22 Golf Training Aids to Lower Your Scores in 2024

There are a lot of really good training aids out there for your full swing, and for putting, but not so much for those shots around the green that can have such a big influence on your score. The Chipping Plate from WhyGolf, however, is a great tool for your short game.

You’ve probably seen or heard of weight-shift boards (and if you haven’t, keep reading!) to help you learn the proper weight shift for your full swing. Similarly, the Chipping Plate forces you to keep your weight right where you want it for your short game shots, on your lead leg. Hitting shots with a premium focus on a fundamentally sound base will bring a new level of consistency to your all-important short game.

Perfect Hands is the perfect training aid. There’s a velcro belt, some clips, a glove, and a resistance band. On top of that, it promises the moon. Fix a slice, cure a hook, add more power. Longer, straighter shots.

The thing is, it works. In fact, Perfect Hands guarantees it, promising a minimum of 8-10 miles per hour of increased club head speed, plus better on-plane efficiency in 4-6 weeks when you follow the recommended training, which takes about five minutes a day. The rough conversion says that each mile per hour of club head speeds equates to the potential of three yards of distance, which means you can expect to gain 20-something yards in about a month of using Perfect Hands.

Once you get hooked into the Perfect Hands properly, the resistance bands guide your hands to the proper swing plane with a more connected swing. Taking advantage of those resistance bands, it comes with four “acceleration” bands, Perfect Hands is a unique form of overspeed training, which helps you gain speed and distance. 

If you want to go all-in on your distance gains, you can opt for Perfect Hands’ accelerated training program, or do the free recommended program.

Yes, the Speed Toad has company in the overspeed training market. But it has one huge advantage that its competitors can’t offer: you train with your own shaft. Presumably, a shaft you were fit for, and perhaps the one that is better for your swing than any shaft on planet Earth.

Speed Toad creators Bryce Mooney and Sam Attanasio told me that using your own shaft helps you transfer the speed that you gain into your golf swing at a 1:1 ratio, whereas using a weighted club on a different shaft might not translate the same way.

You may also notice that the Speed Toad is one unit. That’s because Bryce and Sam realized that the heaviest-weighted club in overspeed training might not actually be effective at helping you swing faster. Meanwhile, the one that’s meant to mirror the weight of your driver can be replaced by your actual driver head.

The Speed Toad connects to your driver shaft – assuming you have a driver with a removable head – and fits all the major manufacturer’s adapters, just select your brand at checkout.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of Speed Toad is that after creating it, Mooney and Attanasio selfishly kept it to themselves rather than sell it. They spent a year training with it behind closed doors, climbing the World Long Drive rankings before deciding to bring it to market. Now that the secret is out, anyone can train with the Speed Toad and the rest of World Long Drive can breathe easy.

GolfForever is more of a golf fitness program than a traditional training aid, but hey, anything that helps your golf game fits our criteria, and it won’t be the last non-traditional training aid to make this list.

GolfForever is the official golf fitness system of the PGA Tour, which should be all the proof you need that it’s all business when it comes to taking your golf fitness to the next level. I went through a 10-minute warm-up session with GolfForever, and was struck by how much it tested my balance the big muscles in my golf swing.

The entire system includes all the apparatus (training bar, resistance bands, grips, etc.), and expert instruction within the GolfForever app. Use it to gain flexibility, strength, club head speed, and strengthen your fundamentals.

In my opinion, every golfer should have a putting mirror. It’s a small and simple device that helps you solidify your putting fundamentals. Once you use your putting mirror to learn the ideal set up, simply check in with it once or twice a month to make sure you don’t fall into any bad habits. It’s an easy and affordable way to build some consistency into your putting routine.

Here’s another simple, yet effective training aid for putting. Jeto Putt is a small device that attaches to your putter, straddling the sweet spot. Simply put it on and start hitting putts.

