Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Sun Jul 26 20:28:26 2009

> > > >>>>I have a problem. I am a great base hit guy but I have a problem hitting triples and homeruns. It's from not having a very high bat speed. If I can get my bat speed up; It will determine if I go D1 or if I go Jco. I need some advice so I can be a "All-hitter", be able to get doubles and singles, but also be able to hit some out if the pitcher makes a mistake. Any suggestions?
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> > Do over under swing training, hit a punching bag with the bat, hit 10 oz weighted balls off the tee. Watch all of the batspeed.com videos on youtube.
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> torque that weighted ball thing is new to me tell me about it


Get an old bat, a tanner tee or whatever tee you like, heavy enough netting to hit into, and a heavy weighted baseball. A real ball feels like you are hitting a tennis ball after hitting weighted balls.

I'm not an engineer and really can't calculate the force on the bat produced by an 80 plus mph fast ball. I do know that the force on the bat produced by a stationary baseball doesn't come close to the collision of a pitched baseball. Hitting a 10 oz. weighted baseball will produce a more realistic force collision than doing soft toss or hitting off a tee using a regular ball.

The idea came to me when I was hitting about 85 mph baseballs and realized that the bat ball collision at 85mph greatly exceeded the bat ball collision of soft toss or tee work with a regular ball. In order to produce a greater force it seemed logical to soft toss or do tee work with weighted baseballs to try and more realistically simulate the collision force.

Just don't throw weighted balls or hit pitches with them as this could be very dangerous. It could also wear out a game bat so you should use an older heavy duty aluminum bat.

I've recently tried this in the last week and a baseball feels like you are hitting tennis balls. I think it helps with a number of little things that occur at the point of contact. It certainly makes the bat ball collision more realistic.

I'd like to know what the force is on a bat/ball collision with an 85 mph pitch and a 5 ounce ball. I remember a physics equation: force=mass times velocity and this is probably the right equation but I don't know how to use it in this instance.

This is something new to me so I'll let you know if it produces noticeable results. Psychologically it does a few positive things. A hitter has to get aggressive on a weighted ball to get results and a baseball really feels like hitting a racquetball or tennis ball. In fact, you don't feel the baseball after doing this kind of training. It feels like a dry swing.