Ground Forces and Speed in the Golf Swing with Dr. Scott Lynn

In this episode of the Golf Beneath the Surface podcast, Raymond Prior and Chase Cooper sit down with Dr. Scott Lynn, a biomechanist known for his work in golf and baseball movement research.

The conversation explores how biomechanics can help players and coaches better understand movement efficiency, power production, and how the body actually creates speed in the golf swing. Dr. Lynn explains why deceleration patterns are critical for generating power, how foot flare influences motion and ground forces, and why many golfers misunderstand what elite movement really looks like.

They also discuss the importance of owning your stock swing and why meaningful improvement still requires time on the golf course, not just time on the range.

This episode blends science, coaching, and performance insight to help golfers better understand how the body works in the swing and how that understanding can lead to more effective practice and better performance.

Find Dr. Scott Lynn on Instagram @drsklynn.  Learn more about Swing Catalyst’s force plates and motion analysis technology www.swingcatalyst.com.

Transcript

Raymond Prior (00:00.873)
Welcome everybody to the Golf Beneath the Surface podcast. I am your co-host Raymond Pryor with me is my co-host Chase Cooper. And today we have with us Dr. Scott Lin, biomechanist, biomechanist. What's the proper pronunciation here, Scott? Biomechanist. I knew I was right and Chase was wrong. It's biomechanist. Exactly right.

Chase Cooper (00:13.814)
Thank you.

Dr. Scott Lynn (00:18.179)
Biomechanist is how, yeah, yeah.

Chase Cooper (00:21.952)
I, I, in Oklahoma, we call it bowel mechanist. All right. That's right.

Dr. Scott Lynn (00:25.273)
Yeah, potato, potato, whatever you want. All good.

Raymond Prior (00:30.699)
Scott, tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself to our listeners, please.

Dr. Scott Lynn (00:35.537)
All right, well, I'm originally from Toronto, Canada. Grew up there, did all my schooling at a place called Queen's University, which is in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, kind of halfway between Toronto and Montreal. Did undergrad, master's and PhD there. I always tell a kind of a funny story. When you go to that university, they give you an email address and it starts with the year you started the university.

Raymond Prior (00:58.996)
You

Dr. Scott Lynn (00:59.193)
So my email was six and then it has your initials and stuff like that. And so, cause I started in 96 and then 2006 rolled around and I got an email from the university. Like, are you still here? Like what's going on? Um, because they wanted to re-give my email address. So yeah, I, they called me the, uh, man wilder of, uh, of Queens university was there. got two undergraduate degrees, a master's and a PhD. Uh, after that, I went for a short postdoc at the university of Waterloo, where I did some work with a guy named Stuart McGill, who's really big in the low back.

core stability stuff. But after my PhD, I actually graduated in September. The beginning of September is when I finished my doctorate in defendant, which is a horrible time because all the academic jobs start at the start of September. So basically you have a whole year where you really can't do much. So I hung out in Kingston. I was working at a gym doing some personal training. I was getting all my manuscripts published. But I also snuck into the lab because when you graduate that you have to hand your keys back to

get your degree. And so I didn't have a key to the lab anymore. So as people were leaving at night, I like stuck a little thing in the door and I snuck in at night and did a covert mission golf biomechanics study. So I was working with the golf teams at the time I brought in some of my golf buddies from the golf team, put some markers on them, had them stand on the force plates and hit some shots. And the first thing I looked at was just foot flare in the golf swing. Because I had seen a lot of teachers to say some said you should flare your foot, some said you shouldn't.

And my PhD was in knee arthritis biomechanics. So wanted to see the effect that foot flare had on the loads on the knee joint. And luckily I had an IRB approval from a previous little study I had done as part of a class or whatever. So I kind of lumped it under that. They had markers on, they were hitting golf balls. And so was this covert mission golf biomechanics study that I started doing as just something fun to do, because I had nothing else to do, because I was waiting for, you know, I was applying for jobs, was publishing my papers, I was working at a gym.

And that thing kind of took off my golf biomechanics work. I did that study, found some interesting things, presented at the World Scientific Congress of Golf. And then I was playing golf at my course in Toronto with a guy who is the editor of Score Golf Canada Magazine and told him about the study just because he's a member at the course that I was at. And he was his eyes kind of glazed over in his head because he was like.

Dr. Scott Lynn (03:24.575)
this nerdy science stuff, I don't really care about it, whatever. And that was in July. No, sorry, that was in May of 2008. And then in June of 2008, a lot of people started caring about knees in golf because Tiger blew out his knee at Torrey Pines. And so when Tiger blew out his knee at Torrey Pines, the guy called me the next day and said, you know, that nerdy thing you were telling me about? you write that up for an article? Because I want to put it in our magazine. And so I wrote it up in like layman's terms. took it to his office. I put it on his desk.

and he, this is a really long-winded introduction, sorry about that, but. And he was reading it and he looked at me and he's like, this is kind of interesting stuff. You know who would really like this is this young kid I've been talking to recently named Sean Foley. And I was like, never heard of him. Who is this guy? He's like, well, he's a young Canadian, just started working with some guys on tour. And so Sean, or he connected me with Sean and I've been friends with Sean for a really long time.

Chase Cooper (03:58.933)
hey.

Dr. Scott Lynn (04:20.345)
Both of us were kind of nobodies back when we first met and started hanging out and talking about golf swings and biomechanics and and all of that kind of led me towards I think I want to do this as a career and So during my postdoc at the University of Waterloo, I applied for a whole bunch of jobs And could not get one in my own country Every time I got an interview. They said how are you gonna get this funded? And I was like, I don't know because it's all healthcare related in Canada And so didn't get any jobs in my own country. So then I started to apply for jobs elsewhere

I applied for jobs all over the US and I believe I was offered pretty much every one that I applied for. I make jokes about the, I was in the University of Waterloo and got invited for an interview at Cal State Fullerton and I was like, in the interview, I was like, where's Fullerton again? And then looked it up on a map and I was like, that looks pretty warm. I looked outside and there was three feet of snow and it was negative something or other. And I was like, I think I'll go there. That sounds fun. Went there for an interview on the way from the airport up to

to the campus, I drove by Angel Stadium and the Anaheim Duck Stadium, they're on opposite sides of the freeway. I flew into Orange County Airport, which is right by Newport Beach and all, and I was like, and it was 75 and sunny and I looked around I was like, geez, I think I can do this. And then I got here and the faculty here is very different from the faculty at a lot of other places where traditional academics generally live. Here, we're just talking about a guy named Ken Roviza who was here when I was here and he was out in the real world.

doing it with real athletes and doing sports psychology stuff. And I don't know, there was an energy here that was a little different from a lot of other schools when I got here. I kind of went home and I called my parents and I was like, I think I might be moving to Southern California. Been here ever since. So been here since 2008 doing golf biomechanics work. In 2015, was connected with, it was actually Sean Foley who connected me with Swing Catalyst, which is a company that makes force plates and

markets them to golf teachers. And through that, I met a bunch of people in the game of golf and been able to work with a lot of the top coaches and players in the game. In 2018, the Dodgers and the Cubs called us and said, we like what you're doing in golf. No one's doing this in baseball. Can you build us a baseball system? So I started dabbling into baseball in 2018. And since then, I've just spent some time with a whole bunch of teams. just at the, actually a consultant, hitting consultant for the Toronto Blue Jays now.

Dr. Scott Lynn (06:42.057)
We had a pretty good year last year, a ton of fun working with them and working with some other teams in that too. So I split my time kind of between a bunch of practical baseball work, a bunch of practical golf work, teaching, research, working a bunch with Greg Rose now at the Titleist Performance Institute because I spent some time in Arkansas. actually an assistant professor in the medical school.

in Little Rock, Arkansas, and we can talk a little bit about the stuff I'm kind of learning there about the structure of the human body, which I think we've ignored for a bit in how we prescribe movements to people. So I have my hands in a lot of different things and it keeps me busy. I have a three-year-old son at home and a little girl on the way in about a month or so. so Chase knows all about that. That keeps you busy too.

Raymond Prior (07:28.297)
Mm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (07:32.601)
So I don't know, that's a long-winded explanation of kind of who I am.

Raymond Prior (07:36.747)
Okay, covered a lot of We're gonna gracefully just brush over the fact that you're breaking and entering into a university as because of a lot of things, but we're seeing, okay, so kind of a lot of different entry ways into different sports based on, how do we understand how to get people to move in more efficient? And I got a layer of that to you for in safer ways, meaning how do we protect joints and structures? So if you could just start here, like kind of broad, what are some...

biomechanics basics or fundamentals that if people understood would help them maybe move better or move more safely. Right. We talk about psychological in this podcast. If you understand a little bit about how the brain works fundamentally, it opens up a lot of doors about why things happen and what we need to adjust if we want it to. Right. Give us some biomechanics fundamentals that if people understood they would be able to have more direction in moving better and perhaps moving in ways that protect

Dr. Scott Lynn (08:26.041)
You're right.

Raymond Prior (08:35.634)
joints and other structures.

