Guest: Sean Foley, renowned golf instructor known for his work with Tiger Woods and other PGA Tour players.

Host: Jeff Pelizzaro

Episode Number: 348

Podcast: The 18STRONG Podcast

Summary

In this episode, we sit down with Sean Foley, one of the most recognizable golf instructors in the world, known for his time working with Tiger Woods. We delve into Sean’s background in fitness, his approach to golf instruction, and his innovative new device, the Pro Sendr. We also discuss the current state of professional golf, the importance of fitness and recovery, and the role of technology in golf instruction.

Main Topics

Sean Foley’s Background and Approach to Golf Instruction
- Sean’s initial background was in the fitness space, which heavily influences his approach to golf instruction.
- He emphasizes the importance of the body working properly for the golf swing and game to function optimally.
The Pro Sendr Device
- Sean and David Woods have developed the Pro Sendr, a device that hooks onto your wrist and is gaining popularity among professional golfers.
- The device helps golfers understand the importance of wrist angles and the structure of delivering the geometry of the golf swing.
The Current State of Professional Golf
- Sean shares his insights on the current state of professional golf, discussing the fitness regimens of top players and the importance of recovery.
The Importance of Fitness in Golf
- Sean discusses the role of fitness in golf, emphasizing the importance of movement, hydration, sunlight, and weight lifting for both mental and physical health.
The Role of Technology in Golf Instruction
- Sean talks about the use of technology in golf instruction, specifically discussing his Pro Sendr device and its role in improving golf swings.

Resources Mentioned

Linksoul – The preferred brand of apparel for golfers. Use the code “18STRONG” for a 20% discount.
Pro Sendr – A device developed by Sean Foley and David Woods that helps golfers understand the importance of wrist angles and the structure of delivering the geometry of the golf swing.

Conclusion

In this episode, Sean Foley takes us on a journey through his approach to golf instruction, his innovative Pro Sendr device, and the current state of professional golf. He also discusses the importance of fitness in golf and the role of technology in golf instruction. Tune in to the 18STRONG Podcast to hear more about Sean’s experiences and insights.

Want the full episode transcript? (click the “+” ????????)

Jeff Pelizzaro: [00:00:00] The 18STRONG podcast, episode number 348 with Sean Foley.

What’s up guys. Welcome back to the 18STRONG podcast, where our mission here is to help you build a stronger game. And that’s on the course off the course. It’s everything that involves working harder, playing harder, playing better, enjoying the game more. And this week, I’m really excited. We have Sean Foley, probably one of the most recognizable golf instructors, coaches to the PGA tour players, obviously known for his time working with Tiger woods.

And this week we get a chance to sit down and talk to him about really so many different things in the world of golf, his background, which I didn’t realize that [00:01:00] Sean’s initial background was in the fitness space. So we talk a lot about the body and how important it is that your body’s working properly in order to get your golf swing and your golf game working properly.

We talk about his new device that he and David Woods have come up with, the Pro Sender that is really taking the world of golf and even the professional ranks of golf by storm. it’s a device that hooks onto your wrist. And we’ve seen the likes of Rory McIlroy and a lot of the PGA tour players on their Instagram channels using the Pro Center.

So we’re going to talk about that and what’s different about it, why it’s not just a gimmicky tool and how Sean uses it and what it’s important for. And then we discuss a little bit of all of it. the current situation of the pro game today, the fitness regimens and how important recovery is and so many different topics.

So I’m really excited to have Sean on here and share this episode. Before we jump into the interview, let’s thank our partners over at Link Soul. [00:02:00] As always, Linksoul is our preferred brand of apparel here at 18STRONG. We had our mandatory golf Friday this morning, and I would say that of the 12 guys playing this morning, at least 8 to 10 of them had some form of Linksoul on, and so it feels like we’re, we’ve got a little bit of Oceanside, California right here in St.

Louis when we have our mandatory golf Fridays, so that’s pretty cool. So go and check out Linksoul. Go to 18strong. com slash Linksoul. You’ll get a 20% off discount if you go there on anything in your cart. I highly recommend the BoardWalker shorts. They now make them in two different inseams. So for all you youngsters out there that are wanting a little higher inseam, I know they’ve got the 8 inch inseam and the 10 inch still for the, the older guys like myself.

So go over there, 18strong. com slash Linksoul to get your 20% off. All right, let’s jump into our chat with Sean Foley. First of all, thanks for coming on. This is awesome [00:03:00] Obviously

Sean Foley: I looked into what you guys do and all that, but how would you explain it?

Jeff Pelizzaro: 18STRONG it really started out as me just as a golf fitness pro trying to get some more information from some of the other people that i’d come across, like the tpi folks and Just try to get a little bit more word out on what the fitness part of the game does or what the fitness game does for the golfers and really was a way for me to start learning more about it.

My background is physical therapy and, always wanted to do something a little bit more online as opposed to just having my own fitness training studio and as a way to disseminate information. And here we are 340 something episodes later where we’re still talking with, some of the best fitness people in the game, instructors, pros.

And, really just trying to champion the idea of, no matter what age level, whatever you are, that putting some time and effort into your physical abilities, your mental abilities, that’s just as much a part of you being a better golfer as getting a new driver or [00:04:00] going and banging balls on the range.

And so wanted to just try to disseminate some of the information and now some of the resources that we have, what to connect with people like yourself and put that out to our

Sean Foley: community. Yeah. it’s something I’m pretty, I, when I started coaching golf, I was also a personal trainer.

Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah. It was really hard to make money teaching golf in Canada at that time. I was, I was, nobody knew who I was. so to build business in between, I was dead broke and I didn’t want to live at home anymore. two things. I continued to weigh tables and then I got my Canadian certification strength and conditioning.

Deal took me like six months to eight months or whatever. And, so I did that and then I started, trading people. So I did it at that time to most of my clients were just overweight, right? I didn’t know, I didn’t have, I didn’t even go to biology class before. So I remember it’s like passing that test was a miracle by the way.

and anyways, I started to do that, but then what happened was. [00:05:00] I met this guy named Dr. Craig Davies and Davies is, Cairo by training, but also a trainer for many years. And his goal was to train people in a way that they wouldn’t need to get treated because obviously his hands and fingers are going to fall off at some point from all the treatments that he’s done.

And he’s moved over the years that we’ve been roommates on tour for 17 years. Craig is at the vault performance. And In all that time, all the different chiros, and osteopaths, and doctors of Chinese medicine, he was mentored by Mark Lindsay, and Scappaticci, who are kind of Canadian gods of soft tissue work, worked at the Olympics for four different Olympics, and I think the thing with Canada, with our PTs and our physios and our, Osteos and Kairos, they’re looked at very differently than in the U.

S. And I think the main concern I have in the U. S. obviously is that [00:06:00] pharmaceutical companies, they don’t want you to believe that movement in hydration and sunlight and cold water and lifting weights is going to help with mental health or physical health, right? surgery makes a lot of money, for hospital, and pharmaceutical companies.

And so in Canada, where we have social medicine, like where it’s completely free to the people while we pay taxes, obviously, these guys are at such a different level as one, how they’re perceived by society, but to, their ability, because. They’re, I remember being in the States and hearing the word chiropractor and people being like, Whoa, but as I came to learn, these chiros just don’t crack backs like Craig does frequency specific microcurrents.

he’s been using voltage to treat his athletes for a long time. He’s got. 10, 000 hours in acupuncture is really expanded and expand. I’d say [00:07:00] his favorite thing to do is still to train people. I think that’s his favorite thing. so Craig and I were in 2010, we spoke, at the, World Golf Fitness Summit hosted by, by Greg and by Dave.

