This device could FIX YOUR GOLF SWING! | BAL.ON Smart Kit Review
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Georgina from the Goot YouTube channel explores the innovative Ballon smart kit, a golf training aid that utilizes foot pressure sensors and AI to analyze and improve swing technique. She shares her month-long experience with the device, highlighting its ease of use, data-rich feedback, and potential for personalized coaching. Despite some minor issues with AI accuracy and the need for a strong internet connection, Georgina sees great value in the kit for dedicated golfers looking to enhance their game with detailed swing analytics.
Takeaways
- 🏌️♀️ Georgina from the Goot YouTube channel is testing the Ballon smart kit at St Andrews links Academy.
- 🤖 The Ballon smart kit is a training aid that uses foot pressure sensors and AI within a smartphone app to improve golf swing technique.
- 👟 The kit includes two foot sensors that go inside the shoes and smart pods that connect to the smartphone via Bluetooth.
- 📱 The app combines video footage of the swing with pressure data to provide personalized coaching feedback.
- 📊 The app analyzes eight different metrics, offering scores out of 100 and suggesting drills to improve weak areas.
- 👥 The smart kit can be used by multiple people with separate accounts, as long as they have the correct shoe size.
- 🌐 The AI requires an internet connection to function, which may be a limitation in some golf club settings.
- 🛠️ The AI sometimes struggles with accurately timing the start of the swing, which can affect the feedback provided.
- 💡 Georgina sees potential in the Ballon smart kit for specific types of shots and believes it could be a valuable investment for dedicated golfers.
- 💰 The Ballon smart kit is not directly available for purchase in the UK but can be obtained through preferred retailers at a cost of £549.
- 📝 Georgina encourages viewers to check out her written review on the GOL aot website for more information.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of the Ballon smart kit mentioned in the video?
-The Ballon smart kit is a training aid that uses foot pressure sensors combined with AI within a smartphone app to act as a coaching and training aid, helping golfers improve their swing and overall game.
How does the Ballon smart kit work?
-The kit includes two foot sensors that go inside the golfer's shoes and smart pods that connect to the smartphone via Bluetooth. The golfer takes videos of their swing while practicing, and the app combines the pressure data with the video to provide feedback and personalized coaching using AI.
What kind of data does the Ballon app provide?
-The Ballon app provides scores out of 100 for various metrics such as overall score, setup, back swing, vertical timing, Max vertical transition timing, rhythm, and impact. It also shows a video of the swing with a pressure graph heat map and individual scores for key metrics.
How many different metrics does the Ballon app analyze?
-The Ballon app analyzes eight different metrics to provide a comprehensive analysis of the golfer's swing.
What are some of the pros of using the Ballon smart kit?
-The pros include ease of use, the ability for multiple users to have their own accounts on one kit, quick AI processing, and the provision of simple drills for immediate feedback. It also offers a granular level of detail in the analytics of the swing.
What are some potential drawbacks or challenges of using the Ballon smart kit?
-Some challenges include the need for a good understanding of the golf swing to interpret the data, the requirement of an internet connection for the AI to work, and occasional inaccuracies in the AI's interpretation of the swing's timing and positions.
How much does the Ballon smart kit cost?
-The Ballon smart kit is priced at £549, as mentioned on the website visited in the video.
Is the Ballon smart kit available for direct purchase in the UK?
-The Ballon smart kit is not directly available for purchase in the UK, but it can be obtained through partnerships with certain professionals and retailers.
What is the parent brand of the Ballon smart kit?
-The parent brand of the Ballon smart kit is Continental.
How was the Ballon smart kit developed?
-Continental held a competition among their employees to come up with ideas for new technologies, and Ballon was the winning idea that was then brought to life.
What is the potential of the Ballon smart kit for golfers?
-The potential of the Ballon smart kit is significant, as it can provide detailed feedback and data on a golfer's swing, which can be used to improve their game. It also has potential for specialized training, such as for specific types of shots or speed training.
Outlines
🏌️♀️ Introduction to the Ballon Smart Kit
Georgina introduces the Ballon smart kit, a training aid that uses foot pressure sensors and AI within a smartphone app to improve golf swing and game. She discusses the setup process, which includes placing sensors in shoes and using the app to analyze swing data. Georgina plans to use the kit for a month to assess its effectiveness and comfort.
