need to press on the ground before you can start that motion everybody thinks it’s your arms moving that it’s pressure on the ground that precedes motion so as you dial back the golf swing you really start to understand the importance of ground connection and allowing the feet to oper properly and all the science out there led us to opening up the toe box yeah no I I’m definitely in there like I’ve always looked for shoes that have that wider toe box to be able to um you know just get those toes more involved in what’s going on now what happened what happened I can tell you personally for me is I’ve actually I actually started for a long time buying wider width shoes because I wanted the front of that shoe to be wider I would always find that typically those wider width shoes my foot for example I probably don’t need a wide width shoe in the heel part of my foot I just wanted it in the front part of the foot that that’s one of the things that I’ve seen some questions come in too you know about um about squares where you know it’s not specifically a wider width shoe it’s just the actual shape of that toe box fits the front part of your your foot a lot better so you know if there’s anyone out there I think that has tried that feels like they need those wider width shoes but they haven’t really been measured and I mean there are people that need wider width shoes that’s there but you know if you’re someone feels like the front of your foot’s stuck like it’s interesting cuz like the way this works is it almost cradles the heel better you know because that that’s a normal width in that side than that wider part in the front yeah I always caution I always caution people against people want to buy extra room in the toebox they always want to buy it how you buy it is you buy a wide shoe you buy an extra half a size um now your foot’s moving in that shoe and that’s another thing that we don’t want to happen is we need that foot in the shoe to be one you want that you to be one with the foot and you want to have room so the toes can SPL um but but I always tell people is that we are not a wide shoe where with is established we’re a normal DWI shoe but we just opened up everything after that in the toebox so H again buying that extra half that extra room is a detriment to a golfer yeah I I agree I mean Tyler would you agree with that I think there’s a lot of people out there that are prying TR probably trying to gain toe width in shoes that they they just aren’t in a lot of the models of golf shoes that are out there and they’re buying wide shoes to get it and then you’re ending up with like heel instability other issues there yeah again and that’s the it’s the matchup right Mike it’s the idea of allowing the forefoot and the toes to play and function how they should but also having a stability and and control in that back right if my heels slipping all over the place because of an ill-fitted shoe it doesn’t matter that I can allow the the front of my foot to do what it needs to yeah awesome well let’s go ahead and move on the next piece that yeah I wanted you to talk about a little bit Bob kind of what we’re looking at right there is like the heel stabilization in the shoe yeah on the back of the shoe we’ve got a heel stabilizer and you know it should have it should have been called more apply a heel inarch stabilizer because it runs externally from uh the heel of the shoe down internally underneath the Arch and what that does it it it has several roles in the shoe and again this is a patented piece for us is that number one It Centers the heel in the shoe number two what it also does is it prevents rollover injury because uh as as Tyler mentioned inversion is a good thing in the golf swing but roll over is a bad thing and so this helps the foot be stable inside of the the shoe because it runs externally internally so it also comes down underneath the arch and it gives a a really good feeling under the arch and it creates or should I say it it’s it’s what I call an anti-torsion device so if you could take a shoe hold it by the heel and the toe and twist it like Mo many of the sneaker like spikeless golf shoes today throw it away do not play golf with that shoe I don’t care if you ever buy our shoe but just do not play with a shoe that you can hold from the heel on the toe and twist it because again there’s so much play in that and it’s going to cause injury so what this heel stabilizer does is again it provides that added structure uh that that golfers need because you create so much pressure with the ground you’re going to need that in order to effectuate the swing yeah cool um I definitely can feel that like I I feel like the heel of my foot is much more stabilized in these shoes than it is in kind of The Wider width ones I was buying before you know one of my favorite things here is kind of what you guys did with the the placement of the spikes on the bottom you know we talk a lot about point of application of ground forest in fact I think if you’d ever see Tyler and I in a training session with a player like we talk about where they’re pushing on the ground probably more than anything else we talk about um we use a lot of devices like the force pedal and those to actually train exactly where to push on the ground you know I think it really does fit in pretty naturally here um you know Bob why did you try choose some of these placements for the