This device could FIX YOUR GOLF SWING! | BAL.ON Smart Kit Review

Summary

In 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

00:00

🏌️‍♀️ 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.

05:01

📊 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.

10:01

🤔 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.

Keywords

💡Goot YouTube channel

A reference to the YouTube channel hosting the video, where Georgina, the presenter, shares content related to golf. It's a platform where viewers can find golf-related videos, tutorials, and product reviews.

💡St Andrews links, Academy

A location mentioned in the video, likely a golf academy or training facility, where Georgina is situated for the video's recording. It signifies a change of setting from the usual Manchester location.

💡AI (Artificial Intelligence)

AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and learn. In the context of the video, AI is used in a golf training aid to analyze and provide feedback on a golfer's swing.

💡Ballon smart kit

A golf training aid that uses foot pressure sensors and AI within a smartphone app to analyze a golfer's swing. It aims to act as a personal coach, providing data-driven feedback for improvement.

💡Foot pressure sensors

These are devices that measure the pressure exerted by the golfer's feet during their swing. They are part of the Ballon smart kit and are used to gather data on the golfer's stance and balance.

💡Smart pods

Components of the Ballon smart kit that clip onto the golfer's shoes and are used to transmit pressure data to a smartphone via Bluetooth. They are part of the system that enables the AI to analyze the swing.

💡Swing analysis

The process of evaluating a golfer's swing technique to identify areas for improvement. The Ballon smart kit aids in this by providing detailed data and feedback on various swing metrics.

💡Heat map

A graphical representation of data where the values are represented by colors. In the context of the video, a heat map is used to visualize the pressure distribution across the golfer's feet during their swing.

💡Rhythm and timing

Aspects of a golf swing that refer to the tempo and synchronization of movements. The Ballon smart kit evaluates these metrics to help golfers improve the consistency and flow of their swings.

💡Value for money

A concept that assesses whether the cost of a product or service is justified by the benefits or quality received. In the video, Georgina discusses whether the investment in the Ballon smart kit is worth the potential benefits for golfers.

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

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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

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