How Grip Strength Relates to Club Head Speed

Have you ever been told that you should grip the club like you are holding a baby bird?

On this live webinar, Mike Napoleon PGA and Dr Tyler Standifird talked about the latest research in grip strength and grip pressure and why lack of grip strength can cause

✅ Lack of club head speed
✅ Inability to properly to maintain correct mechanics at the top of the backswing and start of the downswing
✅ Difficulty hitting the ball out of the rough
✅ Loss of ball speed on off-center strikes
✅ And much more

They also discussed the grip strength differences between tour plates and amateur golfers.

Learn more about the SuperSpeed Squeeze Training here – https://bit.ly/superspeedsqueeze

Welcome everybody thanks for uh joining us for a little bit of uh you know fun kind of tech talk here on the golf side uh actually one of our favorite topics of late uh you know talking about grip strength grip pressure and how it can affect the golf swing uh joined here

With my good friend uh Dr Tyler Stanford so Tyler everything good yeah first day of class yesterday so no complaints about grades yet so uh it’s makes for a good start to the the week always a good start to the season when the uh college students aren’t complaining y um just a

Few things as we’re getting going here uh we do have a Q&A panel uh on this Zoom meeting so if you have any questions while we’re going over some of this initial information uh please type it in that Q&A panel uh Kyle Shay is going to be here as well he’ll answer

Some of those questions uh while we’re going and then other ones we will answer at the end uh we’re going to probably go through about 20 minutes or so of information and then we’re going to just open this up and uh see where it goes so

Uh Tyler anything you want to add before we get rolling no like you said I think it’s just been something we’re excited about because we feel like we’ve been able to kind of put some data Behind These topics that I think have been talked about for a long time and uh just

Excited to share what we’ve been what we’ve been finding out absolutely um is that screen looking good to everybody all right so I think we’re there well Tyler I guess this is the big question right like we’ve talked about grip pressure as golf coaches for the better part of the

Last 200 years in in you know a lot of different ways um I think the general consensus that we would say out there you know if if I talked if I if I pulled just you know golf coaches across the world I think most people are going to

Say we don’t want grip pressure to be too strong that it’s going to inhibit the movement of our hands um I that’s probably the first thing that we we hear when we when we do those type of surveys you know maybe about a five or six out of 10 you know we’ve

Heard all of the old adages about hold it like it’s a baby bird or the tube of toothpaste without squeezing it out you know I I think when we get started here why don’t we actually Define what we’re talking about when we talk about grip pressure and then let’s also maybe get

Into what we’re talking about when we talk about grip strength yeah for sure I think Mike that’s kind of the key where when we’re looking at these two things as we look at the way that these have been talked about for all these years it’s important to distinguish between

What strength is which which for us and we’ll go into this in a lot of detail but it’s mainly an idea of just how much static strength does does someone have right how much can they squeeze how much can they hold you know what what does

That look like grip pressure is more of a representation at least the way we’ve talked about it I think in golf instruction has been more about what percentage of our max strength are we kind of holding on to right is it a seven out of 10 is it an eight out of 10

Where where is that pressure located in the hand lead versus Trail what’s the balance between the two and it’s really important to understand both of these mik because both of them feed into how golfers can utilize their hands in the golf swing okay okay so you know me I

Like to keep things as simple as possible it’s always my goal um you know interpreting the college professors what what what I like to do so I think it’s fair to say that grip strength is capacity so that’s how strong are your hands and grip pressure

Would be how hard do we push on the grip I I think that works right I can I add a caveat Mike I think would be the pressure is kind of how hard we’re pressing or squeezing on the grip uh maybe relative to our own strength

Capacity okay yeah I I like that so and again I think it’s a more complicated situ situation than just simply like how hard are we squeezing you know mainly because you know what part of our hands are we using to squeeze with you know what part of the grip are we actually

Squeezing and I think another big question that I want to answer today is when during the swing are we producing the most grip pressure you know is it the same throughout you know does it change from player to player so we got we got a lot of cool questions here well

The first thing that I would say is let’s make sure everybody knows just some background here on how we measure this stuff you know the screen that’s up right now um is basically the dashboard for a piece of technology from sensor Edge um that’s actually a driver that

Has pressure sensors built into the grip you want to talk a little bit about you know because we’ve been using that system to measure grip pressure a lot right yeah and this is this is I think where we’re able to talk about these things a little differently now just

Because of the advancements in the technology right you know even as recently as I don’t know 10 to 15 years ago we were trying to wrap pressure map map things that we use in feed around a grip to measure that and and now we actually have the capacity to have these

Sensors come in to actually look at exactly where the player is pushing exactly how hard they are pushing um and if we create some nice static calibrations that’s when we can get into these percentage values and so this is a great piece of technology that allows us

To dynamically look at what’s going on during the swing and I think that’s where we’re able to understand more what’s going on in the swing itself okay so you know this piece of technology measures a lot of things it’s going to measure the exact like heat map of where

On the grip we’re putting pressure now that can adjust a little bit when you know depending on players that have an overlap grip or an interlock grip or a 10 finger grip because it’s only really telling where it is on the grip not necessarily exactly where it is on the

Hands but we can get a general sense of you know how much is happening for from the lead hand how much is happening from the trail you know the thing I like the most is that it’s going to give us a dynamic graph of exactly how much of

That pressure is happening at different points in the S so we’ll get into that a lot more here as we go through some of our players uh you know grip pressure traces and then let’s also take a look um at how we measure grip strength and

That one’s a little bit more low Tech right yeah this this is cool right Mike I’ve got plenty of these in my lab you can find these on Amazon I mean this is just a a handheld dynamometer which basically is you can see we give this to