Because I really think that we were really much the pioneers of coach and trainer slash Cairo to like really develop this team mentality around it. So my job was everything related to wrist angles. And the structure of how we deliver the geometry of the golf swing and hit it straight. And then Craig’s job was to create these eloquent human movements.

So it was funny seeing Davies out there in oh seven, like teaching some of his higher level guys to do like Brazilian capoeira and watching their movement become really clean, like beautiful movement, like watching an athletic little kid, right?[00:08:00] it’s like I’m working with a trainer right now. Matt Palazzo, who’s from the Northeast and, he’s into golf, fitness and fitness in general, but very sharp guy.

and he’s, we’re working on my gait cycle and then he shows me videos of his, one year old child. And I’m like, Oh, like that, like we’re born with the right hardware. It’s just because we live such a sedentary life and we do this. Like when did we do this? But if we did this over. The extent of 99% of the time we’ve been human beings, we would be hungry.

So we had to move, right? So I think as a golf coach, I really super, super appreciate, the training aspect of it. And then two is really creating like lanes. Okay. Movement. So people, talk, a lot of golf coaches are into discussing, all these [00:09:00] ground forces. That are really based on the quality of movement through the foot and ankle, which look, but like we all walk on concrete and shoes, we were designed to walk on the earth with our feet.

If we go to places where people have lived the same way for 300, 000 years, their feet don’t look like ours, they look like hands. And so all these back issues we have, neck issues, a lot of this stuff is just directly related to that, right? And A lot of times I would say to Craig, I’d like to do this with him and this with him.

And then he would accept him both, passively and actively. And I don’t know if passively is even. Problem with putting someone at a table and assessing their ability to move, like the nervous system and the intention is not there. Justin Rose was always told, you only have three to four degrees internal hip rotation because he had a retroverted pelvis.

So he had massive amounts in obviously external, but when we put 3d on him with Mark [00:10:00] bull, he moved like a gazelle. He had, he could just move. So if we kept his lower back in the right position and posture, we didn’t really have any issues. But a lot of people would look at that measurement and say, Oh, there’s no way he can play goals.

So it’s all very tricky. And I think that within the training and the nervous system is the important part. So I’ve spent a better part of the last 17 years at night. Like I think back to the PGA championship in 2013, I stayed in the house with six trainers and therapists, right? So that was always what it was.

And so listening to them argue and discuss, it just took me so much further in my understanding. One of what my responsibility is not as a golf coach. Okay. So yeah, of course I see their pivot. Of course I see how they load. Of course, I know that none of it is advantageous. It’s not going to really come from my lips and how to help them improve that.

So we’re [00:11:00] talking about, getting people quicker in a linear and a vertical force. that’s a little naive and cavalier, isn’t it? If you can’t do it with you, if they can’t do it with you, Jeff, they’re certainly not going to do it with me. So that’s, what it does is to work towards this kind of golf homeostasis.

I think the combination of the two and then us really understanding what we’re looking for. So I would say man, I need this player to be able to stay external slightly longer before they go internal. And he’d be like, we’re dead at the shoulders about as good as it’s gonna be. let me see what I can do as it relates to tibial, internal, external rotation, femur.

And a little more thoracic. And then I’m like, Oh, bingo. That’s it. And we get this thing for a millisecond longer, but that can be that millisecond longer over 800 golf rounds could turn into 5 million. So anyways, that’s the thing that people don’t have never really understood about what I do is that most [00:12:00] of my buddies are all in movement, like period. I have a bunch of friends who are golf coaches too, but. I just found that it was a lot easier. I’m not really that interested in opinions. You know what I mean?

Sure. How

Jeff Pelizzaro: much with kind of the, the typical average golfer, let’s say, and I don’t know how many of these you actually work with, or if you’re working specifically more with the high level division one athletes pro.

Sean Foley: Pro golfers, but I work with everybody really but more so like a higher level.

Yes. So for

Jeff Pelizzaro: the, more, more average, let’s say five handicap, 10 handicap, maybe the 40 to 60 year old range, how much do you think is of their, swing characteristics and what you’re trying to work on tends to be some of those physical limitations. Yeah. because of what we do all the time, like you said, sitting all the time.

And how much of it is more skill based or just simply motor pattern based?[00:13:00]

Sean Foley: I can’t really like, like I would, I’m not like a Stanford professor on this stuff. what I think I feel like I’ve done with a lot of disciplines is I’ve learned enough about all of them to know, who’s the guy.

So if I had a player and it was like, I’m having some issues with this hip, I know the hip guy. So I don’t, So as it relates to that, look, how many people. That we’re talking about probably have an open club face, like 95% of them, right? Now they might be really trying to do, and that’s why we designed the Pro Sender is to help people understand the importance of these things, just the importance of these movements.

And so it’s try and pull an object like this. So I come into the gym and you get me on the cables. I’m going to try and pull it like that. I’m probably going to go like that. Now, try to get me to do a shoulder press or bench press, I’m going to be in extension. [00:14:00] So of course, the idea of designing this to get it in extension with the wrist neutral or inflection, that ties in way deeper into how the body’s then going to work to create pulling and pushing, to create rotation from couple forces.

The problem is, where we’ve been taught too much lately about rotation. It’s this idea of opening, but it’s not, it’s, I’m trying to create counter rotation. why would I want to get open and then where’s that even coming from? it’s we talk about vertical force, but most people can’t even move their big toe.

if the big toe talks to the glute, then, what is the use of doing that? vertical force just becomes extension, which then ruins, like, how they hit the ball. club face is, the main difference between a pro and an amateur is their… Is their ability to create a consistent ish, it’s variability there, but it’s minimal of the club face.

Because look, [00:15:00] Jeff, I go to 25 Pro Ams a year, and I will watch 22 Handicaps beat a pro on a par three. they finally time it up and it’s a beautiful shot to fix feet and there’s I couldn’t go onto an N B A court and make a shot on anybody. But that’s the thing that makes it all so beautiful, is that you see that quite often in pro ams.

but why are the pros more consistent? and I think that you’re looking at special human movers, okay? And I don’t think you have to be on tour, but when you look at a DJ, or a Rory, or a Cameron Champ, Them focused on pitching at the age of eight. And it’s like the love of their life is pitching.

I’m going to say they’re at least getting a division one scholarship. That’s high end, right? Like that, if you have a division one scholarship in baseball, football, or golf to a top 20 school in all those sports, you’re on the precipice of being a perfection. [00:16:00] So it, I think we need to appreciate that when we slow their videos down and we’re like, if you just do this, Mr.

Jones, there’s there. There’s there’s side bend, and then there’s how DJ’s creating side bend. And it is more applied to the gait cycle than it is the ability. So then you watch these guys through the fairway. I’d say Cameron and Rory and DJ are the most beautiful walkers on tour. Adam Scott’s not so bad himself.

And so when you watch defensive backs walking back to the huddles. You just, you’re like, Oh, that person’s a mover. You know what I, this is, I’m speaking your language obviously, but it’s when someone’s with me, I have to assess, okay, look, I don’t have Jeff or Craig here. in many cases with the people, who are 40 to 60 years old.

