ABOUT KENN HUNDLEY
Todd and Kenn Hundley, Shea Stadium Randy Hundley, Kenn Hundley,
Todd Hundley, Rick Dempsey, Los AngelesKenn Hundley is an inventor. He has been designing and manufacturing strength training equipment since 1983. He has been training golfers all over the world since 1989. Here is a partial list of the places that he has trained golfers and sold the Long Ball Trainer: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Dubai, England, France, Germany, Hawaii, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, The Philippines and Venezuela.
His first patent was on a multi-function gear puller designed for the automotive and aerospace industry called The Complete Puller. Before he invented the first emulator, he had already created some innovative improvements in the gym equipment industry through his company Perfect Body Fitness. In 1984, Perfect Body Fitness was the first gym equipment manufacturer to paint gym equipment white. Until then, everything was either black or gray. Kenn also created some innovative improvements to gym equipment that are still being used today.
Kenn's second patent was for the line of sports emulators he developed starting in 1989. The only reason that the emulator technology ever came about, was purely accidental. Kenn started to play golf on a regular basis in his late 30's. But there was a problem. His brain only knew how to swing a baseball bat. Kenn grew up in a baseball family. He even played one season of minor league ball for the Cubs. Kenn's brother is Randy Hundley who was a catcher for the Chicago Cubs in the 60's and 70's. Randy's son, Todd Hundley would eventually train on Kenn's batting emulator. All of this baseball history was not helping Kenn's golf game.
When he started to take some golf lessons, it did not take long to realize that the golf instructors could play very well and explain WHAT Kenn needed be to doing his golf swing. The problem was that the instructors did not know HOW to get Kenn's body to perform these movements. He knew that there was a disconnect between what the instructors knew, and how to get Kenn's body to learn. He decided to approach the learning aspect of golf from a different perspective. So, Kenn designed and built a training machine called the Golf Swing Emulator, to help him learn the kind of golf swing that the pro golfers had. The first person to get on the Golf Swing Emulator beside Kenn, was Hall of Fame baseball player Ernie Banks. The next day, Ernie played in a golf tournament and won it. That was in 1989 and Kenn went on to form the company Specific Athletic Movement Emulators or SAME. Within a year, Kenn had also made a batting emulator, a throwing emulator and a football and soccer kicking emulator.
In 1992 Kenn traveled to Japan to set up a deal for a Japanese company to buy golf and baseball emulators. That year, Kenn sold several box cars of batting, throwing and Golf Swing emulators to a company in Matsumoto Japan. In 1993, Kenn also allowed the field goal kicker for the Phoenix Cardinals, to use his kicking emulator for a week. At the end of that week, Craig Davis broke the record for the longest field goal ever kicked for the Cardinals franchise.
Also in 1993, Kenn sold a batting emulator to the Chicago Cubs. In 1996, Kenn sold a Batting Emulator to the New York Mets. In 1997, NBC in Phoenix, did a interview with Kenn that featured Sammy Sosa and Kenn's nephew, Todd Hundley. The interview showed the before and after results of Sammy and Todd using the batting emulator, along with the before and after results of several other major league players. That interview can be seen on Kenn's YouTube channel under Sammy Sosa-NBC.
In 1995 Kenn established the first sport specific training facility in Scottsdale Arizona. The SAME Performance Center featured all of Kenn's individual emulators and he also started to train athletes. In 1996, a PGA tour golfer walked in off the street. He had heard about Kenn and his golf machine at a party. Kenn worked with this PGA pro for about three months in his facility. This golfer had to qualify to get into the 1996 US Golf Open. Not only did he qualify to play in the tournament, he went on to WIN the tournament. His name is Steve Jones. This has only happened twice in the history of the U.S, Open. Soon after this happened, The Golf Channel invited Kenn to their studios in Orlando to do a segment on the golf swing emulator. An interview with Steve Jones is also on Kenn's YouTube channel and Steve is talking about how the Golf Swing Emulator helped him win the 1996 U.S Open.
Kenn was obviously on to something but he was not satisfied with what he had. He knew this technology worked, but he could not explain exactly why. This is when he started to do research in the field of neurology at the ASU Science Library in Tempe Arizona. That work started in 1998 and Kenn is still at it today. You can see one of the research papers that he wrote on the subject of motor memory learning by Googling the phrase "How the brain learns the golf swing".