spikes uh before I get into that I want to emphasize the point you just made is that speed training really it emphasizes and I think what you have done a great job at is training people on how to use the ground where to push out where where to feel it and and and that is that is it is not discussed enough today it’s so overlooked everybody is so enamored with the driver and the ball and this that they they they don’t reverse the swing get back to the ground and then understand the basics of ground force and so the studies that we did early on was where the greatest amount of pressure is exerted on the foot uh during a a good swing uh to optimize the the amount of of pressure you can put on the ground because one of the things that we see a lot is somebody can generate the Newtons or the pressure on the ground but how much of that do they actually use and a lot of that difference is what we call postural control your ability to control your body consistently throughout that motion and one of the keys we saw was the Strategic placement of cleats now a lot of the shoes went away from a cleated product into a spikeless and and and I think you’re going to get to that in a minute about the difference between a spikeless in a spike shoe but I will tell you that 82% of all tour players wear a removable cleat that’s a spiked golf shoe now there’s a reason why they do it and they do it because they understand that they’re connect ction is Paramount and that’s how you generate power in the swing so we strategically place these cleats under the areas where the greatest amount of pressure was exerted during the swing then we supplemented that with a rotational pattern of what we call traction lugs so this is what I call the ultimate hybrid traction system It’s a combination of traction lugs and spikes so that you have the most optimal connection with the ground yeah I I mean honestly I think the other thing that this might seem like absolute Captain Obvious but I think it helps your shoes last a lot longer too cuz you know if you get some of the better spikeless shoes that are out there that have a really you know tight grip right off the bat you know 10 Rounds in they’re already starting to get worn down a little bit I mean I think there is something absolutely important to be able to be said to be able to just change the spikes out and be able to maintain a more consistent connection with the ground over time I couldn’t agree more and you know I always joke with people people say well those spikeless shoes you can wear to the supermarket wear home and I say anything you can wear to the supermarket don’t wear on the golf course because if that is a spikeless shoe those things are set there and you’re wearing them down as you walk you wear them down and you wear them based upon your Tendencies of your feet you know whe they Varys valgus and you you start wearing them in that area and as you wear them that could work against you and I mean where as in not I mean where in the spikes that could work against you in the golf swing I mean you you still catch plenty of tour players around even with metal spikes so I mean it’s this this is something that I think the the big companies have tried to push more of these like lifestyle size type shoes I don’t know I’d rather have much more of a specific golf shoe all right well you guys ready to talk a little bit about some of the stuff we tested Tyler and I tested this stuff at his la uh out in Salt Lake City at Utah Valley University um when exactly that was maybe a couple months ago right Tyler yeah this kind of marchish right yeah so this wasn’t too long ago um we did two kind of rounds of testing and I will also point you guys we have a great video that we released on our YouTube channel um that goes through all of what we’re going to talk about here in the next about 10 minutes in extremely uh you know intricate detail and there’s a couple really good articles out there about this as well so highly um advise everybody checks all of that out um we’ll certainly put links to all of those up um with this video when it when it comes out the webinar video the first round you know was kind of fun for me because I got to be the subject and I got to actually go through this right and you know we tested three different shoes we used um again kind of one of those more modern um very lightweight foot Joy Flex was the model spikeless golf shoe um we tested a zero drop shoe so that basically means that it’s pretty much a Barefoot minimalist style shoe and then we tested the squares v um and we took a look at everything I mean you know like we do with anything else we got on the force plates we you know had trackman set up we looked at everything we kind of saw how these things turned out I thought it was pretty impressive Tyler you want to go through a little bit of the data here that of the things that we saw during this testing yeah and we just kind of like to go through that sequence that we talked about so from a lateral Force standpoint when we’re talking lateral Force kind of in kind of finishing the back swing around transition this is basically our Trail leg doing two things really importantly pushing into the ground and pushing away from the target it needs to do both of those things really effectively so that we get a reaction force Vector that’s up and towards the Target now that’s Force where we just zero