How to Actually Grip a Disc Golf Disc

All about grips! Let me know in the comments if any of these tips helped you! Our good friends over at@OverthrowDiscGolf have also just posted a grip video, if you’re looking for another in-depth dive!

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Grips in disc golf. Let’s talk about it. All right. What’s up? Today’s video we’re going over grip and disc golf. I’ll be talking about all the ones that I’ve personally seen on the Pro Tour and uh going over about the benefits of each one. Starting off has got to be the most common grip used among Pro Tour players for every shot, which is the power grip. And so that’s where you tuck all four fingers underneath the rim with the thumb on top. Um, you don’t want to really go too much further right or toward the edge of the disc than right there. I usually use this line where the flight plate meets the rim as like a reference point for me. Um, but because I have big hands, sometimes I’m even a little further out, but I wouldn’t go there and I wouldn’t go there. Try to find a good good medium right there. What the power grip does is it has the most pressure into the rim of the disc. So you can get the the firmst grip around it and you’re also controlling the outermost part of the disc versus with a fan grip you’re kind of controlling more of the middle. So obviously the weight of the disc is on the outside so it can create a little more spin. Um and some people would maybe say it makes it more difficult to create nose angles but I would disagree. I think that’s more about the wrist position and and the intuitive nature of it and how you can adjust the angle yourself. Uh but yeah, the power grip I like personally because it’s a very consistent release because the pressure is into the rim and not on the flight plate. It’s not really a grip that is, you know, so dependent on friction. It’s it’s more about like a pinch or a pressure. So, in more difficult conditions, cold, wet, rainy, super hot, even, I personally like it a bit a bit better. If it’s hot outside, sometimes this flight plate can get too flexible and you don’t get the grip you want with the fan grip because the fingers are trying to kind of poke through the bottom. Uh, if it’s wet outside or cold and wet, you find it just slipping in. It’s not feeling right. So, that’s why I like the Power Grip is because it’s the most consistent no matter what. And it’s used by a wide range of players including myself. I know Paul McBth power grips everything. And uh I mean most of my friends, so Babcock, I mean pretty much everybody in my opinion that I’ve seen mostly uses the power grip, but I will go over a few more grips. Now, a couple more grips I have seen are the three-finger power grip. Now, this is for people that maybe have smaller hands. They can’t get their pinky on the rim, so they just use three fingers. I’ve seen Drew Gibson use this grip pretty successfully. Um, but I’ve also seen Aaron Goss uses two fingers to grip the disc. And he’s been doing that, I think, ever since he started playing disc golf. And obviously, he’s super successful with it. Now, I actually have messed around with a two-finger grip a little bit. I think I get a little bit of a better like pressure point or like a like a pinch point for the disc to pivot on because it’s it’s a smaller area that it’s it’s holding on versus like four fingers is holding on to a bigger chunk of the disc. But it’s it’s mostly just personal preference. I don’t think it’s easier one way or another for any of those grips. The other grip you might see is a fan grip. Now, a lot of players use this for mid-ranges and putters, and it’s kind of like that. I’ve also seen like that, or kind of more of like a pinch grip, or even way out there like that, and that’s more like a putting grip. But, um, typically it’s where the pointer finger and the pinky are still in the rim, but the middle two fingers are more fanned out. And the pressure is kind of between the thumb and then the bottom two fingers and you’re pinching it. And that one you can probably throw nose up a little bit easier. So I’ll demonstrate that now. With the fan grip, I can kind of keep the nose up and I’m really pushing with my thumb to try to get that that nose to pop up like that. And it’s going to have a more overstable flight and it’s also going to have a slower flight. It’s easy to slow disc down with the fan grip. You see it’ll go out and it pretty much just died right there at about 150 ft. So, not a grip I personally use because I can kind of get the same exact thing with a power grip, but for some people it’s a little more comfortable. Here’s a power grip. This is what I would do. So, I can get it just as nose up, no problem. It’s going to die out like that. The one thing I will say is the fan grip in my personal experience doesn’t generate as much spin. So, if you don’t know, spin helps a disc in many different ways, but it kind of depends on the shot you want. Because if you throw a disc with a lot of spin, it’s going to hold the angle a little bit longer and want to resist the flex at the end of the flight, but it’s also going to do better in wind. But sometimes you might not want that if the shot doesn’t call for that. Maybe you need a driver that needs to flex out really quick like this. So, for this one, I’m going to put a lot less spin on it. And you’ll see it’s going to hook up pretty fast. I mean, it’s just so nos up and and uh less spin. But I’ll throw I’ll throw my even my most overstable PD2 as an example to show that it can hold turn if it has the right nose angle and more spin on it. And then I’ll throw one more PD2. Similar stability but with no spin. and considerably flexed out faster. So, it might have been a bit more nose up, but in general, less spin will come out of the out of the turn a bit