Dr. Scott Lynn (08:37.749)
Yeah, so I wrote a paper on squat mechanics in probably around 2010 or 2012. And I started talking a lot about movement efficiency in that paper. I mentioned that quite a bit. said, well, using this kind of technique, which loads the joints in this way, could be a more efficient way to move. the reviewers of that article wrote back and said, you use this term movement efficiency quite a bit. How do you define that term?

Raymond Prior (09:05.49)
Yeah, good question.

Dr. Scott Lynn (09:06.359)
And I was like, fuck, I don't know. Like, I don't even know what my definition is for it. And so I started to dig into the academic literature of what actually that means. And a guy who was actually at the University of Waterloo when I was there named David Winter, he's one of the pioneers of biomechanics, he kind of wrote the original textbooks of biomechanics. And he was an old grumpy guy when I was there, he was retired already, but still hung around a lot because he really biomechanics was his whole life.

Raymond Prior (09:31.742)
Well, they're letting people break in and all up there anyway, so whatever. Probably weren't too many. You could just walk around, it's fine.

Dr. Scott Lynn (09:35.819)
Whatever. So I arranged to meet with him every Tuesday or Thursday, I forget what it was. And he would literally just call me an idiot for four hours straight. And I would sit there and take it because I learned a lot from him. But anyways, he was the one who put out the original definition for movement efficiency. And it was the the work divided by the metabolic cost, the work done divided by the metabolic cost of doing that work. And so

That definition I kind of like, because I've worked with lot of athletes that tell me after we've exercised or worked out, we go then run our marathon or triathlon, and at the end, we're less tired and we feel better. A funny story, I had a girl that I worked with when I was doing my PhD at the gym and she was an Ironman triathlete. The Ironman triathlon is a crazy event. I don't even know, you swim a couple miles, I believe.

Raymond Prior (10:34.538)
two and a half-ish miles, two to two and a half miles, then you bike and then you run a marathon. Yeah. It is a grueling, savage athletic display.

Dr. Scott Lynn (10:36.259)
two and a half miles, then you bike 100 and something, and then you run a marathon at the end. Running a marathon is unbelievable on its own, never mind doing all that before.

Dr. Scott Lynn (10:50.733)
Definitely and so she came to see me because at the end of every season she would have some injury She'd had stress fractures in her feet. She's had shins splints She'd had all these things and she's like I'm kind of getting sick of getting injured at the end of every season Can you work with me? And so I convinced her over the winter because over the winter in Canada It's really hard to run biker swim because there is a lot of snow on the ground and stuff and so you yeah Did you see that

Chase Cooper (11:11.534)
You can skate and slide.

Raymond Prior (11:14.33)
skate, ski, sled, yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (11:18.423)
Olympic event where they took off their skis and like ran up the hill and then put their skis back on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. All these new things. Anyways, so she came to see me and I convinced her for two days a week to not run, bike or swim and just come see me in the gym. And we worked on fundamental patterns of her movements basically in the gym. And at the start of every year, like when the snow melts was around her birthday every year and there's like a 10 K race in our little town that I went to school in Kingston and she would do that race.

Raymond Prior (11:21.226)
Mountaineering, it's like mountaineering or something like it's new. Yeah, it's wild

Dr. Scott Lynn (11:45.517)
for fun every year. And it was always on a Sunday and she would go out and celebrate her birthday on the Saturday and then just run that for fun. That's the start of her season. She called me that Sunday after she had run that race and she's like, I beat my personal best time for a 10K by like three minutes. Having never trained all winter and like this is normally something I just do for fun and like my 10K personal best time I'd run when I'm trained. And so I think we just took away a lot of those restrictions and things that she was fighting against that made her move more efficiently.

But this traditional definition to me missed something because I always tell my my students like Mechanical work is you know force times distance or torque times angular displacement basically is what Mechanical work is and I'm telling I kind of make up a story, you know pure biomechanically This may not be you know a great story, but it's a good way to illustrate the point So if I'm if I have a certain mass and there's a person that has the exact same mass as me We're moving the same force

And if we both run the same distance, if you ignore kind of up and down, we've kind of basically done the same amount of mechanical work. And if we're both wearing our little, you know, oxygen masks and they can measure how much the metabolic cost is. If we both have the same metabolic costs, technically these two humans have just done the same amount of mechanical of, of, the efficiency of the movement is the same. We've done the same work. We've had the same metabolic cost, but if at the end of that run, I'm healthy, it can run the next day. And the other guy develops plantar fasciitis and can't run again for three weeks.

Well, somebody was more efficient and it was probably the person who could run the next day and is not putting all those loads. So to me, my definition of efficiency is, I like the traditional definition with something about stress or strain on the musculoskeletal system. And so to me, understanding how to optimize performance while protecting the body and avoiding stress or strain on the musculoskeletal system is the gold of where we need to get to in all sports.

Raymond Prior (13:18.378)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (13:43.575)
because I've seen a lot of golf teachers around right now that are getting kids lots of speed. Like we're getting these kids that are 10, 11, 12 years old who are producing plus 100 mile an hour club speeds, but then they go to college and they get spondees in their back or they get stress fractures in their pars inter-articulate. Like I'm getting these 20 year olds who are having to shut down for a year because they have stress fractures in their spine. was like, that's not good. Like what is this kid gonna be like at 30, 40, 50?

if we're giving them stress fractures. So they're getting the performance piece, but they're avoiding the, or they're not thinking about this injury piece. And I think you can do both. If you really have a fundamental understanding of biomechanics, I I talk a lot to Bernie Najjar, who's the teacher of the year in the PGA. And he works with Kyle Berkshire, who is the fastest swinging human on the planet, I would say. mean, he cruises at 150 plus club speed.

I don't think he's ever had like a very serious injury. Obviously he trains hard and he gets his body in really good shape, but the mechanics of what he does in his golf swing don't put a heck of a lot of stress on a lot of structures because of what he does very efficiently. And so I think we need to keep both of those in our minds and have a fundamental knowledge of what loading tissues looks like to make sure we're not just trying to pump on the gas. Cause early in my career, I did a lot of reading into like,

great cook and the functional movement screen and all those types of things. And he said, you can put performance on dysfunction, but not for long. So you can put a lot of gas in the tank on top of not a very efficient pattern, but that will not last long. And I think that's what we're doing to a lot of kids now is we're putting a lot of gas in the tank without really worrying about. so thinking about both of those things, I think is super important. And I think my

original foray into biomechanics was in knee arthritis and gait, which was all about safety. We want to figure out ways to walk to take stresses off your knee. We don't care about performance. Like that was all about safety. And I always tell my students, performance and safety are a continuum, right? You can go way towards performance and you can go way towards safety and figuring out where to go on that continuum. And I tell my students, most of you are not going to work with pro athletes.

Dr. Scott Lynn (16:05.483)
And so if you're going to make a mistake, make it on the side of safety, make it a little safer for the person so that they don't get an injury, which is a catastrophic thing. Cause why are they coming to you? Well, they're coming to you as a golf coach or as a physical therapist or as a strength coach. It's to get healthier, get better, like to perform. And I had an interesting conversation with one of our, our athletic trainers here at Fullerton, cause he was a cyclist and he loves cycling. He would cycle to work every day for like,

15 miles and then on the weekends he'd go for a hundred mile cycle down to San Diego and back or whatever. And he blew out a disc in his back. He got a herniation of his disc. And I was like, show me your bike. And the handlebars are super low. So you have to get down and I'm like, why is it that way? He's like, well, that's for aerodynamics. And I was like, why do you cycle? Like you're not Lance Armstrong. You're not making your living by being a couple of minutes faster on your cycle. You do it for fun, for fitness. Let's move those handlebars up a little bit to get your back in a little bit more neutral position. He's like, but that creates more air resistance. I was like,

So who cares that's gonna err on the side of safety a little bit, but and that's why you know working with pro athletes You you walk that fine line, right? If I take away five miles an hour your club speed, you're probably gonna hate me But if in ten years you can still play that might be so it's a tough line to walk there But I think that's where you can get a lot better at that when you really understand Mechanics of movement and how to kind of optimize movements while still maintaining

structure of joints or not putting joints in positions where we might get injured. And I think that's very individual too. That's what I'm learning from my anatomy work. Everybody is built differently. And if we had a better understanding of individual's own personal anatomy, I think we could do a much better job of that.

Raymond Prior (17:48.139)
Take us through some of the things you would look for for that. So let's just say listening to the podcast is everything from professional golfers all the way to our recreational golfers who are trying to understand one on one end of the spectrum is pushing the performance limits while also longevity of career and health. And then on the other end are a bunch of people who are like, I'd like to play better, but I'd also like my back to not hurt as much or my shoulder, not to be a strike. What are some of the things, postural things set up like practical places where you're

Dr. Scott Lynn (18:10.542)
Yep.

Raymond Prior (18:18.596)
looking and or applying such and such movement change or pattern change where you can perhaps meet some of these demands or interests.

