This excellent, quality training resource blew my mind

Welcome to Play Smart, GOLF.com’s regular game improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

If you’ve ever been a little nerdy about the golf swing, you know that weight and shift pressure are important. Changing them correctly promotes pure ball hitting, increases power and helps with consistency. Doing it wrong, on the other hand, can have disastrous consequences.

But while these things are important for a great golf swing, they can be difficult to measure during a regular practice session. Changes in weight and pressure can be felt by the golfer making them, but are difficult to distinguish by observers. Without the help of high-tech equipment in teaching studios, knowing the exact amount of change in weight and pressure is difficult.

Thanks to one of the newest training aids on the market, however, that is changing.

Enter BAL.ON. This new, wearable training aid – manufactured by the German multinational company Continental – is worn in the middle your shoes also use insole pressure and other hardware to give you real-time feedback on swing metrics like weight and pressure changes.

I recently had the opportunity to try out the BAL.ON Smart Kit and came away impressed with its capabilities. Check out the video below to see how it works, or read on to find out more about my experience.

BAL.ON Smart Kit

When I first heard about the BAL.ON Smart Kit, I was a little skeptical. To me it seemed like a tool too good to be true. A wearable weight and pressure tracker? Neither method would work as advertised.

After 15 minutes with the product, I was pronounced dead. Not only did the product work as intended, it also gave me real-time feedback about my swing.

Here are some of my thoughts on the product.

Comfort is a plus

Wearable technology – especially in the golf environment – can feel a little overwhelming when you first wear it. And when BAL.ON responders tell me that pressure trackers should go inside my shoes, I expected them to feel uncomfortable. However, what surprised me the most was that it was not.

Compression soles are very thin and easily slip into your shoes. And if you wear any kind of special insoles on your shoes (like me), they can be worn under them.

As soon as I got the compression soles on my shoes, I forgot they were there. Walking around the range, and hitting shots, I didn’t even realize I had a high-tech training tool under my feet. That’s a big plus in my book.

The technology really works

Like I said above, I was skeptical that this product would really work when I first heard about the concept. However, I was soon proven wrong.

Under the guidance of GOLF Top 100 instructor Mike Dickson, I got part lesson, part demonstration of how he uses the product with his students. Through it all, he had an iPad with reading pressure by his side.

As I walked through our lesson, I saw an iPad reading where the weight and pressure was on my feet the entire time. When he asked me to put more weight on one foot or the other, I could see on the iPad how much weight I was shifting at any given time.

It’s one thing to feel the weight and pressure changing on your feet, but having an accurate measurement provides an added level of understanding that’s hard to get otherwise.

Practice wisely

Since first trying out the BAL.ON Smart Kit, I’ve gotten my hands on it and plan to incorporate the training aid into my training regimen during this upcoming season. The data it provides will be important in diagnosing errors and working to correct them.

For someone like me who has a low handicap and a solid understanding of throwing, a training tool like this is very useful for practice. But even for seniors with disabilities, the Smart Kit offers a lot of value. You will no longer have to guess about your weight and pressure changes when you go to the course. Now, you can simply check the BAL.ON ratings and work with the trainer to fix the problems.

Since we have limited time to work on our games, it’s important to use the little practice time we get well. With the BAL.ON Smart Kit, that’s easier than ever. Guessing about your swing is no longer necessary. With accurate data at your fingertips after each shift, you can identify errors and fix problems faster than ever.

The final takeaway

I just started working with the BAL.ON Smart Kit, so I haven’t scratched the surface of all the product’s capabilities. So far, though, I’m very impressed.

As I continue to get feedback on the product, I’m sure other benefits will become clear. However, for someone who wants weight and pressure shift data on a daily basis, there is no other product out there that can achieve that like the BAL.ON Smart Kit.