Grip Strength and Sprint Speed, is there a Relationship?
/I have quite literally completed zero research on the relationship between grip strength and sprint speed… let me just make that clear. The statements/ presumptions I make below are anecdotal as of now, outside of the data I collected today- 1/24/22. Take a look at this post to see it in live action!
As I am sure you can imagine, there is a correlation between all cause mortality, grip strength, and sprint speed. As a human ages, their daily activity level typically decreases for numerous reason. This means, humans typically get slower, weaker, and fatter. We can prevent these outcomes by continuing to stay active, and push our bodies through stressors that bring about specific adaptations to the imposed demands. Simply put, if you want to be able to sprint throughout your life… don’t stop. However, this is not the angle I am taking with this post.
I am searching for a way to determine an athlete’s “readiness” within a training session, and a more accurate representation of development over the course of a training cycle. At TP, we use numerous tests to track these metrics like: sprint speed, jump height, reactive jump height, and body composition- just to name a few.
As strength coaches, we create plans to solicit a certain outcome at the end of the plan. A good plan means we adapt the original plan to the current situation. Sometimes athletes walk in the door fresh and ready to go, and other times… quite the opposite. To help determine the sessions plan I need to get a feel for the athlete’s current level of readiness by having conversations with them, watching their movements during the warm up, and comparing the day’s exercise metrics to past performances.
This is crucial because athletes need to be at a certain level of readiness to complete high output tasks safely and effectively (aka- sprinting, jumping, lifting heavy things). An ill-prepared athlete training at high levels could cause excessive stress, injury, or a failure to accomplish the goal for the day.
This has brought me to today’s test: Is there a relationship between grip strength and sprint speed? If my grip strength got weaker as I got fatigued, would my sprints and jumps suffer the same fate? If my grip strength improved, would my sprints and jumps improve? Could I use a simple grip strength test to predict the sprint speed of an athlete? To answer these questions, I took myself through 8 rounds of the following training block:
1- max effort grip test
2- rebound jump test
3- 20 yd dash
The results:
Inconclusive! There was no correlation between my speed, jump efficiency, and grip strength. I believe I know why. My sprint and jump endurance is high, (I have been training these qualities for years) and my max grip strength endurance is low (I literally have not done this before). So… as my sprints got faster and my jumps got higher, my grip strength went down. A result of local fatigue and global readiness elevation.
Conclusion:
For a highly trained individual such as myself, I could not find a relationship between grip strength, sprint speed, and jump height. My grip test went up and down generally, but I kept getting faster. My best grip test outcomes wasn’t even paired with my fastest sprint or best jump. I believe more data from multiple athlete types is needed to determine if we can use grip strength as an accurate representation of speed and jump efficiency.
