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It’s the season of giving and for many golfers the gift of more clubhead speed would be high on their wish list. Regardless of your motive for more distance, we all want it. You could already be a long hitter who wants to improve a strength. Perhaps you have that one playing partner who always gets you by 10 yards off the tee and you want to change that in 2025! Or you could be a short hitter who just wants to pick up enough speed to easily reach every par 4 in two.
There is no shortage of swing aids and programs that are dedicated to speed. Ever since professional golf entered its bomb-and-gouge era, for better or for worse, speed and distance have been trendy topics. I recently started using one the more popular speed trainers - The Stack System - which is used by many top tour players like Matthew Fitzpatrick. Here is my quick review of the swing aid and accompanying “biohacking” program so far.
How The Stack System works
The Stack System’s best qualities are its training aid’s simplicity and its apps usability. The training aid itself feels like a club with a comfortable grip and is around the length of my hybrid. The five weights, which can up to 300g to the weight of the tool, are easy to adjust between sets. The top knob that twists on is quite sturdy and I never felt like the weights were going to fly off or break mid swing (which has happened to me with a speed aid in the past).
The app is also well produced. You can pick from one of four different programs to do based on your experience level in speed training. I am currently in the middle of the foundation program, which is for those new to speed training. Each session is relatively short, in the 15- to 20-minute range, and a lot of that is down time as well. The sessions that take 15 minutes for me are only 18 swings in total. They include 15-second breaks between swings and 3-minute breaks when the weighting is changed. It does keep you fresh for max effort, but seemed a little too long to me.
The one additional device that is needed to complete the programs is a launch monitor. I used the PRGR black pocket launch monitor, which is one of the few launch monitors capable of recording clubhead speed on swings with no ball being hit. With the PRGR you do have to manually input the speed for each of your swings into the app, but with the 15 seconds between swings it was easy to do. The Stack System did recently come out with a branded launch monitor that connects to the app via Bluetooth and automatically records the speeds. The price point for it is $60 more than the $229 PRGR.
The one benefit to the manual input of speeds is I could redo swings on the rare occasion I felt an incorrect number was shown. For example, a couple times I would swing around 100 miles per hour for most of the set and then get a random number in the high 70s. I know we have variance in our speeds, but that drop was more than expected. With the PRGR, I just repeated the swing and recorded the more accurate number.
Play
Overall The Stack System is a great way for an amateur golfer to pick up some much-needed speed without going to extreme levels of training or exertion. I’m only in the middle of the beginner level, but I’ve found the sessions are a nice way to start a regular strength or cardio workout. Or you can add the speed training to the end of your normal workout.
Although my final results are yet to be determined, Dr. Sasho Mackenzie, the founder of the Stack System who is featured in numerous GolfPass videos, reports that the average speed gain from Stackers is 10.1 MPH.
Who couldn’t use that?
What is your swing speed and how do you work to increase it? Let us know in the comments below.
