The principle has been around since the inception of sport - the fastest guy wins the prize.

We all went flat-out fast in learning neuromuscular skills as kids. The first step you took was as fast as you could move. The first toy you threw from the crib was a 97 mph fastball, relatively speaking. You first trip running down the hall was your first Olympic sprint - as fast as you can run.

As kids we all wanted to be the fastest runner, jump the highest, throw the farthest, kick it higher, win the game, beat someone, anyone, everyone at whatever skill we were doing. We weren't born slow. We learned it.

Personally, I had a brother two years older to keep up with, and his friends, not to mention my friends.
 
Forget sport for a moment, even in the classroom we had time limits on taking tests, writing reports, typing papers, and reading books. Maybe the best course I ever took was speed-reading. No one, male or female, was going to type words per minute faster than I, either.

FASTFIRST isn't new, except perhaps in golf. Can you imagine telling a track athlete to slow down for fear of running out of his or her lane? What good is "form" in getting over the hurdles without the speed necessary to compete in the race?

I'll bet that an athlete with speed can learn hurdling technique. Whatever the sport-specific skill, elite athletes are that because they create greater force in less time than others.

I think of that force-to-time relationship as athleticism, the key to performance in the sport of golf. Improving athleticism is our goal.


     My pal, John Novosel, helped me tremendously when he invented the
     XLR8R, which I started using with students in 1990. It is a unique form
     of variable resistance training - the faster you strike the target, the 
     more resistance you're overcoming without danger of injury.

     Training with the XLR8R is terrific because it also takes the golf ball out
     of the learning experience. Training solely with a golf ball quite often 
     turns the ball into the enemy of progress. The very thing the player  
     needs to control can easily take control of the player, and often does.



I didn't write Tour Tempo, but I did live it's development with John, and it is dedicated
to me, for which I am extremely grateful. With it's introduction in 2004, we brought
forth two principles of timing - elite players are and always have been faster than others, and elite players do and have always swung in a 3 to 1 ratio, backswing to forward swing.

 In 2003, my friend Al Dilz, a retired radar engineer who had worked in the space program,
 introduced the SSR (Swing Speed Radar). The SSR was far better than anything that had
 come before, and enabled me to validate clubhead speed. One and a half years later, he 
 brought forward the SSR with Tempo Timer, (SSR-TT), which was another milestone in my
 work with players. 
 
Since then we've been able to quantify results not only in miles per hour, but also in hundredths of seconds. Again, the time-to-speed relationship is fundamental to efficiency in creating force and accuracy in performing golf swings.

                                                                              
   


    In early 2005, Kelvin Miyahira introduced me to his
    invention, the Speed Chain, and shortly thereafter to the 
    Torso Burner.  The two training devices are further 
    examples of variable resistance training, and I'm grateful
    for them and for his input and friendship. He, along with 
    partner, Zane Swensen, (left) a club professional in South
    Dakota, have been of great assistance.






In addition, the late, great Mike Austin encouraged me to "stay the course, and put some fight in that golf club"