📊 Analyzing the Ballon Smart Kit's Data
The Ballon app provides detailed analytics, including scores out of 100 for various swing metrics, a heat map, and video playback with pressure data. Georgina highlights the ease of use, the ability for multiple users to share one kit, and the app's quick AI processing. She also discusses the potential for the technology to help golfers improve their game, despite the need for an internet connection and some initial setup challenges.
🤔 Reflecting on the Ballon Smart Kit Experience
After a month of using the Ballon smart kit, Georgina shares her observations, both positive and negative. She notes the potential for improvement in understanding and analyzing swing data, but also acknowledges the need for a solid grasp of golf swing principles to interpret the AI's feedback. Georgina also points out the occasional inaccuracies in the AI's swing analysis and the importance of having a stable internet connection. Despite these issues, she sees great potential in the technology and considers it a valuable investment for golfers willing to invest time in understanding the data.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Goot YouTube channel
💡St Andrews links, Academy
💡AI (Artificial Intelligence)
💡Ballon smart kit
💡Foot pressure sensors
💡Smart pods
💡Swing analysis
💡Heat map
💡Rhythm and timing
💡Value for money
Highlights
Georgina introduces the Ballon smart kit, a training aid using foot pressure sensors and AI.
The kit is designed to act as a coaching and training aid to improve golf swing and game.
The smart kit includes two foot sensors and smart pods that connect to a smartphone app via Bluetooth.
The app combines pressure data with video analysis to provide personalized coaching feedback.
Georgina plans to use the Ballon smart kit for a month to test its effectiveness.
The kit is easy to set up and use, with a straightforward process for filming and analyzing swings.
The app provides a score out of 100 for various swing metrics, including setup, back swing, and impact.
The app offers both basic and advanced metrics, as well as suggested drills for improvement.
Georgina notes that the kit is versatile, allowing multiple users with different shoe sizes to use it with separate accounts.
The AI technology provides immediate feedback and analytics, but requires an internet connection.
Georgina experienced some issues with the AI not accurately timing the swing, but these can be manually adjusted.
The kit's potential is vast, especially for specific types of shots or training purposes.
The Ballon smart kit is not yet available for direct purchase in the UK, but can be obtained through preferred retailers.
The kit is priced at £549, which Georgina considers good value for the detailed feedback and data provided.
Georgina enjoyed using the kit and found it to be a cool piece of technology with a lot of potential for golfers.
The kit's parent brand, Continental, developed it through an employee innovation contest.
Georgina encourages viewers to consider trying the kit, especially those willing to invest time in understanding their swing.
Transcripts
welcome back to the Goot YouTube channel Georgina here and as you might be able to
tell by the background we are not in Manchester anymore today we are at the St Andrews links
Academy this is the driving range that I spend most of my time at and the reason
we are here is because we are starting a longer term testing than we normally
[Music]
do
so what we're looking at today this is something completely new we've never seen anything like this
although we've seen the technology in different areas of golf so far we're talking about AI here
we've seen it lots in golf clubs with variable face thickness but we've never seen it in a
training aid before so we have got our hands on the Ballon smart kit now what this is is
essentially a training aid that uses foot pressure sensors combined with AI within a smartphone app
so this is meant to act as a coaching a training aid to help you improve your swing and improve
your game so let's have a look at what we've got inside this piece of Kit when we open this up you
can see there's two foot sensors here these are the bits that go inside your shoe they go under
your original insole and then you've got the smart pods here that are currently in their
little charging stations they'll clip onto here and that's how you send the information about the
pressure over to your smartphone by Bluetooth so all of this is designed to clip on to your shoe
and you use it when you're practicing you take videos of your swing so that the app can combine
that with the pressure data and use AI to give you feedback and act like a personalized coat so over
the next month I'm going to be using this during my practice sessions so we're going to be able
to see what this can offer me if it does help me improve my game and if I feel as that I can
use this longterm without it being uncomfortable or annoying so with that said let's get this set
up let's get it in the shoes and see how we get [Music] on Okay so we've got them on connected
to my shoe it wasn't necessarily a difficult process to get them in once you got used to
it and worked out what you were meant to be doing in terms of the feel of them to be honest on the
sole doesn't feel any different to what my shoe normally feels like it's just that little bit on
the side where the smart pod is connected that you can kind of feel it I would say it's just
about comparable to when you can feel your phone in like a jeans pocket so not too annoying but you
definitely know it's there in terms of the way that these look I would say that they're quite
nicely concealed I'm wearing white shoes which is obviously the most contrasting possible color but
because the smart pod is quite small it doesn't look too overwhelming or noticeable that you've