Dr. Scott Lynn (18:27.915)
I mean, set up, think is the first place you would look. And one of my first, I don't know, meetings at the University of Arkansas was with a hip surgeon who is literally opening people up and replacing hip joints four or five times a day. And so he opens people up, he dislocates their hip joint and he stares at the little cup that makes her hip. And when I took anatomy, the hip, they told me my hip, the hip points kind of sideways in the pelvis.

Raymond Prior (18:55.082)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (18:56.089)
I asked him that I was like do all hips point like sideways like this. He's like no sometimes it points forward sometimes it points backwards and When I come back to my foot flare idea if you have a hip joint that points backwards We call that a retroverted hip you better have that foot flared Because that gets the hip in the middle of socket where you can actually push and create force And I think if I tell you if you're a retroverted hip, but I tell you no no no like, you know Which Harman's book says you need to have your your foot square?

And if you convince yourself you caught, you could probably activate muscles and produce a decent performance in that, but not for long. And I think that's where we blow out labrums and then we might compensate with our back and there's a whole bunch of things. And that's why I love force plates now, because I tell people a force plate is like a neurological exam now for me. So our X-Men colors force plates take a thousand pictures every second. And while you're hitting, if there's a little neurological freak out where you're like,

Like I'm in a, and I think the brain does know when it's in an uncomfortable position, you can overpower that and push through it, but that shows up on a force plate. Like if, now when I do testing on a force plate, if I'm not sure about your foot flare, I'll have you hit shots in different foot flare positions. And if one of them makes those graphs really bumpy, I'm like, okay, we're not doing that. Cause your brain freaks out when it gets in that position. and I see this in baseball a ton because the timing is so short. we, you have to be in a good position to produce force. And I think.

So that's one thing, dialing in the foot flare for you. And I think force plates can be very good to do that, to dial in, you know, what your anatomy matches. I'm hoping that in my lifetime, you know, a really high-end golf center like Chase has, and like a lot of these places have, they have research grade force plates now in like, Chase has them in his facility. Like in 1997, when I first started doing force plate stuff in my introductory biomechanics class, we had to go to the hospital on campus.

into the basement where they're anchored to the foundation of the building. And there were two little force plates in there and like, they were, you know, probably high, almost 100 grand probably for both of them or whatever, they're super expensive. And, and now the technology has got to the point that we have now, you know, research grade force plates that you can buy for less than $10,000 dual plates. And so the price is coming down. So I'm hoping that in my lifetime, a high end golf center will have an MRI machine in a closet.

Dr. Scott Lynn (21:17.143)
around the corner so when you come in for your lesson, you go in, the thing goes zip and it gives you a full body rendition of your anatomy. So we can see what your fast and joint orientation is, we can see what your hip joint orientation is and we can build your workout, we can build your golf swing, we can build your shoes, we can build everything based on your anatomy because I think we're gonna get a long way when we do that. So that would be the first thing is understanding how your body's built and building the motions accordingly.

Raymond Prior (21:34.877)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (21:45.687)
The second thing that I think is massive for preventing injury is learning how to decelerate. Injuries happen in high-speed eccentric contractions, which are deceleration contractions, and every sport requires deceleration. We've learned forever with golf and the kinematic sequence, how do we transfer energy from our body into a golf club, is we have to stop our body. It's like the whip analogy, right? If I have a whip in my hand, I just accelerate the whole time. There's nothing that gets in the whip. I have to stop my body, and that shoots the energy out into the whip.

And so if I have a baseball bat or a golf club in my hand, I got to learn how to stop my body to send the energy out into that golf club. And if I learn to do that effectively, I think that creates effortless power. That's the guys where they swing it and you watch them swing. You're like, oh, that looked about 110. You look at the launch one, it's like 130. You're like, holy sh, man, that's like, it doesn't look like speed. doesn't look like effort, but it ends up in producing. And to me, that's efficiency as well, like less input and more output.

Raymond Prior (22:26.334)
Mm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (22:43.381)
And me, they're the best decelerators, the best breakers. Like if I look at Cal Berkshire's breaking mechanisms in his swing, they're unbelievable. And I think that's why he puts on the brakes, transfers the energy distantly, his body's healthy and the energy gets out to where it's supposed to be in the golf club and then into the golf ball. And so training deceleration patterns is where I go to almost exclusively now with any kind of player.

Raymond Prior (23:04.49)
What does a deceleration pattern training look like? In a way that would promote performance and safety.

Dr. Scott Lynn (23:08.953)
There's lots to it.

Dr. Scott Lynn (23:13.625)
There's lots to it. I mean to me right now what I'm prescribing for anyone because biomechanically like when we swing a golf club or a baseball bat it kind of moves in a combination of a transverse and a frontal plane and the only axis that's shared by the transverse and frontal plane is like a medial lateral axis so that's the only force that's in both of those planes and one of the Cal State Fullerton golfers that I work with a bunch is a very efficient swinger of the golf club. I mean he cruises in the one high 120s club speed.

Raymond Prior (23:25.972)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (23:43.669)
Never had any issues with, you know, any kind of body issues. He's now graduated and is trying to play pro and if he could learn to chip or putt, I think he could get there. He strikes it unbelievably. Maybe he needs to talk to you about his mental game too. That might be an issue. But his ball striking is tour level for sure. And I've had him on the force plates a bunch and he does some pretty interesting things with his deceleration patterns that I don't see too often.

And I remember talking to him about like, do you do every day? Like, what is your workout routine? I just kind of, you know, got into his brain. Like what kind of sports did you play when you were a kid? Like, um, and he, he went through this whole thing about what he did. And at the end of it, he's like, Oh, and my dad's had this like slide board thing in my garage since I was a little kid. So it's like a hockey training tool, right? You put little booties on and you like slide back and forth. Um, cause to me, like when you push off your trail side and you start sliding towards that other side, when your foot has to hit that thing and bounce off and go the other way.

that's producing that medial lateral breaking force. And what I'm finding is most people can produce that force. Like in my own golf swing, I can produce it. It just happens after the ball's gone. The ball's almost at its target by the time I produce mine. And in some of the stuff I've worked on in my swing, I I played golf once last year because of my son and my work and everything. I had one round of 18 holes and I hit it great because I think I now know how to produce.

Decelerative patterns where it the energy just gets into the golf because I swing it decently fast the it lines up pretty well where I don't miss the middle of the face too often and like and Now that I've followed some chipping stuff online and I can hit the ball before the ground I actually play okay Whereas in the past if I had not played golf or I only played golf one time a year I would shoot a million but I can do some decent things now because of this so I think that

That tool is something that I feel like should be in every college golf gym, every college baseball gym, every kids should be doing that at all times. Because to me, that's a really good pattern. now at the PGA show, did you stay the whole night with the open forum chase or did you take off? OK, the last panel, it sucks because it was at like midnight. Everyone was exhausted.

Chase Cooper (25:54.606)
I left before the last panel, but.

Chase Cooper (25:59.628)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (26:00.835)
But we had a really interesting discussion about deceleration with Sacha Mackenzie. yeah, so Sacha Mackenzie was on the panel. Greg Rose is on the panel. Josh Koch, who's like one of the fastest swingers in the world, was on the panel. there's somebody, Ben Shear, who's an unbelievable trainer on. So like the minds on that stage were like awesome. And it was really cool to talk about. Greg Rose started mentioning that like.

Chase Cooper (26:06.134)
injuries and stuff right yeah

Dr. Scott Lynn (26:28.535)
Cueing a different kind of move through the ball So like the muscles that move your pelvis or sorry move your thorax like in the direction you're going Actually move the pelvis the opposite direction so queuing external oblique on one side and internal on the other side To turn this way actually improves and so I think you can I mean building it from the ground up is never a bad thing I don't think but like I've had some really cool success queuing deceleration by actually getting something higher to move quicker

And queuing some so there's lots of different ways you can come from it. And I remember when I first started doing ground for stuff, people would always ask me, so is it the movement of the club that affects the ground force? Is the ground force that affects the movement of the club? And mine is like, my answer was always yes. It's both. And so thinking about it from both ways, I think we're going to start to come up with new strategies. And it's something that, you know, we've always kind of gave lip service to in the golf community, but I don't think we've really dug into creating deceleration patterns.

and how to create those in our athletes and training it from young ages and kids. think that's gonna be where we're gonna start to get where we can produce performance without injuries or with a much less lower chance of injuries. You're never gonna prevent injuries come 100%, but you're gonna, I think we're engineering injuries into some kids the way we're teaching them to swing the golf club now and I think we can do it much more effectively.

Chase Cooper (27:47.47)
Well, and real quick doc, like in our industry, we were never, I mean, it was always slide and get your weight all the way to your left foot and our lead foot. And like, we never understood that there needed to be a pushback. You needed to, you know, you, did it kind of naturally, but we didn't understand it. We definitely didn't teach it up until probably the last four or five, six years, really.

Dr. Scott Lynn (27:57.9)
Right.

Dr. Scott Lynn (28:02.305)
No.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's something that can change. I mean, it sucks that that panel was the last panel the night and only the real crazy people or the young people that weren't that don't have kids at home. I was exhausted on that panel. I was in there. I was falling asleep. And but it was to me the most useful one of the night to have all those brains up there talking about that stuff. And I think that's super important.

