Re: shorten swing for better contact?
In my opinion, a 31" may be way too much for an 80 pound kid. Most of the kids I coached in LLB a long time ago we hitting with 28-30's until they reached 110. Remember that bat head control is the key when deciding the type of bat to use. When a hitter has to divert any energy away from the hitting motion, it will diminish the bat speed. You can see this easily, as an adult, when slinging a sledge hammer. If you carry the head of the hammer through the swing, from start to finish, where is the weakest part? It will almost always be from the the point that the hammer leaves the shoulder area and drives through the zone to the point of contact. The reason is that the wrists and arms are having to adjust for the weight of the hammer head (just like the bat-where is the weight: in the head) as well as having to drag the hammer head through the zone. If the child is using a bat that is too heavy to control, this will occur. He is having to compensate for the weight of the bat head (dragging which creates the 'looping'). This 'dragging' ultimately decreases acceleration and you always want acceleration of the bat head through the point of contact. Although it looks better to use a bigger bat, it gets you nothing but a larger area of surface contact. My recommendation is to lower the bat size and have the kid do strengthening exercises such as push ups etc (not weights). Not every kid has to hit with power. A kid who can produce sharp contact and put the ball where he wants to is more valuable than the kid who can hit it out of the park 1 out of every 25 hits.
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