A player um we set it and they squeeze this thing as hard as they possibly can um and this is how we’re measuring that that capacity that Mike described right a player might squeeze this and generate you know 50 kilograms or 100 roughly 110 pounds that would be the capacity of

That hand to produce grip Force yeah and I think that’s another key we need to keep defining as we go through this you know there’s going to be different things to do to increase capacity and there’s going to be different things to do to maybe alter or change the way you

Pressure the grip during the swing depending on what you’re doing right now um I think it’s also important to note that the measurements that we’ve taken have been on a fairly thin setting on a grip dynamometer you know the one that we use that you see Cody Blick there

Holding um can get a setting that’s about the same diameter as a golf grip it’s probably still a little larger than a standard golf grip but it it’s smaller um or it’s a pretty thin size so that we’re measuring somewhat of how that player’s hands work on the same size

Implement as a golf grip and then obviously we also get uh measurements with the sensor Edge technology as well actually on the grip now Tyler next thing I want to look at is just yeah I kind of want to jump to the end if you

Will and and look at kind of what we’re seeing as the biggest Trend here and why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about how this uh this came about yeah this was a a fun study I got contacted by someone who was doing a kind of one

Of those uh I don’t know Community fundraiser type golf tournaments there was going to be you know eight eight players on every hole and they wanted me to set up a little booth somewhere and I said give me a straightaway par 4 where everyone’s going to be using driver um

And allow me to measure their grip strength uh and I took my trackman out there uh and basically measured every single person’s grip strength and measured their Club speed via trackman actually physically out on the golf course so this was a population again it end up being I think about 130 golfers

Or so who did the study maybe a few less a nice mix of men and women nice mix of various handicaps various Club speeds and and again take you back to just some basic uh relationships of kind of linear correlations just plotted these two curves against each other grip strength

Uh in kilograms versus Club head speed in miles per hour and I I think you can can easily see that positive correlation that trend of as grip strength goes up Club head speed goes up and this isn’t unique to us Mike I think this is something that we see in other people

Who are looking at this data but it was pretty neat to have it in a population of of over a hundred golfers in just one afternoon yeah we’ll talk some more about some of those Trends you I just feel like there is a major correlation here with especially with players that

Have deficiencies in grip strength not being able to create Club speed you know the other side it’s not like guaranteed if you have a lot of grip strength you’re going to swing the club really fast but it certainly gives you the option to be able to yeah for sure and

And I understand Mike that uh grip strength tends to be uh related to overall strength and I think that’s true but but I think what you just described right there is really key and that I’m looking at people who have these deficits and grip strength like you automatically know there are some things

That they’re going to struggle with in the golf swing whereas again these players that generate just massive amounts of grip strength it might not mean they swing fast but they sure have a capacity if they do a few things right in the swing to generate high club speeds yeah absolutely okay well let’s

Let’s switch gears here a little bit and let’s talk a little bit about how we can possibly increase grip strength capacity all right and you know first let’s look at some of the things that you know we’re seeing out on the PGA tour with professional athletes obviously they’re

Probably not Olympic powerlifters but a lot of these athletes are doing exercises that involve bars dumbbells kettle bells you know anything where you’re grabbing a bar and holding it that has weight to it I mean indirectly is going to have positive influence on grip strength you know I remember back

At our academy one of our favorite warm-ups for our players was always farmers walk and you it’s just something where you’re holding heavy dumbbells or kettle bells down to your side and just walking and doing laps around the academy and you know that over time is going to strengthen your hands I mean

Where are some of the other things that you see just in general exercise that can improve this yeah that’s a big one I like that one Mike which is again just picking up heavy things and lifting them again something that I’m starting to see is like people using those straps if if

They don’t want grip strength to be the rate limiting factor of the exercise a deadlift or something and again the issue there is now we’re actually limiting kind of what we’re doing with the grip strength and so I think on the other end of that mic is is actually the

Idea of fat grip training so this is one of my favorite things that I I’m seeing in the gym which is actually throwing these fat grips around the bars um and if any of you have ever done this or or seen people doing it the idea is that it

Just really kind of creates this high high level of activation and what you’re doing with the grip strength muscles um I’ve actually Incorporated this in my own training where I throw these in my Farmer walks and do fat grip farmer walks uh and again it’s it’s wild the

Type of stimulus that you can can start to get and again this these are great things to do Mike I think these are wonderful ways to increase grip strength um it just does require again some of this this type of stuff or being at gym type settings or or frankly even a

Golfer who uh is dedicating that amount of time to their strength and conditioning program which I just don’t think we often see in our in our amateur golfers yeah and again there’s other ways to train grip strength in the gym too I mean there’s all kinds of different hand exercise devices one of

The big things that we’re looking at here is you got to activate more muscles in your hands wrists and forearms that might not be functioning as well or activated um prior to this and that’s really one of the things that these like fat grips in the gym will do um we had a

Interesting question I think we can just toss in right now you know about talking about grip pressure and you know is is grip size important to that well I think it fits in really well right here like if I have somebody that has deficiencies and grip strength getting like a larger

Grip is probably the first thing I’m going to try because I can tell you this if we just make that dynamometer bigger and give that person more room to grab on to essentially they’re instantaneously going to be able to produce more grip strength you see that

Too yeah I see that same thing I think that’s an easy test to do to know if that is a problem right if I have a player that on the smallest setting let’s say they do 30 kg which is you know below what we would maybe like to

See and then I make it a little bit bigger and that jumps up to 45 kilograms all of a sudden I think I have a pretty good understanding that this player is going to really benefit from a larger grip because when we make that bigger they’re able to produce more static grip

Strength um and so without a doubt uh you know grip size and the fitting of of these grips plays such a role and is is nicely tied in with grip strength I I think it actually may be like a chicken in the egg kind of uh uh you know

