Prediction of Upper Body Strength By Using Grip Strength Test in Division II American College Football Players’ Grip Strength

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate if the grip strength could be used to predict upper body strength of college football players through comparing dominant grip strength and upper body strength of col­lege football players. Forty-one Division II National Col­legiate Athletic Association football players (24 defen­sive players and 17 offensive players) participated in the present study. A grip strength dynamometer was used to measure grip strength of football players and the one-repetition maximum (1RM) bench press was used to measure participants’ upper body strength. Each play­er had undergone a minimum of eight weeks of heavy resistance training during the winter off-season con­ditioning program prior to measurement. None of the participants had a serious pre-existing injury that could hinder their performance throughout the study, and participants in the study had the ability to understand and perform bench press and grip strength tests. The Pearson product-moment coefficients of correlation and a simple regression were computed to determine relationship between 1RM bench press and grip strength. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to test the differences in upper body and grip strength among offensive and defensive college football players and their player positions by using their relative strength. Notably, strength scores were divided by body weights to express bench press and grip strength relative to weight. The results of this study showed that grip strength test did not predict the upper body strength of college foot­ball players when we used the 1RM bench press strength test as a standard test to measure upper body strength of players (? = .248, p = .118).