Raymond Prior (28:27.444)
So what would be like an example, one or two of like a deceleration protocol you give somebody something in the gym, something while they're actually practicing hitting golf balls, a drill, like what would the something practical look like? Just as some examples, not that it necessarily fits everybody, but just a couple of.

Dr. Scott Lynn (28:41.913)
Yeah, I mean I love those slide boards and the slide board I like it as short as possible because I find one of the things that's a problem like because when I bought my slide board there's four different uh

levels where you can put the thing. And if you put it really far, you have to push so hard off this trailside to get going that way that you're moving so fast when you hit it. And then your brain freaks out and you do all these things to try to, I call it false braking. So false braking is when you reach for the thing, where your foot like reaches out for it so you can slow down over a longer period of time. And then you side bend away from it to kind of lean mass away from it. And those are all the things that we see.

Raymond Prior (28:52.916)
Yep.

Raymond Prior (29:13.289)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (29:16.331)
like golfers do to try to break when they don't have the functional way to do it normally. And so I like it really short. I've actually had some golf teachers that I've worked with and they use it with like older members where they only have one slider on the lead foot and they just keep their shoe on the trail side. So they got some friction here.

and they like push off and maybe slide for like, you know, six inches and hit the thing and bounce off. To me, that's fine. So like the whole goal, and I was actually talking to somebody at the PGA show who wants to design one of these slide boards that has an instrumented bumper on the side that your lead foot hits. And the goal is to hit it and bounce off of it and decrease that time. So you want to bounce off of it as quickly as possible. Cause like even in the slowest swing in person, the downswing is probably quarter of a second.

And you put the gas in around the top of the backswing and you have to decelerate around half of that So, you know, it's a hundred milliseconds in there that you got to put so that thing has to happen quick So I think a lot of it is training the nervous system So I think that tool is great If you don't have one of those tools just like lateral lunges kind of jump onto your lead side and bounce off the other way The problem with that is I don't think that lights up your nervous system appropriately like when you have friction to the ground because I've done that with a lot of players and when you when you don't have that

something about putting those booties on and getting on that slippery situation just like activates like your core gets active everything is ready to go because you're like geez I don't want to kill myself on this thing and I think that's partially what what makes it such an effective tool but lateral lunging is fine being able to lateral lunge and bounce back the other way I think is is the same basic mechanism not my favorite because a lot of people do compensate in that in that type of drill and I don't use it as much as I used to but then I think I've had a lot of from the

discussion we had at the PGA show, I've been telling people to take the shirt buttons on their, on their, like from the top of the backswing, take the shirt buttons and turn them like left of the target as fast as you can. So that gets the thorax moving, which actually turns the pelvis the other way. And I've found the ground forces have improved dramatically with just that cue. Now what that does is generally move the swing direction more to the left.

Dr. Scott Lynn (31:20.899)
But most time when I use that in the people that don't have brakes and are side bending and shooting the swing direction that mile out to the right. So it's actually, it accomplishes kind of four things with one. And so that's something like proximally that I've had a lot of success with since the PGA show that I've been using quite a bit. But then I don't think it can hurt to get better at that slide board thing and get more reactive and learning how to put those forces into the ground sooner.

Raymond Prior (31:45.193)
Right on. We know there's a chain of reaction domino effects, so to speak, between the first domino is our psychology, second domino is our neurology, then there's physiology, and then a series of different things, anatomy, equipment, whatever, down the line. Okay. So we know that our psychology, let's just say for basic purposes, we are present or we are anxious. Anxious is worry about the future.

Dr. Scott Lynn (31:57.069)
you

Dr. Scott Lynn (32:10.915)
Mm-hmm.

Raymond Prior (32:11.114)
defending against a future that doesn't exist yet. So if we're putting this in golf terms, it's don't hit it left or don't hit it for whatever reasons go deep for some human being, whether it's trying to avoid judgment. We know that in an anxious state or a distracted state particularly, that what we get is a changing of the sequencing of physical motions, a different application of force making it almost impossible to hit distance control in a sport that is distance control oriented, among other things.

Dr. Scott Lynn (32:38.809)
Yeah.

Raymond Prior (32:41.244)
So we know that that's the kind of change in the physical forces. Take us through what's happening biomechanically in terms of what are the joints doing differently in order to change the sequence of events to get protective so on and so forth. Like what is actually happening biomechanically that would change that sequence and alter the application of force.

Dr. Scott Lynn (33:02.551)
Yeah, that's the difficult question because I think that's individual because you see very different things in different people. The freak outs that I call like the neurological freak outs are depends on the person. like, you know, sometimes like this, I mean, this cue might not work. It's like moving your your shirt buttons to the left. The cue on some people might be hit a cut for me, hit a start, left cut, and they just figure it out.

Raymond Prior (33:27.572)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (33:30.649)
And then most of the time when they figure it out and that makes the graphs a lot smoother, they'll go to me and it's like, yeah, I remember in college when I used to play well, I hit predominantly a cut. But like so-and-so told me to hit a draw and now like, and I'm like, and so I think, I mean, obviously the psychology comes first and you know, I've dealt with a lot of high level players where I've given them a cue to do something and the force plate tells me better things. And the ball flight looks like it tells me better things, but as soon as they hit it,

Like, and so that human is not going to do that. That's not what they want to do. And so you have to be able to, you know, change up that pattern to make them do what they need to do. but yeah, so I think there's lots of different types of reactions that people can, you know, produce if they're in the wrong place. But I kind of tell people now, like kind of based on your question is like a lot of the work that I do is in a lab setting. So you're on a perfect flat lie.

there's no consequences to hitting a bad shot. It just hits the net and it drops. You don't have to go find it. There's nobody around watching. There's no, like there's no water left or whatever. Like, and so I'm like, this right here is not golf. Like this is not golf at all. But to me, this is where we find our stock pattern. Cause I think if you don't own your stock pattern, doing all the things that you have to do on the golf course becomes impossible. Cause what are you adjusting from? I worked with one player. was like,

And he came back and he said, I hit a terrible shot into the wind with water left into the fifth green. made double and I had a terrible run. And I was like, well, how did you adjust on that shot with water left in the pin left and into the wind? And he's like, I don't know. I just hit the shot. And I was like, we should have. And to me, like the important part about biomechanics, the stuff that I do is, is we want to use the lab to first and

I mean, the players that I work with enough, we use the lab first to dial in their stock move. So I know what my stock move is. And then once you've dialed that in and you own that, now you can produce all the adjustments that we have to produce around the golf courts. So if I know what my stock move is and into the wind, I know that I moved the ball back in my stance and I lean a little left and I lean the shaft a little bit. Perfect. Like that's a adjustment from stock. You need to play the game. And I think the, the anxiety that you talk about that I

Dr. Scott Lynn (35:54.426)
see in players comes from the fact that one, don't own their stock. So then they get out in the heat of the moment when they have to adjust. There's a little rough behind the ball. My dad's over there. My girlfriend's over here. The scout from the college team's over there. And there's water left. And it's the right to left wind. And the ball's above my feet. it's just a neurological complete freak out. And then it goes off the rails. And so to me, like you say, anxiety is worrying about something in the future that hasn't happened yet. And so how do you get rid of that as you prepare?

for those situations so you know what to do in those situations so you don't freak out when you get there. And the way to do that mechanically in my mind is to own your stock so you know where that lives and know what deviations from stock cause all the little things that you need to do around the golf course. I worked with one of the best players in the world who was always ranked in the top five and strokes gained out of the fairway. But he's a hundred and something out of the rough.

So that tells me his stock mechanics produce a way that that clubs in comes into the ball where there's nothing behind the ball, he's great. But if there's a rough in the way, he's got no chance. And so what we have to do, I talked to his coach and I'm like, I don't want to take away from him what makes him forward in the world out of the fairway, because that is what makes him great. But we do need to produce the deviation from that stock when he gets into the rough. So he's not 125th out of the rough. And he clearly doesn't have that. And that's why he's 125th out of the rough. And so.

To me, and then if he hits a couple bad shots out of the rough and now he gets in the rough on the US Open with, and now you can see how that goes off the rails and we shoot 85 or whatever. And so to me, think the psychology, the anxiety comes from a bunch of bad golf shots or not being prepared for that shot when you get in the moment. So not knowing what the deviations from stock have to be to hit that shot.