A lot of times, 10 lessons in a row from 30 yards in will really suffice to playing better golf.[00:17:00] and so that’s the thing, like a senior tour player comes to me and he wants, he doesn’t hit it as far as he used to, but he’s still six foot two, 200 pounds, he’s still a big, strong man. Where has he lost his ability?

His nervous system isn’t as fast as it was. And the tissue doesn’t work quite like it did. So it is a function of it’s basically like when I asked Cameron champ when he was 15 and I was Like losing my mind watching this kid hit golf balls. And at that time when I meet him, I am working with Tiger, Justin Rose, Hunter Mahan, and Sean O’Hare.

So I think I’ve seen it all. you can never say I’ve seen it all. this kid starts hitting balls and I’m like, holy shit. And so when we started to talk, cause I had a lot of questions for him, like, how’d you learn how to do that? I just do that. Do you play other sports? Yes. I play all these other sports.

Are you good? Yes. I’m really good at all of them. how would you explain what you feel? He’s I do everything opposite of what [00:18:00] people have been taught. So I go on my left foot in my backswing and then I go on my right foot on my follow through and it’s Okay. That’s not really what we teach, but we have seen athletes move like that.

and then in the transition of my swing, I feel like I just turned into a slingshot. So he, this kid’s feeling elastic, recoil throughout the whole system. that’s just not, that’s not teachable. Like you could help me get a higher vert, but we’re only gonna get so high, right?

Jeff Pelizzaro: So I was ju I was actually on your Instagram. Looking at some pictures, flipping through Cam Champ’s pictures and I’m like, man, he just makes it look so effortless

Sean Foley: and easy. But that’s how those DBs look when they walk back to the,go to New York City and watch people walk down the street in high heels and in dress shoes and on cement and you watch Gates just get destroyed.

Then you watch those guys walk back to the huddle and you realize wow. These guys walk so [00:19:00] beautifully and they spend a quarter of their time going backwards and like training people to go backwards now is so in,we were on the whole force. We couldn’t turn around. We were supposed to be able to do that.

So yeah, I think it’s not rocket science, but it’s definitely science, it’s, it, we just have to look at today’s society. It’s how we’ve been designed, both from a mental and a physical standpoint, we don’t live like that. I’m being told now, don’t go in the sun. What? Why would I not go in the sun?

my ancestors would have been in the sun all day, starting at sun up. So when people send me a link from Huberman, and I think he’s fantastic, I love his stuff. I like evidence, right? they’re like, early sunlight is so important for sleep cycles. Yeah, because we always were in early morning sunlight forever, like the whole time cold water is more imperative than hot water.

How long have we had hot water as it [00:20:00] relates to our biology, 60 years in wealthy countries. So it’s not once again, it’s science, but if you just look at, okay, this is how we evolve physically. Okay. a hundred years ago, the obesity rate was what, like 1%? Okay, what are we doing to ourselves? And what are we not doing that we used to do?

Move all the time. move all the time. Move all the time. Exactly. Exactly. yeah. So I’m fascinated. Like I have so many smart friends that are in your discipline, and I love listening to them, but I just, I’m very good at staying in my own lane. You know what I mean? it’s just. It’s super important when you start, I think I felt at one point the ability to articulate all of these different things.

So I knew 3% of everything. And so it was like, it just wasn’t deep. And if I got in amongst people who really knew the challenge was, I couldn’t handle the challenge. So I just was like, all right, [00:21:00] what do I need to know about how to overall mentorship role of my teams over the years?

And so it was like getting the right people, and I feel like I did a very good job of getting the right person matched up with a certain player, not always the same people.

Jeff Pelizzaro: So when you are out on the range and you’re working with somebody or you’re assessing somebody, and you know that you maybe don’t have the ability, especially right there in the moment, I assume people are coming in to see you, you might have a short period of time with them.

You’re not really going to be able to send them off to your team if they’re not a professional golfer. This is, let’s say, more the country club golfer. And okay, we’re not going to fix everything that this person has going on physically. you probably have some sort of a, what might your screen be?

physically, are you looking at and saying okay, this is where we’re going to, Maybe try to make a couple changes, or I know we got to work around some of these things just to make them hit the ball better today, and they’re [00:22:00] off and running.

Sean Foley: Yeah, I got some, I have some tricks up my sleeve after 30 years, right?

it’s, basically, most of these players who come to me, who are going to be,amateurs, what we’re mainly talking about. Most cases, their back swings are too short and their club face is too open. So I’m what I’m doing when someone comes to me, I’m I’m, I feel like a triage, I feel like I’m on the front lines and I’m a triage doctor. And so the grenade went off and I see like blood everywhere, but like where, like, where can I not miss it?

So I got to take the flak jacket off and I have to see if it’s by any of the organs, because. My skin can be hanging off and that looks gross, but I’m not going to die from that. You know what I mean? So it’s trying to, in a way, like trying to find a tumor, which to be honest with you, most of the time, Jeff is just someone’s concept and understanding.[00:23:00]

So a lot of people like, if we taught kids how to play baseball, like we teach them science, kids would think that baseball sucks, right? Like we need to start teaching science. Like we teach like sports. so I think. the first thing I’m gonna ask anybody is are you sore anywhere or have you have you had injuries?

So like Aria Jantargaran is one of the girls I work with on LPGA and she dislocated her shoulder and then had a surgery. And so she in external is about right there, so she can’t go very far. Now, she played good golf after that. and she’s incredible. she’s so impressive to watch. She’s in my top three, like pure fleshers, men or women.

she can really smash it and she hits it beautiful. And so when she came to me, she came after I worked with Lydia for two years [00:24:00] and she had turned early and had a deep hand path, which is. Can be the in thing from time to time, right? Getting deep. and we just totally don’t understand that most people do that, see it.

And then go into like basic, like completely over retraction and elevation. And then it feels deep, but there’s like in a terrible place now. So we, that’s the word I don’t like to use, to be honest with you. so she did that because he was so limited, obviously her brain’s I’m not causing more issue there.

So I’m just, Oh, that feels better. And so someone sent me a video the other day of her hitting it like way better than they remember. And they’re like, but she’s so outside. And so to get the center of mass of the club and transition to fall behind her, I have to use momentum because she just doesn’t have that.

She doesn’t. So the thing is when she takes it out, the main thing that she has to be concerned about is making sure that she elevates as she turns. [00:25:00] So she feels the elevation, but sometimes she’ll just take it out and she won’t turn with it. Because obviously if the arms go in a certain direction, then the body’s just going to react.

Basically, her feeling like she’s creating torque clockwise in the ankle and then feeling that it’s out and wide, it’s given us the ability to get it to fall back into that beautiful place that she can just release it and murder it from. That, that, that’s the thing is she’s very lateral and vertical and her sister is literally like this.

So they’re the same, they’re sisters and they move so completely differently. if. If I was to give them the same lesson, one’s going to get better and one’s going to get way worse. So it’s knowing that there are different type of movers. There’s not many, there’s really not many. if you look at the ground force stuff from swing catalysts, you’ll see some guys who stay left and they use vertical a lot.

And then you’ll see some guys who move from left to right and use [00:26:00] vertical. And then you’ll see guys like Tommy Fleetwood, Adam Scott, and Justin Rose, who were a trifecta. So between linear, vertical, and torque, they hit torque average in all three. The funny thing is those are the swings people like to look at.

