BodiTrak provides an accurate way to measure weight distribution during the golf swing, from the ground up
The golf swing is built from the ground up. It’s a philosophy made popular by one of the most revolutionary swings in the history of the game, belonging to the legendary Ben Hogan (right). Hogan was average in stature, standing only 5 foot 9 inches. But he generated great power by creating leverage and transitioning his weight from his back foot on to his front foot during the down swing. His motion became the foundation of the modern golf swing, and it’s a great principle to help your students build a solid foundation for their golf swing.
In today’s world of golf technology, almost everything is measurable – including how your students interact with the ground through out their swing. With BodiTrak– a portable and durable mat with pressure-sensing nodes that detect how a golfer transitions their weight during the swing–instructors can provide tangible and visual feedback to demonstrate what the student feels while swinging.
The device accurately depicts how pressure is dispersed on each foot at every moment of the swing. The advanced technology scans the surface over a hundred times per second, reading how an athlete applies pressure to the surface below. Custom algorithms read that change in conductance and provide calibrated force values – which are rendered in different intuitive ways by the software, mainly in color-coded depictions where the green space indicates the highest-pressure areas (pictured at the bottom of page 63). The wireless device can sync to a laptop or tablet to output data in real time.
Hogan’s swing was ahead of his time. If you’re a student of the game, you have to be curious: What would Hogan’s BodiTrak reading look like?
While we may never know (unless the company comes up with an algorithm to replicate Hogan’s motion), PGA Professionals and instructors of the game are continuing to find ways to use BodiTrak to help their students improve and better understand nuances of the game. Following, we have a Q&A with Graham Cunningham, the 2015 New England PGA Section Teacher of the Year and 2014 Youth Player Development award winner, on how he uses the device with his students and how it’s impacted his business.