Situation here um I think one of the popularities that you’ve seen with midsize and jumbo type grips that have been happening over the last few years it’s because there’s been a little bit less stigma in trying them and I think some people that might have a grip strength deficiency are finding that

They can much more easily control the golf club using those slight larger grips um I think it’s a pretty interesting thing I think it’s a situation though where you know if you’re used to a standard siiz grip and you have a lot of grip strength capacity

There’s no issue right it it’s all about is there a deficiency and then how do we attack the deficiency one of those ways is to do what we’re doing talking about now and that’s increasing capacity which is again some of these things in the gym um and we’ll talk about our super speed

Squeeze a lot more but you know super speed squeeze is essentially a fat grip that fits on a golf club so we tried to make it really easy for people to improve grip strength capacity by using that training device and we’ll talk about you know the protocols and how

They work in a little bit we also have a new protocol to show everybody today which we’re really excited about so Tyler let’s say we have somebody with grip strength deficiencies you know what are some of the things that we see very typically um in the golf swing what what

Happens yeah and we always like to talk Mike about this idea of there’s some things that you aren’t going to have maybe the capacity to do right just having a lot of grip strength opens the doors I think for some things and one of the biggest things is uh off-center

Contacts right so there’s a lot of cool research about this funny enough in tennis I actually sent a study of this to Mike uh recently which was this idea of like they’re literally shooting tennis balls at this at a tennis racket and when you hit it right in the middle

Of the tennis racket racket you don’t really get some of these twisting effects of of the tennis racket um same thing happens in golf where really off center hits which you know we’re going to see from time to time uh the more ability you have to produce grip

Strength in that swing the more you’re going to be able to control some of that twist and get a little bit more stability in those off-center hits and find that you’re not going to lose quite as much distance uh or or lose accuracy with some of the twisting of the face

And that’s a big one Mike yeah this is another one of those you know kind of backwards sort of things with grip strength and grip pressure like you know tour players generally hit the ball much closer to the center of the face than amateurs and you know they have the

Ability to stabilize and control that club head at impact whether it’s hitting the ball first and then the turf you know not hitting fat shots or hitting it right in the center in The Sweet Spot you know they have a lot more grip strength generally than amateur golfers

Amateur golfers who have those deficien icies generally lose even more ball speed when they hit it a little off center lose even more ball speed when they hit it a little bit fat or a little bit thin than than a tour player would so that you know again it’s just almost

Like a catch 22 there for your amateur players y you know I see this guy all the time I mean how many how many people out there ever get that that issue when you’re you know rolling through your your golf gloves you go through 10 golf

Gloves a month and things like that you know I think one of the main reasons this happens you know either at impact or in transition of the club um is going to be able to like really have enough pressure on the grip that the club doesn’t twist in your hands and that

Twisting motion toward the butt of the club there is really what wears that hole in your golf glove right there so just another one that we see all the time just being able to maintain control during uh transition you know obviously getting through the rough is another big one I

Mean we’ve had we’ve had one of our LPG tour players you know told us last year that you know she has a hard time playing in like the Midwest and the Northeast like she gets in the rough like she has a hard time hitting much

More than a wedge out of there and then we watch you know tournament on the PGA tour where they’re hitting out a 4-inch rough and they take a seven iron and nuke at 180 yards like obviously it makes a big difference when you’re talking about stabilizing the club head

As you’re going through a whole bunch of extra grass yeah and I think Mike this is a cool one closer to home maybe for some of you that are working with you know maybe your senior golfers or your Junior golfers most of my golf this last

Year was was spent playing with my 72y old mother or my 11year old son and my main message to both of them was just stay out of the rough you know those are populations that tend to lack grip strength and it’s like watching you know

My mom get in the rough it was just such a long hole for her because she just had no capacity to do anything in that rough and so huge hugee deal for our our players with low grip strength yeah so I mean kind of as a a summary on on the

Way I like to think of what does grip strength do for you in the golf swing you know it just raises the speed limit that’s what I would say like if somebody has a massive grip strength deficiency they are not going to be able to swing over a certain speed without

Having significant compensation in the swing that could be early release or casting that’s a good way to take less pressure off of that connection um it could be excessively long back swings like the transition of the Swing not happening in kind of a short and Powerful kind of position where we get

Good down swing loading like those longer swings a lot of sometimes that’s because they can’t stabilize the club to make it change direction um we’ll talk about that when we get into you when in the swing do we use pressure but that’s a big one what anything else you see

There that I think is important to note here I think what you said said there is the the idea of the massive grip strength deficiencies right something I’m starting to test on all the players that come through my lab and again when someone grabs this and all of a sudden I

See very very low numbers and a player who wants to swing the club faster you know I instantaneously know that this is something that has to be remedied otherwise we could spend all day long working on different techniques and things but we’re just kind of beating our head against a wall Mike right

Because their limiting factor is going to be grip strength and so we’ve got to attack that first and then dive into maybe these other things that we want to do to help them build more speed absolutely well we got a a good question here about you know what are the ranges

Of grip strength that we’d like to see well I I just said we’d answer this one live because it’s this it’s it’s this information so this information comes from about 10 years of our testing at our Golf Academy and also a lot of the

Tour data comes from TPI so this is on a lot of players we’ve got a lot of stats here um up through long drive professionals tour players LPGA players and amateurs and you know these are kind of the numbers that we’re seeing um you know I I think that number that like 60

Kilogram Mark for like Elite level players I like to see that especially if I’ve got a player that’s trying to push above 120 mph Club speed which again I would kind of consider that like Elite bar that that’s kind of starting to come out um you know again look at that speed

Limit kind of kind of range right like we talk about 120 and about 60 kilograms I think that’s a fairly we’re starting to see that as a pretty fair fair piece there I think when we get down to amateurs you know like when we see those grip th those grip strength numbers get

