In this episode of the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad, Chris Finn sits down with Jim Hackenberg, the inventor and founder of the iconic Orange Whip! 🧡 Discover the fascinating journey of how a kid from North Dakota created one of the most popular golf training aids in the world.
Key topics include:
✅ The story behind the creation of the Orange Whip.
✅ How the Orange Whip helps golfers of all levels improve rhythm, balance, and sequencing.
✅ The evolution of the product line, including the Orange Peel, wedge, and putter.
✅ How resistance bands and fitness training integrate with the Orange Whip for better performance.
✅ Why top athletes like CJ Stroud use the Orange Whip for cross-sport training.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned golfer, this episode is packed with insights on how to improve your game and train smarter.
👉 Learn more about Orange Whip products at OrangeWhipGolf.com and follow them on social media @OrangeWhipGolf.
Welcome to the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad. I’m your host, Chris Finn, and today I have a special guest with me. Uh he is the brains behind the the orange ball that you see every in every single golfer’s back when they’re on on the range. Uh Jim Hackenberg, the inventor, the founder, the man, the myth, everything behind the orange whip is here with me. Honored to have you on the show today, Jim. Oh, I appreciate it, Chris. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. And yeah, I love talking golf and orange whip. So yeah, this would be great. Even wore my orange whip shirt for everybody. I love it. I love it. And my favorite part of this is we both live in the Carolinas, but we’re both in the Midwest recording this. So, uh, you know, sometimes you got to go far to hang with friends, I guess. Exactly. But for people who don’t know your story, I think it’s a very interesting one as a as a fellow entrepreneur and you just this the way that you came up with the whip. Um, you know, I know you’re you’re actually you’re in North Dakota now. You’re from North Dakota. How does how does a kid from North Dakota get into the golf business and come up with probably one of the most well-known training aids uh for you guys are getting close to it’s got to be almost two decades now. Yeah. 18. We’re in our 18th year. Geez. Like like how like how does that story take you for anyone who doesn’t know like from how how do you go from there to to where you are now? Yeah. Let me and it may take a couple minutes here, but I think it’s worth it. I think you’ll appreciate the story. So, I was uh I’m from a family of nine kids, number eight. I was number eight of nine kids, and no one played golf. Parents didn’t play, no siblings played. So, some neighbor friends of mine, they started to play with their dads at about 12 years old. So, I’d ride my bike out there with them and watch them. And then I did give me a fivewood or something. I just whack it down the fairway or the rough and really started to get interested in the game. So when I turned 13, I uh I wanted to go out there with him. So I bought some junky clubs from a garage sale and uh would go out there. And I knew within a month of that summer when I was 13 that I was also a baseball player since I was 4 years old. But after one month, I knew this baseball thing is taking too much time for this golf thing that I’m really getting into. So I uh quit baseball and just pursued golf and just worked as hard as I could in the five or six months we have up here to play. But I but I advanced pretty quickly and I got to be pretty good and I wanted to play college golf. I’d done very well up in this region as a player, but I wanted to go south and play for a good team. So I moved to Arizona, did not go to school my first year. I worked on my game and just practiced half the day and worked half the day at a golf course and got better. So then I enrolled at Arizona State and they have a walk-on qualifier for the Arizona State golf team, which was a top five team in the country at this point. Sure. And I uh that’s about when Phil was there, wasn’t it? Well, that’s exactly it. When I was I won this walk-on qualifier, which was 60 kids, and you have to win it and you have to have had your scoring average be better than the course rating for the six courses we played. Okay. So, I won it. I was within that and I got on the team and that was Phil’s freshman year. Oh, no. Yeah. So, we played together a year and a half up there and it was it was great. Um I learned a lot watching Phil play. I mean, I’d never seen anybody like this before, you know? It was unreal. and and not just physically, but mentally. I mean, he was different. He was so positive and optimistic and forward thinking. He was just, I’m going to make birdie from these trees over there, and I don’t care. I’m going to do it. And it was pretty fun to experience. So, so that kind of got me going and I ended up playing there a year and a half. Didn’t want to leave Arizona State, but I was having a tough time breaking into that top five. Yeah. So, I transferred to Oregon State, which was still pack 10, and played there for two and a half years and did pretty well up there. And then, you know, like everyone, I went and pursued uh the mini tours, tried to get going there. Didn’t make it. So, I got in the golf business. And in the golf business, I worked in the shop, worked in the bag rooms. I began teaching golf. And as a teacher, I was very technical guy. I would