This video, I'm going to explain to you a concept called paddle swing weight.
Too often we worry about the paddle's static weight.
That's how much it weighs on a scale.
But that's not what matters.
What matters is the paddle swing weight, which means how it feels when you're out
on the pickleball court swinging the paddle around.
It's a really important concept for you to understand.
Well, this video is for everyone.
I want to make sure that, ladies, your ears are perking up as we talk about this
because in general, our forearms are smaller.
And so if we have a paddle that's the
wrong weight for our game and our strength in our arm, we risk greater injury.
Absolutely. I came from tennis to pickleball.
And in tennis you saw tennis elbow.
So you saw tennis elbow straps.
That was something that you saw on the court.
I did not see the frequency of tennis elbow wraps in tennis in my 40 years of
playing tennis that I've seen in my seven years or so of playing pickleball.
So the injury that's happening to your arm is not medical advice.
We're not diagnosing you. But I can tell you that if you have a
paddle that's too heavy for you, chances are you're overstressing your arm.
So, C.
J, we're going to go into the lab and I'm going to show you how to calculate these
numbers that are on these paddles, these three different paddles, and show you how
the balance of the paddle affects the swing weight.
The single most important characteristic
in a pickleball paddle is the paddle's swing weight.
The paddle swing weight will affect how the paddle plays,
the speed you can wield it out on the court, so how fast you can move it around,
how much power the paddle will impart into the ball, as well as potentially damage to
your arm from a paddle that's too heavy when you swing it.
Now, swing weight is different than static weight or gross weight, if you will.
So static weight would be if I took this
scale and I put this paddle on the scale and weighed it, this this paddle, I did
that just a little bit ago, the paddle weighs
7.83 ounces, which is right in line with what this paddle is supposed to weigh.
That's its static weight.
But when we play it on a pickleball court,
we're not holding the paddle like this and playing pickleball.
We're holding the paddle like this and
swinging it through the air in order to hit the ball.
I'll explain these blue marks and these blue tapes in a minute.
You'll understand them because this is how we're going to
calculate paddle balance, which is a component of swing weight.
But the first thing I want you to understand is that what matters the most
of your paddle is the swing weight of the paddle, not its static weight.
To be perfectly clear, static weight is relevant.
So the static weight of your paddle is
relevant, but static weight alone isn't enough.
You need to know the weight of the paddle
as well as the balance of the paddle and the length of the paddle in order to
calculate the actual swing weight of a paddle.
So what you're looking for is swing weight.
They make some pretty fancy machines that calculate swing weight.
They look like a centripetal machine.
So it takes the paddle, it grabs it and it
swings it around and it calculates the paddle swing weight.
I don't have one of those in my lab here, but I'm going to show you here is I'm
going to show you how to do the same calculation I did here,
which is a calculation that's been used for a long time in tennis to calculate
whether a racquet in tennis is head heavy, head light, or evenly balanced.
We can do the same thing in pickle ball to
figure out relative to other paddles, whether a paddle is head heavy or head
light, and then we can try and figure out, get some idea as to the paddle swing
weight by combining the weight of the paddle with the balance of that paddle.
I'm going to use this rough paddle I draw
on the board here to explain to you how paddle balance.
Would be calculated.
The first thing you need to do is you need to know the center line of your paddle.
That is literally the center point between
the bottom of the paddle and the top of the paddle.
So this line is approximately halfway between the two.
So this would be the center line of the paddle.
In a world in which your paddle was evenly
balanced, this would be the point at which the paddle would teeter.
I'm going to show you in a second how to do this.
You can do this at home with your own paddle.
You can calculate the head heaviness of your paddle.
Head light doesn't really apply in
pickleball, and I'll explain that in a second as well.
But I'll show you how to do it. You can just use a table.
In this case, I'm going to use the edge of my desk here in my studio to show you how
you can calculate the head heaviness of your paddle, how head heavy it is.
But the center line is one important marker.
Then the other mark you're going to find
is when you take the paddle and you put it on the edge of the table, which I'll show
you in a second, you're going to come up with a second line.
So this line here will
be basically the line at which the paddle starts to tilt off of the table.
So this will be where the balance is.
So this is the balance line.
And then what you're going to do is you're
going to calculate the distance between these two lines, the distance between the
center line and the balance line that you've come up with.
And then we're going to use the same convention here that they use in tennis
because it's a convention that's been used for years and it works very well.
For every one eighth of an inch in
distance between these two lines, you're going to assign one point.
Now, I mentioned earlier that you can have
an evenly balanced, you can have headlight, you can have head heavy.
