Want to swing faster and hit it farther? Dr. Sasho Mackenzie joins Adam Scully to break down The Stack System — the revolutionary speed training tool used by golfers worldwide, including U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick! 🏆
In this video, you’ll learn:
⏩ How the Stack System works to increase swing speed
⏱️ How long it takes to see real results
💥 Why it’s trusted by top pros and amateurs alike
🔧 Insights into Stack Wedging and Putting performance
🧠 The science behind swing speed and golf biomechanics
Whether you’re a pro, weekend warrior, or just trying to outdrive your buddies, this is your guide to faster swings and lower scores.
📺 Watch now and see how you can gain serious speed on the course
#stacksystem #stack #golftech #golftraining #swingspeed #mattfitzpatrick #sashomackenzie #golftips
For much more on the stack system, let’s bring in the man behind it, Dr. Sasho McKenzie, who joins us again here on GTC. Sasho, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me back. Absolutely, my man. It is great to see you. And Mark spoke with you on the show a couple of years ago all about the stack system and he has done it. He has spoken glowingly about it and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting started on it very soon. But for those who don’t know what the stack system is, tell our audience what the stack system is all about. The stack system is the uh easiest way to gain club head speed or for folks that are, you know, around my age, the easiest way to uh get some speed back. Um it’s a piece of hardware. Um comes with five weights that you can interchange on the end. We have 30 weight combinations and it pairs with an app that acts acts like a personal trainer. So, you know, we we guide you through the programs. We provide customized programming based on a baseline session. We’ve really gified speed training. It’s it’s fun. It’s addictive. We track your records. We cheer when you’re performing well. We have a grit score parameter to make sure you’re you know, you’re sticking to your workouts. Um yeah, and you know, we’ve we have now 60,000 users. Um average speed gains are just over 10 miles an hour and we track I like to track our top 5,000 stackers and the average speed gains for those those folks is 15 miles per hour and of those 5,000 um about 800 are over the age of 60. So um yeah, we’ve got you know we we’re we’re it’s be we’re beyond theory now. Um we we know that it works and uh you know not not just amateurs, we’ve got lots of tour players who have have gained speed as well. Wow. Okay. There’s so much to unpack from that. But for me when when I hear the average and 10 miles per hour faster like that is bonkers. What is that like 30 yards on on average? I guess sort of about 27 you know 25 27 depending on the exact conditions. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s really meaningful. Yeah. Wow. So, okay. So, I’m I’m totally mind-b blown clearly. When you say 10 miles per hour and 27 to to 30 yards, how fast does this actually happen? Like, how how disciplined would someone going into this program have to be to see distance gains like this? Yeah, it that’s that’s the most important thing is the it is a training program. Um, so you know, you you need to be doing it a couple times a week, but we’ve made it um as painless as possible. Um, and we spend no time doing fluff stuff that’s that’s really not going to help you get faster. So um, you know, if you can devote 40 45 minutes a week um to speed training using the stack, then then you’ll see some gains. The first program is about 6 weeks long, 18 sessions, and the gains there will be somewhere between, you know, five and seven miles per hour. Um, and and then yeah, usually people then add another two or three on the second program. You know, we’ve got some folks that post the results and they get really fast. But um yeah, so you know, within a year, less than a year, you know, those folks would be would be seeing, you know, 10 miles per hour gain. So if you if you started in the off season like January then you know by the fall you it’s reasonable to expect that 10 m per hour gain. That’s so interesting. And speed training it it’s such a fascinating thing because on our show we joke all the time about some of my workout habits. Like I I was someone I played hockey for many years of my life where I was a big squat deadlift. I still do a lot of chin-ups. But these workouts, I would presume, Sasho, that they’re just specifically designed for speed. So, are we talking are we talking just a lot of different variations of swinging the golf club or are we adding things like plyometrics or body weight training while we do this, too? No, it’s just swinging the stack, which is a piece hybrid length, and you can change the weights on the end. So, uh, you know, across many different sports, the concept of overload and oversp speed training, um, has been put to good use. And it’s very clear. I come from a track and field background. Um, and it’s it’s very clear in in