read every book. I would listen to anybody and everybody about the golf swing. I would try to study these behaviors. Well, I was very technical. And I’d be willing to bet over half my students or lessons these I probably should own some money back because I I probably made it harder for them than easier. And then I had a cool experience happen. One of the friends of mine that I used to play the mini tours with and we he’s actually was originally from North Dakota as well. His name is Patrick Moore and Patrick went on to play at University of North Carolina. It’s an all-American there and he ended up playing the mini tour for for a while. Then he made it to the PGA tour. He then called me and said, “Hey, I’d like you to caddy for me.” And uh I wanted to make sure that uh I wanted to see that experience. That was where I was trying to get to. And it turns out that uh I went out and worked with him and watching these people every day, these tour players hit balls, play practice. I started to see the the golf swing differently. I always had all these positions and points to be and different moments of impact and so on and so forth. And it was complicated. And I started noticing there was guys on that range that didn’t appear to be thinking that hard. They were just making these rhythmic balance swings. I think it got unconnected. I don’t know if that’s my end. You still there, Chris? Let me try it again here. everything and we’re good to go. Okay. Yes. So, I had the opportunity opportunity to caddy on the PGA tour from a good friend of mine, Patrick Moore, and while he was on the range, I was able to watch the best players in the world. And I had this technical mind. So I was looking at it from the technical viewpoint, but then started to notice there’s a lot of guys like your John Dalys, your Buickies, your Jeff Oglevies, they have this rhythmic, balanced golf swing, and it looked so easy and effortless and I could tell they didn’t have the kind of thoughts I was having. So they started to intrigue me. So every time Pat would if we played a practice round or a tournament round in the morning, you hear me say, “Hey, meet me at the range at 2:00.” I’d get there at quart to 2. what happened started looking up and down the range and find who I wanted to park the bag next to so I could watch them and I had my favorites and it there’s okay Jeffy was the number one if I could ever watch him hit balls it made perfect sense as to what he was doing so what I would watch for is it looked to me that he wasn’t taking a golf club and putting it all these positions he was swinging the club as if it was a weighted ball on the end of a chain similar to that medieval weapon the mason chain which is a handle a chain in a steel ball. I may have to do this. And I thought, boy, if I could swing a club like that where I let it load and then unload, I could whip all that momentum at a target. And I, you know, I was trying to have people understand it that I would teach on the side for income. And so I started to make something like that, but I quickly learned that you could really only swing that halfway to halfway because as you go back, it wrap around your neck and that could be troublesome. So I uh I switched to a fishing rod flexibility and that worked very well and instead of a club face which especially me my whole life thinking about the squareness of the club face at impact and all these thoughts and I’m trying to control it at the very last second and like the dailies and the Jeff Oglevies and the Boo Weeklys didn’t appear to be doing that. So I thought I’m going to put a ball on the end of this so I eliminate that thought. If I trust that I have a good grip and my club face is square to address, if I make a a golf swing that’s fluid and rhythmic and in balance, it should come back to the same place. So, I put the ball there to allow the the consideration of that club face to go away. And and that club face also creates all those flying elbows and such because you’re trying so hard to make it do something. So the ball became the idea to swing that weight and then I counterbalanced it because Ben Hogan and Jack Nicholas, they used to counterbalance their clubs. They would take the grip off, put some lead weight in the butt end of the shaft and put a grip over it. It’s perfectly legal, but they didn’t tell anybody because they thought it was a good idea, a secret to help keep them on plane. And so I started experimenting with additional weights on the end of it. and these weights. I used to use just Home Depot washers, like heavy washers that were big, and I could adjust. And just through trial and error, I came up with what I thought was the best. And I had some good friends of mine, this Pat Moore, the player, and then a lot of teachers and other good golfing friends. We experimented for a while one evening, and it’s probably about six of us. And it probably took us about a case of beer, but after that we had it all figured out as to how much weight and when it was perfectly balanced where the weight on each end is the same. That’s when everyone said that feels the best. Feels like I’m always on plane when I do it and I’m always in balance. And you could get swinging it pretty fast once you kind of got everything in synchronization. So that became the the initial orange whip, but it was never meant to be a product. It was just to help me teach. He was helping me get a message across. But my first five lessons with the high handicappers I was working