Down in the 40s like if I’m seeing Club speeds above 105 to 108 and I’m only around 40 I’m getting really concerned that there’s going to be compensation we start to look at like you know amateur females we start to get down in those like high 20s like I’m generally always seeing some

Kind of compensation from grip strength there like whether it’s lack of downswing loading casting early release again excessively long back swings that look like they just can’t change direction you know are those kind of the similar type things you’re seeing Tyler yeah and I like when you talk about the

Idea of compensations because it’s it’s not saying that they’re not going to maybe try and figure out a way to generate some of these speeds it’s just that they’re going to maybe do it in ways that aren’t going to promote some of the consistency that we want to see

You know in the swing and if someone talks about ranges and deficiencies again my my rule of thumb is again it’s maybe a little bit dependent upon that player’s speed but if I see a female golfer come to me and she’s you know below 35 kilograms for sure below 30

Kilograms I mean I am like this is the very first thing we need to attack right away if I’ve got an amateur golfer that’s you know probably below the you know maybe 40 for sure 45 even and they want to generate some Club head speed I’m thinking we we’ve got to get this

Number going up more into the the 50s or higher for that amateur male and for sure you know 35 to higher for females I mean I I look at 30 and Below as emergency procedures and I mean we’ve had tour players you know that have come to us in

That range and it is unbelievable the type of results you’ll see within a few weeks of it like because a lot of people just don’t do anything that even activates or even you know Breeze down the idea of working on grip strength so yeah I mean this stuff gets better fast

And you can see the trends too as you get up to your long drive professionals that are Swinging The Club at 150 mph obviously there’s a lot more Force going on there they have to be able to stabilize the club more it’s not shocking that those players have ridiculous grip

String um so why don’t we take a look at a couple of these real quick so you know let’s look at some of this sensor sensor Edge data and kind of look at that typical pattern of of what does it look like during the swing and how much uh

Grip strength these players are producing so this first one Tyler’s Cheyenne Knight um this is from last year in I believe early May um this is before we started working on some of this and and we saw some big Improvement here she ended up having a great season

Last year but um I’d like to think a little of that was grip strength so why don’t why don’t you go over this graph for everybody real quick yeah there’s there’s some nice things that uh that Cheyenne’s doing here things that we see in in our better more consistent ball

Strikers and I think the first one I would point out is the variability in the red and green curves meaning what we don’t see is just that like GP pressure turns on and stays basically the same level throughout the swing that that’s often something we see in our low-level

Golfers our high handicappers our players who tend to struggle with consistent contact it’s like they just grip that club and don’t alter the amount of pressure from lead to Trail or combined pressures and so you can see Chan does a very nice job of kind of building some pressure to initiate some

Takeaway then you can see those curves drop as she kind of goes further in the back swing and then what we what we often see in the very best players is a peak as they’re starting to change the direction of the club that’s a time where that golfer really needs to

Generate more pressure so they can alter that change of Direction um and then we kind of see that tend to actually tail off a little bit as they come into impact um so that’s kind of what those curves are showing Mike and we like to see that on Shan we just maybe would

Like to see some shifts uh maybe potentially upward in terms of raw numbers I think it makes a lot of sense right you need to pressure the grip more aggressively when you’re making the club start moving or change direction let think about it that way once it’s

Already moving in a direction you know you don’t have to apply a lot more Force to keep it going you need to apply the most force and pressure when you need the club to change direction so you know if we walk through this this is an address right and you know this is

Pretty pretty typical of what we’d see with a lot of players you know she’s you know if you look at that red line is her lead hand the green line is her Trail hand um we’re seeing you so the 6040 those big numbers are showing what percentage is on the lead what

Percentage is on the trail and this is very typical lead and’s going to be a little bit dominant there and then below that those percentages are her percentages of capacity so at a dress she’s at about 62% of her strength capacity on her lead hand and 39 in the

Trail now as that goes through the swing you’re going to see those things change you know as we get up toward the top of the Swing we’re we’re jumping up a little bit you know we’re up to 81% on that lead um and transitions is kind of

Peak of where she goes we’re at 95% of her Peak on her lead hand and 74% of peak on her Trail and you know that when I see that when we’re getting to Almost 100% I’m G to you know guess that that’s a player probably could use some more

Grip strength capacity cuz they’re having to Max it out pretty good in transition to get that club to change Direction um and then you know as we get into impact it goes down which is pretty typical you know she maintains a good bit on the lead hand here yeah and

That’s a cool one Mike I I think as you look at those those white percentage numbers and that’s kind of this this thing we talk about in terms of what is the pressure right what is this scale out of 10 am I a five out of 10 a seven

Out of 10 and and you can see here in Cheyenne during transition she literally gets to almost a nine n and a half out of 10 10 and when you start seeing those numbers start to creep up towards the 100% capacity I think that’s a good a

Good sign that for that player’s swing speed it would be a good idea to raise the ceiling a little bit so that we can generate the same amount of force but at a slightly reduced pressure yeah and I I’d say this too um everybody’s a little different here you know I think it

Depends on that type of golf swing if you have a player you know let’s let’s just jump in look at padri here but if you have a player who is creating an incredibly large amount of downswing loading so players that create huge amounts of lag they’re probably going to

Need to create a little bit more grip pressure than a player that doesn’t do that and you know padri is one that creates a lot of lag so I’ve got him here top of the back swing um you know Peak capacity here we’re we’re pretty strong and you know

Just so you guys know Padre’s one of those those players that’s above 60 kg so he has all the capacity in the world and is still you know producing a significant amount of grip pressure especially during the transition of his goall swing but I mean to you does that

