Below is another bat speed training research abstract.  This really was one of the best, if not the best, controlled research study that has been published regarding overload & underload training and its effects on bat swing velocity – and it was done all the way back in 1995! 

The basics are that 3 groups of 20 college players were trained 4 times per week for 12 weeks under the following conditions: batting practice group, dry swing group, control group.  The BP and dry swing group followed this swing training protocol using varied heavy and light weighted bats while the control group just dry swung with a regular weighted bat.

The results say that each group significantly imrpoved bat speed, but that’s a little misleading if you don’t read the whole study.  The batting practice group improved 10%, the dry swing group imroved 6%, and the control group improved 1%. 

Read more…

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research bat speed, batting practice, hitting, power, research, swing, training

Pasted below is the abstract from a bat speed training article published by Chester Sergo and Douglas Boatwright in 1993.  The italics and red text are emphasis added by me.  Read the abstract, but I’ll summarize and make a few points:

 - 24 subjects averaged 19-20 years old and were college students practicing in the off-season

- All the training was done with just dry swings, during practice.  100 swings in sets of 20 performed 3x/week for 6 weeks

- Group 1 (regular bat only), Group 2 (62 oz. bat), Group 3 (alternated sets with 62 oz. & fungo bat)

- Each group improved bat speed 8-9%, with no statistically significant difference.  Group 1 (8.8%, highest), Group 2 (8.0% lowest), Group 3 (8.2 %)

- FYI the average bat speeds reported for these players began in the low 90’s and ended around 100 mph, measured by some light timing device made by the school’s engineering department

Read more…

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research bat speed, batting, batting practice, power, research, training, workout

A couple of years ago, I made a post about resistance training for bat speed that outlined a weight lifting program that has been demonstrated through research to improve strength for high school baseball players.  It’s basic multi-joint movements and progressive overload principle provide exellent results.

Something I think that was overlooked there was that the original NSCA article by Dr. David Szymanski also includes a simple protocol for increasing bat speed using overload/underload weighted implement training:

  Read more…

Jeff Training research bat speed, lifting, power, research, strength, swing, training, workout

What bat should you use in the on-deck circle while getting loose?  Light bat, heavy bat, regular bat?  Is a donut really that bad?

This isn’t a new topic, but an article in Scientific America brings up the issue again with a new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research:

Warming up with 5 swings of a light or normal bat appears to increase post warm-up velocity of the normal bat when compared with warming up with a heavy bat after a rest period of 30 seconds. Within the bat weight spectrum of this study, it is suggested that when preparing to hit, 5 warm-up swings with either a light or normal bat will allow a player to achieve the greatest velocity of their normal bat.

Read more…

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research bat speed, biomechanics, research

Here is another study that I was a part of at La Tech – this one was done to see if adding weight to the forearms while training (taking swings) would help improve bat speed and batted ball velocity.

Read more…

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research baseball, forearm, grip, research, softball, strength, training

From: Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology Jul2007 Supplement, Vol. 29, pS92

In baseball hitting, a powerful bat swing needs to be produced by utilizing ground reaction force (GRF) and it should also be temporally coordinated relative to the flight of a pitch. Therefore, organizing a hitting movement to meet these task requirements is a key for a successful hitting performance. This leads to a presumption that a front-foot stepping motion adopted for utilizing GRF to produce power for a bat-swing motion should be temporally coordinated with respect to an oncoming pitch. The present study investigated the temporal organization of hitting movements by focusing on the timing of the stepping motion relative to the flight of pitches. Six participants hit pitches projected by a pitching machine with following task conditions: 1) hitting pitches traveling at a consistent speed and 2) hitting pitches traveling at fast/slow speeds, which were randomly delivered. The second condition was aimed at eliciting movement modulation to the difference in the pitches’ speeds. Ground reaction forces exerted by left and right feet during hitting movements was recorded by two force plates to measure the timing of the front-foot take-off and landing in the stepping motion. Hitting motions were also recorded by a high-speed camera for interpreting the change of GRF profile relative to the hitting movement. The comparison between the GRF profiles in the two task conditions revealed that the timing of the stepping motion and shifting weight forward for initiating the bat swing was modulated relative to the pitch’s speed. Temporal relation between successive motion phases was compensatory such that the early timing of landing the front foot relative to an oncoming pitch was followed by the late initiation of shifting weight onto the landed front foot, and vice versa. The timing variability in the successive motion phases progressively reduced up to the ball-bat contact. These results demonstrated the coordinative structure of the hitting movement for timing the bat swing relative to the pitch’s flight.