in on just the trail leg and what we can see is that the squares uh model was able to produce 20% of body weight a zero drop was 177% and the foot joint flex was 19% again these these one to 3% changes may not seem like a lot but when you start looking at the percentage magnitude this was a 5% increase in lateral Force um from that trail leg and and I can just from a just feel standpoint you know I’m a player I’m a person that does have pretty stable ankles that have good function so and I know how to use my feet in the golf swing what I thought was really interesting is is really what the zero drop shoe felt like is it just felt like I was having to work harder to get the same results I was having to put a lot more effort into that kind of eversion of the ankle and really trying to grab the heel of my trail foot to get lateral Force whereas you know definitely the squares with that more stability in the spike play on the inside was certainly a lot easier to get that from right right off the bat yeah the one that I liked on this one Mike was this torque right this is the rotational torque this one’s actually coming from what we call in biomechanics a type of force couple which is the idea that your feet so your lead foot in the downswing is going to push really really hard towards the ball your trilo is going to push really really hard away from the ball and you get this combination of those forces that create this nice rotational torque uh Mike is a rotational player that’s where he generates the vast majority of his speed so he already had good values but to take him from the 96 or 100 all the way up to the 114 this was a big significant change and and the reason why I like this a lot is because um I also had a research study that some students of mine did and presented recently at a conference in Colorado um some great students uh Blake moral was the one who led that project and what they found in their study with the this was a group of seven or eight again kind of pilot based data was that this this uh force from the trail leg increased in the squares model that was the force that they were able to push harder and more confidently away from the ball to create this really powerful rotation and that led to some nice increases in ball speed yeah and I mean vertical Force something I’m always working on especially lead leg vertical Force you know if I’m if I have a you that’s where I’m going to go bad if I do um definitely saw an increase there but I think the biggest thing that we saw was you know the ability for those forces to work over more time throughout I mean the biggest number that we saw and Kyler Tyler I know we can go into you know the weeds here on vertical impulse but you know essentially that’s just the total amount of that Force that’s happening over time those were the numbers we consistently saw jumping up with just about everybody we tested yeah and I’ll say it this way Mike th this I think is very closely related to the timing of these forces uh and the rate of force development meaning how how how much force can you build how quickly can you build that force and when you can build those forces more quickly and hang on to them for longer you get these larger impulses and that was something that these shoes led to in in Mike and our other subjects we’ll show you and the the research study that I just mentioned they were just able to create a larger impulse more force over a longer period of time uh again better timings right yeah so the next part of this testing which we we had a lot of fun with was we brought in some random subjects and you know this this part of it was more about how is this going to actually affect some of our super speed training that we do with players and you know if everybody wants to get their screen capture ready this is our um brand new level two ground reaction force protocol really focused on Direction and timing of force this is going to be released with our app coming soon this is the protocol that we put the subjects through so essentially we had we collected data with these subjects uh in their shoes in a pair of square shoes then we put them through about a 15minute training session with this protocol you know hoping to teach them how to better use the ground how to better you know deal with point of application timing and all of those different aspects and then we retested them in their own shoes and squares to kind of see what the differences we going to be and you know look we know we have drills that work very very well to help people get better at Ground reaction forces but if you’re going to give them even more of an advantage by having that more stable platform to do it um you know we saw some neat stuff this is a this was subject one Tyler you want to look through these yeah so this was our subject one this was a a former Collegiate basketball player good good fast uh play um but still just kind of laid on some of his forces we would have loved to have seen larger impulses loved to have seen earlier application of these forces uh because he just was a little bit late for the type of speed that he was developing um and we can see him again he was in that 172% we’d love to see that even higher if we could above 185 even up to 200 um and again bigger impulses values uh to signify generally speaking though we just wanted more right like one where we wanted more he he was doing