Make sense based on the way he swings and how much l lag he creates yeah for sure you know this is one thing it was fun to test padri and recognize that his power source was with that downswing loading and the lag and so obviously his

Hands are going to play a big role in that um and and I’ve seen this in amateur golfers as well right one one of my buddies that I’ve tested who generates a lot of speed in the same way Padre does just a ton of down swing loading really uh I would say mediocre

Ground reaction forces uh his grip strength was above 64 65 kilograms big percentages you know those are the kind of things that like you just need a lot of capacity to be able to do that and so it tends to sometimes just match the way they generate speed well I mean in our

Assessments we test grip strength statically to see if that’s going to be a potential big power source for that player you know if I’ve got a player that has a little bit of a deficiency and grip strength and isn’t creating a lot of lag like it just it tells a coach

Kind of where you can go I think I think it’s a big thing to look at too for sure um padri does decrease a little bit down into impact like most players again I’d say he’s probably one of the more aggressive press Meers of the golf grip um that we’ve tested for

Sure um and you can kind of see I mean he does create just a tremendous amount of downswing loading so that that’s kind of a common thing that you would see with a player that does that all right well let’s talk about you know some of these squeeze protocols like you know

The level one squeeze protocol it’s available on the website right now is pretty simple I mean it really involves just a lot of activation drills of squeezing that on a golf club about as hard as you can making some Swings with it doing some burst squeezes doing everything we can to activate muscles

And get the uh get the hands and forearms um you know stronger um again there’s a lot of other things you can do as well to work on grip strength this one’s just really easy it doesn’t take that long and it fits on your golf club

So I I know that that’s been we’ve seen some big results with players with this thing hey Mike can you describe a a little bit about what the squeeze actually is made out of how it feels I think there’s some people probably have never seen it before yeah I should have

One here I don’t have one right with me but um you can see Cheyenne holding it there it’s essentially made of a kind of firm silicone material it slides on over your grip so it’s basically has a slit down the side fits over the the shaft

And then goes up on the grip it’s tapered inside so it won’t come you know the club doesn’t come flying out and you use it by again holding it on top of the golf grip and squeezing it in various different positions um as we move into

Our second level of protocols um this is the a brand new protocol that’s going to be launched here this uh this you know probably within this next few months um this is going to be coming out with our super speed golf app um this one takes

It a little bit to the next level so we start to do some more of these positional holds in the golf swing we start to do some drills that kind of tie in a little bit of wrist and uh you know kind of face control mechanics especially with that squeeze it down

Drill and transition um we do some of these we’re really trying to work on that throughout uh transition and then also hitting shots with it so we look at the level two here I’d recommend you know about 8 to 10 weeks of that level one protocol and you can do that

Protocol anywhere from 3 to five times a week is going to be fine after you’ve done that for a period of time this one’s going to be able to start to really apply it even closer into some of the moves that you need in the go swing

So we’re really excited for that level two squeeze protocol as well and I would say mik just if I can add in from the difference in the level one and level two as we’ve talked about it we’re not saying that the squeeze is the only way to to improve capacity of grip strength

Right there are lots of options out there and I could grab a thing and just squeeze it at my desk I think the beauty of of what I’ve started to see with the super speed squeeze and my data Collections and in my interactions with golfers who are utilizing them is some

Of this stuff which is the actual transfer to the golf swing itself which I can’t do that with uh really any other grip strength training device this is one that I can throw on the golf club and start to feel those positions I want to be in when when I need to generate

Pressure and when I need that to be a little bit more relaxed I think it just beautifully connects grip strength the capacity to how you want to use it in the swing yeah I mean this is all the level one is mainly about it’s just improved capacity level two is kind of

Applying that to the swing is a good way to say it we had a question in there about uh hitting balls with the squeeze there are we do hit shots with the squeeze on a golf club that’s I think one of the most cool things about the

Squeeze is that you can do that um I think that really takes that application side of that training to to the next level um we had kind of debated back and forth doing that for a while um you know Tyler did some good testing on it and

Showed that there was no real downside there plus when we uh did our initial filming with padri I mean he just put the thing on his seven iron and walked up and you know just smashed a seven iron about 195 yards so we’re like well I guess you can hit balls with

It all right Tyler a little bit about the uh initial study that you’ve done and some of the other stuff that you’re working on now to test more of these these improvements and then we’ll get to some questions yeah for sure and this was kind of a fun initial start which

Was we did want to make sure that uh this was a good training device to improve grip strength um you know we were we were pretty sure it was we put it through a couple of of individuals and ran some testing and then this was one where we actually did a study where

We I was able to look at golfers this was I think about 12 or so golfers over the course of four weeks they just did this three times a week you know 10 or so minutes a day did the level one protocols measured uh isometric grip strength via a dynamometer

Um and after those four weeks saw increases of you know 5 to 6% depending upon the hand um and so that was really exciting for us you know because I have access to to wonderful facilities here we threw them on trackman as well and actually saw some upticks of about a

Mile and a half in their driver speed uh this was actually a population that was a nice mix Mike we had I think there were three females in this study two senior golfers uh and then the rest were kind of your traditional um I guess amateur golfer between the ages of maybe

30 and 55 um and so this was a was a great study um and that kind of led us into then kind of looking at some of the things we’re doing now which is also looking at some of the sensor Edge data pre-post um training with the squeeze

And looking at how some of those pressures change I’m looking at these things over time and then also as we start utilizing this level two protocol um how does that then alter some of these things as well as some of the atics of the golf soon which will be fun

To start diving into as well absolutely all right well I’m going to get this screen share off here and I think uh let’s let’s dive into some questions Kyle you got any that are at the top of your list yeah we’ve had a lot of questions about um other devices people

