Pickleball Lead Tape Experiment - How Much Power Does Adding Lead Tape Give You?
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- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
- Adding lead tape to pickleball paddles is getting more popular. Adding tape is commonly used to add power. I was curious how much of a difference adding tape made when it came to power and if changing the location of the tape made a difference.
Time stamps:
00:00 - The experiment
00:51 - The results
01:54 - Takeaways
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Super great ! Conclusive. Factual and short- please do more !
Absolutley great video, you answeered every question i had in less then 3 min. Keep it up!
Great job. Nice experiment. Nice to know the effect of putting lead tape in different places on the paddle.
Thank you for posting this helpful video
Thank you. Well done video
Just found this after watching your latest video about twist weight. Thank you!
Thanks was just what I was looking for.
😎
Informative, thanks.
where you put the weight has a lot to do with swing weight and how it affects your arm/elbow. I find adding at the throat doesnt increase my swing weight head heaviness as much but still adds plowthrough so the paddle has more power through the ball. It also adds stability in torsion side to side when you dont quite hit it perfectly in the sweet spot.
Adding to the top makes me feel it in my elbow a lot more because the whip is more significant.
There you go! My results make a lot of sense now ha.
Great content. Would love it if you did this again with 2 gm per inch tape and at a 9oz weight. I play with a CRBN1 leaded at the throat @ 9oz and really like how it improved both stability on resets of hard drives, but also my speed on the serve without slowing handspeed (like tip weighting does). It also helped increase the sweetspot, expanding it toward the handle (which otherwise was very wooden).
I imagine we'd get similar results though since you have it weighted about an ounce more than out of the box you probably got a bigger speed boost than what I got with the 003. Thanks for the input on the other benefits of adding weight, I feel like it does the same thing for me too.
sweet thanks!
perfect job
This helps!
I’m a huge advocate of lead tape. I got a lot of players to at Rex play to start using. I like my 003 Invikta at 9.2oz.
Increasing swingweight (adding weight) will increase power. I try to maintain the stock balance point by adding weight to the grip and at face locations 3 and 9. Use a balance board (or table edge) to check your work. A leather grip replacement and overgrip will add about 8g to the handle to counterbalance the face weight.
I owned and operated a tennis shop for close to 35 years. We customized racquets for a living. Lead tape in tennis is basically used to both move and increase the size of the sweet spot. F(force)=M(mass)A(acceleration) For the most part as we increase the mass it usually slows down acceleration. The main purpose of adding lead tape is to make the paddle more stable on off-center hits not to increase speed.
I used lead tape during my tennis days, too. Based on your experience, where would you recommend tape on a pickleball paddle to increase the sweet spot? I'm thinking the sides, but you would know better than me.
@@CharlottePickleball Have you come to a conclusion? I'm just starting to look to adding lead weight to my paddle. My goals were to increase the sweet spot (stabilization) and/or increase my swing speed.
You obviously don't understand much about newtonian mechanics. Per Newton's second law, the Force the paddle exerts on the ball = mass of the paddle * acceleration of the paddle. F is directly proportional to mass so as you increase the mass of the paddle, you increase force. Because the force of the paddle on the ball = the force of the ball on the paddle per Newton's third law, the force on the ball will be bigger than without the extra weight. Force on the ball = mass of the ball * acceleration of the ball. Because Force is directly proportional to acceleration and Force is now larger due to the extra weight, acceleration of the ball must go up because the mass of the ball doesn’t change.
Every serve has slight variations. Even averaging 10 serves each doesn't give an accurate number. You'd need some kind of automated machine to give the exact same swing each time
Great video, all this stuff is so new there is no data anywhere to show where and how much lead tape matters. I added lead tape to my Warrior Edge. Initially it weighed 7.6 ounces. I added .7 ounces of lead tape at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock going down to about 2" below the bottom curve of the paddle. It definitely gave it more power, but it feels like it made the sweet spot larger. So, for me it was still very maneuverable, but it added pop with a larger sweet spot and the paddle still stayed very plushy feeling. A win all the way across the board. Keep going with all your content. When you don't come out with something new in a week, I get disappointed 😂.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of benefits to lead tape. It's nice when the paddle is light to begin with then you can build it up the way you like it without it getting too heavy. Glad you like me stuff ha, thanks for the support.