pretty well with most of the different forces we wanted more Force overall and you know so we tested him and then we retested after uh the training in the squares and that’s what we saw yep and this this is where yeah Mike Mike you mentioned this I think this is really powerful it’s not that it’s not we’re saying hey you’re gonna put on a pair of shoe and then it’s going to magically allow you to do everything but when you start then applying the knowledge of of some of these ground reaction force patterns and how to use the ground with with a surface that gives you the capacity to do it that that’s I think when you can really start seeing these these massive gains I mean these are pretty big numbers I mean most people would not complain about getting 10% more vertical force in a period of about 15 minutes would you agree yeah and again that impulse if you notice the impulse is the one that even increases more which we talked about it’s just more Force earlier larger forces earlier smoother curve traces just just a better transfer of that force all right so subject two another fun one um one of the big things that we saw here was more on the timing side right which is really what this protocol is massively geared toward um I put some little yellow lines in there because it was a little fuzzy to see the club shaft but you know very common thing we see with a lot of players essentially peing vertical Force at impact um in the in the training and then right after that training moving that back I’d say significantly you know Tyler I still wanted earlier I think it I mean I’m a broken record saying I want forces to Peak earlier but yeah this this is a player that had big forces right it’s just that they weren’t applied at a good enough time to allow him to utilize that to create a lot of really high club speed you know again he he was creating close to 200% of his body weight vertically but his Club speeds were were like pretty pedestrian uh just because they were occurring so late in the process yeah this is one that wasn’t getting a lot out of it so that’s a really cool result as well so you know again you know I think neat stuff that we saw in there please check out that full video and the full article about all of this testing that we did with these shoes um I think there was some really neat stuff that came out of that all right I think we got a uh I think we have a few questions here that we can kind of move into but yeah bober Tyler is there anything else that you guys wanted to add before we get into the questions I just wanted to add one thing I thought one of the the things that we have known since we started this was the difference between a spikeless shoe and a spike shoe that uh H how H how much of a difference in terms of distance are you compromising moving away from a spike shoe to a spikeless shoe and you know the studies that Tyler did I believe it was 9 .1 yards of distance between a spike shoe and a spikeless shoe and you know there’s a lot of people out there today that will get fitted for clubs they’ll do speed training they’ll do all of these type of things and and yet they’ve got equipment that’s working against them and uh it’s just I think there’s just so many people out there Mike that don’t understand that you can train you can train to increase your swing speed and you guys have got a great program to do it but it all begins and starts with your interaction with the ground I just think every piece of equipment is important I mean we just did another webinar recently with Ian Frasier uh from club champion and talked all about equipment fitting and how we can optimize you know how we can take advantage of the speed we’re already creating but you know I just think that it’s like anything else we need to think about everything we use during a round of golf as a piece of equipment I think it’s important to think about the glove that you wear I think it’s important to think about the grips you have on your Club I think there’s a lot more to all of this than just do I use a regular flex shaft or a stiff flex shaft based on my club speed and I don’t think that a lot of people talk about the golf shoe as being a piece of equipment and I I think they should I can tell you from experience working with a lot of players of all levels but especially some of the players some of the best players in the world I mean I don’t think most of them think of shoe as a piece of equipment I can tell you that especially on the LPGA Tour people are way more concerned about you know what those shoes look like and how they they function then really how much speed they’re getting them in their gol swing I think it’s a big deal um I think that’s a that that’s something that everybody could kind of reassess in their own games yeah and once you put something on your body it becomes part of your performance I agree I agree I’ve got a question here I want to answer first because I think this is one that um I think this is one that maybe a lot of people would have and that that’s from Jack here saying uh do rubber spikes or high traction Souls impair foot movement that you see uh in a lot of tour players I’m I’m assuming he’s talking about your Justin Thomas is coming off the ground at impact or Scotty sheffler moving his feet around you know Jack let me say this in a simple way and that I can let Tyler or Bob add in a lot of the weeds if they want to