with, right at the end of the lesson, they all said, “Hey, can I buy that thing from you?” And I kind of scratched my head because it was rough. I mean, it was Home Depot parts and I put it together. So, it was it was pretty rough looking. But they were all intrigued by it. So, that kind of turned on the light bulb for me. I thought, well, maybe I’m going to make these and see if I could sell them. And that’s really how it all started. It was really to help my own game. it was to help my teaching, but people actually like the feel of it and were willing to buy it. So, I said, “Hey, I’m going to I’m going to start making them.” So, that’s how I in the fall of ‘ 07 is when I started making them and getting ready and to introduce it to the golf world at the PGA show in January of 20. Sell your first orange whip on the range with washers and all. What was the price of the first orange whip? Well, it was to the member I was a teacher at a golf club called Edgartown Golf Club in Martha’s Vineyard at this time and uh I sold it to them for about 40 bucks each and uh they were but they were happy to pay and I was happy to take it but it uh it was about 40 and then I had to kind of clean my act up for the PGA show. So I had to figure out how to make it look better. So with the orange ball, what I did was I started using a drill press and hollowing out lacrosse balls. So it was an actual lacrosse ball. And if you’ve ever drill pressed a lacrosse ball, a lot of them, the smell is so bad because it’s burning rubber. And I was in a small room doing this. And that was a tough time because it was just such a bad, brutal smell. And I’m doing that. And then I had a weight fixture. It was a fishing weight. Looked kind of shaped like a football. and I’d epoxied that on a shaft and I came up with a way to put the orange ball on so it wouldn’t fly off. Um, and then the counterwe was a harder one for me to solve at this point. I was using doorork knobs I got at Home Depot filled with lead and then I’d glue them on. And when I was getting ready for the PGA show, I was thinking, man, I don’t want to show up with doorork knobs in the end of this thing to the PGA show. And I I kind of lucked out where I I was in Massachusetts at the time before I moved down to Carolas and there’s a a billiard ball company up there that makes pool balls. And some guy just gave me some old beat up pool balls he had cuz I was going to see if I could use that for a counterwe and surprisingly pool balls or Q balls are easier to drill into than you’d think. So, I was able to drill some holes into it, epoxy that on the end of the fiberglass shaft, and that was my counterwe. The problem with that one, it looked cool. Like, the company up there was able to get me a cool Q ball that would they uh burnt in my Orange Whip name and they had it all ready for me, so I just had to put them on. The problem was it was too big and it didn’t fit in the golf bag very well. So, I had some early complaints about that. Um, but then I switched to the steel ball, which is about a golf ball diameter. And uh ever since then it’s I just love hearing how I always joke at least internally to my team at at Barber Success. Yeah, I I used to stand at uh the driving range at Hillindale Golf Course in Durham, North Carolina. I had an A-frame sign. It said $99 for an evaluation in three sessions. You know how many of those I sold, Jim? A big fat zero. And so, yeah, early I mean to your point, you have you got to figure out what your market wants, what you know, how you the messaging you use, you know, little things like the the Q ball just doesn’t fit in the golf bag or like think like so I just I think no matter what the entrepreneurial start is, there’s always those sorts of stories and um well that’s if they knew now what they should first guy actually sold I I sold him I think it was $1,000 to meet with once a week for like the entire year. By the time by the time we got to August, he was like begging to pay me. He’s like felt so bad. I said, “Nope.” I said, “I’m I’m a man of my word.” Nope. But, uh, those are those are some of our early stories. But, um, I want to talk more because now I mean now if you look at what you have done with Orange Whip, you and the team there. I mean, you’ve got certifications, there’s workouts, there’s fitness sty, there’s there’s different types of of trainers, you got the the lights. I mean, how has this evolved like starting from some washers and Q balls to where you guys are now? What’s what’s that journey been like? And just taking people through and just understanding obviously the evolution of the original Orange Whip was really about big swing and getting a feel. What what has the kind of the move been here the last almost two decades? Yeah. So, with that original design and the balancing act of the of the two weights when you swing it back and forth, you not only find rhythm, balance, and sequencing, but you’re going to get it. The the club wants to be on plane the way it’s designed. It wants to be on plane. So, people are getting that without even knowing it. So, when we brought it out, we knew right away we’d have to probably have a slightly shorter one based on height or ability. So, we had come out with the original Orange Whip Trainer, which is roughly a driver length, and then we came out with one 4 in shorter, but all the components are the same. So, that’s maybe for a shorter golfer or someone without the ability to handle the longer one. And so, we were covering