Yeah, those are the pretty ones. Just what I’m saying. But a lot of the rhythm that they have in all of that comes from their ability of when they apply force. And to me, rhythm is not like something where I can have a good rhythm. Like people would say, Oh, John Bonham had great rhythm on the drums.

He also had like incredibly competent mechanic. Give me a drum. I think I have decent rhythm in my golf swing, but give me a drum set right now. It’s not going to sound like I have very good rhythm. So it’s one of those throw out words. So I think the guys that have the ability to move. Not like in a unicorn way, Cameron might be like a unicorn [00:27:00] in a high end movement, air ability with the right wrist,with wrist angles that suit their grip.

They’re the ones who end up really looking elegant and rhythmic is because, they can hit these angles and stay in these angles and then use things to, to go from there. So I don’t understand how we can talk about vertical force, but not talk about someone’s ability to like. Contract their muscles.

So am I going to learn that on the range or if I wanted to get that better, would I just go to a sprint and jump mechanics coach? I think if I did that, I’m going to, I’m going to get it for free on the range.

Jeff Pelizzaro: Yeah. Yeah. How much do you think, I love this transition because we talk about.

Strength training, we talk about all the fitness stuff. We talk about going out and practicing skills. The crossover there, I think, is where most of us tend to get lost a little bit. okay, how do I take that speed, that athleticism, and directly [00:28:00] correlate that into my golf swing? Are there certain things that you and maybe your team do with some of your players to, to bridge that bit of crossover, to make it a little bit more, for lack of better terms, golf specific when they’re working on some of, integrating

Sean Foley: some of those pieces?

Yeah, not really. not really. I just think what happens is just over time you just see that all come together. Because the thing is with the person’s swing, that thumbprint’s pretty heavy, right? Like that thumbprint’s, if I go and hit golf balls right now, I probably get hurt. Because when I.

When I formally built my swing and got it to where it’s always going to be right. I moved way better than I do now. Like my ankles moved is whatever you want. I just moved way better. So I have to work on my movement right now, as it relates to hitting the ball better, because my hands and arms are very educated on what to do.

See what [00:29:00] I’m saying? So it’s. If I get to the top of my swing and I’m like that, then I don’t care what you did in the gym with Jeff for the last year, because as soon as you go to apply all that stuff, physics wise, now you’re in trouble. but you know that I think one of the things that mystifies me is it relates to all the instruction about people keeping their butt on the wall and rotating.

And then these world class players go into the gym and do a bunch of flexion and extension exercises. So when I think of the pivot, I see it more as the idea of a stretch phase, a counter rotation phase and an extension phase. Okay. But I think more people can do that than actually can build their backswing into a place where it’s going to be good.

And I think that golf is very much a backswing game as it relates to. Once you get to the top of your backswing, you have three one hundredths of a second before you get to impact. So [00:30:00] the sail, the ship is sailed to some extent, the only angular changes you’ll be able to make will be with large movers.

And so I don’t really think that extension is a problem. And I don’t really have to fix it. If I can get the mass of someone’s club coming in from the right place, they know what to do from there. Just like they know what to do from there. If you look at Jason day’s swing from five years ago till now,

you could see obviously why he was, his back was getting hurt. his posture wasn’t good. he probably swayed more than he turns. He was very steep coming down and had to Pike up to not cut across it. And so if I look at the difference now, because of where his club is and because of where his arms are.

And because of his posture, he’s probably not going to hurt himself again. So it’s like the back is better when the back’s not even the focus. It’s not even [00:31:00] the back’s getting hurt in these decelerations bases where we’re trying to make up for lost time of something we did wrong. And our intention is very clear and our brain’s very good with intention.

And so if we get out here and then rotate, we’re just going to slight this. So we’re just going to early extend so we don’t slice across it. And then we think that early extension is the problem. Early extension is actually almost the talent.

I’ve never heard it put that way, but yeah,

Jeff Pelizzaro: it’s basically a compensation to fix what problem you had in the backswing.

Sean Foley: Yeah. if you look at Sergio and Cameron Champ at impact, if Scottie Scheffler had his backswing where he did, and then look like them through impact, he’d be hitting huge slices because when you, but once again, what do they say?

They ended up doing an article on why you should have his footwork. Of course. But honestly, if you look at it. and if he came to me, I wouldn’t say a word to him cause he hits it amazing. And so his [00:32:00] coach, Randy Smith has been brilliant just to know that this guy’s a big ball hitter and practices a lot.

And they’ve got their couple of things that they work on and where Scotty has it is amazing, but it’s very rare that you’ll see a player on tour whose sternum is ahead of his pelvis.

That his arms are very upright with the face open. These are rare. You don’t see it very much. And so if I’m up here and I’m already this way. As soon as I start down, if I was going to get open, look at where I’m coming from. Yes. If I now slide my hips really hard to the target,

and then from there I start to extend, my foot is going back that way in relation to just trying not to spin out. Yeah. So that’s how he does Hovland.[00:33:00]

Who, once again, you wouldn’t touch that because you don’t touch it because they’re number one and two in ball striking. So whatever they’re doing is lawful. They can do it, right?

If it’s eight out of 10 people, those are two unicorns on the spectrum. And then everyone else is fits, in, into the middle.

Jeff Pelizzaro: Tell us a little bit about the pro center and why you decided to go with, so obviously that you’re working primarily on implant impact. It’s basically one position, but tell us why the way that you guys designed it works so well to help improve that position.

Works on the backswing, works on impact position. but I’ve heard you talk about the science of how our bodies learn and how you guys designed this specifically for that reason.

Sean Foley: Yeah, I think because the backswing is two one hundredths of a second away from impact, I don’t think impact is the goal. I think [00:34:00] by the time we get there in our transition, that’s pretty much all hero.

Okay. I know I’ve heard players say they saved it. That the physicists tell me that’s not possible. Okay. So feeling real, don’t really relate. So if you just think about us

as we’ve evolved, some of the ways that we would have had to be able to create velocity. In the spear or in the stone or in our fist or in the sword, that’s where all of athleticism stems from. So back 5, 000 years ago in a big sword fight, the guy who was the best sword fighter was just the best athlete who loved sword fighting.

Basically. So yeah, the whole idea of being in extension with the right wrist and the right forearm and pronation. [00:35:00] And the shoulder in external rotation that has so much to do with so many evolved movements. Okay. Now, obviously once I would take the spear, I would, if my weight, I would load, I would counter rotate, and then I would go ahead into extension phase and throw it.

So I’m getting, I’m generating energy from the ground. What I’m doing to it, it’s doing to me. I have these factual slings, posterior and anterior. And then I have contraction of muscle and deceleration and acceleration, right? That’s where I’m at. I don’t think that I need to know much more than that.

I feel like that’s about what’s happened. So when you watch modern javelin throwing today, that’s obviously a completely different process because you’re trying to throw it high as well, but you watch those guys [00:36:00] and they do have a lot of drills where they just work on being here and pushing.

They’re not always running and loading. They’re also using, they’re also using that kind of, to me, it looks like how a dolphin moves, right? Propulsion to do this all together. No one says like a javelin thrower has great glutes. Javelin thrower has a great arm, right? So Nolan Ryan on his knees would put a hole in our chest.