Your comment is very helpful, because I'm thinking of moving my lead tape from being about 10 to 2 across the top... to being more on the sides to increase the sweet spot. Thank you!
Can you assess the differences in the control/swing/arm fatigue
Thank you for answering the question of if adding lead tape to a control paddle sacrafice what makes a control paddle a control paddle. one other question i have is what do you think adding lead tape to the air dynammic throat would do? i just got the Luxx S2 in and need to experiement a little, but i am assuming tape in that location would improve the paddles blocks and punch vollies which i hear are a weak point on that paddle.
I don’t imagine putting lead tape there would do much for stability but it would change up the balance point of the paddle.
Hi I’m wondering if you could do a video on the ramifications to your game hand speed how the weight at that location effects power if speed on serve is different and if you’re slower in game speed of paddle for blocking shots in regards to using the suction cup on the bottom of my paddle and not the lead tape. I find that when I’m playing against high level players I tend to tear the suction off the bottom and play without it but it makes it easier on my back to play with it so I’m trying to get used to it.
I’m not sure how I would measure that, I’ll have to think about it. I like that idea and am interested too.
I’d be curious if you can impact the sweet spot and/or stability with lead tape.
I’d also be curious how adding more tape, taking the paddle up closer to 9oz would impact power. At what weight do the benefits diminish?
Good questions, I have some ideas on how to measure the sweet spot but haven't messed with it yet. I'm interested in that as well. Arbitrarily it feels like the sweet spot is increased with additional perimeter weighting from lead tape.
I wonder what is the difference in swing weight and balance point in a paddle with lead tape at the bottom vs. at the top.
That would be interesting. I'll have to look up how to calculate that stuff.
The reason everyone I know adds lead the the bottom of the paddle is for more stability when blocking or playing defense..
Yes, that's very common too. Stability and power seem to be the top reasons for adding tape.
thanks, very interesting! I guess the next question is, how much is too much lead tape? when does it become diminishing returns to add more and more tape?
Good question, I’d be interested in that too. That should be my next experiment.
That would be based on each unique individual and their own preferences That is similar to baseball bat swing weights and different players will have different swing speeds with the exact same bat. The idea is to have the maximum amount of weight without sacrificing the bat speed. I would think this would translate to pickleball paddles as well, you want the maximum weight that doesn't sacrifice your paddle speed or reduce reaction time on net volley battles. But there is one other variable that I think needs to be considered and that is the additional weight can induce elbow, and shoulder pain after prolonged play. That is the main reason I returned my Joola Ben Johns Hyperion 14 was the feel of the sweet spot was amazing when driving and dinking but the head-heavy balance and overall weight at 8.5oz fatigued my arm during play and I felt slowed down my reaction time.
@@dcppcp well said, I think you got it right.
1:34 Adding some more nerdy details: punching the numbers into Excel, we can do a 2-sample t-test--which can tell us whether the differences in the averages here are due to actual differences in the average or just due to random variance in the testing. The numbers above yield a t-stat (p-value) of 1.77 (0.24), which means the differences between the two weighted tests are not statistically significant. On the other hand, the same sort of analysis applied to the non-weighted vs. top-weighted tests yielded a t-stat (p-value) of 4.05 (0.00), which is a statistically significant difference. Basically a long way of arriving at the same exact conclusion as you in the video.
This is awesome!! Glad to hear the numbers lined up with my thoughts about it.
I added lead tape to my 003 inside the hole. It seems to help some.
Ha that’s clever, I’ve never tried that.
Interesting, I'll have to try. Any notice on weather your dinks are faster by dong this?
@@michaelroot1313 Yeah, the ball pops off just a little more with the extra weight which effects dinking some.
im more interested in maximizing sweet spot. My current Gen 1 paddle seems to have a force dampening field just past the sweet spot that my opponents have an uncanny ability of targetting...LOL so from what i have seen ...should just put some weight at 3 and 9 oclock
😆I've done several lead tape experiments now so my next lead tape video will show the ultimate placement and amount. I think it be somewhere around 3 and 9 though.