everything in that regard, but then we kept processing it down. It’s like, you know what, there’s junior golfers, and then there’s no way they could use either of these two. So, we made a lighter, shorter one for them. And we also then we had a lot of people who and we encouraged this to swing it if you live in North Dakota in the winter. Swing it indoors all winter and you’ll never lose your golf swing. Well, we we got some funny calls like somebody say, “Hey, you know, I love my orange whip, but I’m swinging and I hit our chandelier. My wife is not happy about that or they break stuff.” So, we we then created a what we call the compact. So, it’s the same orange whip but just shorter and easier and safer to swing indoors. And then it just kept evolving because we wanted to go right all golf, not just all full swing. Uh so we then evolved into what a device I call the orange peel. It’s a platform that you stand on. It’s stable, but it’s got a concave surface. So, basically, if you’ve looked and seen the the Leonardo da Vinci painting called Vuvian Man, which is just a big circle, and there’s a man, and there were two sets of arms and legs, and he’s centered. But if you look at his feet, they’re kind of canered in like this based on the sphere. I thought, boy, if I could swing an orange whip inside of a bubble, that would be the best way to keep my core centered. I can still pivot. I can still shift weight, but I’m not moving laterally all over the place. But I didn’t need the whole sphere. I just needed a small portion of it. So we brought out the orange peel to center and balance people why they trained with their orange whip or their golf clubs. Uh and then we then I got to start I started taking part in a lot of teaching summits where orange whip would be the pay we’d pay to be a part of this teaching summit and they’d give me some speaking time. So I’d get up there and I’d tell my story. I would show slides of my early days. I would bring in original versions of the orange whip. I would talk about all the development that had happened along the way and all the pitfalls and and the problems I run into. So I uh I would do that. Well, at one of these a couple of these events, uh Stan Utley was one of the guys they brought in as the short game guy. So I would listen everyone I would listen to no matter what their presentation was. I can I can always learn more. So I’m always listening. Well, Stan was talking about stuff that was completely foreign to me in regards to the short game. And I’m it’s not foreign at all, but to me, learning the old school way with put the handle way ahead and just drag it through. Well, that that’s a good way to learn to chunk and blade a lot of short game shots, which I was really good at. And uh he was talking about using the bounce, which I understood the bounce, but I couldn’t I didn’t utilize it. But he was showing how to utilize it, how to use your body pivot and not really let those hands drag at all. So he and I developed a friendship and we started talking about the orange whip and he goes, “Jimmy, I’ve watched you hit balls and I’ve watched you chip now.” He goes, “It’s a different person. You’re not you’re not doing it even close to the same with your short game.” He goes, “But you should. Your your ideas about the orange whip are perfect because they can go into the short game. You just need to understand it and learn it.” And he goes, “And and because of that, I think we should take one of your orange whips, cut the ball off it, put a wedge head on it, and it should be the physics should work the same.” So, we started to work with Stan Outly. We developed the the Orange Whip wedge to allow people to have the same idea of loading and unloading and pivoting and allowing the club to swing rather than drag through the area. And that even moved in towards putting and and I created a a putter head that’s basically basically like a bullseye. It’s it’s right or left-handed and it allows you to do the same rhythm, load and unload and impact so that it becomes more natural. So basically it’s it’s my pursuit of improvement of my game, my students games, uh everyone. So it just kept evolving and with his evolution then we we joined up with Brian Newman who’s a he was a PJ golf professional. He was at a great club up in the Carolina mountains but he was his side gig was fitness. I mean fitness, he’s one of those guys who all that’s what he does for fun and he really developed an interesting program based on what he had learned through different fitness programs as well as golf fitness programs and combined it with what we already had with the orange peel with the orange whips. Uh he did uh add some resistance bands to allow for more movement pattern changes or or development. So, it’s what we’re proud of is we’ve basically tried to cover every aspect of golf on the physical side so that you can play the game mentally like we all hope to. It’s where you can stay focused and not think about all the details of how you’re swinging or can your body handle this, can it do this or that. So, it’s just been a basically I’m a I’m a golf nut who wants to get better and I want my students to get better and if if we can add some things tool-wise or or you know products andor programs that’s that’s just I love the the evolution of going you know I think the peel there’s so much to cover. We got the peel, the wedge, the putter fitness. Um, I want to go back to I want to save the the peel and the in and the fitness for last year