A really overthought message from the guy who created Stryper
THE STRYPER STORY
For the first 48 years of my life I hated golf.
Mainly because I was just so very bad at it. I played a lot of sports and had been relatively successful at them, but never golf.
Then COVID hit. In Australia, you were only allowed to leave your home to exercise, and golf was allowed (no touching the flag, leave it in the hole!)
A good mate and I - both mad keen surfers – were going nuts during lockdowns when the waves weren’t pumping, so we started playing the Tanawha Par 3 on the Sunshine Coast.
Within a couple of weeks, we were walking up and down that hilly little course every couple of days in the searing Queensland heat.
As the COVID restrictions eased a little, you could have a beer on the deck. There are Kookaburras that come in and land right beside you.
On occasion a kangaroo will skip down the first fairway. The wider experience than just whacking the ball started to win me over. I also started to realise the hatred I had for the game was purely frustration of not being able to improve as fast as I wanted.
Fast forward a few years and I’ve played hundreds of rounds of golf.
Dozens of lessons.
Three sets of clubs.
Thousands of YouTube videos.
I don’t surf anymore.
Chasing white balls several days a week.
Chasing golfing Nirvana.
Totally hooked.
What’s between your ears hurts your golf.
I’m the world’s biggest overthinker. At least I’m pretty sure I am. 😊 I need to know WHY stuff works. My mates are constantly giving me sh*t for always wondering why something is done a certain way. I’d be on a surf trip to Indo and paddling in every hour or so to change fins to see if I could get that last drop of enjoyment out of those waves.
I also love tinkering and experimenting. Motorbikes, cars, surfboard fins, a positive pressure dust suppression fan for my caravan to travel the outback, and now golf. So, in between mucking around in my shed making things that are probably already on sale somewhere, I also started to analyse what it takes to build a consistent swing.
In golf, though, this constant overthinking is a total curse. You need to learn as much as you can away from the course, then step up to the tee, forget everything you do and don’t know, and just swing.
Let your training take over and let your brain miraculously put 3 inches of metal onto a ball half that size and get it to go towards a spot hundreds of metres away.
I relate it a lot to running a successful business. We follow systems and processes every day, with incremental change, measure the outcomes and keep the things that make improvement and discard the ones that don’t.
Occasionally, when things suddenly aren’t going as well, you need to regroup, and work out what’s changed. Often you need to make mistakes to understand the right way is the other way. Or what was the right way before is now the wrong way because you've changed another part of the ecosystem. No one decision or change happens without the possibility of causing unforeseen change (good or bad) to previous decisions.
To me, that’s golf in a nutshell, too. You get your swing path in-to-out but you start shanking because you’re making it happen by having your hands in the wrong position, for example. You compress the ball but you start taking too much of a divot, your body gets sore and then you stop following through.
Back to the drawing board. Or YouTube – you know it’s bad for you, but you just can’t help yourself, can you?
Drill in the muscle memory, then just swing.
Now, here’s what Stryper is trying to achieve. We all know there is a scientifically perfect golf swing. There’s even a robot called LDRIC https://www.ldric.com/ that has what is regarded as the perfect swing. But even LDRIC can’t hit holes in one on every par 3, so you are kidding yourself thinking perfection is the only way to improve. LDRIC also doesn’t get sore muscles, hasn’t had a knee and shoulder reconstruction or put his back out sneezing like I have.
In any given human swing there are multitudes of things that will vary. The best we can do is to put our bodies in the same position as many times in a row as we can. How do we achieve that? Muscle memory from practicing drills. How do we know where to put our bodies? A good golf coach. How do we put our bodies in that same position every time when the coach isn’t there? Stryper.
A golf coach tells you what is wrong and how to fix it. StanceMate and SwingMate ensure you keep doing what they’ve told you when you are by yourself. Train the muscle memory and then just swing away.
Who
we’ve
worked
with.
My two biggest issues in golf (other than the space between my ears) are swaying - and hence not getting “through” the ball right either - and swing path. And clubhead speed, and hand height, and tempo – did I mention I think I’m hilarious as well?
I’ve worked with two really great coaches on the Sunshine Coast, Golf Pros Marcus McPherson and John Wright, to develop SwingMate and StanceMate. The way they teach resonates with me.
Lessons with John doing gate drills is where I started the idea for SwingMate. Same goes for StanceMate working with Marcus. He's a zealot for "little step left, big step right" every single time you address the ball.
So, getting back to the crux, put the ball and your feet where they are supposed to be using StanceMate, set up alignment rods with SwingMate and start swinging. See what happens. Measure it. Improve It. Trust It.
I know my swing has improved out of sight and my handicap is slowly falling. The funny thing is, if I’d had StanceMate and SwingMate before I ever picked up a club, I’d reckon my ridiculously overactive brain would have worked out how to swing without picking up bad habits and I would have saved many months if not years getting to where I am now.
If you are serious about your golf, you’ll always need professional coaching to examine YOUR swing. But you should also get your coach to set up StanceMate and SwingMate specifically for you so you can take that home and practice it over and over and over.
Now get out there and stripe it!
The process of creating Stryper has been a big boost for my golf.
I know I’ll probably never have a single-digit handicap, but I am improving and the beer is always cold at the clubhouse.
To those who have read this far, thanks for humouring me. I hope Stryper's products will improve your scores as well.
Corbs
Head Stryper