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.