because uh all of you listening are listening to a fitness podcast. So, we’re going to make you wait for it. Uh, but also that’s there’s a lot that we’re going to go into there that I think will be really really insightful for everyone. Um, so hang on, keep listening everyone. Uh, but I I really want to get into the the wedge and the putter to me I thought is brilliant and that it’s it’s taking you I’m a big fan of like just keep it as simple as possible and trying to eliminate a lot of the thoughts and really just get a sense of the feeling. I thought that was really insightful. you want to go back and highlight when you said when you Stan’s watching you chip versus he’s watching you swing and they’re they’re two different humans and he’s like no dude just just do the same thing and and so I think fundamentally and correct me if I’m wrong it’s really that a lot of you know from the the original whip to the wedge to the put and all the products are really based around the same principles of the rhythm and the tempo and getting the body to move correctly and if you do the stuff with the body in the right sequence and and and tempos that there’ll be a consistent end result in terms of when the club hits the golf ball. Is that pretty accurate? Very accurate. Because ideally, I mean, once you’re in a proper setup, be it a full swing or or a chip shot, once you start making the movement, it shouldn’t be a hand eye coordination game as much as just a a swinging of a of a mass through something. and the loft of the club and the way you balanced your body be it on a short game shot maybe more in the lead foot and on a driver it’s maybe more in the the rear so yeah it was really just the trust of that and but how do you apply that because every when I first teach a beginner their number one goal is just to hit the ball they just want to hit the ball but that over that tends to overrule what we’re truly trying to get to is a is a free motion that is in balance And yeah, that’s why it applied so well to the short game. And it it it cuz I was pretty pretty sketchy around the greens. And once you get that bad demon in your head about the the flinch or the blade or the chug. So this is just a a way to almost exaggerate the flaw until you learn to do the correct movement and then it works beautifully and then it becomes almost easy. So yeah, we’ve been very proud of that and it’s it’s been fun to watch a lot of people who struggled like I did start to turn that corner and trust it because then then you’re having fun again playing. You know, it’s not when you when you struggle around some of those shots, it gets to be a difficult process. important thing for people listening to take away is it’s by focusing more on and you know with these training aids you’re focusing on the inputs and the feel of what it feels like and you’re not I think I think you get a lot of the hand eye like trying to hit the ball when it you’re so you’re so like results are outcome oriented and I think obviously short game the result happens very very quickly at least with a full swing you have maybe 3 seconds before it hits the ground or you go it starts to go where you don’t want it to go but like with short game you’re not hitting it that far. So you you and so I think getting the feel and I can attest too of the fewer different swings you have. I mean when I started playing I had a putter set up and swing. I had a wedge setup and swing. I had uh you know the the the nine iron through the seven iron where like swing and then I had you know there was multiple different swings. And then when you start I think the better you get you start to realize well it’s all kind of the same. So yeah, and so I think yeah of the whole product line is it’s so it’s it’s principle based and I think it’s we try to do that on the fitness side is identifying hey what what are the core principles regardless of the golfer whether they’re 95 they’re playing on the PJ tour or they’re an 8-year-old touching a golf club for the first time. Um and obviously you guys have have carried that through, you know, from the original whip, you know, through the to the wedge and the putter. Um, I want to get into the peel and the fitness side because I think for a lot of people listening I even in the beginning wasn’t I didn’t have a full like clear understanding of the value of the peel. Um, and that, you know, I would look at it and I’d say, and we we’ve actually we’ve obviously we’ve had the conversations at the, you know, just in person about fitness and the peel and and it is such a great tool for what we would term as transfer training, which is the ability of getting the body to move in the, you know, whatever your physical skills are, your mobility, your strength, your power. If you can’t get it out into a golf a usable golf motion, it doesn’t matter, right? That’s where you get, you know, guys like Yeah. I don’t know, football players who can’t outdrive Will Alurus, right? Maybe now they I think he just had another back surgery, but like like, you know, basically guys three times the size of other than they can outdrive him. Um, and so that to me, I thought the and I I loved hearing the story of how you came up with the idea. It makes total sense. Um, I’d love for you to just explain more of kind of what you’ve seen through the evolution of the peel and obviously you’ve layered in now uh with the bands because now you have you can use the resistance to assist a movement and you can use it to resist a