Posted by: Bruce (bm01626@windstream.net) on Sun Aug 9 07:41:57 2009

> > > > >>> I remember a video of John (I think that's his name) where he hits a ball off the tee over the fence. We do not know specifics like bat length, wood or metal, distance to fence, etc. but if John has the skills to hit a stationary ball off the tee over the fence then others should be able to do that.
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> > > > My freshman high school son and I have tried to improve using a tee versus spending money in the batting cage but neither of us can exceed 280 feet. He is 15, 5 feet 11 at 140 pounds and very fast on his feet. I am 6 feet one at 180 and have less muscle mass. We have tried wood bats 33/30, stealth aluminum 33/30, stealth 32/29 aluminum and we both hit the same distance. We are using rotational mechanics.
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> > > > In earlier posts, it was said that trying to kill it does not work and with our experiences this is very true. The smoother swing gets better distance. We still can not figure out how to squeeze out another 30 - 50 feet.
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> > > > We are avid believers in your program but we are missing something.
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> > > > Got any ideas? <<<
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> > > > Hi Bruce
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> > > > I was somewhat taken aback with your statement that you remembered a video of John where he hits a ball off the tee over the fence. As I recalled, John's tee work was used to demonstrate mechanics and did not show or mention the ball's flight. So to make sure, I reviewed our instructional video and found I was correct. We did show John hitting balls over the fence using different batting styles. However that was while swinging at live pitching.
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> > > > Sorry, but I do not have any data on ball flight differences of balls hit off a tee compared to live pitching. Maybe some of our readers could help you with the answer.
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> > > > Jack Mankin
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> > > >>I have done quite a bit with this and if you have quality swings going on it is probably a mass problem and the wrong w/o regimen,when i was 45 and 235# i was hitting it no more than 310 tops,but after 3 months of a certain w/o i started hitting it over the fence about 325.Take into the fact i had lost alot of elasticity in my muscles from my youth and it was a combination of mass power and good mechanics to generate the batspeed.
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> > Correct me if I am wrong but to hit a ball over 300 feet it is my understanding it needs to be going atleast 90 mph with a very good flight path.... so thats not a real easy thing to do off a tee.
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> There really is no so called maximum distance a ball can be hit. It is a combination of batspeed, strength, swing plane, and where the batter hits the ball on the barrel.
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> To get more distance hitting off a T, use a heavier bat 32-34 ounces. Since there is no pitched ball, timing is not a factor. Therefore it is much easier to use a heavier bat. Roger Maris once did a test after his record breaking year and proved the heavier bat the greater the distance up to a point.

Where we are coming from is info we researched on the NCAA website, http://m-5.eng.uml.edu/umlbrc/Publications/BESR%20White%20Paper.pdf, where this is the equation:

V-ball exit = (BESR + .5)V-bat + (BESR - .5)V-pitch

this says the ball exits the bat based at a speed based on the bat's BESR rating times the bat speed plus a smaller portion of the bat's BESR rating times the pitch speed. The example is bat speed of 70 mph and pitch speed of 75 mph with a BESR = .65 (where a perfect major league bat is .728) equals a ball exit speed of 92 mph. We do not have a way to measure our bat exit speed but with a good bat and good mechanics, you could have a bat exit speed of 105 mph and theoritically you should be able to hit a ball further than 280 feet. If you watched the Home Run derby, the pitcher probably was not pitching more than 80 - 85 mph and some batters were hitting close to 500 feet. Fielder was a good example of poor mechanics and he was just trying to kill the ball and almost went down on one of his swing that went over 400 feet.

The bat has to be a part of the equation, we do not have a new Easton aluminum or compostie bat and we are wondering if we speend the money if we would get more distance.

The other thing we observed is that the bat speed is the other important factor. We are trying to figure out how to get more bat speed before ball-bat collision because we are convinced that after the collision there is no amount of extra force that can be exerted to make the ball travel further.

We tried to bring the bat back toward the catcher to increase mommentum in the swing path but it feels very ackward.

We feel we have good leading hip rotation and a CHP, but we tend to get more distance with BHT versus THT, sometimes at collision they may be equal but we achieve just a shorter distance say 20 feet.

The only other area we have a question on is the weight distribution at collision, should there be more weight on the back leg, equal weight on both legs, or more on the front. On the videos we watch it appears as if there is more on the back in order to have a straight leading leg.

We do not want to get to carried away here just some thoughts.

Thanks.

Bruce