He’s obviously being able to create enough friction and resistance to then go against. But in your work, that’s why what you do with people’s core is so important. Cause now you’re giving me two ground. So I remember years ago, I met a guy who was a special forces in South Africa and was shot in war and was paralyzed, but became like the number one ranked adaptive golfer in the world.

And so he built a golf cart that stood [00:37:00] him up. And then he was able to hit, And it could go on the green and everything. I think he sold lots of them. but he’s at 150 mile an hour club head speed. Oh my gosh. How heavy is a golf club?

not very. So my friend, Sasha McKenzie, who’s a PhD in biomechanics up in, Nova Scotia. Sasha was the one who created that stack system that Matt Fitzpatrick used to increase his club head speed. what was really cool is that he was a good sprinter and he was a great lifter.

So not only is he a PhD in biomechanics, he had very, a lot of wisdom in it. So Sashko says that how we apply. How we create force and speed into a golf club is more equivalent to a badminton racket than even a baseball bat. And then if you look at sports like lacrosse, obviously you have a pull hand and a push hand.

[00:38:00] And the more you’re able to do that, the faster you can move it. Okay. Now, if you take a running start and do all everything else. A world class lacrosse player standing dead still doing that isn’t going to lose much velocity. that’s why this is so important, is because so much of what I’m doing in golf is in the grip and about the handle.

Now, your job is to get me to move in an elegant way so that… I can get it into optimum places to make it really speed up. So the movement part has as much to do with hitting it straight as it does hitting it far, maybe more, to be honest with maybe more too, because no one’s ever done a biopsy of Cameron champs motor units, so that will be telling.

Okay. that will be telling. So we can, we can say this, and this, but I think there’s slightly deeper levels to why there’s like when you have [00:39:00] one of one type of velocity, right? So just going off the idea of how we had, would have always produced, throwing energy, right?

Cause I think of the golf club, like when old school pros talk about releasing it, that’s throwing it, just not letting go of it. So you got a pull hand and you got a push hand. So once you put it on and the way we did it, Jeff was basically right, Wrist extension on the PGA tour goes from say 40.

There we go. Goes from 43 degrees to 62, roughly. Okay. So you might get some of the super bode guys, like in a higher level of it. Now, are they bowing their left wrist or are they corkscrewing their right so much that it’s pulling the wrist [00:40:00] into that position? Cause this, for people, this is a weird thing.

Like with right handed golfers, this is like no man’s land, right?

we built it at around 50 degrees. So that’s in the midpoint of that picture

picture back in the day that I have a spear or a rock, it’s going to be in that position. We would never have been in that position.

Now, say I was going to throw something would be in this position, I wouldn’t be, or in this position. Like a frisbee kind of a throw. Totally. Where I’m going, I’m probably flex early going into older, right? And so with the right wrist there,

as the [00:41:00] person puts it on there to the top, sorry,

based on their ability to obviously create space and time with their pivot. Once they’re into that position, ideally, what happens now is when we release it, we’re not releasing it this way. We’re releasing it as that arm is straightening. It has to obviously to create a mechanical advantage that the wrist is, it stays in it because it’s in extension, but it’s going older.

Okay. So it’s not so much, it’s not so much of a draggy thing. Okay. Cause that might look better, but that ball is not going to go very high and it won’t give me what I need optimally. If you look at this movement here,

so I’m in extension and I’m letting my right arm straighten. Okay, there’s been a lot of talk about keeping the elbow bent in front of you. I don’t know why you want to do that. I [00:42:00] think Jeff, you have to be so thick in forward bend and rotation to create enough side bend to actually even hit the ground.

So if you can do it. But if you can’t do it, don’t do it. Not good. I think there’s a lot more players in the hall of fame who are here at impact than here. Okay. So I think I would call this kind of sidearm golf, right? How many pitchers in the major leagues are sidearm throwers? Is there five?

Very few. Probably five, right? we have five golfers. Who can do that too. So once again, it’s just going to be human movement. So do I think for amateurs, it’s a good idea to go to the, to go to a lake and trying to learn how to skip rocks. Absolutely. 100%. the guys who could really do it and make it skip like 50 times are bent over so much that it’s just incredible that they can [00:43:00] keep that the plane of it that way.

So the idea is that as I’m doing this, that motion there. It’s really not a lot different than that motion there. The reason I don’t want people’s elbows to be bent at impact is the reason as a boxing coach, I wouldn’t want your elbow to be bent when they hit somebody. So we have to get, we have to be able to use that pack and that shoulder to get that arm to extend in the tricep, make contact and generate push force.

So what happens is when the amateurs get to the top and they’re out of it. This left side is going to have a lot more responsibility for what happens because the right side is just in no man’s land. So the face is going to be wide open. So they’ve got to, if the face is open, they’ve got to find a way to close it.

So they try to swing left to help close it. But the problem is because it’s here, [00:44:00] it’s going to find a way to go back. And so the pro sender is getting it to where I’m going to make it go back in transition. And now I can go. Whereas when it comes down this way or steep, it’s going to go back late. And that’s why, 85% of people slice a golf ball.

So this is much more important in the sense that when I’m in this angle, now picture the golf club connected to it, that club stays behind my hands as they work down. So this phase where the club would be on this angle, as I’m working down, they didn’t let me do that as a kid. Cause they said that I wasn’t on plane, but if you really wanted to create speed, you couldn’t be on plane.

You wouldn’t go up. It’s not even, I don’t think it’s a word that even matters. It’s I think hopefully some of the language in golf evolves, right? Like why can we not call it a stretch phase, a counter rotation phase and an extension phase? Why isn’t a [00:45:00] backswing, a downswing and a follow through, right?

Even when you talk to an amateur who is a beginner and you tell them to make a backswing, they literally swing backwards. Like, why wouldn’t they, right? So hopefully over time that can change because, when you guys discuss things, you say glute men or glute mead. You don’t make up a different name for it.

There’s nothing wrong with challenging people to just a little higher form of contemplation, would you

Jeff Pelizzaro: say that? For kind of that range of golf where you’re talking about before that’s the biggest miss that open club face at impact that, because I know that describes my golf swing perfectly, over the top move, which has been cool to, to play around with the pro center and see how it really does change the, just the feel of where my club is and, working on that position and

Sean Foley: into the ball.

And then I would imagine what you would feel is that say you felt like that got really improved. You would notice what your body was doing was way different than before, but you [00:46:00] didn’t even think about it. And the hands have a lot of memory in the brain. And so my saying has always been that the club face is the CEO, but the hands are the GPS.

Do I need to turn my body or do I need to stretch away from myself? So a lot of the second baseman who steps up and the ball gets hit and he goes right and creates a horizontal breaking force and then creates a lateral force with a vertical force to catch the ball. He’s only trying to catch the ball.

He just reacts like an athlete, right? he would have had that when he was five years old, the ability to go side to side like that. Now he could work with you to make it better and more explosive. He’s in the major leagues because he catches balls. so we can’t get, we can’t get lost in the It’s like when people talk about, what came first, the chicken or the egg?[00:47:00]

what came before the chicken and the egg was atoms and molecules and electrons and protons, right? that’s what came first. I think the same can be true, with strength and conditioning and golf, right?

Jeff Pelizzaro: Let’s take a quick break here to thank our partners over at Live Pure. Live Pure makes the highest quality hydration product on the market.

It was developed in part with Dr. Troy Van Biesen, who is the chiropractor to some of the highest level players on the tour, including Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas. In fact, Justin Thomas is one of the investors in Live Pure, and just came out with his cool lime flavor. And I was at a member guest this past weekend in Kansas City, Missouri at Hallborough Country Club.

