Differences in Hand Grip Strength in Division I Male Student-Athletes Across Multiple Sports

Hand grip strength (HGS) is often used as a marker of hand and forearm muscular strength, but also as an indirect gauge of upper-body muscular strength and shoulder stability. For sport athletes that utilize grasping actions (e.g., tennis, lacrosse, wrestling), HGS measures can be used to help guide programming to increase strength and stability of the upper extremity and to monitor progress through rehabilitation programs following upper extremity injury. However normative values for HGS for different sport athletes are scarce. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare potential differences between bilateral HGS across multiple sports in Division I male student-athletes. METHODS: During a preseason screening, 146 Division I male student athletes (19.9 ± 1.5 y, 182.3 ± 8.0 cm, 83.2 ± 11.1 kg) volunteered to complete a standard hand-grip test. A hand-held dynamometer was used to determine HGS for the right (HG-R) and left (HG-L) hands using standard procedures. The highest of three trials was recorded for each hand. One-way ANOVAs with Tukey’s post-hoc test were conducted to assess differences across the different sport athletes using SPSS v30 (a = 0.05). RESULTS: Normative data showed significant differences in HG-R and HG-L across sports (F[5] = 3.940, p = 0.002 and F[5] = 5.871, p < 0.001, respectively). Wrestlers had the highest HG-R and HG-L (52.1 ± 10.1 and 51.9 ± 8.1 kg), whereas tennis had the lowest HG-R and HG-L (42.7 ± 4.2 and 35.7 ± 5.0 kg, respectively). Wrestlers had significantly higher HG-R than basketball and soccer, and significantly higher HG-L than soccer, tennis, and lacrosse (p < 0.05). Male tennis athletes had significantly lower HG-L than basketball, baseball and lacrosse (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: These findings suggest absolute HGS varies across different male sport athletes, therefore, normative values for HGS should be sport specific. Future research that explores the relationship between HGS and injury risk is recommended to assess the utility of using HGS to monitor fatigue and injury risk in athletes, especially those where grasping and grip is inherent to the sport-related tasks. Furthermore, this study focused exclusively on male Division I athletes, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to female athletes or those in different divisions or levels of competition.