Grip Strength in Sports Medicine: Uses & Protocols

Grip strength assessment plays a vital role in sports performance medicine – helping clinicians, coaches, and sports scientists monitor fatigue, guide rehabilitation, and make informed return-to-play decisions. In this article, we explore the role of grip strength in sports medicine.

Grip strength, measured using a hand dynamometer, is currently an underutilized tool across athletic healthcare.

However, it is rapidly emerging as an indispensable biomarker of health across various clinical specialties, and in sport, grip strength is essential for effective power transfer and equipment control.

Grip strength is also a fast, objective, and portable measure of neuromuscular function, with many studies highlighting its relevance.

Read on to learn more about the role of grip strength in monitoring athlete fatigue and readiness, detecting injury risks, supporting rehabilitation, and informing concussion management.

#1 Grip Strength in Sports Medicine: Athlete Readiness & Fatigue Monitoring

Neuromuscular Fatigue Indicator:

Grip strength reflects central nervous system (CNS) load; a measurable decline may indicate neuromuscular fatigue or early signs of overtraining
This makes it a valuable tool for ongoing athlete monitoring and recovery management

Daily Readiness Check:

Quick grip strength assessments completed before training or competition provide fast insights into an athlete’s physiological readiness.
A lower than normal baseline reading may indicate fatigue or under recovery, helping inform decisions around training intensity and session modification.

Strength Recovery Tracking:

Post-game or post-training grip assessments can highlight delayed or incomplete recovery.
Tracking these values over time enables coaches to fine tune load management, optimize recovery protocols and reduce the risk of overtraining.

Athlete Readiness & Fatigue Monitoring: Example Protocol

Pre-Season Benchmarking: Grip strength assessments to be completed on all athletes
Morning Grip Strength Test: 1-2 trials to detect CNS fatigue or under-recovery and guide daily training decisions.
Post-Training Assessment: Check grip strength immediately after competition or training and 24 hours later to track fatigue trends.
Recovery Benchmark: If grip strength drops >5-10% from baseline, consider adjusting training volume or recovery protocols – a persistent decline (>5%) 24 hours post-event suggests incomplete recovery.
Trend Analysis: rather than using one-off measures, monitoring trends over 2-3 days. Persistent drops over several days can indicate accumulating fatigue or over training.conversely if grip strength is near baseline (within a few percent) it suggests the athlete is adequately recovered.

In baseball, professional pitchers show steady in-game declines in grip strength as fatigue builds. Those who eventually suffered shoulder or elbow injuries showed grip strength drops of up to 25% compared to uninjured peers by mid-game, highlighting how accumulating grip fatigue can flag elevated injury risk (Erikson et al, 2024).

#2 Grip Strength in Sports Medicine: Injury Risk & Rehabilitation

Reduce Injury Risk:

You can measure grip strength to monitor physical and neurological fatigue.
This can provide insights to ensure adequate recovery time and reduce over-training, to reduce the risk of injury in athletes

Early Risk Detection:

Strength asymmetries (especially beyond 10–15%) are a known red flag; studies in sports such as baseball and tennis linking them to higher rates of injury risk in the upper kinetic chain, including wrist, elbow and shoulder issues, often on the weaker side.
Identifying these early allows for targeted intervention before issues arise.

Return-to-Play:

Following hand, wrist, or upper body injuries, tracking grip strength recovery ensures athletes regain full strength before returning to play.

Post-Surgical Monitoring:

In sports such as baseball, basketball or MMA, grip strength can help assess functional recovery after injuries.

Force-Time Profiling:

In addition to measuring grip strength, track the rate of force development to assess neuromuscular recovery and explosive readiness post-injury.

Injury Risk & Rehabilitation: Example Protocol

Baseline Test: 3 max grip trials per hand, 30–60 seconds rest.
Injury Rehab Monitoring: Compare injured vs. non-injured side over time. Measure left vs. right-hand strength to identify imbalances (>10% difference may indicate a risk factor).
Recovery Benchmark: Use >90% return-to-baseline as a strength clearance metric.

In elite junior tennis players, over 5% showed grip asymmetries >15% – linked to increased upper limb injury risk – and 1.3% exceeded 20%, indicating very high risk. Monitoring bilateral grip strength can help detect and address early imbalances through training load adjustments and targeted strengthening or compensatory exercises to restore symmetry before injury occurs (Válek et al 2024).

In golfers with medial epicondylitis (“golfer’s elbow”), grip strength was reduced by 6–11% compared to the healthy arm, and up to 11% compared to expected norms. In lateral epicondylitis, reductions reached 12–15%. Peak torque in wrist flexion also dropped by 13–17%, highlighting broader neuromuscular impact beyond the elbow. This demonstrates that grip strength measurement offers a practical way to track injury severity and recovery in amateur golfers (Pienimäki et al 2002).

