The Bratt Bat has been around for a long time and if you pay attention you can probably see one in the on-deck circle of most major league baseball teams. Although Bratt Bat’s are traditionally used as a warm-up device, I think they can also serve a purpose for learning specific areas of the swing, such as rotation and swing path. Even though these heavy weighted bats are out of the suggested range for use with standard overload-underload bat speed training, they still can be an effective tool for teaching mechanics that generate power and increased bat speed.
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This video clip is of a college player who was looking for a way to improve after a redshirt freshman year at a Division I baseball school. I’d say he figured it out! This is one of the most drastic improvements I’ve seen in such a very short period of time. Bat speed work with overload-underload bats, reaction and timing training, several different drills for rotation and swing path…we did it all:
I received an email update this week (11/28/06) from a player who I spent time working with last winter/spring. We met nearly every-other week for a few months.
Here is what she wrote:
“Hey Jeff, hope you’re doing well. Just wanted to let you know that I made first team all county this year and lead my team in doubles and almost tied the school record for homeruns, all thanks to you.”
What follows below is information I first wrote in January 2006. I’m reposting it because I want to have the info on the ‘new’ version of the site (rather than just the old link) and also because it’s pretty good stuff.
There’s a video clip to show the progression, and the text details a number of things:
Back in August, Kevin Long (Yankees hitting coach) described how he worked with Alex Rodriguez to create a more compact swing. He gave a description of using the “net” or “fence” drill:
“You take a stance parallel to a net only a bat-length away from you. You hold the knob of the bat to your stomach to measure the distance. Then, your coach flips balls to you and you hit them — without the bat touching the net. That’s how you know your swing is more compact. The drill forces you to pull your hands towards your body as you swing — it gets you in the proper position to turn on those inside pitches.”If you watch the video closely, you can see A-Rod taking one of these swings in his recent piece with 60 minutes:
“…Bob had posted some clips of Ricky and Paul did an evaluation pointing out some bat lag/drag problems
Going along with this motor learning idea that the body begins to figure out ways to accomplish the specific goals you set for it, I was hoping that doing the ‘pure reaction’ mode would force Ricky to eliminate some of that wasted movement in effort to get quicker
You can see the result in the clip
On the left is the ‘pure reaction’ setting where the player sets up to just unload (just turn) as soon as he sees one flashing light from the trigger unit. On the right is a typical tee swing from a couple of weeks ago
by my count, there is about a 2 frame difference – or ricky’s bat starts moving significantly to the ball about 2 frames later in the reaction swing on the left
and again, this was the first set of swings this player had taken doing reaction training”
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