Because if you get into that position where you're into the wind, the ball's above your feet, there's water left, the pins left, and the scout's over there, and my dad's over there, and da da, but you're like, well, I know my stock is this, and I know for this shot I have to do these things. And you go through your checklist, and you set up over it, and you do it, and it turns out, well, now the next time that comes up, the anxiety's not there anymore, because you have something to fall back on and know how to hit those shots. Well, maybe not always, but yeah, potentially. But I think, to me, that, I mean,

Raymond Prior (38:05.675)
Potentially, Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Dr. Scott Lynn (38:11.609)
I know myself having played enough competitive golf, the anxiety in me came from those memories of when I got in a situation where I didn't have the shot to fit that thing and a crazy thing happened. And you remember that crazy thing happening and then you get in another situation. And I think that's what these indoor golf centers with all the technology are really good for is one, dialing in your stock motion so that you own it. And I always tell people,

I started thinking about this quite a bit in 2018. I was at the players championship. It was the last year the players was still in May. And Tommy Fleetwood came into the bay to hit some shots because his trainer wanted to talk about some things. And I asked him to hit five wedges, five six sirens, and five drivers. basically, what I talked about is the maximum pressure shift into the trailside was almost identical in all 15 of those shots. And I remember him, he got his wedge in his hand for the first time.

and to hit five shots. And I said, just hit me five stock wedges. And I remember him asking me, he's like, well, I never heard of stock wedge. Or he told me that. And I was like, well, what do mean? He's like, well, when I have a wedge on the golf course, it's generally a knock down kind of like abbreviated follow through, keep the spin off it, punch a little lower and not have it. And I was like, okay, that's cool. But that's a deviation from suck. I want you to hit your stock wedge. What like you make your stock motion with a wedge in his hand. And he was able to do it perfectly. And he hit

five widgets, five, sirens and five drivers. And that was one of the purest displays of ball striking I had ever seen. I know if you've ever been to Sawgrass, but the range is really long because they hit balls back and forth at each other. And I picked a tree on the other side of the other people on the other side of the range is probably 500 yards away. And literally all 15 of those shots were either in the middle of the tree or on one edge of the tree. And that was the year, you know, in June, he went to the US Open and shot nothing the last round or whatever. So that was a man who owned his stock motion.

Raymond Prior (39:44.586)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (40:04.693)
and knew how to adjust from that stock motion to make other things happen. I I talked to Greg Rhodes quite a bit. He considers driver to be a specialty shot. I don't know if that's the case, but some people it might be. Some people, know where my stock motion is, but with driver I side bend a little bit, I tee it up a little forward and I hit my specialty shot that is my driver shot. But I know where that adjustment lives based on where my stock motion is. So I can make that adjustment. And then I can make the adjustment to hit the low shot with the 60 degree wedge. I would argue you should never hit a stock.

Raymond Prior (40:28.255)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (40:33.465)
60 degree wedge on the golf course. What's the old analogy? A guy who hits a full wedge is the guy you want to bet against, you never like there's a lot of people like Tommy Fleetwood who never use their stock motion with a wedge in their hand. Cool. That's totally fine. But they know where the stock motion lives and they know that their wedge is this deviation from stock. And to me, that's that's super important to be able to play good golf.

Raymond Prior (40:57.502)
Yeah. When we are in a state of anxiety, there's the psychological, then there's the neurological, which is oftentimes a slowdown, change in sequencing, whatever. There's a physiological, which is we become more constricted, that is us moving closer to our center line. So we get narrower, shallower and shorter, and we become more immobile.

meaning it feels like muscle tension to us, but it's actually not tension, it's immobility. I mean, it is tension, but if the purpose is immobility, trying to make us less mobile, therefore more protected, that physiological state that comes from anxious, how does that impact our biomechanical sequencing movement, pressure on the joints? Like what is the biomechanical impact of that physiological immobility and constriction?

Dr. Scott Lynn (41:40.462)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (41:47.512)
Yeah. I mean, I think that really, it could be variable amongst a whole bunch of different players. And it's hard for me to answer that question because it's hard for me in a situation where I can measure all those biomechanics to actually do it. Like, cause it's rare that a person in my lab gets into that state because there's no consequences to.

Raymond Prior (42:09.876)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (42:10.647)
to their shots and so you have to then measure it. And one cool thing that you can do with the Swing Cattle Software that I've actually told a bunch of coaches to do is measure them in like a facility like Chase has, right? Where you're just on force plates in an indoor thing, maybe with a net or just hitting out into the net into the range. And then go to the first tee and measure on the tournament day and measure their swing with the foam. And then you can put those swings side by side in the Swing Cattle Software and measure the length of the backswing, the timing of the backswing and the timing of the downswing and measure that ratio.

Chase Cooper (42:36.248)
the timing.

Dr. Scott Lynn (42:40.553)
And most of the time, like you say, the downswing gets a lot shorter and the timing changes quite a bit. And I think what I found quite a bit with, with technology and some of the younger people that are playing the game these days is having that to back up what you're saying. Cause you can go to the first tee and say after the round, you know, I think you're getting kind of short and quick on the first tee and they're going to be like, no, I'm not. you talking about? Like, I had the guy who I talked about, the slide board kid who's really good. he lost his driver before conference two years ago.

And he came to see me in the lab and he hit balls on the the fourth place and he was hitting them all over the place. And I looked at his stance width, like how far his feet were apart. And his stance had gotten like six to eight inches narrower across the season. And I was like, dude, your feet are way narrower. And like, what are you talking about? I was like, your feet a bit. And he widened them a bit. I'm like, more. I'm like, more. I'm like more. And then he got to where he was in September when he was striping it. And he looks at me, he's like, there's no fucking way I was this wide in September. And I was like, look at it. And I opened the swing from September and I opened the swing from.

He's like, there's no way, it feels so weird. I think your machine was broken in September. I was like, dude, just hit a couple that way. Let's see what happens. And it's like, pew, pew, pew. And he's like, all right. And so having that backing, I think, can really help. So I think that's one place I think that getting on the golf course, and obviously now with some of the technology you can use with your phone to actually measure biomechanics in real settings, it's going to help us kind of answer some of those questions.

We do have that ability in baseball. So every baseball stadium is, is outfit with a Kinnatrack system, which measures full kinematics in the actual field of play, like in battle. and I'm hoping eventually, you know, we might convince the NHL or the NFL, NFL MLBPA to put force plates in the batter's box. Cause then we can measure that in real time. but with the Blue Jays, there are a few players that they've found that their cage swing does not come anywhere close to resembling their swing in real, in real.

games and we're actually able to measure that in baseball. And so that's really affected how they work. What we've actually done is limit the amount of time they spend in the cage because why work on something that's way different from what you do in actual in the actual field of battle? And so.

Raymond Prior (44:49.875)
Yeah, I got news for you Scott. Most golfers are like that too. Your range swing and your on course swing are not the same because it assumes you're in the same psychological state, which you may or may not be.

Chase Cooper (44:59.576)
Yeah, 100%.

Dr. Scott Lynn (45:00.821)
Right. I think like my obviously, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but my biomechanical mind would be they don't own what they do on the range or in the

Raymond Prior (45:11.103)
Well, we don't own it in different psychological states. So again, like any motor pattern that I may have learned, owning it neurologically or physiologically.

but then if I'm in a anxious state, I have now turned what I need to do into defense mechanism, not an offense. So whether I own the motor pattern or not is irrelevant. What I'm actually using it for now becomes things. So it's gonna change. So I could make the argument you don't own your pattern. I would say you own that pattern there because you're using it for what you're actually trying to use it for. When you go to the golf course and you're using it to avoid the left side of the golf course or judgment from other people.

Dr. Scott Lynn (45:28.301)
Right.

Raymond Prior (45:49.29)
Your brain isn't gonna own that pattern. It's gonna own the pattern it thinks will save you from whatever you have told it to save it for. In which case then now we get a different motor pattern, a different weight transfer, hence the different sequencing, the different applications of force. There's a different application of force for throwing a spear and using it to protect yourself from it. Right, so.

Dr. Scott Lynn (45:58.38)
Right.

Right.

Dr. Scott Lynn (46:06.627)
Sure, sure. No, totally. Yeah, no, I agree with that. And I think the I mean, I'm not an expert at all in psychology, but in my own experience of having played the game, I think the fear and the anxiety and all that came from bad performances, like not being prepared and not having it. And then that crazy swing or that fearful swing showed up and then that snowballed into. And so, yeah, how you break that cycle is your job, not mine. But I think

Raymond Prior (46:34.503)
Yeah, it's...

Dr. Scott Lynn (46:35.959)
You got no chance if you don't know how to adjust. Like that kid who I worked with who was in the middle of that fairway and the ball was, he was into the wind and there are all these conditions. And I was like, what did you do to adjust? And he's like, I don't know. I just hit the shot. Like that to me, he had no chance. And then that bad shot leads to more anxiety on the next one because now I hit a bad shot and I don't want that to happen again. And it, it, it, it, it, and it snowballs on top of itself.

Raymond Prior (46:39.295)
We might, we might.

Raymond Prior (46:57.905)
Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, how we respond to a shot we don't like will either keep us pursuit and present or push us toward anxiety for sure. Right. Okay. Chase over to you.

Chase Cooper (47:13.762)
First thing I would say, following up to a lot of that, definitely think like, from my perspective, we may own the pattern, but it's once the gun goes off, the speeds are really hard. It's hard to keep the sequencing and the speeds the exact same. like from a, I'm going to say this, even though it's not complete kinematics, but from a kinematics standpoint, the patterns are pretty close, but the force application could be 10 % different and it's going to completely change the delivery and the speeds at which everything happens. And so that would be the.

Dr. Scott Lynn (47:40.856)
Yeah.