Jeff Training research biomechanics, Mechanics, research, strength, swing

Since I have pretty much directed most of my work to MLB analysis, I thought it would be good to get back to a bit of the training side of things.

This is a recent article on resistance training for bat speed written by Dr. David Szymanski, who is one of my professors here at Louisiana Tech.

For you high school coaches out there, this may be a good guide especially for players who are not experienced with weight training.  This protocol was used in a few previous studies by Dr. Szymanski and I experienced it myself this past fall in a study we did (which is not published yet, but referenced in this article).  Also, if you have limited facilities, this is a basic way to help young players get stronger.

This is an overview, but you’re going to want to read the whole article:

The article explains general, special and specific conditioning and also explains possible differences in training high school and college players.

I’ve got to throw this in here too, because it was pretty cool to see:

These are references to the studies we have done so far, which have been a great experience.  Maybe someday I’ll have my own publication?  We’ll see…

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research bat speed, hitting, lifting, program, research, training, weights

After a quiet, sleep filled break from classes, I’m getting back into action this weekend with a little road trip to the NSCA Sport Specific Conference in San Antonio, TX.  This year’s conference covers soccer, football and baseball.  Guess: which one I am interested in?

Actually, I would like to attend the sports-vision and power development presentations for football, but there are a couple of baseball presentations going on at the same time.  One on friday is going to be presented by none other than Tom House, whose topic is Rotational Strength, Endurance and Flexibility for Throwers.  Should be interesting.

Dr. Szymanski has a 2 hour presentation on increasing throwing velocity, which we already got to hear in class.  Interestingly, it covers all of the research that has been done on improving throwing velocity and then goes over some applications.  For anyone who still says there is no documented research on using weighted baseballs to increase throwing velocity for baseball……well, that is not the case!

I am also looking forward to hearing Perry Castellano (head S&C for the Twins) presenting “Power is not Size”.

Here is the full rundown of presenters and topics:

Friday

Saturday

Looking forward to learning some new things…

Happy New Year

Jeff Training research research, sport specific, strength, training

I believe I previously mentioned a research project I have been involved in here at Tech, which involves effects of weight training on bat velocity and batted ball velocity.  Few training studies have been done over a 12-week period, and now I know why:  organization, assistants, and participation. 

Spread over 5 area high school, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 players began, and only 29 or 30 finished.  Injuries, sickness and plenty of other weird excuses came up for those who dropped out, but there were a number of hard working kids that really made some progress. 

For the bat speed measures, we used the SETPRO sprt5-a.  I’ve had a lot of experience with this and found it to be very reliable in measuring bat-tip velocity.  Why?  Because it measues the tip in the same place, evry time (as long as you have the tee set up correctly.  I have had a hard time telling where some other bat speed units pick up the bat, and some have seemed more inconsistent.

The Speedtrac-XRQ was used to measure ball speed, and this was a bit more tricky.   Many of the players did not like that you actually have to hit the ball solidly in order to get a good reading, but that is the idea – solid contact equals higher ball velocity.  There were a few instances where a player would hit the ball solidly and not get a reading, but this seemed more due to set-up than anything (which I still don’t totally understand).  But, for the most part, when we got the unit setup so that the player could hit a line-drive directly at it, we got relatively consistent results.

Here is a look at part of our testing set-up:

And for strarting off on my own research, I again used the SPRT5-A to measure bat speed and different variances of swing quickness/reaction:

A good time was had by….well, me at least

Jeff Training research bat speed, biomechanics, power, research, training, workout

Just the other day I saw someone in the weight room doing wrist rolls and it made me think of this article.  I’ve been meaning to post it for a while now, so here it is.

Dr. Szymanski is an assistant professor here at La Tech and is one of the main reasons I decided to attend.  As I’ve mentioned, we’ve already started a study about the effects of weight lifting on bat speed and batted ball speed.