sprinting that if you, you know, run in slight declines, you get an oversp speed effect, slight inclines, you get an overload effect. The Jamaicans are very famous for that. And then now we’ve got, you know, more advanced machines where you’ll see sprinters where they um pull a cord out of a box. So either there’s a little bit of resistance that provides overload or they’ll flip it around and have the the cord kind of pull them while they’re running. But throwing uh baseball um you know there’s jumping where you jump with weight in your back or jump with assisted load that’s that’s helping you jump faster. Um, so wi with with the stack it is just golf swings, just regular swings the same way you would swing your club. We don’t do any swings from the knees, no non-dominant side swings. And we basically um have you swing things that are slightly lighter than your driver and things that are slightly heavier than your driver. And we fine-tune those because we have 30 weight options. we spec choose a specific weight based on the to make sure we get the stimulus that that you need uh for your swing. So, you know, I just did a program with my 14-year-old son. We did the same program. It was about it was the foundation, but we had very different workouts um because we, you know, we we require different stimulus to get faster. Wow. I mean, this all sounds so cool. Whether whether you’re a weekend warrior or someone, let’s call it you’re a 20 handicap. Let’s say you’re a 10 handicap or you’re like yours truly here who right now as we record Sasho I’m a 2.4 index and where where I’m really curious uh when I get to try this is is how as Mark Zakino says my my home run swing is sort of my every swing where I’m sort of out of my shoes. My club speed can get up to 118 120 and my ball speed’s generally around 175. But am I right in saying this that let’s say I I go on the program for the entire duration, my home run speed will go through the roof now, but my more controlled speed will be faster. Am I right with that? Yeah, that’s our philosophy. So we don’t want we actually want you swinging with less effort on the course, but swinging faster. So, you know, let’s say, just to make the math a little bit easier, let’s say that your home run, the fastest you could swing right now is 100 milesPH and you play in the course at 90. Okay? So, you’re at playing at 90%. And you use the stack system. Well, my goal would to be to take you from swinging at 100 max to 110. So, we increase your ceiling, but then let’s have you play at 95. So, your your encore speed is increased by 5 miles hour, right? So, you’re hitting the ball further, but now you’re under more control because it’s a lower percentage of your max. So, for someone like you, and we’ve got lots of folks that jump in, um, you know, that are already fast. I’d like to get you up to probably 130 and have you play at like low 120s. Um, you know, that’s if you look at some of the longest guys on tour, even people think, oh, Bryson’s swinging out of his shoes, you know, if you watch the driving performance he put on at the PGA Championship, um, he had lots of club head speeds in the upper 120s, you know, maybe touch him 130, but he can swing at 145. So, you know what I mean? So, even though it looks he’s he’s well within his his capabilities, he’s not out there in the course swinging at 140, right? He’s he’s at 130. he’s got a lot of room to to to give. So, you know, that’s that’s kind of the direction I could see you you moving in. That’s so interesting because I I would think for me like my absolute max as of I think the highest I’ve ever been measured in terms of club head speed would be about 123 and that’s like going out of my shoes. But I on average I’m not I’m not far off from that. I I just sort of grip it and rip it and hope to find it at at some point. Sort of my my uh my tagline. So, this this is all just very exciting and and uh I I can’t wait to to give this a try. But, um I was first really introduced to Stack and I’m sure a lot of people were as well when they saw what Matt Fitzpatrick did back in 2022. What was it like for you to see his whole journey and how he rebuilt his golf game to becoming a major champion? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there was a lot of when his his coach reached out to me at the time, Mike Walker, um and said, “Hey, look, we need some help getting Matt faster, they had just finished playing in the the Fall Masters. Remember when DJ won, it was kind of cold and kind of wet and it was like, hey, you know, a number 11 at Augusta, DJ has a 9 iron in and we’re playing hybrid in.” Well, you can’t make up for that in other parts of your game. So, he was swinging about 112 at the time. Um and you know this the stack was able to take him from a tournament average of 112 to a tournament average of 121. Um yeah average driver speed um that was at the tour championship. U so he continued to increase his club head speed throughout the 2022 season uh won the US Open in there. Um yeah so that’s