We Tested Over 300 Different Weight Setups

What’s up, guys? This week we are talking about our short clips channel, weighted tape setups for your paddle, and understanding the different paddle shapes. Before we dive in, here’s a new poll to see what shapes you guys are enjoying right now.

Weighted tape study we did

So, this week we are talking about some weighted setups for your paddles.

I’m currently working on a revised lead tape video that will go in-depth on all of this, but we did a recent study with different amounts of weighted tape in specific areas on a widebody, hybrid, and elongated.

I think there is a lot of nuance that people don’t always consider when it comes to how to weight their paddles. Especially when changing to a new shape.

In the data we logged, we had over 300 different weight setups.

I’m not going to share all of them right now, but I did want to share some of the more interesting points we observed.

Maximizing twist weight and minimizing twist weight.

If your goal is purely to maximize twist weight and minimize twist weight, these were the top ranked weight setups to do that.

You’ll immediately notice that ALL of the optimal positions to do this involved putting the weight centered on the bottom corners, or running all the way from the bottom of the neck (or the top of the handle) as far as the strip would go.

I thought this was really interesting since the traditional thought prior to this was that placing the weight just above the bottom corners was the best place to do this.

Now one last point of clarity, maximizing twist weight and minimizing swing weight should NOT be your end all be all goal unless you are at the very limits of swing weight on your paddle and you are using something that isn’t stable. This would be most applicable to elongated paddles.

However, widebody paddles are already very stable and really don’t need the added stability, but instead could benefit from a higher swing weight to plow through the ball more. Having a widebody with a 9 twist weight really wouldn’t be that useful, and in some contexts might make your paddle too hard to rotate for rolls and flicks.

A little weight in the head goes a long ways.

Below is another chart of how weight directly at the top of the head can impact the swing weight. Just remember, the further the weight is from your hand, the faster swing weight goes up.

As you can see, a small amount of weight can bump your swing weight very rapidly at the head of your paddle. I would only recommend doing this if you have a paddle with an extremely low swing weight and you really want more plow through.

In a lot of cases, I probably wouldn’t even recommend placing directly at the head and instead placing the weight in the top two corners so that you are at least adding plow through+stability.

All of the data you just saw was for widebody paddles. But, we did test these on a hybrid and elongated paddle as well.

It will probably be a bit until we organize all of the data into something that is useful/readable to everyone, but I look forward to sharing it and hopefully help make it easier for you to know how the different positions and weight amounts impact your paddle.

If you want some more nuance about things to consider when applying weight, head to the bottom and check out this weeks latest podcast.

Understanding the different paddle shapes

If you missed it, we published a small piece on Instagram about the differences between the various paddle shapes if you’re still confused about them! You can check it out here.

Understanding the differences and their various benefits can make it MUCH easier to narrow down your next paddle purchase.

Short clips channel

If you don’t have time for the entire podcast, don’t forget we also have the podcast clips channel! We take one short clip from the podcast that we think had a good discussion and upload it here in more digestable bites. This weeks clip was covering the 11six24 All Court vs the Chorus Supercourt. You can watch it here

🎙️ Latest podcast

If you missed it, this week we covered the upcoming Engage Pursuit Pro1 new shapes, upcoming Spartus budget paddle, Franklin C45 update, a really odd paddle shape that caught our eye, and more discussion about the weighted tape setups that I discussed at the top of this post.

We even had some debate about whether the pro game will start seeing a switch toward widebody and hybrid paddles in the future. In the kitchen we also dive into some stuff that we worked on this week to improve our own game that you can takeaway and use for yourself.