03/10/2026
As a Golf Digest Top 50 Fitness Trainer, one of the biggest things I see when evaluating golfers on force plates is this:
Many amateurs are not necessarily incapable of producing ground reaction forces. They’re producing them too late!!!
That timing issue is a huge limiter.
When it comes to using the ground effectively in the golf swing, sequence comes first, timing comes second, and magnitude comes third. If the sequencing and timing are off, it does not matter how much force a player can create. More force at the wrong time will not produce the result they want. If the ball is gone and your peaking your forces late, who cares.
Using force plates gives us the ability to measure this objectively, not guess at it.
We can see when forces are occurring, how the player is using the lead and trail side, where the pressure is being applied, and whether the player is actually creating the kind of movement strategy that can transfer into speed and efficiency.
What makes this conversation so important is that once you identify a player is late, the next step is having practical tools to improve it.
A few of the concepts I really like for helping move ground reaction forces earlier:
* Throwing drill variations
* Golf jump progressions
* Rotary chair drills to improve foot pressure awareness and force application
The goal is not simply to help a player push harder.It is to help them push sooner and in the right sequence.
When golfers begin to improve the timing of their ground reaction forces, the swing often becomes more athletic, more efficient, and more powerful. That is when players start to feel speed they may not have accessed before.
This is one of the reasons I value using force plates in both assessment and training. They help take a concept that can seem abstract and make it measurable, coachable, and trainable.
In this session from the TPI community, Dr. Greg Rose (Co-Founder of MyTPI) and Jason Zuback (6x World Long Drive Champion) break down one of the biggest mis...