Chase Cooper (47:41.913)
That'd be where I would kind of say like the motion in my lab may look pretty similar on the golf course. Yeah. Some kids will go super short or super quick or whatever, and you can tell a difference, especially when they're in an anxious state. But the overall pattern may look the same, but the results are completely different because of the speeds at which they've applied the forces and the, and the movements are so much different. that's

Dr. Scott Lynn (48:02.297)
Yeah, and that's interesting because I mean, you're working, I rarely work with kids like now. Most of my work is with like college golfers. So like they've already had enough success to get here that I think they probably have the mental capacity to overcome some of that stuff and do obviously they performed well at some point to get here. Right. Like so they've they shot enough low scores and had enough success to get here that, you know, now it becomes owning that pattern to make

more good things happen to reduce the anxiety to so I think I'm at a little bit of a whatever you want to call it a Darwinian you know like the kids that have the super anxiety that get into that pattern where the pattern changes too much don't get to see me don't get to this point and then that's why I've kind of had a you know my sample has been a little bit tainted in terms of the people that I've worked with and so that would be

I think that would be kind of my, I probably haven't seen the people whose pattern changes that much from the lab to the course, because they don't get to the point where they're now college golfers probably, and they've been Darwinianly excluded from my sample.

Chase Cooper (49:10.358)
Yeah. And, and I think, and doc can touch on this, but I would say like, from our perspective, we would say that the, anxiety is not based off them necessarily being prepared enough for being, you know, having all those tools at their disposal. They could have the tools and still face fears and still face the, know, we've got a bunch of players that, know, really good players that had a lot of success. And I had a college girl the other day that had, she was a freshman of the year last year and really struggling this year. She knows how to hit all the shots.

depending on her psychology, she's faced a lot of struggles that we've got to kind of unwrap and figure out and then, and then see if it's like the yips, right? Like usually in my opinion, yips start from a bad mechanical issue, but then turn into a mental issue and then it becomes a vicious circle. But then we have to unpack the mental first and then, and while also working on the mechanical as well. So it's kind of this, this, this big pie that they're both combined. just depends on the percentages.

Dr. Scott Lynn (49:51.213)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (50:00.548)
Totally. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (50:05.631)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (50:05.879)
Yeah, and I mean, I've worked a bunch with Tony Rogerio, who was with Smiley Kaufman through his big struggles. I mean, the guy almost won the Masters and then fell off. And he said he'd be on the range with him and he'd hit like a whole bucket of perfect shots and go out of the range and, know, shank it off the first tee or whatever. so where does that come from? And this is where I like, I mean, I've done a lot of digging into the motor learning science with

with a bunch of my colleagues, Will Wu and John Dunnigan do a bunch of good stuff in motor learning world. And they talk a lot about scrimmaging. Like the range is so different from the golf course where in every other sport that I'm aware of, like you scrimmage, you play the actual game in practice. And so they're a big proponent of actually practicing on the golf course, like getting on the golf course and throwing balls in the rough and throwing them in the places instead of.

you know, dragging one over and putting it on a really perfect piece of grass and making that motion every time. So that may, you know, I don't know how much they did with that, like in my, I mean, obviously there are psychology things that need to be unpacked in people, definitely. But doing more scrimmaging on the golf course, think then gives you more, you know, because.

Working on that perfect pattern with a perfect lie and where you don't have to go find it afterwards is a very artificial scenario, which is where most of us practice this game.

Raymond Prior (51:29.727)
Yeah, it's a very psychological safe place. The, the driving range, know, we, we on the podcasts, we've had variations of the question. Why am I super confident on the range and not when I go to the first tee and it's because there are two different environments. One is highly variable with consequences attached and one is not very variable and no consequences attached. And then therefore you don't need to be confident on one or at least self generate it. And on the other you do.

Dr. Scott Lynn (51:33.522)
Hahaha

Dr. Scott Lynn (51:54.04)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think what I've learned from this, you know, the Blue Jays have a really smart hitting coach and, for people like that, he just limits their time in the cage. He's like, get in there, get the motions, feel what you need to feel and get the hell out of there because spending a lot of time beating balls in the range for myself as a golfer too, I play worse when I spend more time on the range. I play better when I play more golf because I'm out there solving problems with every shot instead of just dragging another one and

whacking it and then hitting another one before that one's even landed probably.

Raymond Prior (52:26.729)
Yeah. Hence we see in the research that randomized practice, the impact is higher in golf because oftentimes in other sports, there's more variability in practice because you are scrimmaging. There's very little block practice in most sports relative to golf. And then therefore we see the impact of randomized practice and playing on the course for learning and development much, much higher. So yeah, indeed.

Dr. Scott Lynn (52:40.419)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (52:52.833)
Yeah, and like, I mean, that made me think of like Shaquille O'Neal back in his day, right? Like he would shoot jump shots during the game and look completely coordinated and get on the free throw line and look like he'd never played the game before because that is it. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (53:03.091)
Yeah, different psychological state. Also challenging when you're so big as a human being that a basketball is like the size of you or me holding an orange. And so it's just, it's a little bit harder to throw. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (53:03.554)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll stand there in the way.

Dr. Scott Lynn (53:15.209)
Yeah, it's a different pattern. That's interesting.

Chase Cooper (53:20.842)
Scott, you talked about dialing in foot flare for our listeners at home that don't necessarily have force plates or access to force plates. Is there anything from a field standpoint for him? Any visuals, if you're, if you're looking at golf swings, like anything, anything that you could help our listeners with, with foot flare.

Dr. Scott Lynn (53:37.954)
Yeah, that's really hard. mean, if you don't have a force plate, I always default to the Goldilocks principle. I would say if, and I do that often with players even just to convince them what is best. Cause I can show them on the force play and say, I think this is best. But so I'll generally have them hit five with their foot flared as much as possible. I would their foot almost turned in a little bit and five in the middle. And with my foresight, you you can like categorize the swing. these are the

blue dots, these are the yellow dots. at the end of it, sometimes I'll tell them, if you had to go to the first team and play a guy on a $300 NASA right now, which one would you choose? And a lot of times that's a pretty good litmus test for the best thing to do. And I think that's a great way to learn any and doing that on purpose in practice, I've found has helped me a lot. Like doing it wrong on purpose, like when would you ever do that? Like,

Chase Cooper (54:08.812)
Again, to... Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (54:27.903)
I tell the story, my wife is a college golf coach in LA and when she first started, she had this girl on her team who was her fifth player who developed the shanks coming into conference. So she'd hozzle a rocket one or two per round and have a double or triple and it would ruin her whole round. And my wife asked me, you work with her a little bit before conference? Cause we need to get rid of these shanks.

And she came in and she was hitting balls on like in my garage. Remember that old crappy garage that I had with a little net in front of it. And she's hitting balls and like the third or fourth one, she hits the Hossle rocket that just goes into the net and she goes, there it is. That's the shank. Like, my God, I can't. And, and what we found was she, she was starting completely on her heels with her pressure. So when she swung, she couldn't go to her heels anymore. She would dive towards the ball and that would introduce the Hossle to the ball. So we worked on just getting her more balanced at setup.

And that allowed her to hit the middle of the face a whole bunch of times. And she was happy and she was, you know, this is awesome. And I was like, wait, before you leave, hit me five shots and just rock back on your heels and do the same thing that you did. And the third one, she shanked and she went, ha, look, it's shanked. I was like, hey, you're fixed. Cause she wasn't fearful of that shot anymore. She knew how to create it on purpose. So now I know how to stop it. And so I do that often. I actually get players to do the wrong thing. Like maybe once or twice. So they understand the feel of what it feels like.

And so then they know if the ball starts doing a small version of that on the court. So I'm just sneaking a little bit back towards here. need to. So playing the Goldilocks game on the range, think introduces or in the lab or wherever it is introduces some of that variability that helps you control it under fire on the golf course.

Chase Cooper (56:07.798)
Yeah, we've we've had john and will on the pod. But I've done again, it's been a long time friend of I've known will for a long time too. And we we talked a lot about Goldilocks and and Raymond's also talked about how the brain learns its best from extremes. And so like understanding big toes and big heel strikes and then find the middle ground. We do that a lot with and talk about that a lot here. So definitely preaching to the choir with with that stuff.

Dr. Scott Lynn (56:10.679)
awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (56:20.75)
Yep.

Dr. Scott Lynn (56:28.759)
Yeah. And, I mean, at the PJ show, I know John was talking about, like, I wouldn't do it very often. Like you don't want to do the wrong thing a whole bunch, but like the odd, you know, time to understand where it is. And I almost find it like in my warmup. cause what I find, like, you know, we've talked about, or, you know, Mike Adams old stuff of posting styles and like, understanding where a big rear and where a bit center and where a lead post kind of is lives.

Chase Cooper (56:35.34)
No, with elite players, yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (56:57.409)
And I know where I play my best golf, but I and I hit balls on my plate enough that if I just come in and swing, sometimes I'll be a little more here, a little more there, depending on whatever. Like I might've slept on my right glute a little differently and I can't load it quite as much. So sometimes my normal pattern needs to feel way right. Even though it isn't, but it needs to feel that way for me to get where I need to hit it. Optimally. Sometimes my pattern needs to feel a little more like this. and so, you know, the first whatever couple of balls on the range, it's okay to, you know, do sets of three and hit like.

what feels like way right and feel way left for you to dial in your feel for that particular day. And I use that quite a bit with my own game now. And it seems to help me dial in my feel and my pattern for that particular day.