the foot motion that you’re see on these tour players is a result not a cause of their ability to push incredibly aggressively on the ground okay so the traction that they have in their shoe allows them to push more aggressively on the ground in the right places and actually causes more of that motion that you’re seeing it’s not something that restricts it it’s actually one of the reasons they’re able to do it would you agree with that Tyler yeah I I think Scotty Sheffer is the perfect example I love watching him swing a golf club obviously he’s an incredible incredible player um I think it’s important to look at when his foot moves in relation to where his Club is right that trail foot he doesn’t go to push with that trail foot in his back swing and then all of a sudden the foot slips and moves away from the target that’s not the motion of that shoe or that’s not the motion of his foot right the movement of the foot is Coming Far after he’s applied those forces at the correct timings and the correct applications in insane magnitudes that then you get these reaction forces of that foot he’s not slipping on his takeaway like you would on a wet golf surface on an early morning tea time or maybe in an incorrect shoe yeah 100% I I mean I guess the point there is never try to copy what you’re seeing those players do with their feet because you’ve already missed the point if you’re trying to do it like those those motions that you see are reactions they’re the result of what they’re doing before and that’s where if you do good training with how you use the ground it’s very possible that your feet aren’t going to be exactly perfectly planted when you’re done so if you’re pushing hard enough you should be moving them a little bit as you go through the SAG and and I’ll just add Mike because I want to make sure this is this is really clear Mike said something that was really uh key there which was they are the reactions of something that’s taken place right the next time you’re out playing golf in an early morning round with one of your buddies and it’s dewy or it’s wet and you they go to take a back swing and they start to push and their foot goes in the direction of the push right they don’t have that locked in interaction with the ground that allows the ground reaction force to then push them in the opposite direction they just end up moving kind of where that force is going from their body same thing would happen on Ice the same thing would happen again in Slippery condition um in amateur golfers I think and in those wet conditions we’re seeing like the internal Force we’re seeing just the body push in those directions because it lacks the secure connection with the ground yeah so next question here so compare Barefoot golfing to wearing shoes this is a fun one yeah this is one where there’s a real especially if we’re comparing those shoes that can constrict the toe box and constrict our foot right if we’re just looking at the way a golfer would generate ground reaction forces and I’ve talked to some people who’ve collected data in these scenarios and they can sometimes see some pretty cool things with a Barefoot style shoe or or sorry with a bare like just Barefoot on the ground you have much more of a feel with the ground the issue becomes again slippery surfaces right can you walk over the course of of that time period with that right we love the idea of a of a shoe that allows you to let that foot act more like it is Barefoot but there still is some benefit to the traction on the bottom and some support when you’re walking and doing other things like that I mean I go ahead Bob no I was gonna say we did uh we were part of a study once where we did a difference between a spikeless shoe Barefoot and a spike shoe and and the worst performing out of those three was the spikeless shoe because with a with a Barefoot you can actually grab the ground a little you can grab the ground and create a little more ground force uh whereas that spikeless shoe wasn’t giving you that connection I I I would not suggest that that anybody goes out and plays Barefoot simply because if you have to grab the ground with your toes it just creates so much tension up the body but uh I I think there’s some cool research that could be done there I’d like to go back to one of the things we talked about earlier is that I think it depends a lot on the function of that player’s foot I certainly no players I mean Kyle Shay for example other owner of super speed you might have some of the most functional feet of anyone that’s ever walked so like I think he could probably go out and play and hit a few shots Barefoot and get some pretty good performance out of it I think as soon as you start to look at players that have a little bit more limited toe Mobility or different things happening in the Arches I think that having more support under that’s going to make a huge difference now that being said again I’m a big fan of doing physical exercise in a more minimalist kind of shoe to actually activate those muscles in your foot to get your arches stronger to get your toes working but just like that Sprinter that could probably run pretty fast Barefoot they’re still going to run faster in in a platform type shoe that’s designed to help them run faster on their foot that’s the same thing we’re we’re saying here so again depends on the function of your foot get your feet as functional