And that is one of the things that helped us get through this member guest. It’s a marathon of a golf event from Wednesday to Saturday afternoon. And you better believe me, we had our [00:48:00] lip here on hand to help us get through the, Maybe there’s a couple of later nights and a little dehydration going on, but it’s important to keep it in the bag.

We had it in our cart all day long. So go check out LivePure, L I V P U R. com. You’re going to get a discount with the code 18STRONG. Go over there, check them out and use LivePure to champion your day. Sean, I’m going to shift gears here a little bit. Cause I know we had a, we put out to our audience, that you were going to be on the show.

So we want to get a couple of questions. So we have our crew in a segment. So I’m going to spitfire a different couple of questions at you. that may be in totally different ranges. First one comes at you from Kelly L who has a hardworking junior as a golfer, very dedicated to golfer, achieving some very high level goals.

But get super, super nervous when going into competition or even before competition, what would you say to your players [00:49:00] that are achieving at a high level, but maybe suffer with a little bit of this nervousness,and really get on edge before going in to perform?

Sean Foley: I don’t think nerves are a bad thing.

I think the problem is nerves and anxieties feel similar, but they’re way different. if we’re nervous, blood leaves the inside and goes out to the outside, and that gives us more ability, right? Now, if we have anxiety, the opposite’s gonna happen. look, every player has to, one, really assess how they treat.

How do you train? So if I’m going in the NFL season, I’ve had a bad start and I’m offensive lineman and all I’ve been doing is all the whole time all I’ve been doing is working on my backstrengths. That’s probably, I’m going to get pushed around, aren’t I? So I imagine offensive lineman from an anterior standpoint has to be very powerful.

So let’s look at that [00:50:00] first before we think we have like mental issues, right?

One, how does this young kid train? Okay, so if it’s like most everybody else, it’s, alignment rod down to a middle flag and hitting seven iron for two hours at the same flag. Not saying that doesn’t have its place. The last time I played golf, I didn’t have I didn’t have two circumstances that were the same, everything was different.

So there’s that part that is important. The second part is getting them to understand, feeling like that’s fine. You’re feeling that because of the quality of your thinking. So when people say, I got a tournament in two days, what is that, what if never is like leads to a good, what is right.

No one ever says what if this was the greatest week of my life? And so [00:51:00] getting the kids to understand one, it’s natural because so much of the brain’s process is just there to make sure we survive, not thrive, just survive, right? Thriving is like a new thing. It’s like the last 5, 000, right? But survival till that point.

Okay. And so fear is natural. We’re born with it. What’s the first thing the baby does when they come out of the womb? They freak out because they’re afraid. Okay. What’s the second thing that happens? They give them to mom and then they quiet down. So fear and love are within the first minute of life. And then they both either add to or haunt us for the rest of our life.

And it’s nothing, everything else is just made up names. There’s subsidiaries of those two things. So if you really love Galt. love it, right? That would do a lot to disseminate fear. But second is getting people to understand that fear [00:52:00] in most cases, that mechanism in our brain that’s there to protect us.

So we have this thing called the, from what I understand, the mesocortex, which is the basal ganglia, the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. And that is our old brain. And it is, it’s faster than the new brain. it will outdo the old brain, the new brain. So the new brain might be going, it’s okay.

That noise in the trees, that didn’t sound like much. The old brain is going, that’s saber tooth tiger, even though there’s no saber tooth tigers, it’s probably a squirrel, but right. Why did we get freaked out? It’s like we’re born. This is like generations of DNA that’s been transferred through the helix.

That’s a noise in a book, that’s Sabretooth Tiger, even though I’m in Algonquin where it couldn’t possibly be a Sabretooth Tiger, right? that’s why the part of that brain that we need to get people to understand, it’s mostly inaccurate. then you take [00:53:00] the word fear. And create that, the acronym that I read, which is just so perfect is fear, meaning false evidence appearing real.

So one training to, to understand that most of what you’re afraid of is just false evidence that appears real to you. And then if it appears real to you, then your brain knows how to react to what that is. So those are the first two points. And then the third point is since this generation has been so about parenting has been so much about themselves and not the children, we’re flying in the face of all the academics on from neuroscience and from childhood development and from genetics saying that these kids are born with 400 traits.

They’re not an empty slate at all. they come with generations of information on who they are. And The idea that we can engineer academic [00:54:00] excellence and engineer sports excellence. that’s just allowed all these rackets in children’s sports where it costs like 30 grand to be good at any sport.

especially certain sports. And so I think because the parents are making it more about themselves and they don’t mean to, okay. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I, but I look in the mirror a lot, right? That’s all I’m asking anyone to do is understand that. We’re not engineering these kids, these are sheep, they’re sheep.

So all we can do as a functional shepherd is to ensure that we take them to safe pastures with soil, with a lot of nutrients, and then get them to understand what happens when they walk off a cliff, that’s it. That’s all a good shepherd does. It’s just guide. It ain’t engineering, no matter what you do, you’d never turn a sheep into a bird.[00:55:00]

And so I think that the kids feel an incredible amount of pressure, especially in a time where, kids have NILs with sports companies because of all their followers on Instagram. And then someone sees that and it’s goes, Oh, I’m going to do that with my kid. It’s whatever happened to like, why you play the game in the first place.

So I working with people like that. It gets very simple. Remember, we’re trying to strip away, we’re not trying to add to. Why do you feel this way? One, it’s okay to feel like that. Two, Tiger Woods was nervous on the first, Tiger Woods might be the worst ever in golf off the first tee. And I bet you if you asked him that, he’d probably say he was Michael Jordan missed more shots than anyone over a decade and was the best player in the game. Why are we so afraid to go out and play bad? like the thing I’ve learned in my career, since I stopped judging myself and [00:56:00] labeling everything was I would make a mistake with a player, but I wouldn’t make it again.

And so when I feel now is like the players who work with me now, they have the best version of me and definitely the most, like the least dangerous. I have very few belief systems, which I think is important because this is not about belief. if you believe in Santa, that’s awesome, but this is not about, I’m not teaching you when you come to see me, I’m not teaching you what I believe to be true.

of do I have preferences? Of course, who doesn’t have preferences, but I’m aware of my preference. So by being aware of my preference, you are safe from my preference.

Like the best thing about failing is that. If you really look deeply at it and you’re reflective and you’re introspective about why you think it happened. And remember, it’s probably a me problem. It’s probably not your caddy. It’s not your coach. It’s not your, it’s [00:57:00] definitely inside of you. What did, what can I learn from this?

And so you win when you lose, because then you apply it the next time. So I feel like these kids now are so afraid to make mistakes. because the parents are concerned that when their kids are making mistakes, it looked, them look like they’re not apt parents. if any parent was on, was being honest, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I have no idea what I’m doing. Okay. I have no idea. All right. I tried to support them, create non negotiables and have unconditional love for them. I don’t know what else I can do. Yeah. Would I like him to go to Harvard? Sure. Do I care if he does or not? I don’t. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally.

If he’s in his board and I yell at him, it’s because he disrespected the ref. It’s not because he missed the net. I just watched the pros miss the net all day. You know what I mean? And you know what they do? They get into the next moment and they get ready for the next shot and then they shoot again. And yeah, I [00:58:00] don’t think that the kid feeling nervous is a problem.

