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Mailbag #3 – rotational strength and bat speed training

Jeff — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:50:54 +0000

I am trying to use my larger muscles more when I swing and I thought perhaps you had some type of specific drill with a medicine ball or some weight that would help develop my rotational strength.

Check out this post I made on Resistance Training for Batspeed. The article in there covers a lot of basics about general, special and specific training for bat speed. Each of the protocols referenced there were used successfully with high school and college athletes.

The medicine ball exercises are basically standing rotation movements similar to a swing – just pick a couple basics, there’s not one magic one.. You can look for more exercises here (specifically abdominal and plyometric drills) and also refer to the recent post on texas rangers s&c exercises. It’s a good idea to mix in some of the bridge exercises for stabilization, and if you’ve been swinging and working out already you are probably okay to move in to the other med ball stuff.

Also add some weighted implement training to your hitting routine. This is what is going to take your developing strength and transfer it into your actual swing. If you’re still playing at this point (in-season) just mix it in on the tee or soft toss. For more ideas for the off-season, see this post on off-season training.

I recommend that you go over these things with your local baseball coach and/or strength and conditioning coach. Good luck!

Mailbag #2 – A couple of comments

Jeff — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:20:00 +0000

There are a couple of recent comments that I’d like to pull up here to the big board:

#1 – A comment from Mr. JP Francoeur of JP Fitness

JP’s comment stated the need for sufficient strength in order to maintain correct sequence patterns.

The following was part of my initial response response:

”

I understand your position about strength deficit, but I still feel like mechanics/technique plays a role (maybe or maybe not specific to Jeff Francoeur).
For example, weight distribution at the time of stride foot plant will effect how rotation takes place.

Flexibility may also be an issue. Here is a question: is it possible for a hitter to be too flexible across the ’serape’ muscles of the torso? Just like too much laxity in the shoulder joint opens the door to injury. Torso flexibility may be great for golf, but not to the same extent for baseball due to time contraints.”

Given a time constraint, as in baseball batting, I would imagine that an optimal load/stretch is a necessary part of the basic compromise between mutually exclusive ends of maximal bat speed and maximal swing quickness.

On top of that, I’d agree with JP in a case such as Francoeur that a possible plan of attack would be to focus on concentric strength in diagonal rotation patterns in order to improve swing quickness. Assuming a player can ‘get away with’ more separation, it could be a good thing — just have to make sure the swing is executed in the given time period.

I’ll also mention again, if you have not checked out the JP Fitness Forum, it is worth a visit.

#2 – anonymous comment goes like this:

“I was wondering if you had an opinion on the benefits of a longer stride when batting.”

In my personal experience measuring bat speed for myself and other players, I would say that the stride contributes about 10% to maximal bat velocity. This is an example of what I mean: Player A has 100 mph maximum bat speed using his stride. Player A also achieved a maxmimum bat speed of 90 mph without using the stride. This was what I generally saw with college and minor league level players.

I have to add there that those not experience taking swing without a stride had a bigger difference. Similar to my comments on my biomechanics project. This was mainly because they heavily relied on thier arms, dragging the bat, etc. to create bat speed. Over time, they learned to use their body more efficiently to produce bat speed and quickness.

Research wise, the only number I can reference specifically is from a golf biomechanics study that quantified a 10% contribution from lateral movement/shift prior to launching the swing.

Baseball studies show weight bearing on the front foot to be greater than 100% of body weight at the time the stride foot lands, which suggests the need to get the weight shifted to the front leg. Actual picking up of the foot is really a matter of preference, comfortability (ie. golfers have the same shift without the actual stride).

My word of caution about trying to create too much bat speed by way of the stride is this – while a biomechanics study on ground reaction forces in pitching did show a correlation between total ground forces produces and linear wrist velocity (speed of the throwing hand moving toward it’s target at release), GRF that peaked too soon showed a negative correlation to the same wrist velocity.

My interpretation of that is basically if you push (forcefull extension of back leg) too soon, then you’re in troube. Rather, you’re looking for a controlled build up of momentum leading to forceful, late rotation as the stride foot begin to land.

Personally, I usually focus on reaching good athletic positions, instead of a set idea of stide length. Especially with objective feedback, players tend to figure out which positions are good and not so good.

Mailbag #1 – Do it yourself video analysis

Jeff — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:10:00 +0000

One of the questions I get a lot is about how to do video analysis. Believe it or not, I don’t have any fancy video equipment – just an old mini-dv camcorder and computer programs that were either free or hand-me-downs.

Last week I received the following:

“What program do you use to sync the videos when comparing swings? I am giving hitting lessons and would like to show my hitters not only before and after but compare their swings to others”

My first piece of advice is to go to this site and download the free version of V1 Home.

If you have figured out how to log on to a computer and use email, you should be able to figure this out without a problem. It’s about the easiest program I’ve found to use – especially for free.

Plug your camcorder into your computer and you can run live video, capture and show your players instantly….give your bit of instruction, and moments later you can show a split screen comparison to see improvements or not. It has different slo-mo speeds and frame by frame, forward and backward.

This is the type of thing I did often with players while working in Atlanta. See softball 1 for an example.

If you’re into drawing all sorts of confusing lines and shapes, you can do that with the program also. Have fun.

Mailbag

Jeff — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:20:00 +0000

I’ve been getting a few more emails of late and I try to get back to everyone when I get the chance. Sometimes emails fall through the cracks though because they get forwaded to another address and sometimes don’t make it. I have also been getting more spam type emails and comments so I have to do a lot of deleting.

What I would like to do is begin a “Mailbag” section where I try to answer particularly good questions or general types of things that I get asked on a regular basis. So I would encourage you all to continue sending emails and/or asking questions in the comments section. If I happen to miss one, don’t be shy about asking again (I know I have been very annoying to a lot of people when trying to make contacts and/or get information!)

P.S. I will do everything possible to generalize the origin of the question (ie. remove names, locations, etc.) when appropriate or requested. In other words – make them anonymous unless otherwise specified.