got some big piece of technology attached to your shoe so we're going to get into it I'm going to
hit a few balls we're going to start a new session on the app which also means that I'm going to be
recording my swing so that the app can analyze it so let's see how we get [Music] on so we are
now back a month later I've been using the Balon smart kit in all of my training sessions and I'm
going to be talking you guys through what I found how I've been using it and to be honest there were
a lot of really interesting things that I noticed with this a few frustrating things and definitely
some potential that I could see for some really interesting training progression with the smart
kits as you guys all have seen we've been putting loads of content out recently with all of the new
equipment for 2024 so make sure that you're all subscribed to the golf lot YouTube channel so that
you don't miss any more content from us in the future so when I first used this we were talking
about roughly what we thought it was going to do and how you were going to use it now that I'm a
month into using it I'm going to talk you guys through how it actually works so first of all
what you do obviously is put the sensors into your shoes which we saw earlier on when I first used it
and you set up the phone to film you but something that I realized about three sessions into using
this is that the box is set up so that you can put your phone into it like that and it acts as
a tripod for you so that initial setup and getting it ready getting everything connected and getting
the app set up I thought was a really really easy process and then essentially what happens once you
started the filming process you tell the app it asks you how many shots are you going to hit what
club you're using where the sensors are whether they're under your saw or on the top of it and
then it just puts you into filming as you hit the shots it does does then take a couple of minutes
to calibrate itself and spit out the data back to you and what it gives you is a lot of data it
shows you scores out of 100 for a few different metrics so it gives you overall score the setup
back swing vertical timing Max vertical transition timing Rhythm and impact so that's eight different
metrics that you're getting from the swing video that you took on it it also then shows you a run
back of the video of your swing with a pressure graph heat map and individual scores for some of
the key metrics which it then splits up into the basic metrics if you're maybe somebody who hasn't
had coaching before or you're quite new to sort of looking at swing changes and things like that and
then it also gives you the more advanced metrics if you're somebody that's going to be comfortable
with getting the setup position right timing's right things like that so that you've got the
higher things to work towards so obviously there's quite a lot going going on with it in short all
you need to do is set this up film yourself hitting a few swings and then the Balon app
is going to give you back some feedback basically rate you out of a 100 for different areas and then
it also suggests some drills for you to work on to improve your weakest area out of those eight
metrics so let's talk through some of the pros that I found using this kit obviously as I said
earlier it was very easy to use very easy to set up and connect which was really good one of the
key things that I thought was really good about this is that you only need one of the smart kits
for multiple people to use it so all you need to be able to use this kit is a different Fern
and log in account for every person so say for example if you were a family or a couple or even
a teaching professional provided that the sensor size is the right size you only need one of these
smart kits for multiple people to be able to use it have their own account and keep only their own
data on it when the AI works and everything goes to plan it's very quick and it gives you some
very simple drills so that you're getting feedback immediately and the main benefit for me was really
just seeing how much data it gave you and how granular you can get into looking at the analytics
of your swing so what you get from the feedback which makes it really easy to use and see what's
going on you get this video up at the top here and at the bottom is where all the analytics are so
I'm going to press play on the video and you see the heat map moving you can pause it at any points
if I wanted to know how my pressure distribution was at the top of the back swing I'm getting it
there and you can see all of the different points in the swing you have this balance graph and heat
map and then it splits it into the basic and the more advanced metric so as you can see there the
Rhythm and the max vertical were the two things that were coming in a little bit lower score so
if I wanted to click onto that it gives me an explanation as to what the Rhythm score is and
what the ideal number is that I will be looking to get so it makes it easy to see what you're trying
to work towards and how you're trying to improve things from this data so as you guys can see you
are given a lot of information from every single swing that you put onto the app you could sit and
digest the information for hours on this if you wanted to and it's really impressive how granula
you can get on each of the different metrics so overall I would say this is just a really really
smart piece of technology and the story behind the balance Market is actually really interesting
so the parent brand of this is continental and essentially what they did is they said to their
employees we want you to come up with ideas for new technologies new projects and we'll pick the
winner and bring it to life and so Balon was the winner of that and to me I just think it's really
cool that this has been brought to life it is a really really clever piece of technology and
