Let's Talk Grips

hello my name is Andrew Jensen most people know me as AJ I am the pro shop manager here at bowlersmart Rockford cherry and my name is Justin Mooney I am an employee here at Bart Rockford cherry and today we want to talk to you about uh inserts basically grips the things that you can put on your fingers to help make you get a little bit more rotation on the ball uh maybe some more Comfort uh more control I feel like those are things you kind of get out of GPS in general um most of it can be decided uh from your pro shop operator I think you're a pro shop operator will will or should ask questions I would think at times to let you know figure out what's your what's your specific needs are for these grips there are definitely plenty of them out there ultimate has them Vice has them turbo has them um we have the old days with some Contour grips uh plenty of other ones that I could probably bring up that I think a lot of guys would go oh man I remember those you know that kind of thing uh but but primarily in our shop we typically do uh Vice and turbo uh turbo we don't do near as much um but we do a fair amount because there are some people that do need them that uh have used them for a long time Pro Shops in the past in this area I think have sold those a little more often uh and then we've chosen to utilize the vice grips which are on the side that Justin's on currently So Justin's going to talk to you about uh a grip that we use a lot of us guys in the Pro Shop use a lot of the guys that are maybe a little bit more uh Advanced players that tend to need a little bit of Freedom with their fingers uh he's going to talk about the vacuum grips yep so one thing I also kind of want to touch base on is um there's definitely a lot more options for finger grips out there than you probably think I think it's just more thought that the only options for finger grips are going to be either conventional just sticking with the conventional just drilling the finger fingers straight into the ball stuff like that um and then either having your oval and power lift that you're probably going to be most used to seeing but there's a lot more different options hence why we're kind of here talking to you about the different options for you so for vacue grips vacu grips for me um I see them as they are very common they it's actually still fairly new if I am not mistaken like the concept is still fairly new and it's definitely popularity within like the younger players more advanced players like what AJ said so like I use them myself he uses them basically everybody who works in the shop uses vacu grips at this point and we're seeing it a lot with our college kids here what are vacu grips so I want to say the main misconception is people think it's just a different type of grip it's actually not even a different type of grip it's just a different process of how he drill the bowling balls different for us um so it's actually nothing different on the product end it's all basically our end as a pro shop operator and how we drill the bowling ball yep basically all it is is you drill down the first inch into the bowling ball with a bigger bit in most common cases it's the inch and 302 bit for us you can play around with your drill bit sizes on that one like there was a small point where I use an inch and a 64 as my top bit um and then you just drill down the rest of the way with your normal 31 32nd bit that you use for normal finger grips and a normal bowling ball um so what's the benefit of grip so just that extra room which is like a 16th of an inch on the top part of your finger hole actually allows the grip to expand and so if you're someone who kind of struggles with swelling a lot like I do especially my fingers um it's actually a very beneficial idea because your grips will expand to allow you to swell but not lose feeling not have to struggle to get your fingers into your ball basically so and then it just creates some sort of suction so you still have a good grip on it and but once you're coming out to release it it comes off your hand pretty quick basically the same as normal grips and so you're not really losing anything in terms of your release it's just more a feel which to me is a lot more comfortable and again if you are one of those people who do struggle with swelling on your fingers it's a it's a good concept for you yep I would say to add on to what he's talking about we have uh these wonderful Tools in here that allow us to be able to fit your fingers uh as Pro shop guys uh they do make one for a vacuum grip uh which does have the power lift side where there's a little flat Edge to the side of it I'm sure he can take some you know video or pictures of that later and add that into this uh as we go on the other side is the ovals that are more commonly used um like Justin is saying typically we want to make sure that you still get to the crease but there is a wide range of people that are using them that like as far as two-handers go uh one-hander sometimes people like to you know dig their fingers in a little farther he's one of them I used to be one of them also a lot of our two-handers kind of do that generally so it's up to us and you uh as we're in here and you're working with us also as far as getting that to figure out as whether or not this is an option uh at some point doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the one right off the bat just means that you know as you go on and maybe you start talking that you need some extra feel to the ball maybe some better uh ability for that swelling like he was talking about uh but these are really great tools for us to be able to get those sizings correct uh what he was saying with the vacuum grips