that’s not like what if I swing once what’s the fastest I can swing. This is with driver in the FedEx Cup playoffs in a tournament. We average all those swings were 121 and just you know over 180 ball speed and you know back a couple of months before that um he was the only person on Sunday at the US Open to drive the par4 181 ball speed cold had a sweater on um you know a bit of wind um so that’s like the ultimate test you it’s not like an overnight flash in the pan where oh I can make one swing at that like you own your club head speed when you can pull it out on Sunday at the at the US open. Um, and you know, it was very nice of him to to give myself and the stack credit. Um, but it really it really did change change the way he was able to approach golf courses. And, you know, to to he he’s still, you know, searching for a bit of form. He had a, you know, pretty good show at the PJ Championship, but but our philosophy is you never want to lose that speed potential. So, you know, if he’s not quite feeling his swing, and this goes for all tour players that I work with, this is my philosophy. It doesn’t mean you stop speed training and slow things down because all of us, all golfers can relate to this, is that, oh, hey, you get into a groove and you feel like, oh, I’m hitting every fairway. Well, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to tap into that potential to swing at 123, you know? So, if you’re like, oh, baby, I’m not finding fairways. I’m going to stop speed training, start to slow down. You’re like, “All right, swing’s clicking. Let’s go and try to win a major,” but you don’t have that reserve. So, you know, at the PGA Championship on Sunday, hole number two, he had the longest drive. He had 184 ball speed um and launched it over the trees. So, you know, that that that potential is still there, right? Because he’s put in a ton of speed training in the off season. Um, and hopefully, you know, at the US Open at Oakmont, he’s able to, you know, to to tap into that if his swing’s feeling good. He has that that speed in reserve. He He was just been so much fun to watch. And some of the videos of him swinging, it’s it’s just so cool. And everything about the stack sounds so amazing. And the stack is also expanded here. It’s not just full swings, right, Sasha? We have stack wedging and stack putting. Tell us a little about stack wedging and how it works. Yeah. So, stack wedging, you know, we we have our own radar that come out because, you know, we’re you need a radar to do the speed training. So, you know, to to kind of um hedge our bets on making sure we, you know, it could be that our supplier for radars that from third party were like, “Oh, we don’t have any radars left.” Well, shoot. What are we going to do for speed training? What how are we going to provide our customers the radar? So, we needed a radar. The stack radar is awesome. It pairs with the app. So, there’s a Bluetooth connection. And we thought, how can we enhance, you know, this radar like so folks can get more out of it? You know, they buy it for speed training. What else can we do? Um, and we realized that it’s very very good at measuring ball speed. Um, so we’re we’re within, you know, half a mile per hour track with ball speed. Um, and yeah, we round it in the in on the display, but we’re really tight. Uh, so we did some research last summer looking at how we could leverage that. And so with with stack wedging, we need to know the club you’re using. So we’ve got this really cool interface in the app where we uh we run you through a baseline. So we get your wedge distances, full swing wedge distances. Um, and then we can recommend a certain club to a target in a combine. Um, and we we track your score using a strokes gained approach. So, it’s it’s like these really fun gamified uh combines. Um, we also uh have a a premier mode in there where we adjust the difficulty level to match the ability of the golfer. So, it’s kind of a it’s a motor learning principle where if you’re trying to get as as increase your performance as fast as you can, then the tasks you’re practicing with should be at a certain level of difficulty. If they’re too difficult, you’ll never get better. Like if you take a a beginning golfer who’s never played golf and you like drop their ball in deep rough and step on it, that is way too easy. If you take a tour player and you say, “Hey, let’s work on your pitching and chipping and you put it on a tee, well, you know that you know you’re at the opposite end of the continuum.” So, what we do is we adjust the difficulty level of the combine so that you’re always getting just the right right level of uh of practice. And with the strokes gainbased scoring system, are you familiar with strokes gained, Adam? Yep. Absolutely. So it’s it really tells you how good the shot was, right? But the problem is that it’s in decimals, you know? So, hey, how many strokes did you gain in that shot? Oh, I gained 0.14. Wow, great shot, you know? But it’s like what what does that mean? And if