Testing Our Grip with Sport Science

Welcome to Young Hollywood.

Hey, Young Hollywood, this is Jon Brancato from ESPN Sports Science and welcome to the lab. This is where we do all of our experiments that you see on ESPN. We have the world's greatest athletes come in here and we put them to the ultimate test. Go. One, two, three. Boom! Boom! Faster!

Hey everyone, Nikki Novak here for Young Hollywood in the biggest man cave ever with its creator, Jon Brancato.

Yes, this is the ultimate man cave. One of the great things about Sports Science is that we get real data from the world's greatest athletes. The best men and women that come into the lab really give it their all. And that's what makes it so fascinating. So, if someone hits me, what you see, it's a real hit.

What's the most scared you've ever been?

Dwight Freeney has hit me into retirement for a while now. We wanted to see, you know, how much force he could generate when he's sacking a quarterback. He hits me so hard I literally come out of my shoe like, wha- like it looks like a Road Runner cartoon.

Have you recovered? Do you see five of me right now or how many of me do you see?

I I have recovered, but I I've put on pause getting hit for now.

Tell me about the dog that bit you.

All right, so the dog that bit me. We were testing um how hard a human can bite versus how hard a dog can bite because we wanted to see what bites harder. Mike Tyson or an attack

Are you gonna test my bite?

No! The trainer was saying, "Look, just stick your arm out. The dog's just gonna run and bite your arm." And I said, "But how do I know the dog's gonna bite my arm?" He said, "The furthest thing out from your body is is what the dog's gonna bite." So we line up, the dog comes running at me, "Boom!" goes for my leg. So I'm like, "Get this dog off my ankle!" And I'm like, "What happened? You said the dog would bite my arm." He said, "Ah, it's a dog. How do I know?"

I promise I won't bite you today.

Right. Unless unless, you know, you get me uh something really bad happens to me.

I heard you're gonna put me to the test with a few of these experiment

So we're gonna test him on your skills. This is one that you and I can challenge each other on.

Oh, good. All right, ready? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna see who has who has the best grip strength. One, two, three. How do you do? I don't know, for real. Stop. I don't think I can do anything.

Right. Almost 80. So we need to work on it a little bit.

Okay, so tell me why I'm putting on these pants?

So you're gonna put on the pants and what we end up doing is we end up zipping you into the anti-gravity

This is the hardest part of the whole thing. It is. It's accepting the humiliation. Nice. Oh, sexy!

When you're running, you actually can take body weight off of your legs.

How much will you take off? For example.

We'll probably take 20 to 30% of your body weight off.

So I'll be down to 175. How does this help you recover from injuries?

Uh because it allows you to still work out while being injured.

Ooh. Suddenly I feel like I've just had a very big meal. I think I'm I feel like it's Thanksgiving and I've eaten too much. All the same. I'm now 82 pounds.

82%. There you go. So that's down 20%.

I do feel lifted. I'm on the moon.

You feel like you're on the moon, right?

Yeah. Oh, you do. Wait, I'm not actually bouncing higher. I just feel like I'm bouncing higher.

What we're gonna do here is we're gonna test your ability to react. We're gonna test your peripheral vision and your ability to react. Quick! Go! Boom! Swipe! You

No, just need to wave your hand in front of me. It's fine. Oh, I was punching it. Go!

There you go. Just wave in front of me. See? Peripheral vision. Boom! Boom! Oh, faster than that! Come on! Faster! Yeah! Boom! Boom! And faster. To your average reaction time was 1. 7 seconds. A good reaction time is about . 4 seconds. So you're about 1. 7 seconds, which just means we need to we need to work on it a little bit.

It means I got a lot of sleep last night. What I'm gonna do is you're just gonna stand here. We're gonna test your standing reach. Doesn't matter how tall you are because it starts the same for everyone. It's where you can reach. I'm not where you begin, it's where you end. Exactly. And we'll be able to tell how high you actually jump. Okay. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Okay. It's at 75. And three, two, one, go! Your vertical is just about, it's about 22 inches.

Why are you grinning? So it's good. It's actually not bad. It's actually not bad.

Hey, Young Hollywood, this is Jon Brancato. Thanks so much for watching and uh taking the tour of Sports Science. Make sure you watch ESPN for all great Sports Science segments.