That is true in tennis.
In tennis, the rackets are much longer, so
there's a lot more space towards the grip in order to have weight there.
So you can have rackets in tennis that are actually head light, meaning that this
line is actually on this side of the center line of the racket in that case.
For pickleball, I have not yet come across a paddle that is head light.
So spending a lot of time talking about
headlight in a pickleball paddle, probably is not going to make any sense.
This is a pretty evenly balanced paddle.
And in fact, I'm going to bring this paddle out for a
second video where I'm going to suggest to you a baseline that you can use
for your balance line, for the number you're going to calculate.
And I'll give you a little spoiler here.
This paddle comes in at eight points head heavy.
So this paddle is eight points head heavy.
By telling you that it's eight points head heavy.
And again, in pickleball, I'm pretty
confident that once all the dust settles, this is not going to be necessary because
there's not going to be any head light paddles.
But for purposes of being complete, eight
points head heavy tells you that this
line is one inch from the center line.
If you had a paddle that had a balance
line that was further this way, then the number of points will increase.
The other paddle that I'm going to show
you, the test that I ran on actually comes in at 11 points, head heavy.
What that tells you is that paddle is actually one and three eighths
inch away. The balance line from the center line.
And what that tells you relative to this
self work paddle that I'm showing you that's eight points.
This other paddle, which is a Franklin
beginner model paddle, comes in at 11 points head heavy.
What that tells you is that paddle is
actually one and three eighths inch away, the balance line from the center line.
And what that tells you relative to this
self work paddle that I'm showing you that's eight points, this other paddle,
which is a Franklin beginner model paddle, comes in at 11 points head heavy.
What that tells you is
between these two paddles, the Franklin paddle has a heavier balance.
Now, what that translates to
is that you expect everything else being equal for the paddle with 11 points of
head heaviness to have a higher swing weight.
Meaning when you're swinging it through
the air, it's going to be exerting more pressure on your arm.
It also deliver more power into the ball, but it's delivering more pressure into
your arm, more weight into your arm as you swing the paddle while you play.
The tools you need to calculate the center
line and the balance line of your paddle are very simple.
You need some painters tape.
You can use this thin one like this or a thicker one will work fine.
Nice thing about painters tape is it won't hurt your paddle.
You'll need a pencil. You'll see why?
Because we got a mark on the desk once we
get it situated where it starts tipping over.
You may want to put a marker too, in case
you want to see it better, but a pencil so you don't mark up your furniture.
You're going to need some a ruler or a measuring tape works fine too.
Ruler works great. To do the center line.
If your ruler is not long enough.
You can use.
Just a piece of string or something like. This to.
Get the length and then half it.
You can also look at the manufacturer's site.
They'll give you the length of the paddle and then you just take half of that and
you can mark it that way so you can get your center line.
Let's go to the desk so I can show you how
to calculate the balance line in the center line of your paddle using this
painter's tape so you don't damage your paddle.
It'll allow you to calculate how head heavy your paddle is.
If you want to learn more about paddles,
we have a free paddle guide that I'll link to down below in the video description.
Get that paddle guide, you'll also get access to our free video hub.
It'll show you how to optimize your paddle
with lead tape and things like that to really optimize your play.
And if you're enjoying this video and you like this content, make sure you subscribe
to the channel and hit that like button so you get more content just like this.
All right, let me show you how this is done.
You can see on this side I've done it
before, so I'll do it on the other side to show you how it's done fresh.
So again, two ways that you can do it on the center line.
One way is.
Just look up the size with the manufacturer.
What I'm going to do here is I'm just going to ballpark it and then
I'll show you, get close with the tape, and then you get it right.
So I think this paddels about 16 inches.
So I think I need to put the tape around here, around the vangard.
So you just take a little piece of tape t ick it off.
Bam.
So there's my tape.
Then what you do is get it close and then you can sort it out.
So go about eight inches here, mark it there.
About eight inches from here, mark it there.
Looks like I'm pretty close, but it's a little more than eight inches.
So we're going to go eight inches, one eighth.
And then from here, should be eight inches and one eighth.
So this is my center line here, and I'll square it off.
Not trying to get exact science here, just trying to get close.
This is an approximation of the calculations.
My hope is that one day the manufacturers will do this for us.
I've actually written an open letter that
will be published around the time of this video to the manufacturers asking them to
please provide us with this information so that we don't have to do this at home.
And we have more information as to the paddle swing weight, which again.
Is the most important characteristic of a paddle.
