Comments on: Baseball Specificity of Open vs. Closed Hand Strength

By: Dan Blewett

Dan Blewett — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:59:58 +0000

Having a loose grip until impact is definitely necessary for maximum performance, but let me offer another reason to have a crushing grip: it allows more force to be applied to the bat with less effort. If your hands are weak, then you have to exert more of your maximal strength to simply holding onto the bat throughout your swing, and especially at impact. If your grip is incredible, then suddenly having relaxed forearm muscles becomes easy, as it takes relatively little effort to maintain control of the bat.

By: Dan Blewett

Dan Blewett — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:55:59 +0000

That study, while it shows a correlation between softball players, I think is very limited. It’s not just increasing bat speed that we’re after, but applying force to the ball. Imagine if someone pitched you a bowling ball – if you could even manage to hit it forward, the collision of the ball and bat might be so great as to knock the bat out of your hands. Your grip would be the limiting factor at impact, because higher forces would suddenly be applied. Youth hitters sometimes appear to have their bats knocked backward by the ball at impact, because the shock of the ball has more of a braking effect than with stronger hitters.

By: Jon Hart

Jon Hart — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:56:52 +0000

I should elaborate on the “sound” I referred to, strong hitters bats make a different sound, because the bat is not allowed to stop and compresses more. Many good hitters will listen to the sound of their bat and know the difference.

By: Jon Hart

Jon Hart — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:54:41 +0000

Increased grip strength yields increased bat speed and power, but only if the grip is loose until the point of contact. If the bat is not allowed to move backwards as it makes contact with the ball, ie strong closed grip strength, the trampoline effect is magnified, thus providing a more true sound, and as I like to call it, thwack. The simplicity of it is, strength is never a downfall.

By: Dan Blewett

Dan Blewett — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:08:04 +0000

That’s an excellent point, Fred. Yes, for a hitter the point of having a great grip is not to squeeze the life out of the bat. Rather, as I will discuss in a later post, additional power is generated through forearm ulnar deviation as the bat comes through the zone, and bat control is enhanced by the grip in general. Tense muscles don’t perform well, as you said.

By: Fred Dimpfel

Fred Dimpfel — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:54:47 +0000

Article hyperlink that did not copy over:
http://www.iowaahperd.org/journal/j97s_baseball.html

By: Fred Dimpfel

Fred Dimpfel — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:53:36 +0000

I am a big believer in grip strength and I specifically train my forearms every week through a variety of exercises. My goal is to crush a man’s hand when I go to shake it as well as rip as many phone books in half as I can at social gatherings. As arbitrary as my goals may be, I am very tuned in to grip training. I have worked with Dan and seen vast improvements in my grip strength by applying the methods he is talking about. But with all the success in the forearm muscle growth department, I question its applicability to the baseball swing. Several years ago, I partnered with my baseball coach and intensively studied the baseball swing and one of the concepts we settled on was that bat speed was generated by hip rotation and body torque. Another concept that we focused on was the grip of the baseball bat. We determined that a loose grip on the bat relaxed the muscles in the forearm and allowed the arms to move faster thus the bat will swing faster. Surely you have heard this concept before, relaxed muscles react and move faster than tense muscles. I challenge you to grip the bat as hard as you can and swing it, then grip the bat easily and take a rip. Which one feels faster? I guarantee the easier grip felt faster and we could measure a difference in bat speed too. I came across this article and although the study was applied to softball players, there was no correlation in increased grip strength with increased bat speed. With that aside, the point I want to make very clear is that there are benefits to increased grip strength although they may not pertain directly to bat speed. Strong dense forearms are beneficial to a hitter as opposed to a hitter with toothpicks connected to his elbows. The strong forearm hitter should be able to wield the bat with more control than the weakling and therefore better control will lead to more consistent contact with the baseball. And when I think about the great hitters during the steroid era of baseball, they obviously had monster upper bodies with big forearms to boot. Barry Bonds became a massive human being and I believe his increased arm strength allowed him to control his bat that was moving faster due to increased hip explosiveness. So do not use your massive forearms against you and squeeze the life out of the bat, instead use them naturally to grasp the bat with increased control.