I have often stated that we do not know what takes place (what we do) in execution of a skill. You may think you know what what you do but studies have shown that we are wrong well over 95% of the time. Even the world’s best athletes can not accurately describe what they do in skill execution.
The reasons for this are not well known. Most likely they are due to lack of cognizance when learning and perfecting the skill. However this cannot be expected of the youngsters who learn mainly by imitation not through verbal instruction and understanding of what takes place. For higher-level athletes technique is often ignored and there is no discussion of what takes place in skill execution.
Thus, it is not surprising to find even the world’s best athletes making statements of what should be done that are erroneous. For example, one of the worlds best golfers advocated holding the club as gently as possible — the way you would hold a baby bird.”
In addition, he stated that in order to develop good rhythm, “you should keep your hands soft at the address and throughout your swing; never ‘grab’ the club mid-swing.” The idea here was to have good rhythm and a long, fluid swing.
In essence, he believed that it is necessary to be relaxed with only a touch of tension in the muscles so that they can act with explosive force. But do these statements hold water when viewed from a scientific perspective?
It is true your hands should be soft at the address. This is great for being relaxed at the beginning of the swing. However you should not be relaxed throughout your swing. If you kept a loose grip at the moment of contact or when the club was building up speed, you would lose the club. It would fly out of your hands!
At and before contact your grip must be tight. In addition to not losing the club, this is the only way the forces generated by your body will be imparted to the ball. Perhaps even more importantly is that for the muscles to act explosively they must have prior tension.
Understand that rhythm implies a change in speed during a swing. In the golf, baseball and tennis swings there is a distinct buildup of speed from when the hitting implement is behind the body to when it is in front of the body. Because of this as the swing speeds up your grip must also become tighter for the reasons stated above.
After contact, as you go into the follow-through portion of the swing the grip once again gradually relaxes. In other words, the grip should change in accordance with the speed of the moving implement. Speed does not remain constant during a swing, nor does the hitting implement remain constant during a swing.
For more information on the role of the grip and how you can improve the feel and strength of the grip see Build a Better Athlete and especially Explosive Golf. For demonstration of exercises that you can do for the grip especially with the Exer Rings see the Explosive Golf DVD.