Can use like those hand uh Crushers um what else they could do just like a little training device then also other things outside in the gym uh Tyler I might throw that to you I know we talked about some of the pinch grips and the uh

Thumb the scrip um if you could review just a couple more of those for the people that are interested yeah this is where I would say Kyle that like again there are just so many good ways to train grip strength and maybe that’s not what Kyle and Mike want me to say right

Now which is that there are a lot of things we can do and we know this right we know this from a lot of research again uh via you know some of the things that we’re doing with our our kind of hands to create different grip things

And uh again you know squishing balls and squishing things that way and and people talked about farmer walks being good ones I think I saw a question about you know hangs and I like hangs my only issue with hangs is that potentially we’re now getting limiting factors from potential shoulder muscles and arm

Muscles and we’re not really isolating grip strength which I think is our goal and so that’s where I tend to go more towards kind of a farmer’s walk um I would I would still add that I think the beauty is and this is something I see a lot in biomechanics which is just

Because I increase the capacity of a muscle doesn’t necessarily mean that that person’s going to utilize it the correct way in a movement be it running walking any kind of weightlifting and so um I love the combination of having this on your golf club which then allows you

To maximize capacity but also then practice the techniques you need to translate it to a swing perfect thanks Tyler um we’ve also had several questions about why aren’t most grips big on clubs uh would you recommend a larger grip as an older golfer even more than a midsize Tyler

Maybe you could also add about uh what Liam has seen with the uh correlation between finger length or hand length and and grip size yeah it’s been fun to connect with Liam mlo and Carson H up at the golf lab in Canada they’re doing some awesome awesome work in fact they

Were the ones that first introduced us to this sensor Edge technology and and we’ve been able to have some good conversations with them and yeah my favorite thing is that there literally is zero correlation to hand size and grip size and in fact what we what we

Probably see more often than not is that these individuals with really small hands maybe our our women our Junior golfers uh they tend to have smaller hand sizers lower grip strength and they tend to do much much better if we could get that grip a little bit larger so I

Think that the answer to that question about why aren’t more people using larger grips I think it’s partially we just didn’t know as much um I think Liam and their most recent study said 80% of people are in the wrong grip size and that’s probably because at the end of

Most fittings the question just kind of becomes hey what grip size do you want us to throw on the clubs and you just say I don’t know standard with two wraps um as opposed to actually testing it and seeing hey you could really benefit from

A little bit of a larger grip and I would say like I I want to say that most indiv individuals would benefit from having a little bit of a larger grip size unless they just have through the roof grip string yeah I mean I can add

Some stuff on the golf side I can say that pretty definitively at this point that hand size does not really determine what type of grip size you should have um I think testing your grip strength could probably give you a better idea you know if you test it with a kind of

Narrow setting and then a slightly wider setting could definitely tell you if you’re somebody that with a little bit more width there could could use their hands better in the golf swing um I haven’t really seen any definitive studies at this point that prove you know that bigger grips cause you to not

Be able to close the faces easily like that was kind of the old consistent thought in the club fitting world that like a bigger grip’s going to make me leave the face open and a smaller one’s going to make me close it easier I mean we don’t really see that when we test

Closure rates and things like that so I I mean if the big idea there is why aren’t grips slightly bigger I would ask that same question I think the trend that we’re seeing is that a lot of players are moving to slightly larger grips you know whether that’s midsize or

Adding wraps or things like that or or things like jumbo Max that are out there and most of the time there are very positive gains from doing so thanks both of you um a couple questions about should we have a similar grip strength and both hands does it

Hurt if one hand is more dominant or extremely stronger than the other and then also question from Alexander about if your say a Phil Mickelson style golfer you’re right-handed but actually swing the golf club left-handed is there any implication there on how that might affect this I would say uh let me hit

This first and then you can add in Tyler I’d say the trend we see with every player we test is that the lead hand in the golf swing is more active on the golf club than the trail hand so whichever way you swing the golf club it’s certainly very important that your

Lead hand is strong now that being said I wouldn’t really want to see a huge difference between the two like if I’m looking at an athlete and helping them max out their speed and power I want both of their hands to be as strong as possible because you know again I I

Think my team makes fun of me for saying this but there’s just no downside to getting more grip strength capacity in your hands whether it’s your lead hand Trail there’s no downside to it it’s not causing anything to go wrong in your swing all it’s going to do is help you

Control and stabilize the club better so yeah I mean more is better that’s my real detailed answer I would say those asymmetries or differences between the hands can really be a telling sign of maybe something else that’s going on when they get really big right like I I

Know in the study that I did I measured both of them and I didn’t have time to go through an injury history of that person but I would hand it to him lead hand might be I don’t know 35 kg and then Trail hand was 52 kgr and you’re

Like what happened they’re like oh I’ve had like three surgeries on my lead hand shoulder and some elbow pain in the past and all of a sudden like oh wow I again I didn’t have time to assess that but I think it’s coaches that can be a really

Wonderful way for you to kind of dive into some of the things that might be going on to cause those deficits and and as Mike discussed I I always get really really concerned when I see a lead hand that is significantly lower than the trail hand just because we know how

Active it is dynamically during the swing or should be thanks guys just to kind of top off this uh one topic we’ve had some questions about grip texture should they be softer uh to feel those and also is there any implication on the lead hand uh strength with wearing a glove within

The dynamic uh testing versus not any differences there yeah I mean generally speaking players going to do what they do whether they have a glove on or not obviously if the grips are really worn and Slick um that player’s probably going to have to apply more pressure to

Be able to stabilize that club than if the grip is really tacky and softer um obviously yeah the more friction you can create between the grip and your hands the easier it’s going to be to control the club so I guess theoretically Tyler you could have slightly less grip

