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How to Select a Proper Youth Baseball Bat |
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By Ryan Lotito on
7/1/2006
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Possibly the most important choice your player will make prior to any given season is on what bat to use. There are a host of different choices out there, ranging from inexpensive ($20-$30) to extremely pricey ($250+). You'll need to decide what sort of price range you have prior to shopping for bats, so that you can really compare "Apples to apples".
The point of the baseball bat is, of course, to allow the player to focus as much power as possible upon the baseball. While this may sound simplistic, it does lead us to the guiding principle behind selecting a bat - a player should swing the heaviest bat he possibly can without sacrificing any of his batspeed.
Batspeed is the number one creator of power in a swing. Of course, the laws of physics tell us that if you can swing a heavier bat with the same velocity as a lighter one, you will produce more power - energy equals mass times acceleration, after all!
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Increase Hand-Eye Coordination With Practice Golf Balls |
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By Ryan Lotito on
7/1/2006
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I picked up this hitting drill from a softball coach several years ago. At the time, it seemed a bit silly, but when I watched the man transform automatic strikeouts into quality at bats, and decent hitters into all stars, I knew that he had something.
The fact of the matter is, especially when dealing with younger players, the number one reason that batters fail to do well at the plate has to do with the fact that they have no idea where the ball is. On every single rookie team across America, I guarantee there is at least one player whose eyes never leave the coach as he is pitched to, and the only way that the player will ever get a hit is if the coach manages to hit his player's bat.
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Increase Batting Power with an Old Tire |
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By Ryan Lotito on
6/30/2006
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It seems like every team has one - a player with a great batting eye who consistently puts the ball in play, but never seems to hit it hard. He teases you with his potential, but for whatever reason, he just can't seem to hit with authority, and most of his at bats result in groundouts and weak singles.
Most of the time, this is due to one of two major flaws - the player is not properly using his hips to generate the force necessary to drive the ball with power, or his wrists and/or forearms are simply too weak and allow much of his generated energy to seep away at the point of contact.
Lance Berkman of the Houston Astros talks about one of the biggest things his father did for him was to have him hit an old tire every day. Every single day, Lance would take fifty swings from the left side, then fifty more swings from the right side (his father was grooming him to be a switch hitter). It paid off, obviously!
To move the tire at all, the player must rota ...
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