What do you guys think of the use of weighted bats or donuts in the on-deck circle? I've heard some people say it increases bat speed, and I've heard others say it actually decreases bat speed.
Posts: 57 | Location: Cedar Rapids, IA | Registered: June 07, 2005
Try using a towel-bat. Cut a wood bat in half, screw an eye bolt in the end, put a large towel through the bolt and use a zip-tie to secure it. Swing this on deck- it simulates resistance similar to a donut, but doesn't lead to casting your hands and slowing your muscles down. If you're doing it right and swinging with hands rather than body/shoulders, when you snap your wrists, the towel will make a popping sound.
Posts: 61 | Location: Johnson City - Rockwood | Registered: August 11, 2006
I used a weighted bat in the ondeck circle my entire playing days. I used it more for stretching than swinging. Recently I read the effects are gone by the time the player steps to the plate. Some feel it may create bad swing mechanics. My son still uses a weighted bat when ondeck out of habit.
For the past year he's worked out with a Swift Stick. There's a theory swinging a very light bat hard improves fast twitch muscles. My son's bat speed has increased a lot. Is it the Swift Stick? I don't know. He's also grown from 5'11", 135 to 6'1", 162. He's also lifting weights seriously for the first time this year.
* Everyone prefers to win. Do you have the passion and work ethic to do what it takes to win? *
Posts: 3697 | Location: Mid-Atlantic | Registered: October 29, 2007
Originally posted by cneagles19: If you're doing it right and swinging with hands rather than body/shoulders,
How can your hands swing a bat? To swing a bat that is IN the hands you must swing/turn your hips, torso, shoulders, arms.
Watch this video, from the same program, which shows the kinetic chain and how power is produced. Watch it all the way to the end of the golf ball speed experiment.
jmart- obviously you do have to use the rest of your body to swing the bat, I wasn't overly clear on that. What I meant by that statement, was that many people, when swinging a weighted or resistance aided bat, try to "muscle up" and swing with their big muscles (body/shoulders) and the hands tend to lag behind and cast out away from the body....
Posts: 61 | Location: Johnson City - Rockwood | Registered: August 11, 2006
Using the donut is a waste. I never used them warming up. I wanted the same feel at the plate as the on deck circle. My son never used a weighted bat or donut either. He used the time in the on deck circle to get his swing and timing down.
Posts: 719 | Location: NJ | Registered: October 27, 2007
The numbers are insignificant. 1) the 2 speeds are still pretty close. 2) they only did 1 test 3) contact with the ball was at different points of the swing, the "weighted" one hit the ball out in front more.
I like the ripple on the bat on POC
Posts: 194 | Location: LA, CA | Registered: September 29, 2008
While I agree that swinging the heavier bat trains a slower neuromuscular patterning, there was something amiss in the experiment in that video. They said the batter's swing was slower after warming up with the donut. Yet, they showed the batter hitting off the end of the bat which implies he was early.
There is a actually a lot of research that shows that you should take your warm-up swings with a bat that is no heavier or no lighter than 3 oz from your regular bat. I have a lot of the articles on my PC--if you are interested, please let me know.
Do not become overly infatuated with professional players idiosyncracy's, they use usless gimmicks such as, weighted balls, weighted bat attachments,linear hitting movements and many more useless things that have absolutely no advantage whatsoever to their personal improvement, major league baseball managers, coaches and players are in a fantasy world all of their own and are professional tinkerers where tinkering should be left alone, there is and has been great basic baseball such as the straight change which has been, still is and will always be the best pitch in baseball when used properly with the fast ball,is along with other great baseball basics that was learned many years ago which has gone by the wayside and then low and behold we have just learned a new way to approach the hitting of a baseball,"NOT NEW" Ted Williams,the most intelligent,not only hitter, but also baseball mind in the game period, showed the whole baseball world how to approach the hitting of the baseball making good hard consistent contact, yet,unbeknown to most people these so called new hitting methods are finally being copied from his book etc. but there is very little said about where this new method of hitting originated from,"TED WILLIAMS" MY FRIENDS," I have been teaching his methods for several years and I give him all the credit he certainly deserves when I talk to any one about hitting. As the video Brian Shanberg suggested we all view scientifically proved that weighting the bat end down is actually detrimental to bat to ball sweet spot contact, I, as LABall noticed that, using the weighted bat prior created non, necessary uncontrolled bat speed and the bat to ball contact was made at the end of the barrel, Muscle memory is the main factor here, To successfully accomplish what every one unknowingly belives is that a weighted bat barrel helps them to successfully hit a baseball which is absolutely false is simply to implement a constructive, consistent, daily, repetitious set of bat swing exercises with their regular bat, The muscle memory along with good proper rotational hitting movements will do the trick, get away from those useless gimmicks, and find out what actually works on a regular basis not what might temporarily work. Don Ervin. kom_ervin@yahoo.com