Strength if the grip is softer bigger tackier than if it’s smooth but you know I I I think general rule of thumb there is get the grips that you know are stabilized in your hands and then make your hands as strong as possible yeah you you give me a chance to give an

Equation and I will so the equation for friction is the coefficient of friction multiplied by the reaction force which is coming as a result or reaction of your squeeze and so it’s both of those things and so as Mike described you know as your hands uh or as your grip gets

Older and slippery right your coefficient of friction goes down it’s less sticky so the only way to create more friction is with more squeeze and if you don’t have that capacity you’re going to run into a lot of issues and so again old grips you know needing to be

Replaced I think is a big thing to look at gloves that wear out quickly you know those are all things that play into this role because of that friction equation perfect um a couple questions on swing weight if grip pressure is related to swing weights if you apply

More pressure that way and then what changes on swing weight if you uh get larger grips I know jumbo Max has some uh really light versions of huge grips out there now yeah absolutely so you know the heavier the swing weight of your clubs essentially the heavier the

Moi of that club is going to be so you know it’s like you’re swinging a heavier Club the heavier the swing weight is the heavier the club the more you know the more stability you’re going to need to create on the grip end in order to control the club head so yes lighter

Weight clubs I think would be a another way to fix you know or another way to attack an issue where somebody has a massive deficiency in grip strength um that’s the way I would look at it like if you have a lot of grip strength you can probably handle a heavier swing

Weight heavier Golf Club you know with more control uh if if you don’t you’re going to probably need to go lighter weight bigger grips generally are heavier uh now you’re going have to look at all the different companies because some of the companies have made larger volume grips that are not heavier than

Standard golf grips but a lot of times um adding that slightly larger grip can reduce the swing weight of your club for some players that may be a good thing you know if you’re a player that’s really dialed into exactly what that swing weight feel has felt like for many

Years you know you may want to alter That Swing weight by adding some weight you know either in a tip weight or something like like that on the head if you want that to match but we have also found that adding some weight on the handle

End which is going to reduce the Moi of the club can be a benefit for a lot of players too so you know that’s one that I think you just have to test yeah I I’ll just second that really quickly one of my favorite things about being involved with super speed is the

Individuals I get to interact with um in in our environments and situations and collaboration so one of those is Zan Frasier up in Canada um and really an excellent fitter lots of cool data that he collects and I would just reiterate what Mike says with if you are a fitter

Or if it’s something that you push your players to do really understanding grip size and getting that dialed in and then kind of moving through or having that a part of your process so that you can tailor these swing weights for that player and really test it um it’s just I

Wish it was as simple as kind of one thing I think Mike expressed some like good general rules but but just be willing to test it right figure out that way to see because I think we’d see a lot of players improve uh distance and consistency when they’re fit in the

Right grip and a nice matching swing weight to that sounds great um would you guys uh be able to discuss uh any injuries with grip strength training especially uh within the elbow I think that’s always a good question that people bring up I haven’t seen anything with the

Squeeze I mean again we’re not doing re like these are more isometric type holds and movements and bursts like yeah we’re not adding a lot of resistance or weight to it I mean for sure I think I’ve seen more issues with players that have existing either injuries or conditions

With their hands and wrists and asking you know more if they should try to do this training Tyler maybe you can hit some I’ll just say with with the group I had I think that that last part is key if you have this pain going in for sure

Any type of grip strength training is going to exacerbate that pain in the in the elbow region so we do first need to get that under control once that’s under control um isometric training and this has come out in research a lot where it used to be we kind of thought you know

Tendons and ligaments it were just really hard to train they still are hard to train they’re not as responsive to training as muscle um but what we’re starting to see is isometric type training can be a wonderful way to actually improve the capacity of tendons and ligaments and those things so I my

My theory would be if you have nothing going in and you do this training the right way build into it as we describ which is probably starting out with maybe you know three or so sessions a week and then building up from there um I only see a benefit moving on as the

Capacity of those muscles increase and you’re no longer working at 95% when you’re coming through the rough I can tell you on the medical side Tyler I’d love to see a study of grip strength numbers through populations of golfers who do suffer from elbow tendonitis golfers elbow tendis elbow I would be

Very very shocked if players that have a lot of those issues you know I I bet they also have some grip strength deficiencies and it’s causing other things to overwork yeah it’s a good hypothesis I think so again that hasn’t been tested but I don’t know

That one just seems like one that we could we could prove pretty easily all right a couple more really good questions here for those that like to test their static capacity using a dynamometer um Steve brought up that we’re using the Jammer one which is a great one a little more expensive side

If they wouldn’t wanted to do that on their own and didn’t have access to that is one of the cheaper digital spring ones sufficient and if so how would they set that up I mean I’d say yes I would say you know some of the we like the one

That that Jamar one because you can get it at the same size as a golf grip but you know if you can find one that has some settings that make it slightly thinner um and even if you can’t I mean if you can test it at all it’s better

Than nothing um so I I’d put that in that kind of good better best type of scenario yeah and I think if you’re if you’re using the same device to track your improvements in your grip strength you know what might not be that a $35

One is quite as accurate as a $400 one but here’s the idea if the $330 one you test on that thin setting and your grip strength is 25 kgrs it might be that you’re somewhere between 22 and 30 but there’s no way you’re 50 and so I think

That gives you an indication that it’s time to get after it and train and then you now have a good device that you could utilize repeatedly and watch those numbers go up um and so I I think I think finding something like that um could be a very great way to start and

Kind of move from there sounds great uh another question about chipping and pitching um how that pressure looks uh also training a lot with uh one-handed chipping and pitching Tyler I know we’ve got some great data that we just had plus uh we had that great anecdote Mike I think I sent you

From Scott Stallings about that wasn’t really Our intention to actually use it for chipping and pitching a lot but we’re getting a lot of feedback on that side yeah for sure I mean look the old thought that like we’re going to maintain exactly the same grip pressure throughout that entire motion just it

