This ground-breaking, high-tech training aid blew my mind

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

If you’re ever the slightest bit nerdy about the golf swing, you know that weight and pressure shift are crucial. Shifting them correctly promotes pure ball striking, boosts power and helps with consistency. Doing it incorrectly, on the other hand, can have disastrous effects.

But while these elements are crucial to a great golf swing, they can be hard to measure during a typical practice session. Weight and pressure shift can be felt by the golfer doing them, but it’s tough to discern for those watching. Without the aid of high-tech devices in teaching studios, knowing the exact amount to shift weight and pressure is difficult.

Thanks to one of the newest training aids on the market, though, that’s changing.

Enter BAL.ON. This ground-breaking, wearable training aid — produced by German multinational company Continental — is worn in your shoes and utilizes pressure soles and other hardware to give you realtime feedback on swing metrics such as weight and pressure shift.

I recently got the chance to try out the BAL.ON Smart Kit and came away super impressed by its capabilities. Check out the video below to see how it works, or read on for more on my experience.

BAL.ON Smart Kit

When I first heard about the BAL.ON Smart Kit, I was a bit skeptical. It seemed to me like a device that was too good to be true. A wearable weight and pressure tracker? No way it could work as advertised.

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

Here are some of my other thoughts on the product.

Comfort is a plus

Wearable tech — especially in the golf space — can feel clunky when you first put it on. And when the BAL.ON reps told me that the pressure trackers were to go inside my shoes, I expected them to feel a bit uncomfortable. Much to my surprise, though, that wasn’t the case.

The pressure soles are super thin and easily slide right into your shoes. And if you wear any sort of special insoles in your shoes (such as me), they can be worn right underneath them.

As soon as I got the pressure soles in my shoes, I forgot they were even there. Walking around on the range, and then hitting some shots, I didn’t even notice that I had a high-tech training aid right beneath my feet. That’s a huge plus in my book.

The tech really works

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

Under the guidance of GOLF Top 100 Teacher Mike Dickson, I got a part-lesson, part-demonstration on how he uses the product with his students. Throughout it all, he had an iPad with my pressure readings next to him.

As I went through our lesson, I could see the iPad readings of where the weight and pressure were in my feet at all times. When he asked me to put more weight on one foot or the other, I could see on the iPad exactly how much weight I was shifting at any given time.

It’s one thing to feel the weight and pressure shift in your feet, but having an exact measurement provides an extra level of insight that’s tough to get otherwise.

Practice smart

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

For someone like me who is a lower handicap with a solid understanding of the swing, a training aid like this is immensely helpful for self-practice. But even for higher-handicappers, the Smart Kit provides plenty of value. No longer will you have to guess about your weight and pressure shift when you head to a lesson. Now, you can simply refer to the BAL.ON measurements and work with a coach to correct the issues.

With limited time to work on our games, it’s important to use the little practice time we do get efficiently. With the BAL.ON Smart Kit, that is easier than ever. The guesswork about your swing is no longer necessary. With objective data at your fingertips after every swing, you can diagnose flaws and correct issues quicker than ever before.

Final takeaway

I’ve only just started working with the BAL.ON Smart Kit, so I’ve barely scratched the surface on all the capabilities of the product. So far, though, I’m tremendously impressed.

As I continue to get in reps with the product, I’m sure other benefits will become clear. However, for someone looking for weight and pressure shift data on a daily basis, there isn’t another product out there that can achieve that like the BAL.ON Smart Kit.