movement. Both are y depending on what your movement patterns you’re trying to learn are both very well researched and proven ways to improve movement pattern uh learning and and change. Um, so I’d love for you to just explain to people kind of how you have seen the best results with the peel and the bands and and using it to help golfers actually start to move in a way where um, you know, they get what they would like to see out of their golf swing. Yes. So, in going back to what I’d stated about with uh looking at the uh Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci painting, Vuvian man, I thought I solved everything with the orange whip. Mhm. But there was still I I could move laterally and other people could. When I looked at that painting and studied it, I said, “Well, if you could stand inside there and center yourself, it’s going to be so much easier to make a repeatable balance swing.” So it really spawns from that and allowing the body to still move like an athlete but from you know a bowl basically. And that was really helpful because I started seeing people start to recognize it much sooner. And I really was just training them to hit uh to swing an orange whip or a golf club from it. Not necessarily hit golf balls because the dilemma is when you do have the raised up walls a bit. You’re a couple inches off the ground. So hitting a golf ball isn’t wasn’t easy, but as I explored and and tested it more, if you tee up a golf ball, it’s very easy to do it that way. And so we basically I’ve changed my tune on the thought of not hitting balls while on it, just swinging, you know, just, you know, type training to get that movement. But hitting balls from it became still a good function if you did it right now. Right. There’s lots lots of great ideas and exercises and tools, but you know, if you don’t use them right, then they they don’t work. That’s exactly right. So then before we get into the fitness side with the peel, if if you’re standing on it, these are my feet and the peel, I’m centered. If I move this way, I’m now in an uphill lie. So you can see how what you need to do to get your body weight to get up the hill and off your back foot. If I move this way, I’m now in a downhill lie. And you and everybody practices on a flat driving range and they go on their course and there’s hills and there’s terrain and they don’t know how to balance properly. And also in the orange peel, you can move back backward on it and get sidehill ball below your feet and then move forward side eyeball above your feet. So you’re always experimenting with how to stay balanced and rhythmic while on an unusual situation. But that can be to your benefit as well. If I want to help someone learn to draw the ball rather than slice it, I’ll put them in a position to where ball above their feet sidehill eye and they have to drop the club in. Or if I got a 19-year-old kid who drops it in and hits a 40 yard hook, I’ll back him up and get it so he’s a little more tilted forward and his gravity and his balance points change. So that started out part of the development of how to play on the course. And then when I got to know Brian Newman, we played a tournament together in the Carolina’s PGA and he started telling me about what he’s doing with resistance bands and how it helps move the body. I was very intrigued and he was only about an hour away from our our uh Orange Whip World headquarters. So he came down to visit us down there and I introduced him more to the orange peel and immediately you could see his mind functioning about attaching something there that would be the resistance band that would then attach to his belt. And this belt he could put on his right hip and it could be attached to the front left of the orange peel. when he would turn back, there’s a lot of resistance, but it’s building a stable resistance. And then when he turned through, it’s almost like somebody pulled that hip and they it rotated through faster. And you could go vice versa where it’s uh easy to go back within a bit of a resistance through. And there’s applications that that would be beneficial for swing training. Well, then he took it to the next level and he had different setup band setups, these resistance bands, so that he would do a series of movements, either exercise types of movements or golf swing training movements that are going to work the body more for that particular benefit. and he developed it into a whole program of of uh applicable movements that if a person does these a few times a week, they’re going to train strength, coordination, and and be healthier on their body because there’s, as you know very well, that there’s movements that you can make that can certainly hurt yourself. And if we can train and strengthen the correct areas and movement patterns, we’re less likely to get hurt and more likely to get better. So, the evolution came with the orange peel. and Brian and I experimented with different thoughts and ideas and then he just had the background with Pilates with uh other fitness golf and cross trainining. So he took all he knew from that world brought it over to what he knew in the golf world and you know put it together to create a nice fitness program and training program especially for those off seasons. I mean again going back to my North Dakota early days I I would put my clubs away in late October and wouldn’t touch them again till March. Well, I had to relearn the golf swing every year. Countless people, particularly up north, that