Just doesn’t really happen that way um again even in a short motion when you’re making the club change direction or move you’re going to apply more pressure than when you’re not you know if anything we would see less grip pressure at impact with chipping and and pitching than you

Would with full swing just because you didn’t need as much you know to make the club move in those directions I think generally you’re going to see a little less but you’re still going to see the same pattern yeah and and I’ll just add I think when we describe these

Individuals who are really great around the green I would say that the common um description I hear about them is they have great hands and what I think about when they have great hands is is it’s it’s a player who can apply the right amount of pressures uh and the right

Amount of raw values but not be like at 95% of their Max right again when we see in these really lowlevel amateur golf offers even in chipping they tend to push that up you know into the 90 95% range I saw some cool data that again Liam and carso Carson collect on this

That we’ve kind of seen similar things which is the idea that again the closer you get to that 100% there’s just not really anything left over to kind of get that feel around the greens and do that chipping so I just I I think it can can

Be a really wonderful part of improving your work around the greens too that’s great just a couple more questions Mike OB obviously we’ve had a few uh inquiries about the app maybe just touch on that just briefly just for those that are still with us I can say

That all of us are all smiles and extremely excited about this app that’s coming so uh we’re going to be uh debuting kind of an alpha version of it at the PGA show this year um you know there’s a lot coming here I mean number one we’ve got what Tyler 20 new

Protocols coming out yeah so we’ve got supporting physical fitness we’ve got ground reaction force rotational sequencing lag and wrist mechanics ball speed application I mean there’s a ton of new stuff coming with the app so just stay tuned and be ready when when when that all gets here um the tracking and

Analysis side is unbelievable in there we’re really excited about all of that and we’re not just tracking like your speed Club swings I mean we’re we’re going to be collecting Driver club speed ball speed we’re going to be tracking gains where it really matters um really showing everyone how to create

A very comprehensive speed and power program the same way we would do um with a lot of our tour players we work with so yeah stay tuned coming soon thanks Mike uh a couple more questions here a good one about taper versus no taper in the grip how that might show dynamically

And if people should be looking more into possibly a no taper style grip um I think it’s some interesting stuff to test um you know I I think probably the overall size of it is going to matter more than whether it tapers or not um and again your lead hand is the one

That’s producing more pressure on the grip and that’s the one that’s on the top part of the grip I’m not yeah I think we’d have to do some more testing to see if that made that much difference yeah just don’t have have the data to

Answer that Kyle I will say that I I do think part of the equation of this is also the feel of the golfer right if I put a golfer in in a grip that they just are not comfortable with and they just cannot get comfortable with you know

That would obviously be a negative effect for that player and so maybe some of this taper stuff would come down to that where where what Mike suggested is again I think a bigger grip would be definitely worthwhile trying um I think maybe taper no taper at least my initial

Hypothesis would be that that might be more of a subjective how does that feel to the golfer um rather than maybe seeing something different on the data yeah uh quite interesting question from Alexander would would just squeezing harder increase someone’s Club head speed when they’re Swinging with their current club or their grip

So I’m gonna say probably not but the that’s with a few caveats here so the the first thing that I would say is that if it’s a player who mentally is just has been told their whole life I got to grip this thing at a four out of 10 or a

Five out of 10 or I got to grip this thing super super light and that’s a goal that they have throughout the swing is to make sure they’re never gripping it very tight and they’re gripping it super light if that player doesn’t have PGA T level grip strength they’re probably

Having some issues there that could be limiting their Club speed throughout the swing now that being said you know if it’s just xrandom person that doesn’t have that predisposed you know thought process of how they’re supposed to be doing it I don’t think gripping it stronger is going to make a huge significant

Difference just by making that action I think increasing their grip strength capacity if they actually do train that and get stronger with their hands has a very high likelihood of increasing their swing speed perfect now Tyler I’ll kick this one over to you why are we um why are we

Using kilograms versus pounds and then just give quick quickly people the conversion right there if they want to yeah yeah good question um I would say actually probably the main reason is that those who have been collecting data before us did it in kilograms and so I

Think just to to make kind of some kind of cohesion there it’s kind of nice to make those comparisons quickly um again the conversion would be 2.2 so 2.2 pounds for every kilogram and so if you want to think about in pounds uh again kilograms will always be smaller than

Pounds uh and so just multiply that number by 2.2 or divide your pounds by 2.2 uh to get into kilograms so you’re thinking big numbers on the PGA tour in pounds 135 140 pounds of grip string for sure yep yep then last question here about a axe handle style um any thoughts

There I mean seen some testing in baseball um you know where if there so thinking about the fact that a golf grip is completely round and and in the rules of golf has to be round um on on most of those clubs like it doesn’t apply too

Much but you know if you have edges where you can especially if you’re starting to try to create rotational torqus in the grip if you have edges that are going to create essentially more friction in your hand I could see that being a possibility of something that could increase your ability to

Control the club with less grip strength Tyler yeah I mean it friction and also maybe like the direction of some of these reaction forces right that would place it in locations and directions and point of applications that could really uh kind of enhance some of that again I

Haven’t tested that but that would be kind of what I theorize with that y sounds great well I think that uh hits us right on the hour mark and gets through all the questions really great webinar again guys all right well appreciate everybody spending some time with us this evening uh recording of

This webinar will be available tomorrow so um yeah we got a lot of exciting stuff coming here at super speed golf this next year so make sure you’re following us on all of our different platforms and uh stay tuned because yeah 2024 is going to be a big year here at

Super speed thank you everybody for uh for staying Tyler good to see you have a great evening and Kyle thanks for moderating we’ll see everybody next time yep thank you