as you can but then why would you ever not take advantage of you know the ability for something that’s going to give you gains um and make it easier to do the things you need to do in your golf swing that that’s kind of where let we forget Mike and and my first job in the golf course industry was on the grounds crew um there’s a lot that we put on that grass to make the grass look nice so just be a little L that but to Mike’s Point my students will ask me this a lot with running and my answer to them is always when I see someone win the Boston Marathon running Barefoot I’ll start to to believe that there isn’t a benefit to putting the technology of the shoe in there right yeah not to say though there is benefit to some of those shoes as far as like making your feet more functional there’s some good stuff that can go on there all right next one here um Bob I let you take this one um the newer models of of your shoes are a little lighter than the original versions or or are they about the same what do you think yeah it’s lighter you know one of the things that we we try to balance and Footwear is weight and structure and they oppose each other um so it’s always a challenge to to get something uh a little lighter and and that’s where materials come into play uh types of materials and and for instance we’re looking at a new material now that we believe we could pull out maybe about uh probably close to 30 grams and 30 grams doesn’t sound a lot but you’d be surprised U you know when you hold something in your hand and you you’ll be able to feel 30 grams and I’ll just I’ll just add uh and I I do actually playing squares at my round today I played in in my my set of squares um I I can feel that difference in the newer versions I I felt like the the one I had previous iteration if you felt like there was some bulk there some good stability but a little bit too much bulk for you um yeah the these newer ones you you can feel that difference even though it’s it’s very minimal as Bob pointed out I’m going to go a lot more aggressive on this one honestly and just say that I think that large company marketing has told us we want lighter golf shoes and I think it’s just a little bit of BS I’m not sure that we really need golf shoes to be you know feather light for what we’re doing I think the performance benefits of having a little more structure really outweigh a perfectly super light golf shoot that’s my opinion I could Mike I couldn’t agree more and all the science that is out there establishes that point um and and it’s not you know it’s a challenge really to to bring weight down and keep structure up and with our new V shoe we added a material on the side that reduces tension in that area U it allows expansion in that area and we could do that in a very lightweight fashion so yeah I’m always after trying to take a little weight out of the shoe but I will never ever compromise structure because we know how important that is excellent Tyler this one looks like a good one for for you so um using Orthotics heel cups arch supports will that change what you’re trying to accomplish with the square shoe and increasing speed through Ground Force so I’m kind of reading that as if you know it’s somebody already has Orthotics or ar supports that they likely have had prescribed by their doctor is that something that you know is going to work against these shoes or work with them yeah again I think you’re getting that orthotic and I’ve actually been fit for a pair of orthotics um that I used for a little bit until I couldn’t stand them and then went to some of my own intrinsic foot muscle strengthening that’s maybe a whole another webinar but I I think what we’re saying is if you’ve been fit for an orthotic by a doctor because of some things that you have from a pain function from those different types of things you know for sure like like use that orthotic we would still love to see you doing things that I think can can Aid in that foot functioning but again your specialist has told you that’s something you should do now I’ll say as you get in with the interaction with the shoe I still feel like you’re getting all the benefits of the cleat placement right that orthotic is not going to change is usually Orthotics are coming through the midfoot into the heel they’re not spaying clear out into that for but where the toes are and so you haven’t lost that benefit when you put an orthotic in the shoe you haven’t lost the stability of that that external internal stability of the Hill um so I I would just say that that I think there’s it’s they’re not fighting against each other I think they could really support each other and the way the squares is trying to attack it um your your orthotic isn’t changing that if that makes sense yeah and Bob just to be clear I mean these do have a remove able insole so if somebody does have that prescribed orthotic they can put it in right that is correct and and Tyler I can’t add to what you said that’s spot on you know from from our perspective too um that that orthotic should not change display should not change the balance should not change the traction all of those elements that uh you know we put together to make uh to optimize the the shoe the golf shoe yeah I mean we’ve always been a fan of trying to improve foot function wherever possible I mean there are IAL conditions where it’s not going to be possible and you know I