Last updated 2 October 2026
How we grade the evidence
The short version
Every exercise in Grip&Grind shows a grade from A to D. The grade is not a rating of the exercise itself — it's a rating of how strong the evidence is that the underlying physical quality (strength, power, rotation speed, and so on) actually matters for golf performance. A grade-B jump exercise and a grade-C jump exercise might both be excellent for building power; the difference is how directly the research connects that kind of power to hitting the ball further, not how good the exercise is.
We show the grade next to every exercise because we think you should be able to see the difference between "there's a real study behind this" and "this is a reasonable idea nobody's tested." Grip&Grind never invents a research claim, and we never show one without a source.
The four grades
A is reserved for exercises with golf-specific trial evidence — none qualify yet. A strong association between a physical quality and swing speed is not enough to earn A.
A real study measured this quality in golfers and found it's connected to clubhead speed or ball flight — usually a correlation (people with more of this quality tend to swing faster), sometimes a controlled trial. It's good evidence, but it doesn't prove that training this specific exercise is what caused anyone's speed gain.
Either: (1) it's what tour players and golf fitness coaches actually do, based on their own reported programs, even though nobody's run a formal study on the exact exercise; or (2) it's a reasonable way to build general strength, mobility, or resilience that supports training and playing golf, without a specific golf-performance claim attached.
A plausible idea, a marketing claim, or a specific injury-prevention or "this will make your swing more consistent" promise that we can't point to a real study for. We don't program grade-D exercises at all.
Why we tightened this up
The research that connects strength and power to golf performance is genuinely useful, but it's almost entirely correlational — studies that measure a golfer's strength and their swing speed at the same time and find the two move together. That's real evidence, and it's why golf-specific S&C training makes sense at all. But correlation isn't the same as proof that training a specific exercise causes a faster swing for a specific person.
The training meta-analysis looked at golfers before and after a training program and found average gains of about 2.3 mph in clubhead speed and about 10 metres in total distance in controlled studies. It rated its certainty for controlled outcomes as low, and for single-group outcomes as very low. These are group averages, not a promised result for any golfer or proof of a specific exercise. That's not a knock on the research; it reflects how few, how small, and how varied the underlying studies still are. It just means we shouldn't treat any single exercise's golf-specific benefit as settled science.
So, starting with this review, we made the grading tighter:
- No exercise gets an A right now. Even our strongest evidence (the studies linking jump power, rotational power, and general strength to clubhead speed) is correlational, not proof that a specific lift causes a specific gain — so it's capped at B, however good the correlation number looks.
- A "this prevents injury" or "this makes your swing more consistent" claim needs its own real evidence — golf-specific evidence for that exact claim — to earn anything higher than D. General fitness reasoning ("stronger core muscles support most physical activity") stays fine at grade C; a specific, uncited promise about golf injuries or golf consistency does not.
- Grade C stays honest about what it is. If a tour player's reported routine includes an exercise, we say so — that's a legitimate reason to include it, but it's a very different kind of evidence than a study, and the grade says so plainly.
What this doesn't mean
None of this means the exercises are wrong, or that strength and power training doesn't help golfers — the correlational evidence for that is genuinely strong, which is why this whole approach exists. It means we'd rather tell you plainly "this is a good bet based on solid but indirect evidence" than imply a level of proof that doesn't exist yet. As better golf-specific training studies come out, grades can move back up — with a source, every time.
Grip&Grind is not medical advice
Nothing on this page, or anywhere on Grip&Grind, is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a substitute for seeing a doctor or physiotherapist. Evidence grades describe golf-performance and general-fitness research, not clinical guidance for an injury or health condition.
How grades get reviewed
Research changes. When a new study or meta-analysis is published that touches a grade, it goes to the founder for review before anything on the site changes — we keep a record of each grade change and its reason. The sources below explain the difference between association studies, training trials and reported practice.
Sources behind the grading method
- Brennan et al. (2024): physical characteristics and golf clubhead speed. A systematic review with meta-analysis of associations; useful for choosing physical qualities, not proof that a specific exercise causes a speed gain.
- Johansen et al. (2026): physical training interventions and golf shot performance. A systematic review with meta-analysis of training programmes; the controlled findings have low certainty.
- White et al. (2025): elite professional golfers’ preparation practices. A survey of reported practice; describes what players do, without demonstrating that an individual exercise improves performance or prevents injury.