What if one was to put lead tape all around? Will power and sweet spot both be at its max? I understand the weight may not be desirable for most but just curious.
Yes, it would just be heavy is all.
Looks like you’re at the Picklr? I play there everyday!
Nice! It’s a great place. I’m in Boise, ID but visit fam in Utah and have played at the Picklr a few times.
How did the two locations differ in impact on swing weight?
I didn’t measure the swingweights during this test but you can look at his lead effects Swingweight here, czcams.com/video/IUAsK-ySnVE/video.htmlsi=5i5cMK2owXONUcHX
Adding tape did increase power. Adding more tape will add more power. It will change the swing weight and feel as well. You need to find the balance of these properties that works for each individual player.
By throat do you mean at 5:00 o'clock and 11:00 o'clock? Thanks
Yes
I wonder if the tape at the head would have had a bigger increase in power compared to the throat if your serves had more wrist flick in them. With how close the numbers were I'm assuming you aren't a heavy wrist flicker when serving, otherwise the small difference would be even more surprising to me.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a heavy wrist flicker when serving.
What type/brand tape do you use
There are a bunch of options on Amazon but they usually give you way more than you need so I get this smaller roll from Tourna because it’s half the price and has plenty of tape. pickleballeffect.com/product/tourna-pickleball-lead-tape/
Does adding weight to the two top corners increase topspin?
Idk, I didn’t test that.
Changes you can make to add more topspin are increase the friction on the paddle face and/or change the swing path more low to high.
Did you feel any difference in control? I used to wrap my Electrum pro. But on the model E, I couldn't control my server when I had tape out on the upper edges. On the Model E, I had to keep it in the throat.
I wasn't paying attention to that in this test but from my experience playing around with it in general I prefer the feel of the weight on the sides and throat, otherwise my swing timing gets thrown off and I do lose some control.
@@pickleballeffect my partner would look at me like I was crazy for not being able to get a serve in hahah. Took tape off the top, and back to normal
@@erikcrossley5048 haha I'm glad you figured out what was going on. Thanks for your thoughts here, that's super helpful for others reading this and want to play around with lead tape.
Another 10 serves at the end with no tape would have been useful. Having other players repeat the tests also.
Why not the base of the handle?
IDK, I’ve never put it there before so I didn’t think to make it part of the experiment.
Appreciate your questioning and effort here, but application of science would make your results far more meaningful. Identify variables, vary one variable at a time while you control all the others, and interpret your data with science principles (physics in this case) to make conclusions, predictions, and generate further questions. This is high school science. (You also need to learn what a controlled variable is).
For sure, the location of added mass affects the swing weight, balance, and the paddle's ability to transfer momentum to the ball. In general, we know from physics :
More mass at same speed imparts higher ball speed
Location of mass closer to tip of paddle imparts higher ball speed
Increasing mass eventually leads to slower paddle swing speeds (for our human arms)
Assuming you're swinging with the same speed thirty times in a row is a huge error here.
Oh, c'mon, it wasn't that bad. A high school teacher would have given me a good grade for that. I controlled what I could but who has some expensive machine to swing the paddle to keep it at the same speed? Should I not have even attempted the experiment because I don't have a machine to swing the paddle? I think the results, though imperfect, are still interesting and helpful.
So picking a heavier paddle would do the same trick, but look better and save you the money for the tape
Depends. If you start light and add the weight yourself then you can pick where the weight goes. But if you buy a super head heavy paddle like the Joola Ben Johns then you’re stuck with it being super head heavy.
Meh
If the amount of lead tape needed is determined MATHEMATICALLY, a surprising amount of lead is needed to achieve marginal changes in the balance and/or swingweight of a paddle or racquet. An entire pack of Gamma tape (.5" X 36 inches?) may be needed. If the weight is needed in the butt grip, just use fishing weights instead of tape. The few inches of lead tape many players apply at various parts of the paddle is laughably insignificant. Unbeknownst to the player, the benefit is more psychological than mechanical, especially if measuring devices are needed to distinguish a few MPHs.
I did my part today, I hit that like button! I took 1 second of my day to do this after watching this awesome video which probably took hours to make. I also commented my process (doing it now) which took 1 minute. Not all heroes wear capes… 🦸♂️
haha thank you #hero