I feel as though there's huge scope and potential of how this could help golfers so like I said I've
been testing this out for a month and there were a few things that I found that weren't
completely perfect so the first thing was just that I did feel as though you need to have a
decent understanding of the golf swing to be able to interpret all of the things that it's telling
you now one of the ways that Bon does help you with that is that every metric and drill that
they give you you can go onto their page or within the app and find out a little bit more information
about it it could just take you a while to sort of fully digest and understand that but at the same
time if you put that time and effort in you're going to get a really good understanding of your
own golf swing which is obviously a huge positive point the next thing is that obviously since this
is an app and it's using AI it does require an internet connection now I'm not sure when you
think about the majority of golf clubs and the driving ranges the likelihood of having a really
strong internet connection there isn't super high there's not many driving ranges that have Wi-Fi
and that was something that I was struggling with because every so often the connection was
timing out or it was kind of messing with the AI a little bit now the main issue that I had with this
is that every so often the AI doesn't quite work out the exact positions of the Swing so for me I
kind of move my hips forwards and I pull the club back before I start the swing and that meant me
that the AI was thinking that was the beginning of my swing and it meant that it thought that my back
swing was 19 seconds at some point so my down swing was only 1 second so some of the metrics
like the Rhythm I was getting scores of zero out of 100 and this happened for a few sessions and
I ended up just thinking I know my golf swing I know the type of shots I was hitting and I don't
think I was justified in getting a zero score when I looked into that I realized what was happening
and that the AI wasn't quite putting the start of my swing the back swing the impact at the right
timings luckily you can go back into the app and you can change where those positions are it's a
little bit of a longer process it can be a little bit frustrating at times but once you get those
positions in the right place all of the feedback and the data refreshes and you get the right
analytics so did I see any sort of improvement and did I think that this really worked like I
said I only tested it out for a month so it's hard to say that I gained any distance or consistency
or ball speed however the main thing for me was just seeing the amount of potential that is there
with it at the minute it seems as though on the app it's sort of a one siiz fits all you're just
going for one particular swing but I can see a lot of potential if you were looking to use the
sensors for certain types of shots for example if you were trying to play flop shots or punch shots
or somebody like Kyle bursha who uses the balance market for his speed training to be able to chase
super high distances now with that obviously the pressure distribution the type of Swing you're
going to be putting onto it is very different from a normal standard swing so if you were
using the kit for something like that for those different types of shots you would need to know
what types of pressure distributions what timings you're looking for things like that that the app
currently doesn't have in it who knows they might at some point and that would be great if they did
but there's definitely so much potential there if you know what you're looking for and you know
what you're aiming for the balance Market can definitely give you the feedback to see if you're
hitting those points so at the moment the balance Market isn't available to buy directly if you're
in the UK but what they have done is partnered with a few professionals and retailers so you
can still get it if you go through one of their preferred retailers we had a look on the website
and the first one that we clicked on the cost is coming up at £549 so comparing the price of
a few coaching sessions with a professional to investing in the balance market for the amount
of feedback and data that you're getting for this I would say that it's definitely very good
value for money especially if you are the type of person who wants to put the time and effort
in to understand their swing to understand all of the metrics this would be a very good investment
for you so overall I really enjoyed being able to use this with my training sessions the amount of
information that it gives you back is really cool and it gives you so much to work on definitely
something for you guys to go and try out like we said there were a few little drawbacks that
I found with it but if you're willing to put the time and effort in and to persevere with some of
those small issues there's so much potential with the balance Market that I think a lot of golfers
would really enjoy and see a lot of benefits from using this so obviously a really really
cool piece of equipment it's something that we we haven't really seen in the golf space before and
when I first heard of it I was really excited to try it out and I want to know what you guys are
thinking would you give this a g do you think that you would find it useful with all of the
information that it gives you let me know down in the comments if you would look to try this out so
obviously loads to talk about with this piece of equipment if you want to know a little bit more
about it definitely go and check out my written review over on the GOL aot website and if you've
enjoyed this video please remember to drop a like thanks so much for watching And subscribe for
[Music]
more
Voir Plus de Vidéos Connexes
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)