faster. So, it is useful in some situations if you want to slow the disc down or get it nose up at the end of the flight. That’s what it’s good for. Like I said, I kind of just throw a power grip and do that the entire time. Here’s another grip I’ve seen use is like Paul McBth. He kind of pinches these back two together and the front two are a little more spread apart and less pressure. And um he kind of he’ll switch the pressure around depending on the shot. So if you kind of apply pressure to the back couple fingers, it’s not going to really have a pivot point. It’s kind of just going to come out of your hand like that. Where if you pinch the front couple fingers, you’re going to have that pivot point. And that’s going to give you a little more spin and maybe a bit more accuracy kind of depending on on what you’re thinking here. I think for distance players, they really drive that thumb, middle finger, and pointer finger into the disc, and that’s where most the power is. If I tried to throw with just my back couple fingers, it probably wouldn’t really go anywhere. But if I can just use my front two, and I can throw almost as far as I do now. So, like I said, just depends on the shot shape. And um yeah, that’s pretty much it. All right, we’re going to go over the forehand grips really quick. So, to start off, the most common once again is the power grip. Um, this is the stat grip. Uh, actually, so this is going to be the pointer finger and middle finger pressed up into the flight plate and into the rim. Some players stress it differently. Some players really push into the rim where someone like me, I more just kind of push in with my my fingers into the flight plate and then pinch with the thumb. And so I get this pivot right here. You can see it’s pivoting versus if I’m like locking my hand in there, there’s no pivot. Even if I like do the same thing. So when I do that, when I just pinch it instead, I mean, it’s not coming out of my hand. Like you can’t really take that out of my hand, but it’s still got that little extra lever on it. So I actually get more snap. I have done the tech disc and I’ve been recorded as one of the highest spin rates in the world for the forehand. Now I don’t have as much speed, but I can forehand pretty much any disc because spin is very important in keeping a disc stable and not having it wobble. So if you have a forehand that wobbles, that’s probably why. It’s a little bit of off-axis torque, but if you don’t have much spin, it’s not going to want to correct it. And that’s probably why you lean toward more of like a driver because it has I mean a little more gyro around the edge of the rim obviously because it’s it’s heavier there. So, but if you want to forehand slower speeds, you’re probably going to want to find some more spin. So, uh yeah, right there I just pinch it and I snap it. Get a nice clean release and a uh pretty consistent flight there. The other grips I’ve seen is like a split grip. I know Gavin Babcock uses this on his forehand approaches. So, anything slower than a fairway driver. Um, Silver Lot also does something similar. I think his finger is a bit more in like that. Um, but I think they just maybe like how it pinches. Uh, the other grip is kind of like that where the pointer finger is pushed up into the disc like that and then the middle finger is flat. The thumb’s typically in the same position no matter what. And uh the last one I’ve seen is kind of like McBth and Ston. They they actually stack it kind of backwards like that where it’s the pointer finger and the middle finger on top. Uh that’s pretty much it for forehand grips. They all do relatively the same thing. I think the grip that Gavin and Silver use can take off some spin a bit easier and also control the angle because you have that pointer finger out in the middle. Um so can potentially give you easier angle control. And to finish it off, I’ll show you just how I throw my forehand with my grip. money. And a couple more grips that you might see for certain shots. Tomahawk is going to be the same as a forehand, but you just throw it over your head. Thummer, I’ve seen a couple people put their pointer finger like that, maybe like that, but the thumb is locked into the rim there. And then you throw it kind of like a baseball over your right shoulder. Um, and then the last throw is the grenade. Uh, I’d say a lot of people do this grip where they put their thumb into the rim like that. Now, I don’t like this one because it hurts really bad and I get no power. So, I actually do pointer finger into the rim and then thumb on top. And so, it acts more like a power grip in my opinion and I can get an easier pivot. So, with the grenade, I just kind of throw it high. I’m not going to throw this one too high, but you’ll see. straight up, straight down. And that one will hurt your hand for a little bit, but I’ve done it a lot, so it doesn’t hurt as much. And I think the final grenade grip, some people do it the opposite. Some people go thumb and then pointer finger, which that one feels horrible to me, so I don’t do that one. But, uh, yeah, that’s pretty much all the grips that I have seen in disc golf and what they’re good for. Um, like I said, I power grip everything myself. All my forehands are thrown with this grip. So, I have two grips and then I have a putting grip and that’s it for my entire game. I like to keep it simple. That’s been my my whole thing about my entire disc golf game is just keep it simple. So, that’s my opinion on it. You can go out and try all those grips and uh you know, let me know in the comments what worked well for you. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you want to see next. Finally, thanks Ben for uh filming. And if you’re looking to pick up these new Clive Breakers, they are out now. your favorite local retailer or the Discia store.