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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
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:
What type of diet do you follow to improve or maintain your baseball or softball playing performance? Here’s an interesting article on how some teams are changing the types of pre-game foods they prepare for their players.
For the ballplayers, whose muscles can command multimillion-dollar contracts, the push for sound nutrition has more to do with performance and recovery than deflating a spare tire.
The article goes on to talk about how, despite the efforts to offer more nutritious foods, it is still a challange to get players to eat right. Ultimately, it’s the player’s choice.
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.
More from the Texas Rangers…..their Major League strength and conditioning coach, Jose Vazquez, has a series of instructional videos on baseball strength and conditioning, which include strength exercises, core stability, medicine ball work, and also stretching.
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:
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
There are more and more sites out there addressing “sport specific” training. Baseball specific weight training, etc, etc.
First of all, think of the term strength training. Pavel Tsatsouline suggests in his book Power to the People that the amount of tension in the muscle reflects muscle strength. You don’t necessarily need heavy weight to create tension, but if your training does not create a high amount of tension, chances are you are not gaining a high amount of strength. I am coming to the conclusion that strength training is really teaching your muscles how to create tension (which can be viewed as a skill, but that’s another topic…)
Here is a question – is there any exercise you can do in the weight room that takes you through the full range of motion in the swing at near or above game speed?
Specificity is another issue, but I’m going to make a quick argument here that your lifting in the weight room is not going to be very specific at all – at least if you define specific by the terms mention in my above question.
You don’t bench, squat or curl on a baseball field. So what is the point of lifting? Hopefully the following information will give some insight.
If you have been involved in some type of weight lifting program, you may have heard of different types of muscle fibers – Type I (slow) or Type II (fast). I would like to suggest here that a good part of your lifting should involve recruiting Type II (especially IIB) fibers.
This past winter it was described to me that some high level players (MLB) were working on their “fast-twitch” muscles by doing light weights and moving them as fast as possible. Their concern was that lifting heavy was too “slow”
Barry Ross makes a good analogy addressing this issue in his article Ballistics or Baloney:Heavy weights in the 90%-100% 1RM range can only be moved slowly. However, what you see on the outside does not match what is happening on the inside. What occurs in the neuromuscular system is the equivalent of the field commander’s tent during a heated battle. Calls have gone to the central command to recruit additional motor units; only the largest of which will do since it isn’t clear how long or how often this heavy weight will be lifted. The myofibrils in all of the fiber types are fully involved and working, their motor units firing them at full speed to keep the heavy weight moving. The weight is moving slowly but the motor units are firing as fast as they can, the larger motor units firing faster than smaller ones, to provide the necessary strength. All the new recruits will be trained and ready to work when it’s time for competition if command central believes that there will be a continuing demand for the larger motor units and more myofibrils. When the amount of weight is reduced, there is sufficient strength to overcome inertia and to move the weight significantly faster.
And the following is another excerpt from The Biophysical Foundations of Human Movement, which defines the difference between muscle fiber types and how to recruit type IIB fibers, which are the largest and most powerful:
Conclusion
Lift. Lift heavy. Rest. Repeat.
Use your time in the weight room to teach your muscles how to create tension and to recruit as many of your most powerful muscles fibers as possible.
As far as specicifity goes and carrying this new-found strength onto the field, well that involves a different kind of training (hint: it involves a bat!)
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