someone, right? And if someone said, “Oh, I gained 0.2.” Well, that’s way that’s even better. But they’re like, “Ah, they’re both small numbers.” So, we’ve converted into points like a video game. So, I have this little equation. Basically, it’s take the strokes gained, add to multiply by 100. So, a good shot for a tour player would be zero strokes gained. So, that converts to about 200 points in stack wedging. Um, so it’s, you know, that’s kind of the the reference point when you’re doing these these wedge combines, but it’s an amazing way to work on your distance control. Um, and you know, we’ve seen the the the the wedge motors really caught fire. We have more people hitting wedge shots now and speed trading is still increasing. So, we’re still getting more and more users. We’re at 60,000 users, but um right now we’ve got more people on a daily basis taking wedge swings than than speed trading swings because it’s it’s just exploded. Wow. So, that is that’s fascinating to me. But it all makes sense to score because you can hit the ball as as far as you want, right? But if you can’t score at the wedges, what’s the point of hitting it that far, Zach? Right. So, that that’s brilliant. Yeah. you know, and there’s there’s, you know, been some positive spin-off effects that I, you know, wasn’t I didn’t consider, you know, like so you think, uh, well, you know, distance wedging, maybe it’s only such a small facet of my game. How great if I maximize that, maybe it doesn’t influence the overall score. But what lots of users are telling us is that really it’s it’s a way to practice that is easy on the body, you know, so because you’re taking these half wedge shots, but people are dying dialing in their low point control, their face to path variability. So, you know, there’s some added benefits that then extend to other parts of your game by hitting these more controlled shots, you know, which is kind of nice. Yeah, it makes it makes so much sense. And so we’ve got the stack, we’ve got stack wedging, and then there’s stack putting. How does stack putting work? Yeah, stack putting um again that comes, you know, free in the app. It’s part of the the package of the whole stack system. Um we we basically want we we see Marty and I would see a lot of people on the putting green not maximizing the use of their time, right? Or they just don’t know how to practice. So, we’ve got these really cool 15minute sessions where we tell you the 18 holes that you’re going to putt to, right? So, there’s 18 holes. Um, and you just need a green that you can hit a 30-ft putt and it’s got some slope. So, you’ll open up the app, go, let’s start a session. It’ll say, “Hey, hole one, 10 ft downhill right to left.” So, you walk around the practice green, find a putt that’s 10 ft downhill right to left. And you, you know, there’s usually a couple different holes you could choose from if the green’s busy. drop your ball down, hit the putt, and I like to do with my um ear pods in uh so, you know, I don’t have to um interact with the phone, just keep the phone in the pocket. But then you just uh tell the app after you hit the putt, hey, did you misread the speed or line? And what happened? Did it go in? Did you miss fast left? Did you miss just straight left? You know, slow right? You you tell the app and then um it’ll move you on to the next hole. hole two, 7 ft uphill, you know, straight. Um, and we give tons of really helpful insight. So, we can tell if you have a systematic miss. So, after the end of the session, it’ll be like, “Hey, which is your misbias? Left or right? You tend to hit them too fast or too slow.” Um, yeah, it’s so it’s really the most effective way to practice, but also we have some pretty cool insights, too, from from the practice session. Then we we we’ve got a ton of up um uptick from tour players using it. They’re some of our heaviest users, especially mini tour players, cornfurry tour players. Wow. There there’s there’s so much really cool information with stack and you’ve put a lot of research and a lot of great thought into all this. My my final question for you, Sasho, is someone watching this, someone listening to this saying, “Hey, this is for me. How do they find more information?” Yeah. uh stacksystem.com online. Um we’ve got and we’ve got tons of great uh great content you can sign up. I do like a science of speed newsletter that you can uh email series you can sign up for on the site. Um yeah, and you can follow me on X um Sasha McKenzie. I usually send all my my updates on golf science stuff and stack related. Well, it’s it’s always so cool to learn much more about the game and as the game continues to evolve and to change and I think over the last 20 minutes or so, Sasho, I’ve certainly learned a lot. So, really appreciate your time today. Looking forward to getting started on the stack system and updating our audience as to where I go and and let’s let’s connect again in the fall and and see where where my speed uh has gone. Sasha, thanks for your time today. Thanks, Adam.