But it just depends if it’s nerves or it’s anxiety, and if it’s anxiety, then that kid is spending a lot of time thinking about the what ifs of tomorrow, which is not really responsible because there’s nothing you can do about tomorrow till tomorrow. So just getting them to be aware, I’m still gonna, these tournaments happen every week.

Sometimes I sit there on Tuesday, I feel uneasy. I’m not sure what it is. I can normally draw it back to my ego and the fact that I’m wondering how Sunday’s going to go. of course, that’s why I feel uneasy because I’m not where I’m not where I’m at. So if I’m not where I’m at, I’m not going to feel natural.

Cause it’s natural to be where I’m at. I’m just taking myself out of it. So all this talk about being present, you are present all the time until you take yourself out of it. It’s not a place, Jeff, that we need to get to. It’s a place that we live in. Like we take ourselves out of it. Yeah, as my career has moved on, I spent a lot more time discussing these things with players than [00:59:00] their, their golf swings.

but just getting, understanding that doubt that you have is just mental constructs from previous experiences where you failed and maybe in failing you created a bit of trauma, which means it’s going to be remembered because the more emotionally you react to something, the deeper you reinforce it.

Which is why having a real deep meta perspective on why you do what you do is really important because you only really fall as low as you climb high. So for me, I like to inspire people. I really enjoy the challenge of my job and I like to be right. Those are the three things. That’s me to a T.

As long as I’m doing that and feeling like I’m helping others as I’m helping myself. Because every time I get them to believe in themselves more, I believe in myself more. But you can only believe in yourself when you’ve actually, when you’ve done it. And the problem is it about accomplishment or achievement, right?

[01:00:00] the accomplishment is climbing the mountain. The achievement is the summit. The problem with the achievement is you can’t stay there for long because there’s no oxygen, it’s freezing cold and you got to get down and now you got to get down, but you’re going against gravity and you’re now eccentrically loading muscles that are already tired.

So the better percentage of climbers die going down than going up like way more. I think it’s about more like accomplishment.

to me, getting someone to understand that a lot of their doubts are mental constructs of previous experiences and it will feel real in the moment. And once again, the brain is just trying to protect you from feeling ashamed and failing. It really is. And next thing you don’t have any touch in your hands and you go out and shoot 45 and then everyone thinks it’s mental, but it’s not really mental, is it?

Like it’s the brain. It’s not mental. I think if we had called mental health, [01:01:00] brain health a long time ago, we’d have way less problems with it now because mental health is like saying to someone, I got mental health issues. And they go, what’s wrong with you? nothing’s wrong with me, right?

what’s wrong with me is I don’t understand what’s going on inside of it. And if I can help people understand what’s going on inside of them, am I ever going to hear like a noise in my house at two in the morning? And my first thought is not going to be saber to tiger. I’m not. But.

when I understand that, for example, I’ll give you an example of like false evidence appearing real,

this school shooting shit is a disaster, right? And it’s embarrassed. And this country is the greatest country in the world. And this is just a problem they shouldn’t have. And I’m not, look, I’ve not,I’m not for or against, I understand what people’s rights are. I get it. That’s that goes without saying whatever that doesn’t matter to me, [01:02:00] okay,

but should I really fear that so if you look at the amount that we’ve had in the last 10 years and the amount of fatalities versus the amount of kids who’ve went to school every single day. During that time, the chances of it happening to me is as a kid is probably like 0. 00, almost infinite to the 1%.

But the thing is, because our families matter so much to us. Is that when we see it, it’s like it, it deeply, do you remember where you were on nine 11? who doesn’t, right? Because the reaction emotionally was so heavy that it was reinforced so deeply that people can remember what they were wearing, what they ate for dinner the night before, the smell in the car dealership, remember crazy things.

like my wedding day, I [01:03:00] remember almost every minute, but should I get to where 18 holes really matters that much to me? I don’t think I should. I don’t think that’s helped because this is a problem that we cannot let our kids go to school with that concern, but we do need to also recognize that when we turn the television on, it’s in their best interest to scare the shit out of us.

It’s in their best interest, right? And so I just think that, people listening to this, just ask yourself, like what you’re afraid of one, how realistic is it? So I’ve never met anyone who’s afraid of heights, whoever fell from a building. So I’ll ask people, what are you afraid of? I’m afraid of spiders.

Oh, have you been bit by like a tarantula? No. Oh, okay. So by a black widow. No, I’ve never been bit by a spider. Okay. So what are you so afraid of? they just look gross. [01:04:00] I think if that person educates themselves on spiders, they might not be as scared, right? So that’s the key. that’s where the knowledge comes into it.

And then the wisdom is like, all right, so what are you afraid of? I heard this place has a lot of spiders. It does, but they’re not in here. there’s a way to get rid of that, but it’s just, it’s knowledge and wisdom. So it’s, that helps create understanding people who are afraid of flying.

Planes don’t go down very often, Jeff. Okay. We’re in the 0. 0 billion percentage to one, right? But what’s amazing is they’re okay with driving to the airport, which is way more dangerous than flying. So I think when you can work with someone enough and them questions and challenge it and they’re open to it.

They just exterminated as Oh, I’m taking a risk by getting on a plane, but in my car, I feel like I have more control. [01:05:00] I’m like, yeah, but you don’t control anyone who’s looking at TikTok driving next to you at a hundred miles an hour. You don’t control is like elusive. it’s phony. it’s not real.

And so I think by getting to some of these deeper understandings, the idea of pre shot routines and visualization and self talk and that stuff goes out the window, man. Those are all things that I’m doing there. I’m adding things. I’m adding things. Are you going to tell me that this week whoever wins the PGA Championship that their routine is the same every time?

It isn’t. It’s not. It really is not. It really isn’t. You ask half of them, you visualizing the shot? They’re like, no, should I? Look, dude, they’re really good at golf, which is why they are doing that. And then they side bend a little bit and they’re really strong and they hit these beautiful high draws. And then people say, do you want to draw it?

Visualize it. If the face is open at impact, the ball is never going to draw no matter how epic your imagery is.[01:06:00]

Jeff Pelizzaro: Those are words to live by right there.

Sean Foley: I just think, look, man, I, you know what I’m trying to have a. I want to experience life and what I’ve learned along the way is that experiencing life doesn’t mean avoiding life, like it’s the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Like you’re going to get all sorts.

And I think if you can have limited belief systems and you can almost get to the point that you don’t label anything, your experience is going to be so different.

when

Jeff Pelizzaro: you had a chance to work with Tiger, you mentioned him in this whole discussion here. Is there anything you mentioned? He gets nervous, maybe more nervous than most. is there anything that you learned from him in your years with him that you have continued to pass on to your students these days?

Sean Foley: he’s just the most structured ever. The most attention to detail as it relates to time. I learned in our [01:07:00] first lesson that seven o’clock meant six thirty. with most of my guys, if I said seven o’clock, I could show up at seven thirty and still have time. and then just the structure in his processes.

This many chips, this many putts, this many range balls, this many golf holes, this many workouts, this many calories, it was just, and I think obviously he would have learned a lot of that his dad was a green brain in Vietnam. And so very militaristic. and I think that the way the military do things in many ways is very good for developing discipline, obviously.

but just a level of concentration, he’s not on his phone. He ain’t talking to anybody. He looks reclusive and hard to approach. He’s not. He just is doing his thing, right? So it’s people would say, oh, I felt like Tiger was rude. No, I think you were rude by thinking you should say Heidi.