Chase Cooper (57:36.835)
No, for sure. And going back to understanding your pattern, right? Like if you know where it's supposed to be, and like you said, you wake up feeling a little different and go on kind of calibrating it as huge, right? from all the force plate data, you've seen what some of most instructors believe about the golf swing that the data doesn't actually support. And this could be outside of like the open forum crowd of a bunch of golf nerds that have force plates, but like, and it could even be something that you've learned over the years that you didn't, you didn't think was correct at first, but the force plate, force plate data has kind of shown you.

Dr. Scott Lynn (57:39.553)
Right.

Dr. Scott Lynn (57:45.827)
Totally.

Dr. Scott Lynn (57:53.154)
Oof.

Dr. Scott Lynn (58:06.201)
Well, I mean, I probably go back to and I think this has this debate has been settled big time because I remember when I was a kid being on the range for junior clinics, golf teachers would get down on their hands and knees and hold kids feet on the ground. They're like, this is not basketball. We don't jump in this game. And and that's something that, you know, it's interesting. Like I've I don't think you should like.

try to get somebody to jump if they're not jumping. It's not something that like, and I think people have gone down that road. It's always like the goalie loss game, right? Like a little is good. So a lot is gonna be real good, right? And that's where that vertical force, like we saw a of these long drive guys that had tons of vertical force and we tried to engineer a shit ton of vertical force into everyone. I don't think that's the best thing in the world. But if somebody is jumping naturally and creating that like crazy foot pattern like Scottie Scheffler and still hitting the middle of the face and doing good things like that.

That's something you need to leave alone because it's a pretty effective way. And that's one of the deceleration patterns like that kid that I talked about that has really good deal. He has a little bit of jump off his lead side, which shifts the net ground reaction force back towards his trail side coming into impact, which actually moves that vector on the other side of his center of mass, which creates that tipping or that breaking action to get rid of a lot of that side bend. So there's actually a lot of cool mechanical ways that

on waiting your lead foot coming into impact and getting off of it a little bit is advantageous. Because I remember I used to get people that would send me their center of pressure data of a player and they're like, look at, they're like only 20 % on their lead side at impact. Like, my God, the reverse pivoting is terrible. And what we know from force plates is the work is done by that point. What happens at impact doesn't matter anymore because all that energy has been transferred into the golf club and we don't really care.

what your feet are doing at that point. And that's where things get extremely variable with people's feet. And so that's something that I would say with force plates, can like, I really don't care what your pressure is at impact, because your work has been done by that point. And the people that do unweight their lead foot, if they're doing it naturally and creating a bunch of other good patterns actually could be very advantageous to saving them some wear and tear on their body and creating better deceleration patterns.

Chase Cooper (01:00:27.704)
So one of my preferences is like, I'm going to say seven iron, but, but probably more eight iron, nine iron wedge down. Like I like my, my players lead foot to be pretty stable with those clubs more so from a low point control standpoint and delivering the right amount of loft and stuff. I see you nodding. Would you agree with that? Would you say I still need to be open to letting my kids cause I don't like zero pressure left. I don't like the left foot coming off the ground before impact with the, with the mid to mid to short iron. Yeah. Driver.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:00:51.576)
Right.

with the shorter clubs. I would say that's fine once they have enough speed to still get it out there. So like if I have a little kid who can't hit it out of his shadow, if he doesn't jump at it a little bit and you keep their foot on the ground, that doesn't make the game as much fun. But like, I know, cause I've had this discussion with Tony Rogerio a bunch cause he's the same way. He doesn't like to see that. his example is like, I know Justin Thomas and his team have really worked on quieting his left foot.

Chase Cooper (01:00:56.962)
driver I'm okay with.

Okay. Okay.

Chase Cooper (01:01:09.752)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:01:21.817)
in the downswing, I was like, well, Justin Thomas works out with Colby like every week. He's a strong, one of the best athletes in the world. Cool. That's fine because that becomes a specialty shot, right? The eight, seven iron that might not be his stock pattern. That's his specialty shot, which is more like a wedge kind of swing, which is totally fine. But I think, you know, we had the reason we had this is we had a kid at one of his camps who literally was hitting the thing off the middle of face every time and his left foot was off the ground, but he was just little tiny. I don't know how old he was like nine or.

eight year old or whatever. like, and I think we tried some with his foot on the ground and he hit it like, whatever, 30 yards shorter. And like, and he kind of got this look on his face like, that's no fun. And I was like, okay, well, but when this kid's 18, 19, 20, and he's gotten in the gym and he's put on some mass, then sure, that's the time to quiet that left foot down and, you know, and introduce that pattern for sure. But I think like, if I think if you if you take that kid at eight,

Chase Cooper (01:02:13.858)
Yeah, totally.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:02:18.809)
910 and you make his 8 iron 7 iron 6 iron go or whatever wedge go 30 yards shorter so that You know his buddies are all pumping it way past him and he's 5 iron into a green and they're Whatever you might not he might not keep playing the game till 20 or whatever So so I think that's where I would qualify that and I would agree with you with you know established players that have speed and have

Chase Cooper (01:02:37.208)
No, sure.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:02:45.717)
strength and they're fully developed, yes, but I think you got to be careful with kids that are still athletic enough to jump because it's the easiest way to hit it is just to jump at it a bit. I I teach that with a lot of older people that aren't very athletic. Like the golf swing is body goes down, arms go up, and body goes up, arm goes down.

Chase Cooper (01:03:05.774)
When you say easier, easiest to hit it, would you say easiest to create? that the easiest way for you to create more force, more power?

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:03:12.729)
Well, think it's just the easiest plane for a human being to move in. It's a pure sagittal plane motion, like a jumping motion is like, and that's the way we do most of our motions, whereas like lateral motions and rotational motions are like frontal and transverse plane motions are down the chain. Like if you watch a little kid learn to move, they're not side shuffling right out of the crib, right? They're crawling and then they start walking and yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:03:33.784)
for the members. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (01:03:39.66)
Yeah, I was going to say Scott, if we're getting kind of, for people listening to this, who are like, yo, I'm kind of interested in perhaps taking a look at my golf swing or perhaps my training methodologies from a biomechanics perspective, where can they go?

Like where are the places that they can go, okay, I want to go look at somebody and I want them to tell me about my swing from a biomechanical standpoint so that I can try to one, maybe increase the performance thresholds of it. And also maybe I've got a nagging injury that flares up more when I play golf, lower back injury or shoulder or knee or an ankle, whatever. Where do people go to get a, we might say a quality or at least minimum standard of

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:04:20.611)
Yeah.

Raymond Prior (01:04:25.183)
biomechanic analysis might say.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:04:27.609)
Yeah, I mean, it's difficult because there's different, you know, levels of people all over. I would say, I mean, for me, like, obviously, I'm slightly biased because I work for the Swing Catalyst. And so we have a list of ambassadors all over the world that have our products and go through our education and understand our stuff. So I would say that'd be kind of a good place to start it. You know, it's a little biased. There's a lot of other teachers that I know that use other force plate systems that are unbelievable teachers as well. So but I think

Yeah, it's tough. Getting on force plates would be my stock answer to that. like, if you get on force plates with somebody who doesn't really know how to use them, it might not be that useful. So trying to find somebody that is, you know, very skilled at using them and understanding the data. And there's lots of different force plate companies now. And they all provide really good data that can help you with that. They just need a skilled instructor to analyze that data for you and kind of provide some of that feedback, which is

Raymond Prior (01:05:02.987)
you

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:05:25.209)
You know, that's kind of my goal is to provide that education for the golf community as a whole and try to get people to to understand this stuff better so they can use it better and you know It's funny. I a couple of our ambassadors one that you know really well chase just down the street from you I had a call with him a couple of weeks ago and he was like I think I use about 20 % of what this thing can do and he's you know, I've worked with a bunch and done a bunch of work with so it's

It's a process to get to that point and that's really motivated me to improve my education because the fact that somebody like him feels like he only uses about 20 to 30 % of what the tool can do tells me I gotta do a better job of educating people on this stuff.

Chase Cooper (01:06:10.414)
EJ is another friend of the podcast. He's been on my work. We're good. I'll call I'll call you out. He I'm in the same boat. I'm I'm probably around 20 to 25%. So the single foot. Scott, what's the quickest way to hit them for our listeners? What's the quickest way if there is one to hit it further? Is it vertical? So we've got the three the three I'm going to say single plane forces, you've got horizontal force back and forth away and towards the target. You got torque, which is rotational, you're kind of spinning the

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:06:12.185)
I was trying not to

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:06:20.588)
Hahaha!

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:06:32.984)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:06:39.234)
the plate around its axis and then you've got vertical. I still tell players that vertical to me is the quickest way. Would you say it's now that you've learned, diving into this more, is it more breaking and timing the breaks? That's the quickest way to hit it further. What would you say to that?