staying engaged. And I think that’s one of the things all of the Whip products do, but obviously the, you know, the original Orange Whip in particular with a full swing. Um, you know, the kines and I think everything that you’re talking about, there’s a emphasis on people kinesthetically learning, right? There’s three ways people learn, right? You have your visual learners, your auditory learners, and then you have kinesthetic and and by doing and by experiencing. And I think that’s what all of the products do so well in my opinion is they like you there’s no choice but you have to feel it otherwise it doesn’t like the the whip will feel wrong or you know it won’t like when you feel it there’s an immediate feedback loop of like oh that was it right so there there’s that immediate um that was good that was correct or nope that was not good or that’s not correct and then you know taking it to the next level with the with the orange peel and having those assistance and resistance bands on there. You know, particularly, you know, for those of you listening who like have worked on, you’ve heard me yelling from the rooftops about the importance of the four rotary mobility centers and you know, now that you’ve gotten there’s so many people that they’ll improve their hip rotation, they’ll improve their shoulder rotation, they’ll improve their thoracic rotation, right? So now all of a sudden, you know, they’re they’re checking all the boxes that they can rotate as much as they need to. But then you watch them swing and I’m sure you’ve seen this on the lesson tee and they look like a baby giraffe. They just don’t know how to use it, right? And I think that’s the value, you know, in particular of the orange peel and those band is it to your point, it’s going to for centers you. It forces you to feel correct, you know, quote unquote good and then it’s you can adjust it based on what your need is and and your level of, you know, progression is. Um, and I think that’s one of the it’s just been so cool to hear you talk through the progression of the products, but then knowing like where it is today and the end result that it can get for people based on where they’re at in their golf journey and what their needs may be. Um, I mean, you certainly are are covering most if not all bases. Oh, yeah. No, it’s been fun. I mean, like I said, I’m a golf nut and anything that I can do to improve my game and then help students or other players have more fun and play better is was is the key. And what’s kind of interesting about the Orange Whip is I really designed it for the bad player. You know, it was my initial thought was I want the over-the-top slicers who struggle mightily with this game, can’t learn the motion, and I still believe it’s most important for them. But what was fairly interesting to me in that first year when I first started at the PGA show with it, I knew I wanted to go there and I wanted to share it with teachers, but I didn’t really know what to expect or what what they would think of it. But it turns out the better the player, the better the teacher, the more immediately they got it. I mean, within five swings, they’d look at me go, “Oh, I get this. I feel this. I love it.” And they already do it very well. you know, they’ve already that’s not a problem for them. And the higher handicappers still to this day, if they just pick one out of someone’s bag and start flopping it around, it’s bouncing off their back. They’re they’ll kind of go, I don’t know what this is doing to me. But I if I have a moment to spend with them, then it really turns out good because then I start to explain the philosophy and the concept and after 5 10 minutes, they’re like, “Oh, that feels incredible.” So, that’s kind of my main mission to this day is like, how do I share it with your average player who needs it the most, but I needed a little bit of their attention? And it’s best if I’m in person, although that’s not realistic every time, but it it was fun for me because I was I knew the group of people I wanted to get it to, and there’s way more bad golfers than there are good ones. And but it was the good players who right away go, I get this. I know what that this feeling is because they felt this before. So, it was I think that higher handicapped player, they don’t know what good feels like. And I think that’s the the beauty of when you do spend that time with them. And I’ve seen you do it at the show. And I’ve seen the like the eyes on those guys go like, “Oh my god.” They get big and white. They’re like, “Whoa, what is that?” You’re like, “Well, that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.” Um, yeah. But I think that’s, you know, one of the things I’m really excited about, you know, as we start to do more together, you know, with, you know, with you guys and and giving more people those opportunities to understand and and put you in front of more and more people and and explain it to people that like, you know, these tools are so good. It’s the same thing in in my world, in the fitness world, right? I can tell people how to squat. I can tell them how to deadlift. tell them how to, you know, swing a club fast, but until they’ve done it the right way, they don’t actually know what it feels like. And I think that’s the beauty of a lot of a lot of the Orange products is and I think of a good training aid or a good training device is like if you a good one if you when you do it right, you’re like, “Oh, like you don’t need a four-page manual.” It’s like