The soundness of your grip onto the handle of your pickleball paddle is an important factor that affects your shot accuracy, power, and consistency. For those of us who live in warm and humid climates, we know that excessive sweat on the palm of our hands can cause the paddle to slip or rotate, resulting in weak or inaccurate shots. Squeezing the handle too tightly may stiffen your swing or make you swing unnaturally, leading to poor shots, fatigue, or injury to the muscles or tendons in your forearm or joints (such as “tennis elbow” or ECRB injury). Besides wearing sweat bands or gloves, or using absorbent overwraps, or wiping your hands or paddle regularly, what are the alternatives?
Grip enhancers might be an ideal solution for players in hot and humid climates who sweat a lot or do not like to wear gloves. They consist of powders, gels, lotions, or other materials that you can apply to your hands to manage sweat or increase the tackiness between your hand and the paddle. In this article we will explore the science behind grip enhancers and review some leading products.
Why Slip Occurs
The amount of friction between your hand and your paddle is dependent on many things, including your grip strength, the surface finish or tackiness of your paddle grip, and the presence of lubricants between the palm of your hand and the paddle grip. In this article we will focus on grip enhancers that manage or control the formation of sweat and oils that may be secreted by your skin during a pickleball game.
If your hand and paddle were completely dry, your grip on the paddle would be determined by dry friction between peaks and valleys (known as “asperities”) on your skin and paddle (Figure 1a). As you exercise, the palm of your hand secretes sweat and oils through glands in your skin. These liquids then bond or coat to the surfaces, effectively acting like a layer of lubrication between your hand and paddle (Figure 1b).
Grip enhancers can reduce the amount of slippage between your hand and your paddle by mitigating the effects of the oils and liquids between your hand and the paddle handle. They may incorporate one or more active ingredients that are classified into four different types, such as antiperspirants, tackifiers, hydrophiles, or hydrophobes. They may also have several other inactive ingredients, which define the product’s form, texture, fragrance, or appearance, or may perform other functions, such as moisturizing the skin. Following is a review of these ingredients and some popular products* that use them.
Antiperspirants
An obvious way to reduce slippage is to reduce the amount of sweat that your body produces. Antiperspirants physically clog glands on your skin and prevent them from secreting oils and sweat. Hand antiperspirants are typically used by people suffering from palmar hyperhidrosis where their hands over-produce sweat. Because antiperspirants affect the function of the body, they must be FDA-approved. Antiperspirants typically contain compounds of aluminum, which are compatible with the skin and less likely to cause irritation. Antiperspirants are often classified according to their percentage of aluminum salts, where up to 15% are typical for over-the-counter products and 15-35% are typical for prescription products.
Gamer Grip and Carpe Hand Lotion (Figure 2) are two hand antiperspirants that contain high levels of aluminum salts together with other ingredients designed to dry or moisturize your skin. Both products are quick-drying and provide an initial tacky feel. We found that although antiperspirants are effective in reducing the sweat levels produced by your hands, they may still get wet if sweat rolls down your arm or if you touch other parts of your body or clothing. When your hands initially get wet, both products will create a slightly slippery residue that you will need to towel off. Gamer Grip seemed to create less residue than Carpe Hand Lotion.
In general, we found that the antiperspirants are effective in reducing sweat and slippage. They may not work the first few times you use them, as the manufacturers of these products claim that it may take up to 6-8 hours for the aluminum salts to block your sweat glands. They also recommend that the antiperspirants be applied regularly. We found that Gamer Grip was slightly more effective than Carpe Hand Lotion as it appears to be engineered for the rigors of racquet and paddle sports and will last longer during play.
Tackifiers
Tackifiers are a “sure-fire brute-force” means of increasing the adhesion or tackiness between your hand and your paddle that will be effective whether your hand is dry or wet with sweat. One basic tackifier is pine tar, which is derived from cooking down the stumps of pine trees, resulting in a syrupy or resinous substance. Pine tar has long been used to enhance the grip on the handles of baseball bats. Critics have argued that the use of pine tar on baseball bats is messy and prone to building up with repeated application and will pick up dirt and other contaminants which may ultimately reduce friction. To be fair, the handles of baseball bats are often in contact with the ground, which may not be the case with pickleball paddles.
Gorilla Grip Gold (Figure 3) is a tacky towel that contains natural waxes (bees wax) which repel moisture and increase tackiness thereby improving your grip on the paddle handle. We found that the towel is not messy and can be easily applied to the grip of a pickleball paddle before and during a game. Initially, we found that the amount of tackiness is significantly increased and will gradually decrease as you play. During a game played at very high temperature and humidity, we needed to re-apply the product just once. The product does not appear to create a sticky residue on the paddle handle because the waxes evaporate over time, avoiding the potential build-up of dirt and other contaminants. Gorilla Grip Gold supplies their tacky towel to several 3rd parties that sell the product under different brand names.