Jeto Putt forces you to hit the sweet spot every time. If you miss the center, the ball will shoot off severely to the side. Hit the sweet spot, and putts roll true.

I gave the Jeto Putt a try and can attest it gives valuable, instant feedback on every stroke.

Tempo is one of the most underrated elements of the golf swing. Part of the reason for that is it’s a hard element to train. You could train with a traditional metronome (or metronome app) but I’ve tried it, and it’s a really clunky and confusing experience.

The Tour Tempo app is like a metronome for your golf swing, and for a one-time, $25 purchase, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. 

When you swing to the beat of the Tour Tempo app, you not only feel the proper 3:1 ratio of backswing to downswing, but you might even find that you gain some speed in your downswing (I did). You can speed up or slow down the speed of your swing in the app while maintaining the ideal 3:1 tempo, and the app also comes with a short-game mode with tones set to a 2:1 tempo.

If you’re willing to put a little effort into your game, and you’re open to a new way to reading greens, I highly recommend trying WhyGolf’s Putting System.

First, you use the slope plate to learn to use your feet to judge how much slope is in your putt. When you show up to the course, use the small stimpmeter that’s included to gauge how fast the greens are rolling that day. Finally, use the green-reading card included to match the green speed with the break in your putt, and get the precise break, and your target, on every putt.

This is another training aid that’s perfectly legal to use under the Rules of Golf. And WhyGolf is so confident you’ll become a better putter that they offer a one-year money-back guarantee.

Lag is one of the most popular buzzwords in golf instruction, and if you want lag in your swing,you want the Lagmaster.

The Lagmaster attaches to your club and gives you feedback you can feel to teach you how to swing to optimize lag. The ball at the end of the Lagmaster should touch your shoulder at the top of the swing. When you keep the ball on your shoulder until your lead arm is parallel to the ground, you’ve got optimal lag, and you’ll get a lot more out of your swing than if you start the downswing by casting the arms, a common mistake by many recreational golfers.

By training with Lagmaster, you’ll engrain the ideal swing sequence and likely become a better ball-striker.

BAL.ON was one of the coolest products I saw at the 2024 PGA Show. Slip the pressure soles into your shoes to get 18 data points on where exactly your weight is distributed, and when. Use the app to pair that data with video of your swing to get a virtual lesson on how to optimize the foundation of your swing.

I got a full demo from a representative with BAL.ON on his feet and the corresponding app on the iPad in his hands. It was cool to see in real-time how accurate the sensors pick up weight transfer, and how that corresponds to a successful golf swing.

The ProSENDR doesn’t force you into any positions during the golf swing, but it gives you feedback you can feel when you get into the right positions. It trains you to use your wrists, hands and arms effectively throughout your golf swing, and also helps you with connectivity in your swing as well.

The unit itself is almost like a glove. You strap it to your wrist and during your takeaway, your goal is to make contact with the cradle behind your wrist, and maintain that contact. If you can do that, you’ve learned a better golf swing. 

Since the move isn’t forced – there’s no pressure pushing your wrists into the correct position – it’s learned, and it’s much more likely to stick.

GEM stands for Golf’s Essential Move, and that’s exactly what the GEM Golf Swing Trainer aims to teach you.

The GEM Swing Trainer clamps to the bottom of your grip and has a rod with a weight at the end. When you train with the GEM Swing Trainer, that weight will help guide your swing into the correct positions, showing you exactly how a great swing should feel. 

The system actually comes with a few rods. The longest rod is used for the shortest swings, and as you use the shorter rods, you can lengthen your swing. 

This is a great unit for golfers interested in feeling in improved swing plane and release, which will lead to better ball-striking, and of course, lower scores.

No matter what aspect of your game you need to focus on, there’s a training aid geared towards helping you improve. To really reap the benefits of your work, commit to diligently practicing and building your skills until they’re second-nature. This will help keep that dreaded miss from creeping back into your game as soon as you put the training aid in the garage.