#3 Grip Strength in Sports Medicine: Concussion Management

CNS Function Insight:

Concussions affect motor control, coordination, and muscle activation, which may reduce grip strength.
A significant drop in grip strength post-injury may indicate CNS dysfunction and/or persistent neurocognitive impairment, even if the athlete reports feeling recovered.

Baseline & Post-Injury Tracking:

Declines in grip strength may signal lingering cognitive or motor effects.

Sideline Utility:

Portable, non-invasive, and easy to deploy alongside traditional concussion assessments (e.g. SCAT5 and BESS).
Significant asymmetry or decline in grip strength may be an early warning sign of concussion.

Complementing, Not Replacing:

Grip strength provides an additional objective measure of neuromuscular function, helping detect subtle impairments that cognitive tests may miss. This is especially valuable in addressing the health congruence paradox – the discrepancy between an athlete’s subjective sense of recovery and their actual physiological status.
When integrated into concussion protocols, grip strength can enhance diagnosis, guide return-to-play decisions, and support long-term monitoring.

Example Protocol:

Baseline Test (Pre-Injury): 3 max grip trials per hand pre-season to establish athlete-specific baseline and identify asymmetries.
Post-Injury Screening: 1–2 trials per hand after suspected concussion within 15–30 minutes of suspected concussion; a drop >10–15% or new asymmetry >10% may indicate CNS dysfunction. Use in conjunction with SCAT5, BESS or other sideline tools – not as a standalone diagnostic.
Recovery Monitoring: Repeat testing at 24–48 hours post-injury and during return-to-play assessments, monitoring for gradual return to baseline strength
Clearance Benchmark: Grip strength should return to ≥90–95% of baseline and show minimal asymmetry (<10%) before full return-to-play.

Both amateur and elite sports programs are beginning to incorporate grip strength measurements into post-concussion evaluations as an objective gauge of recovery of CNS function. In youth athletes with concussion, grip strength was significantly reduced during the symptomatic phase and remained below baseline even after symptoms resolved. This suggests ongoing neuromuscular impairment not always captured by cognitive tests, supporting grip strength as a valuable objective tool for concussion recovery monitoring (Reed et al, 2016).

Practical Considerations for Grip Strength in Sports Medicine

To see the benefits of measuring grip strength in sports medicine, we recommend the following:

Incorporate grip strength into your sports performance program: It is easy to use alongside more sport specific tests, to enhance assessments and scalability.
Protocol standardization: Use consistent testing conditions (same time of day, warm-up, grip type, position and device).
Set individual athlete baselines: To track improvements or declines, personalized strength programs can be designed based on grip strength trends.
Monitoring asymmetries: Identifying left-right hand strength imbalances can highlight compensatory injury risk
Integrate results into coaching decisions: Adjust training loads based on athlete readiness.
Combine grip strength with other performance metrics: Layer grip strength data with VO2MAX, HRV, sleep, RPE, and force plate outputs for a more holistic picture of athlete performance.
Assess device affordability, sensitivity and reliability: Grip strength measuring devices must be portable, cost-effective, and capable of detecting subtle performance changes with reliable, repeatable results.

For more information, read our Hand Dynamometer Guide here.

Able Assess: The only grip strength platform equipped for data-driven elite and amateur athletes

Able Assess turns grip strength into a powerful digital endpoint – enabling fast, standardized and highlight sensitive testing.

It delivers data-driven insights to support athlete monitoring, training, rehab, and performance analysis:

Remote Baseline & Recovery Tracking: Monitor grip strength over time – whether in the gym or on the field – to track progress, detect plateaus, and assess training effectiveness through longitudinal data.
Sport-Specific Protocol Customization: Tailor Able Assess to the sport and athlete population, using the most appropriate grip and position to reflect the demands of the sport.

For further reading about Able Assess, explore our extensive collection of studies on using a hand dynamometer, grip strength and more here – including:

Able Care is a pioneering functional health company. We leverage our proprietary GripAble sensor and advanced data platform to integrate grip strength into routine medical practice, health and wellness and sport performance.

Able Assess brings grip strength metric into real-world training, and research environments, redefining how strength and recovery are measured and managed.

Grip strength is a window into overall athletic capacity, readiness, and resilience. Make it part of your performance strategy.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at hello@able-care.co or by using our contact form for more information.

Grip Strength in Sports Medicine: Use Cases and Recommendations