Then what you do is you have to guess with this one a little bit at first.
You get it in the ballpark.
So I'm going to put it on here.
So there it's starting to tip a little bit.
So now I can see where it is at the tips.
Obviously, I have a little bit of a cheat on this side because I can see it,
but it's basically right around this lower switch there.
So if I put the tape there, I feel pretty confident that I'll be in the ballpark.
Then you put it back on.
Then you find...
You want to find right where it starts to tip over.
Not yet.
That's a pretty good spot there.
You can see it starting to come off the desk.
So I hold it down, then you come underneath.
And draw your line.
So now I have two lines.
You may not be able to see it too well
with the camera, but I have a line here and I have a line there.
Now, what I'm going to do is I take the ruler and I'm going to take a measurement.
So in this case, it's about the same as last time.
It's roughly one inch.
Let me show you real quick.
So it's basically the center line is here, the bottom of the
ruler, and then the balance line is right here.
So that's the balance line. That's the balance line that's one inch.
One inch is eight.
One eighths.
So because it's eight one eighths, this means.
This. Paddle is.
Eight points head heavy.
To demonstrate the difference in swing weight that a head heavier paddle can
have, I did the same test on both of these paddles.
This is a Selkirkpaddlespaddles Vanguard
Power Air Invicta, a little longer paddle than this one.
This is an old school Franklin Pickleball
X charge paddle that is like a beginner level paddle from Franklin.
I just happen to have it laying around.
No criticism of Selkirk or Franklin on these paddls.
It's just how these paddles laid out.
And also, I'm not suggesting that because
this paddle is head heavy that it's going to extend out to other Franklin paddles.
Franklin has a much newer technology that they're selling now.
It's just a comparison of these two particular paddls.
So this paddle came in at 7.83 ounces, the Selkirk.
The Franklin came in at 7.76 ounces.
So this is a lighter paddle when placed on the scale.
The Selkirk paddle is a longer paddle than the Franklin.
You can probably see that pretty clearly.
So we'd expect, based on the weight of the paddle and the length of the paddle, for
the Selkirk to swing heavier than the Franklin.
But the Selkirk is eight points head
heavy, meaning that the balance line is one inch away from the center line, while
the Franklin is 11 points head heavy, meaning that the balance line is up here.
It's about an inch and three eighths away from the center line.
At the end of the day, what you would find if you were to swing both of these paddles
is that this paddle swings heavier than this paddle.
Again, that's not to say there's anything
wrong with this paddle, but it is to say that if you were trying to
determine which of these two paddles has the greater swing weight,
knowing the points of head heaviness would help you differentiate this paddle from
this paddle when determining the paddle's swing weight.
And as I mentioned at the beginning of the
video, paddle swing weight is the number one most important consideration other
than grip size and length when picking a paddle.
In our paddle selection guide, we have two
potential disqualifying factors for paddles when you're selecting them.
One is the grip.
The grip has got to fit your hand.
But the other thing is the paddle swing weight.
Some paddls simply have too high of a
swing weight for many players out there playing pickup ball today.
You now know how to calculate your balance
line, your center line, so you can calculate how head heavy your paddle is
relative to the paddls I've shown you in this video.
To look at swing weight, there's three factors that you want to think about.
You want to think about number one, you
want to think about your paddle's static weight.
Static weight is the weight of your paddle on a scale.
Most paddles these days are right around eight ounces plus or minus.
So you have your paddle static weight, then you have your head heavy points.
How many points?
So is it around eight or is it more than eight?
And how many more than eight?
And then the third factor to consider is the length of your paddle.
There's, I believe it was Atlas who said
that if you give me a lever that's long enough, I can move the Earth.
So if you think about it, the longer your paddle is, the more leverage it has, the
more it's going to resist as you swing it through the air.
So if you look at these three factors, it'll give you a sense of how
your paddle swing weight affects the paddle as you're playing or what the
paddle swing weight is as you're playing with it.
So if you have arms that cannot take
a lot of weight, particularly if you're a player with smaller arms, be
very sensitive to these factors as you're playing out there.
If you're suffering from tennis elbow and
things like that, not trying to give you medical advice, not a doctor, but I will
tell you that these factors can play an influence on that because of the amount of
stress that you're putting on your arm when you're out playing pickleball.
Hopefully, this helps you understand
better how your paddle works when you're out on the pickleball court.
Make sure you get the free paddle guide and the optimization guide so you can
learn how to add some lead tape to your paddle strategically, not crazy, but
strategically, and other tips that you can use to maximize how your paddle plays.
Have fun out there.