like to think of orthotics are more like you know putting a wrist brace on your wrist or something like that like they’re they’re going to help the pain and but they’re not necessarily going to make the function of your foot better so that’s always a balance that you know everybody has to work out kind of with their medical professional on their own um yeah um so Kevin’s question here I think it’s is he meaning diameter of the midsole or size of midsole go ahead yeah I would guess that it’s it’s dir yeah I’m guessing diameter of the midsole of the squares maybe the makeup of the midsole of the squares Bob if you want to maybe take that and just kind of some of the ways that you guys have attacked the mid soole of the shoe yeah so so the midsole you know obviously plays a very important role in um in in comfort and so we look at materials for energy exchange you know there’s a lot of shoes out there that I watch consumers go into a store and buy a very a shoe that’s got a very thick midsole and and they equate that to comfort now you know they talk about cushioning what’s cushioning is just a a fancy word for energy absorption so there’s a delicate balance on the thickness of the of the midsole that you that you want to use the right materials for for strength um and energy return but you don’t want to make it so thick that it absorbs a lot of energy so there is a delicate balance and we we just went to a to a new EVA foam that’s lighter but you’ll have you’ll have a better feeling a better sense uh and you don’t have to make it very thick to get the right amount of cushioning so that does the midsole does play a very important role in in Footwear and and the durom meter could also be representative it’s a it’s a scale of like stiffness of plastics and of that nature I believe it’s the sh C uh I think it’s a sh C measurement or sure D I think it’s short C measurement that you know our designer works on and and you can you can you can measure the resiliency you can measure you know the response rates and and again we go into that type of detail and that’s something we’ never really talk about but again it just you know in Footwear if you can pick up a little here a little here a little here you know it it represents a lot at the end of it um last question we got on here right now is uh it looks like there’s six options on the website any of those models better than the others what are the differences Bob if you can just give a little overview for for everybody watching yeah there is performance-wise there really isn’t too much difference now I I want to address that somebody with a very aggressive swing speed would probably gravitate would I’d want them to gravitate to the V because it has a little more structure on the lateral medial sides of the shoe for that added swing speed somebody who’s very aggressive you we all know those guys that try to swing out of their shoes so you know a long drive guy a guy that generates maybe over hundred something miles an hour over 100 miles an hour in swing speed you know you really want little more structure now the other models we have really is more fashionable we have one which we call the Speed 2 and it’s it’s it’s got a microfiber upper it’s just more of a contemporary design but how we accomplish structure there is we we simply on that shoe is we emboss the side of the shoe and embossing gives you a little more structure because you’re tightening the material there and then on the pr S2 we went to a an upgraded version what we call a grain texture a grain text upper and that’s a microfiber up with a grain texture and again we did embossing on the side of the shoe so you know all the shoes have the same geometry same traction pattern same midsole same laces but again the upper material we played around a little with that based upon some swing speeds and and and fashion awesome I think that’s great well everybody we really appreciate you being here for and spending some time with us this evening uh remember check out the full video and the article on all the detail that we did on the testing um with these shoes I think they’re really fantastic also um just again that update you our app is very very close to being released now um we’ll have all of those ground Forest drills um actually two other additional protocols for ground forest in addition to that and a lot of that self physical screening will be in there so you can check and see exactly which ones of those that you might need um you know beyond that definitely check out the bundle that we put together here um you know in in light of this partnership with squares and also kind of moving up toward Father’s Day uh you can get uh our super speed golf training system and a set of force pedals which is one of our favorite uh ground reaction force training AIDS you need those to do that protocol um you can get that for a discounted price uh again there’ll be links to that um when we send this video out tomorrow um I know Bob you’re also uh offering um a pair of a few a pair of socks and a carry bag correct with a little bit of a discount on a pair of squares so everybody check out those deals uh give this stuff a try um you know I did I’m going to be playing them uh moving forward I haven’t really found anything better so um really good stuff Tyler thanks again as usual Bob thanks for uh joining us this evening I hope everybody enjoyed the webinar n