Tackifiers are quite effective, but they should not be combined with other grip enhancers, such as antiperspirants, liquid hydrophiles, and hydrophobes, since they will tend to remove these materials from the palms of your hands and the surface of your paddle handle.
Hydrophiles
Hydrophiles attract and absorb water. As your hand sweats, a hydrophilic material will absorb and remove water, thereby increasing friction between your skin and the handle of your paddle. One basic hydrophilic material is chalk, consisting mainly of magnesium carbonate. It comes in a variety of forms, including blocks, powders, and liquids. Chalk is somewhat messy and can get onto other body parts, clothing, or equipment. Once it is saturated with water, it is no longer effective, requiring re-application. Hydrophiles alone are well-suited for short-duration activities, such as pitching a baseball, gymnastics, or weightlifting, where they can be re-applied during breaks in the activity.
The Tourna Sports Rosin Bag (Figure 4) dispenses rosin through pores in a cloth bag. Rosin contains a combination of chalk (a hydrophile) and resin particles (a tackifier). Rosin bags are traditionally used by baseball pitchers and bowlers, where it is applied with each pitch or roll. In our assessment of the rosin bag for playing pickleball, we found that the Tourna Sports Rosin Bag is certainly effective in drying sweaty hands and will leave a fine dry dust on your palm and paddle handle that will continue to absorb sweat; however, the fine dust may actually make the handle feel more slippery.
Liquid chalk products such as Tourna Grip RX contain a hydrophile (in this case, silica) suspended in alcohol. The alcohol helps spread the hydrophilic material uniformly onto your hands and dries quickly. It is cleaner than dry chalk or rosin in that the application of the product onto your hands does not generate chalk dust particles like a powder would. When dry, Tourna Grip RX leaves a thin residue of chalk on the surface of your hands. We have found that the product slightly improves tackiness but will wear off quickly, especially if you sweat a lot. Furthermore, we have found that your hands need to be dry before application and you need to wait until the product dries on your hands before it becomes effective. This makes it very difficult to re-apply in the middle of a game.
Hydrophobes
Hydrophobes repel water. As your hand sweats, the hydrophobic material pushes water away from the skin, increasing friction. Examples of natural hydrophobic materials include oils and waxes, which are well-known for repelling water and are used in numerous waterproofing applications. More recently, synthetic hydrophobes have been created using modified forms of silica, which have good adhesion to the skin and are capable of absorbing oils and repelling water.
Sahara Dry Grip Spray (Figure 5) uses a super-hydrophobic modified silicon (likely in nanoparticle form) capable of absorbing oils from your skin and repelling water. It is mixed with alcohol to improve its application and drying on your hands and (in some formulations) a resin to enhance adhesion. In our evaluation of Sahara Dry, we verified that the product could make water bead and run off your skin. It also seems to have a small amount of tackiness which improves adhesion between your hand and the paddle. During play, we found that we still needed to remove moisture with a towel or rosin bag periodically, which restored grip to the paddle. Since it comes in an aerosol spray, it is easy to apply.
The Chalkless Grip Enhancer uses a modified and patented form of silica silylate. This product comes in clear gel form, and when rubbed into the palms of you hand will absorb oils and moisture and leave a thin chalk-like water-repellant coating on the palms of your hand. The product is highly effective in that it bonds to your skin and makes it hydrophobic to the extent that water will easily bead and run off your skin. We could tell when it was time to re-apply Chalkless, as the chalk-like coating eventually wears off. During play at high temperature and humidity, we needed to re-apply Chalkless once during a game. Unlike other products, we found that we could re-apply Chalkless onto sweaty hands. One drawback of the product is that it is since it is in a clear gel form, it is not easy to see and therefore difficult to apply in the middle of a game.
Summary & Recommendations
In this article we described how the four different types of grip enhancers work and evaluated some of the leading products. These products were tested in perhaps one the most challenging of temperature and humidity environments: South Florida in July. In our assessment we achieved different levels of success with all of the products tested. Your results may vary based on your climate and body chemistry. Since there may not be a single product that will work 100% of the time, players should try the different products to determine which one or combination of products works best for them.
* Disclosure: Some of the embedded links in our website are affiliate links, meaning that at no cost to you, Pickleball Science will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Purchase of merchandise through these affiliate links will help support the Pickleball Science website so that we can continue to provide meaningful content to our readers.