it’s like when you do it, you’re like, “Oh, that was it.” Like, I got it. Um, and I think that’s the beauty of of everything that you guys have done, Jim. But I obviously I want to be respectful of your time. Where So, where is the best place for people uh to follow you guys? Um, you know, I know you guys put out a ton of great content. Um, and then obviously also for people to go check out the amazing uh, you know, products that you do have and and get involved with you guys. Yeah. So, the best start is probably at our website at orangewhipgolf.com and you can see a lot of the things we have there and then some descriptions and demonstrations of the products and how they fit into your golf game or just go into either YouTube and go up to orangegolf. So, it’s always around Orange Whip Golf and you can find a lot of stuff in social media with with Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, but at Orange Whip Golf on YouTube is really good. There’s probably hundreds of videos there. But it’s fun stuff. It’s it’s educational. It’s also basic usage issues, how to do it, what you’re supposed to do with it. But a lot of the neat things about it is I’ve met many people where I’ll demonstrate I’ll show the basic drills that I promote, but then I’ll run into them a year later and they’ll say, “You know what else I’ve been doing with this? Here’s what I’ve been doing.” And they’ll show me something. I go, “Wait a second, that’s a great idea. I want to I want to borrow that myself.” So, people have been able to take it to other levels. Even for example, um CJ Stout, who’s the quarterback for the Houston Texans, he he has an orange whip and he in his pregame warm-ups, he has all these unique drills he does, but he takes the orange whip and swings it more on a horizontal plane like a baseball bat and he does a step pattern where he’s stepping back like he’s going to drop for a pass and then he steps into it as you would throw the pass. And what I love about that is, and you know this well, that the the transfer of the body weight is really what gets the momentum going of the club rather than us trying to over the top it with the hands. So him showing this exaggerated footwork is really showing that you’re loading up back here and then you’re unloading here, but it’s a movement of that body. So I love to see an athlete like a CJ Strad and now Cam Ward. Cam Ward’s been doing it a lot lately as well. that are doing the basic athletic movement patterns that are also in the golf swing but that are doing it for their particular sport and from from you and part for success and who you work with. I mean, it’s a lot of golfers, but it’s a lot of athletes that do a lot of these things. And you probably parallel a lot of these movements into Well, I think that’s what I think I’m excited about. Um, you know, this is little teasers for you guys, but like we’re already doing some work with the whips and looking at with an orange whip, what are the best drills that we can look at to improve certain ground reaction forces and um and improve, you know, we call them, for those of you guys who’ve listened, the core four, right? the weight shift, the hips first movement, speed out front, like uh X factor stretch, right? Those sorts of elements. The reason why you’re getting guys, overhead athletes, quarterbacks, like um baseball players like is because this the kinematic sequence doesn’t change. It’s the same exact kinematic sequence for golf, for baseball, for I mean for tennis. Um, I know we were messing around down at the PGA show with Yeah, there there’s lots of different applications and um and that’s why we’re going to have to have you on many more times to tell all the other people all about it. So, u but Oh, I love I love to and I love visiting your your spot in Raleigh area. It’s beautiful. Your location’s awesome. So, yeah. No, I’m I’m excited because you you really help me to explain what I just kind of see, but I don’t have a background or a knowledge of it. So that’s great for me to be able to, you know, I just visualize something when I was catting on tour and then it I started to make something to replicate that. But it’s great to have someone like yourself who can explain why that’s happening and what it does for Yeah. So listen, we will put all those links in the show notes. So go you can just go below in the podcast notes. Uh if you’re watching on YouTube, you can click there on the in the show notes. You can go get uh everything you can to learn about Orange Whip. um see see the different products. Um but ultimately guys, what it will do for you is it will help you to train the core principles of the kinematic sequence. Uh whether you’re you know no matter the sport and if you’re tall, if you’re short, if you’re a kid, if you’re 95, whatever it is, um and if you know, as always, if you guys have any questions on how to use anything, um you can always reach out to me. I’m happy to push you guys over to Jim if if I don’t know the answer. Um, but this is a great uh great tool to add to the repertoire um you know in in your arsenal for helping you to play game the game of golf for as long as possible. So Jim, thank you so much for coming on the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad and uh I can’t wait to have you on again soon. Thank you Chris. I appreciate it. Yeah, I’ll definitely be back onward and everyone else. Thanks so much for spending the time listen uh here on the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
