TopSpeed Strength & Conditioning

Congratulations to Aces Fastpitch outfielder Abreya Perry on setting a new TopSpeed gym record for highest standing vertical jump by a female athlete @ 32.7 inches

Perry, a Texas A&M 🥎 signee, betters the previous mark which was held by former Aquinas & University of Arkansas track athlete Grace Allen, by more than an inch.

Way to go Abreya 👏👏👏

So you want to hit more home runs🤔 (or for more power in general)? Then read on 👇

A long time ago in a city far away the strength staffs for the KC & Houston collaborated on research meant to identify KPIs within performance.

One of the metrics identified as a common attribute among players who had a high amount of extra base hits was grip-strength.
Now you might be thinking “duh”, but research among NCAA baseball players (Hughes et al. PMID: 15142011) found that grip strength and instantaneous bat velocity were “not significantly related”.

The keyword there is “instantaneous”, given that the hands are so far downstream from where rotational power begins that actually makes sense.

What we found during our collaboration was that players with better grip-strength were able to maintain faster bat speed throughout the entire swing versus players with weaker levels of grip strength.
In simplest terms, players with weaker grip slowed their bat down earlier in their swing than the players with stronger grip (probably to avoid having the bat fly out of their hand?)

So if you’re on the hunt for some stronger 🤲 try rotating a couple these into your program at the end of a session and see if they work for you.