Basically, this study finds that although group 2 (which does additional grip/forearm strngthening exercises) achievs significatly greater grip/forearm strength, but their bat speed does not improve significantly as compared to group 1.

I do have a copy of this entire article, but I will post the abstract (as found here) below:

______________________
Szymanski DJ; McIntyre JS; Szymanski JM; Molloy JM; Madsen NH; Pascoe DD
Department of Health and Human Performance, Auburn University, Alabama 36849, USA. dszyman@latech.edu
This study examined the effects of 12 weeks of wrist and forearm training on linear bat-end velocity (BV), center of percussion velocity (CV), hand velocity (HV), and time to ball contact of high school baseball players. Forty-three baseball players were randomly assigned by a stratified sampling technique to 1 of 2 training groups. Group 1 (n = 23) and group 2 (n = 20) performed the same full-body resistance exercises while training 3 days a week for 12 weeks according to a stepwise periodized model. Group 2 also performed wrist and forearm exercises 3 days a week for 12 weeks. Wrist and forearm strength were measured pre- and posttraining. Linear BV, CV, HV, and time to ball contact were recorded pre- and posttraining by a motion-capture system. A 3 repetition maximum (RM) parallel squat and bench press were measured at baseline and after 4, 8, and 12 weeks of training. Both groups showed statistically significant increases (p < or = 0.01) in linear BV, CV, and HV (m.s(-1) +/- SD) after 12 weeks of training; however, there were no differences between the 2 groups. Both groups statistically increased wrist and forearm strength (p < or = 0.05). Group 2 had statistically greater increases (p < or = 0.05) in 10 of 12 wrist and forearm strength measures than did group 1. Both groups made statistically significant increases in predicted 1RM parallel squat and bench press after 4, 8, and 12 weeks of training; however, there were no differences between groups. These data indicate that a 12-week stepwise periodized training program can significantly increase wrist and forearm strength, linear BV, CV, and HV among high school baseball players. However, increased wrist and forearm strength did not contribute to further increases in linear BV, CV, or HV.

These accompanying charts and figures may also be of interest:

*of special note is that the study was done with HIGH SCHOOL players

My basic comment is that forearm and grip strength does not have to be totally neglected, but it also does not have to be insanely over-hyped.  There are plenty of exercises and training scenarios that allow a player to focus on moving and using the major muscle groups while allowing grip and forearm strength to improve (ie deadlift)

Jeff Bat Speed, Training research baseball, forearm, hands, research, softball, strength, training, wrist

Tomorrow we are doing a number of testings on high school athletes here in Ruston, LA at La. Tech (I’ll have more on my move later)

The testings will be done for a 12-week research project investigating the effects of an overweighted lifting program on bat velocity and batted ball velocity.
We’ll be using the SETPRO sp-5 and new Speedtrac X to measure bat speed and ball exit speed
There are many other things to be tested such as 3RM for squat and bench press, rotational medicine ball throw, grip strength, body fat %, and throwing velocity.

I will try to put up maybe a picture or two from tomorrow’s events (my wife will be there to document by video)
This is the first of hopefully many research and study opportunities for me here at Tech.  It will be interesting to match up the “SETPRO” education of the past few years with the formal university education (officially a MS in Education with a concentration in exercise science…..I’ll be able to scan in my plan of study to show what courses I am taking).
_______

If you haven’t guessed from the last post (I moved) and this one (I’m in Ruston, LA at Louisiana Tech), I moved to Ruston, LA to pursue a MS in Education with a concentration in Exercise Science at Louisiana Tech.

I have not been able to do much work on the site because we have been helping to renovate the house we hopefully move into this weekend and also I am LOADED with classes and teaching classes (I am a grad. assistant so I get to teach 2 activity classes – beginning bowling and beginning weight training.  I missed out on golf!)

But once we are moved in and have some sort of routine going, I’ll update some more on what classes I’ll be taking.

This is a really great situation and there will be quite a few opportunities for me to get involved in research here and also generate my own original ideas for research….and a thesis if I choose to do one.  If you have any great suggestions for research topics, feel free to post or email them.

Jeff Training research research, swing, training