is basically when you get your finger inside the grip itself it should get to a point where it's around your finger fairly snug not loose but not super tight uh but just enough to where when you go to put your hand in the ball you're actually going to get out of it fairly clean in general uh but if you do have anything else other than swelling and stuff like that maybe the Pro Shop guy and you should be talking about you know a fit of some kind that might be changing uh it might not always just be the swelling that you need that for but we go back to uh Vice and turbo they both make an option for power lift power oval oval uh they even have Nubs which are a little little uh dots inside the grips that have a little bit more grip to them so I believe he'll probably take some pictures maybe a v a video of these to see the insides of them so you can understand what we're talking about um this one in particular has what we would consider a mesh bump in it uh dub as they call it uh on the other side is the same thing but Vice actually makes this type of grip in a clear and a purple um and you can actually do uh the same they have two sizes on them basically so you can do like I say a 5 and a half and a six you can flip them over so you don't have to carry LW size of those in in stock uh turbo does make the same concept in theirs as well but on the other side they have this little uh bump like a speed bump on the other side for you to be able to hang on the ball a little bit better um back in the day that was kind of the reason why we use these a little bit more is just to kind of be able to hang out of the ball a little more uh not feel like you were going to lose it so that the pitches wouldn't be a necessary issue so to speak um Power ovals are basically going to still look like a slight oval to them but they're going to have that little bit of a power lift and like I said um we have those in Vice and turbo the lower one is the vice and the top one is the turbo uh you should be able to see and you'll probably do a picture and video of that later maybe where they're a little rounded they still have a little lift to them uh but those are kind of the big differences there and you know if you look at them both side to side with each other you know you can tell the difference I think in general for a power left to a power [Music] [Applause] [Music] oval you can remember what they are I remember everything so then basically after you know seeing all that knowing all that uh they have different sizes 3132 uh grips that we use or sizing for the outside diameter of the hole and then they have 78s which are usually in our books called lady grips but it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be just for ladies um I I know that for a while I'm pretty sure Mike uh dole was using those grips the smaller 78 RPS uh it's more of a feel thing really or uh taking less out of the ball you know those are things that as a pro shop I think we think about a little bit more um I think the if you decide like we just had uh don mun to step in for a minute here a few seconds ago he uh doesn't use a slug on his balls to do stuff when he drills when he gets them drilled um so he's one of those that kind of leave some of those things out of it um but he does still use grips so you know it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to to I know there are some options to do back uh when I was doing you know a lot of no grips you know just doing fingertip with no grips uh was pretty much an option but uh we have 78 for um purposes of kind of seeing it so I don't know if he'll take a video or not but we'll probably have that in there some kind of picture at least to see it uh so you can kind of see the difference between the two um is there anything else that you want to add in I mean really with the 78 scripts you there is the option to do vacue with that too just kind of the stay on topic with the whole vacue grip idea it is possible to do vacu with 78 grips uh the vacuum bit at least what we use don't want to really say it's an industry standard it's the 15 bit on top it's just the same concept of the top hole is going to be a 16th of an inch bigger so 7/8 you can do vacuums with so for you know ladies or even younger children uh who don't have big enough enough fingers to be in the 31s yet because the 31s are made only down to a size zero once you're down to a size zero you can't get any smaller um 9/16 which is a pretty small size so when it comes down to the 78 grips that's when you're actually going to start going into the negatives I think they go down to about what2 I want to say they go down to or negative 1 negative 1 negative 1 yeah so you have like 17 and 37 sizes and those that's the smallest you get so then it's you know if it's if you have a smaller finger with that you know I know in the past I have drilled you know grips for the middle finger cuz their middle finger was bigger and the ring finger you just couldn't get into a grip so you just did a a plain Hole uh that's pretty common it can happen it doesn't necessarily mean that it's weird or you know it's the guy that's doing it is some strange person for doing it uh we just have to make do with what is there and if that means that you can have that grip in the finger I think it's necessary it's okay it gives you a little bit more feel to the ball and you can get a little more on the ball with the grips I think in general and then there's also like some small little tricks that we usually do in the shop like it could even be as simple as the person that we're talking to at this moment is still a smaller person they have their ring finger that can kind of fit a negative one maybe a little loose so we can