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:06:42.028)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:06:53.441)
Yeah, I would say, mean, but that's a more difficult problem because like timing the breaks is something that I'm not sure you could teach somebody to do in a lesson. I mean, I've actually had more success with just moving this, moving the chest more in terms than at cuing anything towards the ground. Cause like, you know,

Chase Cooper (01:07:06.476)
Move in the chest, move in the rib cage rotation. Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:07:13.549)
it's a very short period of time from when you put the energy into the system to when you hit the brakes is like 100 milliseconds. And like, I can't tell you to think of something to do in 100 milliseconds. It's impossible. Like we have that neuro-mechanical delay of 200 something milliseconds. So I think that's hard because it would depend on the person for sure. Like my stock answer a long time ago would have been vertical, but I think that can get dangerous and can create some. I mean, my stock answer a lot of times with some people like

I was working at a really nice course in the Palm Springs area here a couple of years ago. And a guy came in who was an entertainment lawyer from LA. And so he has very little athletic ability. He's just on law his whole life and he's getting ready to retire and he doesn't know what he's going to do when he retires. So he wants to take up golf. And the teacher showed me his swing and he was was like, side bending like this and like flipping at it. And he was hitting his driver about a hundred yards and he said,

Last year, he's like, when I worked with this guy, if I teed up 10 balls in front of him, he'd whip six of them and hit four of them. And his swing had a massive amount of lateral and a massive amount of side bend. And obviously this guy is just taking up the game, you know, and that's what I told him. I was like, we're going to change your golf swing. Your golf swing is going to be, which all vertical basically. I was like, your backswing, you're going to feel like your body goes down, your arms go up and your downswing is going to be your body goes up, your arms go down. And I had him hitting wedges about a hundred yards in the air.

And he said his back was feeling better and he didn't whip any of them like to me. That's the simplest way to hit a golf ball but Like and that would be for somebody that really doesn't control their low point like with his he hits way behind it some of his drivers He would drop kick it and by the time it dropped kicked it would go over the ball and he'd whip it that way and So like that would be my stock answer for you know, somebody like that like somebody brand new to the game or somebody that just wants to you know

Chase Cooper (01:08:57.506)
Right.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:09:07.873)
If they chunk a whole bunch of balls, that's a good way to do it. But I mean, a stock answer for, you a 10 handicap to hit a further might be a completely different or like a college player to hit it further might be a completely different. That's where I think you'd have to analyze their leg bias pattern. Like if they're more of a lead bias pattern than I would go towards vertical, if they're more of a trail leg bias pattern, then we might start to introduce more of a frontal plane moment by adding a little ladder.

and maybe working on breaking or unweighting. If they're more of an unbiased person or a centered pattern, that's when you go to the rotational pattern and try to create more torque or rotation with them. And so that would depend on a lot of things.

Chase Cooper (01:09:51.177)
With with regards to those patterns, do you think with with the tour players that you've you've worked with worked with to like, is there an is there an accurate pattern versus a power pattern? Like if you just if I just showed you force plate data, would you just could you assume like, yeah, that player hits it for far that player is more accurate? Can you make those assumptions?

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:10:11.385)
You can't, I mean, I would kind of on average say a more lead bias, like generally people get more lead bias as the club gets shorter and it becomes more of an accuracy game and they get rid of a lot of the lateral movement. So like more of a lead side biased player would be more accuracy and less of a power pattern. I haven't actually seen the data, but I've heard, you know, I've heard, or people have told me that Cameron Champ

is one of the most lead side bias players they'd ever seen on force plates. Like he stays way on his lead side and was one of the longest guys out there for a while. Yeah. So there's always like, I think if you are lead, lead side bias, that's where your speed is going to come from. But I mean, it's possible that, you know, getting more off the ball could add a little bit more gas, but then create a little less more or a little less accuracy. But that's where I find like,

Chase Cooper (01:10:46.712)
bombs it.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:11:07.097)
One of the best players in the world, his coach called me because he plays practice rounds quite a bit with another really good tour player. And he says their stock drives go the same distance. And then they get on a wide open part five and the guy hits it 30 past him. Like he has this other gear and he's like, I don't have another gear. I don't know where my gear is. And so he brought me in to try to find that other gear. that's, so that to me is like that other player owns his stock powder, knows where it is and knows when he gets on a part five, this is my extra gear. And this is what I do to adjust to hit it further.

And so that's what makes him a more effective driver of the golf ball because he has another shot in his bag. And to me that you first, have to own your stock to know where that lives. And I find like most of the good players that I work with have their stock driver. have their wide open part five bomber driver and they have their squeezer cut fitted in the fairway, whatever you want to call that thing. Fairway finder driver. And so, but the only way you have those three options to you is you own the middle. You own.

Chase Cooper (01:11:56.59)
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:12:03.885)
the stock so you know what to do to hit the fairway finder, squeezer cut, and you know what to do to hit the bomber. And it's different for each person. And so having that ability, I think, is really important.

Chase Cooper (01:12:14.958)
One final question. Biggest differences you see in the forceplay data and pressure shift stuff from tour players to just diverge amateurs.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:12:25.625)
I don't think there's like massive differences because like I feel like the tour players can get away with a lot more like I'll see tour players like I've worked with a really good tour player recently that got the pressure way out to the edge of their foot on the backswing which I generally think is not a very good thing the only people who've ever convinced me that that might be okay is long drivers because if you get to the outside of your foot that can give you a little more hand path and allow you more time to speed up the club and and in the one out of six game the long drive I think that's fine

But I'll see that in amateurs as well, where they'll obviously hit much worse shots from there. it's interesting, people ask me that question, what do you do different working with a tour player than working with an amateur? I think I see a lot of the similar bad patterns, the tour players get away with it because they're way more athletic and they can hit better shots from these bad patterns. That's why they're tour players. But it's the same magnitude problems and the same things.

The guy who was getting the outside as photos Tony Fina like one of the best players out there. I work on that with 40 handicap golfers and I worked on it with Tony Fina. Tony could hit much more effective shots from out there, but I still think the work we did allowed him to rein it in and and hit better shots from there. So I think when we're working with a human being, it doesn't matter really if it's Tony Fina or that entertainment lawyer who could hardly hit it like you're trying to make that human be more effective in their pattern.

and make this game more fun for them. And take away some of that anxiety by hitting better shots.

Chase Cooper (01:13:55.01)
Awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Prior (01:13:58.252)
If only hitting better shots actually reduced anxiety, that would be great. It might make you feel a little bit more certain, but as soon as I create narrow enough circumstances for you or enough risk, it can't do it, which would be great. basically hitting good shots creates a sense of certainty for us. But then I put you in a situation where...

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:03.518)
gives you a better shot. You gotta agree, it gives you a better shot.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:15.393)
Interesting. But it helps.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:21.134)
Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:14:22.04)
Well, it doesn't.

Raymond Prior (01:14:23.741)
Certainty is not available to you and your history of outcomes becomes irrelevant to your brain.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:29.313)
Interesting. So, but then that results in a bad shot, which then results in, yeah.

Raymond Prior (01:14:32.715)
The bad shot doesn't result in something. My response to the bad shot creates something to it. that's right. OK. All that being said, Scott, where can people find you if they want to find out more information about you, your work, biomechanics, et cetera, or how to break into research laboratories?

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:37.209)
100%. That's a great point. Yeah, your response to the bad shot.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:14:49.145)
We have, yeah, you can find me through the Cal State Fullerton website if you're looking to do research stuff. My email is on the Cal State Fullerton website and you can get it if you're anybody that's interested in golf, biomechanics or baseball hitting or even pitching now we're doing biomechanics research. I would love to chat with you because I'm always looking for students and help with that kind of stuff.

Chase Cooper (01:14:51.787)
if

Raymond Prior (01:15:06.891)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:15:13.305)
The Swing Catalyst website is a place swingcatalyst.com. They have an education page where all of our education is there. You can go to there to see some of that stuff and learn about that. am probably the best way to get in touch with me personally is through social media and I don't even remember my social media thing. I'm terrible at it.

Chase Cooper (01:15:33.912)
something me sorry

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:15:38.957)
So in Instagram it's DRSKYNN, so Dr. SK, K is my middle name, Lin. So that's my Instagram thing. That's probably where most people that don't know me shoot me a message on there and just say, hey, I'm interested in this or ask me questions through there. That'd be the easiest way. But my email is available. It's slinn at Fullerton.edu. That's my university email. So you can get in touch with there too if you wish.

Raymond Prior (01:16:05.867)
Okay, Scott, thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:16:08.781)
Thank you for your time. This was fun. Hopefully we can do it again, spend some more time chatting. Because yeah, that is, we get stuck in our little silos of mechanics or whatever it is and getting outside of those and learning new things is always very helpful.

Raymond Prior (01:16:23.975)
Indeed, right on.

Chase Cooper (01:16:24.879)
Scott, you're the best. Thanks for coming on. All right, until next time. Thanks, Doc.

Dr. Scott Lynn (01:16:26.605)
Thank you.

Raymond Prior (01:16:29.942)
See ya.