That’s, rude is your determination of somebody else’s behavior. [01:08:00] That, so that’s rude. You know what I mean? But just so locked in,

yeah,I would say that just prepared, like hitting balls in rain gear just to see how much the rain gear was going to affect his swing and see the adaptations that he’d have to make to either his footwork or his rhythm or his time, and then measuring it with me on a track man to see where it’s at.

And then watching most everybody else get there and it starts raining and they complain they can’t swing in rain gear, like low hanging fruit like this. This is like a great lifter who we see deadlift a thousand pounds, but we don’t see the 30 minute activation period that he does before he tries to lift it.

And you’d look at it and be like, how’s that going to help him lift all that weight? It’s just all the small details, man. I think that the goats are obviously, given a physical, have a physical gift. But then I just think they’re the most passionate about the Monday [01:09:00] and they love it so much.

think about being a parent so hard. Imagine if you didn’t love your kids. they would be out on the street. So it’s just the love that

like life is going to be a struggle, right? And love makes that endurable. Golf is going to be a struggle and your love for the game makes it endurable. So if I really love what I do for a living, like truly love helping people, love learning and love being right. Then why do I need to be positive about it?

I don’t like I could look positive or negative from the outside, but that’s just where I’m at in consciousness. And you can’t really change that. I’m going to go from up to down. What can I do physiologically to ensure that I’m going to be in a higher state all day? Wake up early, get early morning sunlight, be super focused on my hydration, get in cold water, take a cold shower for three minutes.

Maybe get 10, 15 minutes of cardio and maybe push ups and pull [01:10:00] ups. And now I’ve given myself a way better chance. So I think a lot of the psychological barriers that we have in society right now. All relate to the fact that physiologically, we’re not giving ourselves the information that we, from the, you know, from us, Yeah,

Jeff Pelizzaro: absolutely. we’ve done some pretty cool shows, talking about so many of these things, like even just the earthing aspect, like you said, we’re never touching our bare skin to the ground. We’re never out in the sunlight in the morning. it’s

Sean Foley: When they test Jeff, when they, when Craig tests, he’s got this thing that tests voltage, in the body.

a lot of this stuff is as modern as it is from a physics standpoint, Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine have been saying things like this for a long time, right? Meridian systems, all the channels, it really matches with science very well. And and it’s been around for 6, 000 years and it’s been tried to be disproven for 2, 000 years and they’ve yet to do it.

it’s pretty legit, right? And so I had some bad [01:11:00] bursitis in my left ankle and this thing just would not get better. And so Craig went to his mentor, Tennant’s, Dr. Tennant’s and got this device. And so he started doing these things with me. And so he put it on my ankle to see what basically it’s putting out a charge into me.

So think about a stun gun, but not a stunt. Okay. And he put it down on my ankle and… He looked up at me like, you don’t feel that? And I was like, no, I don’t feel that. And he’s Whoa. And I go, what does that mean? And he hit me in the trap with it. And I literally almost punched him.

And so basically said that the voltage was so low from the cells in that area. And obviously the electrons and the protons. That the voltage was so low that the light system couldn’t help the nervous system, which couldn’t help the immune system. So I couldn’t, so basically got me to stand on,[01:12:00] they look super medieval, but, Just on these metal boards and I would hold on to these two metal things here and I would just sit on it if I spent the next,if I spent the next

two weeks finding a way to be on the ground an hour and a half a day, things like inflammation, arthritis, these things are all going to go down. And a lot of these, a lot of these things that we have that could be more so autoimmune that we see more than we used to. It could just be related to that. We weren’t supposed to live in cement cities and wear rubber shoes, I really think that’s part of it.

And then obviously diet, but that diet’s a whole other, that’s a whole other thing. Oh man,

Jeff Pelizzaro: we could go on many different tangents about all of those things, but it’s so incredible when you, like you said, they’ve been looking at all of these different things for thousands and thousands of years, and now we’re just starting to maybe understand a little bit of it [01:13:00] from a research standpoint and scientific standpoint.

Yeah,

Sean Foley: so many. We, look, we’re probably intellectually beyond what we’ve ever been, and it is easier to be alive now than it’s ever been, okay? But we are definitely globally, but especially North America, as unhealthy as we’ve ever been. it’s like the science of fasting and everyone’s so into it.

And it’s guys, we’ve been fasting forever. We weren’t, we couldn’t pick when we were going to eat. We could only eat when we had food, man. Like it’s natural for that. Like it’s amazing of all the things that start to happen in us when we don’t have food, that are all quite very helpful. it’s,Dave Matthews has a lyric.

He says, progress takes away from what took forever to find.

Love it.

Jeff Pelizzaro: Sean, I can’t thank you enough for coming on. I know we’ve taken up more of your time than we should have, but,this was great. I really appreciate, everything that you’re doing, everything that you’re sharing, the pro center, obviously, where’s the best place for people to go find [01:14:00] you and info on the pro center and everything you’re doing.

Sean Foley: I’m at Sean Foley performance on Instagram. I’m not on Twitter cause my wife will not let me Jeff. That would be a problem. we will be a problem. and so Sean Foley performance on Instagram, pro sender golf is also an Instagram and our website between David woods. And I think you’re having David on the show in a few weeks.

David’s my partner and one of my close friends. David Woods pga and, you can find us on the web at ww pro sender golf.com. And we are, we’re in stock now. We have lefty version coming out, and we finally, as of this week, have worldwide shipping, so Awesome.

Jeff Pelizzaro: Awesome. We’ll definitely make sure that all that stuff’s linked up in the show.

real quick before we go, I got to ask you one quick question that everybody gets on this show. Caddyshack or Happy Gilmore? Oh, come on,

Sean Foley: man. Caddyshack. Who says Happy Gilmore? They got to be younger than me. They got to be. You know what? they’re younger or they’re [01:15:00] European usually. Yeah.

it’s good too, but Caddyshack is oh man, that, it doesn’t, that’s that’s such a. That’s such a classic. my, the line that always pops in my head is when Ty says to Dan, he says, do you do drugs? And he says, yeah, every day. And he goes, so what seems to be the problem?

it’s so good. So good. I love it.

Jeff Pelizzaro: All right, my friend, great to have you on. Hopefully we’ll do this again in the future sometime and good luck with all your players. I know you’ve got a lot of players doing some pretty cool things at all levels. we just appreciate you coming

Sean Foley: on. Okay, Jeff.

Have a great day.

Jeff Pelizzaro: Thanks for joining us this week on the 18th Strong Podcast with our guest, Sean Foley. It was such a pleasure and an honor to have him on. And to get an insight in the way that his brain thinks and the way he looks at the game, which I think is very unique. He has a very different, philosophy and way of approaching how he works with his golfers, which is really cool to hear.

So if you want any more information, you want any links, you can go to [01:16:00] 18STRONG.com. This is episode number 348, and this episode is also on YouTube. So if you haven’t checked out our YouTube channel lately, we are putting all the episodes up on YouTube as well as some clips of the episode. And we’re going to be shooting a lot more videos over there.

So you’re going to see some changes coming to 18STRONG. We’ve got some new branding and everything coming up. So be ready to see some changes over at 18STRONG, and we will catch up with you again next week with another great guest train hard, practice, smart, and play better golf.

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