do a little bit of a trick of where we even just wrap some electrical tape around the grip um that's something we actually do pretty commonly y um is just wrapping some tape around the grip it actually will make it a little bit smaller so I want to say at that point you're you're not necessarily dropping it down like a full size or a half size it's maybe even like a quarter size but it's enough to fit the person correctly yeah we see that sometimes in the 31s too so there is times when we fit somebody and I know I've done it for many times that you know you fit somebody and they're kind of in between sizes and that's I mean they're half sizes when you go from one to the next anyway uh so a little bit of tape might be the best option and if your pro shop operator does that don't freak out don't you I think it's strange it's normal something that we do on a uh across the board in general sometimes uh inch and a 302 to a 31 generally for the vacuum grips on everything up to a size eight which is going to be a 1316 for us and that's getting a little bit more on the technical side of it I suppose that you probably don't necessar all need to know but you get past that that whole size already goes to an inch and a 302 for bigger sizes so then like what Justin was saying to clarify what he was talking about is that that bit size up top has to get to a different number because an inch of 30 seconds is what you're using for the actual size of the grip so we have a guy I think we used uh the inch 364 is that what you were talking about earlier I want yeah I want almost positive the inch and 32 for the size of the grip at the bottom so it actually sits there and holds on to it and then the top it had to be bigger so that he had the actual vacuum to it um I know one thing we didn't really touch base on is as you can see these I'm going to turn Justin's new Pride over to the side there and then turn my clone uh from Roto Grip off the side you'll notice that the grips are hanging up on his just a little bit right now currently and the mine are not it doesn't mean that he's done something incorrectly 100% just means that I've just got used to cutting mine down cuz when I go to places or go to tournaments or if I go to put surface on a ball the grips protruding like this they'll have to get cut down anyway because one I think USBC actually has a rule for it they look for it when you go to Nationals and stuff like that they'll actually look at your ball for the serial number they'll look at your ball for that to see if they have any protruded bet truding uh grips that are sticking up because vacuum has become a little more common now uh it's been around since I was you know starting off in the Pro Shop stuff so I know it's been around for a while we just haven't done it as much I don't think throughout time frame I think more Pros do it a lot of times than some of the uh amateurs and even young people do but this is going to be something you want to pay attention to maybe try and make sure that they get cleaned up if they don't just so you don't have that problem yeah um and I know he will at some point when he does his he just have time to do it yet but generally cut them down and we can take you know a razor blade nice and clean cut to them and take some uh we have an actual Barrel sander that he he was showing in the video a little bit earlier but I don't think he got on there but we use that to kind of you can use a buffing wheel you can use that if you're careful with it you can use this uh buffing wheel usually works really good for the Pro Shops in general and then if you don't have a buffing wheel we go from that to cleaning it up vum it and then you know acet toning it so it doesn't have any roughness to it and it still feels same as what you had when you first used the grip so that'd be the one last thing I would add into this is that's kind of one of the things that we'll have to do as a pro shop on our end for you when you leave but if you have those you might want to get them in and have them com down so I think that's about it for us yeah I think we pretty much touched base with everything as always we're super happy to try and give any kind of information if you have any questions feel free to ask it down below in the comments we will try to do some sharing as we go here here and then hopefully this will get some you know good good foreseen play to it so that we can actually give you guys some more info and anything you can ask us whatever it doesn't matter we'll I'm sure we have some sort of an answer for it and if we don't we'll try to give us our best shot yeah and if there's anything that you guys would like us to kind of talk about like get more in depth like what we have been doing in these videos with grips thumb slugs the interchangeable just comment that too and it'll probably just help us give us an idea of what we can do for a future video so yeah that's about it all right well we look forward to giving you another one here soon I know we don't come out with these very often but we're going to start trying to do as much as we can it's normally our busy season uh gets a little harder I go on the road some to do some remodels and whatnot with the shops and that we have for bers and uh you know he's stuck here kind of washing the shop so uh time it'll probably just depend on time but uh in general we'll try to do as many as we can and and keep you up to date with some stuff just so that you can have some more knowledge going forward all right we'll talk to you guys later [Music]

Channel: BowlersMart Rockford-Cherry

Views: 40,437

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Id: pxSz1Zm5ZCg

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023