Posted by: Zig Ziegler (hmnmotion@aol.com) on Fri Feb 7 06:21:38 2003

Robin,

Thats great if you have four girls that are strong enough with good balance and have no side bend to their trailing side (right side for right handed hitters). That means they have good balance. BAtting averages in softball without an explanation of what kind of pitching it is done against isn't an indicator of how well an athlete swings. Using our biomechanical analysis technology, I have analyzed over 10,000 athletes in the last year. I have spent the last 15 years developing true functionla strength and conditioning programs for athletes. 95% of those athletes lack the simplest physical component that must be present in order to swing a bat at any length. That component is balance. So base upon my research and random sampling, I can conclude that most athletes not just girls need to focus on developing their body's physical components while they try to develop their technique.

I have analyzed Candrea's athletes also and they do not have perfect swings. They do what they do better than most athletes out there because they are some of the strongest and most stable athletes that we analyzed. Not because they have the perfect swing or anything close in fact only one of his athletes did not exhibit any flaws related to balance and strength. But she was 5-10, 220 pounds. She swung a 34 inch bat, but only half of the other girls swung a bat that length. The did not swing -11s or -10s. Because they are not strong.

My research did not rely on analyzing video tapes at 30 frames per second. We put sensors on each athlete, and recorded exactly how fast each body part was moving and could see exactly what happened when in the swing.

Don't get me wrong, some of the swings were not signigicantly flawed and as a result they have made up our swing database of good characteristics. the length of a softball swing the way it is taught today is longer than a baseball swing. (By the way, earlier someone commented about wanting a girl on their team who could go from 0 to 100 in .15) That girl or guy doesn't exist. You might be able to get that on a stop watch, but our technolgy (3D-SkillCheck) measure the length of the swing and no male or female athlete has a forward swing of faster than .18 seconds.

The accuracy of our testing methods have been validated over the last 20 years by engineers and scientist at top research institutions in the US, Europe, and Japan. This is not MHO, but instead it is fact.

Robin, If you have four girls that swing 34 inch bats I would like to test them and see what impact that bat has on their swing (No guessing). The .473 batting average is great in comparison to baseball averages, but that puts the girls in the 50 percentile for batting averages. We have also collected that data and many of the girls we tested had batting averages in the high .500s and even .600. The best college coaches told us that a girls batting average is the last thing they care about because the pitching at the high school level is so bad, that you could go 0 for 5 against a good pitcher and 6 for 6 against a bad pitcher (and there are more bad pitchers than good ones) and have a batting average above .500.

Let me know if you will let me come out and analyze your girls. I am from Arizona and currently in Texas making my way around the country. Where are you located.

if there are any coaches out there who would like for me to come out hook up your athletes and tell you if what you are teaching is what you are seeing I will be glad to let me know.

Zig Ziegler