hitting power

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Feb 27, 2019
137
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I have a question to pose to you all on hitting. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here goes.

I assist coaching on a travel team (12U). I have two pretty un-athletic girls that lack hustle and are not able to keep up in fitness aspects such as pushups and sprints with the other girls.

The question is that when they bat, their swing appears slow and without much leg involvement however, they out distance some of the others that are stronger and faster in all other facets. what gives? Their form isn't good and their bat speed is slower but they kill the ball. Any thoughts?
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
I have a question to pose to you all on hitting. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here goes.

I assist coaching on a travel team (12U). I have two pretty un-athletic girls that lack hustle and are not able to keep up in fitness aspects such as pushups and sprints with the other girls.

The question is that when they bat, their swing appears slow and without much leg involvement however, they out distance some of the others that are stronger and faster in all other facets. what gives? Their form isn't good and their bat speed is slower but they kill the ball. Any thoughts?

Have you actually measured their bat speed?
 
Apr 30, 2018
349
43
Using a bat sensor like Blast Motion combined with radar gun to measure the ball launch velocity would give you lots of insight. It will give you peak bat velocityIf you don't have one or access to one, you can try taking video from the side of each girl and doing a frame by frame comparison. A camera that can take 60fps or higher video would help. Video won't give you all the answers as the bat will accelerate differently for each girl. 60fps video just won't give you enough frames to get detailed answers.

Push ups are dependent on both the strength of the girl and the girls weight. A better comparison would be a bench press or other exercise that tests similar muscle groups to hitting. This will give you direct comparison of pure strength.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
Feb 27, 2019
137
28
I haven't measured their bat speed. However, to the naked eye, it looks noticeably slower. As for the strength test, those were just generalized activities that they have done in our winter conditioning program. Two that were the worst performers in any physical conditioning drill ,either strength or speed, hit really far compare to others. They are all within no more than 2 inches of height and ballpark 10 lbs of weight. I'll see if we can test the bat speed.
 
Apr 28, 2014
2,316
113
I haven't measured their bat speed. However, to the naked eye, it looks noticeably slower. As for the strength test, those were just generalized activities that they have done in our winter conditioning program. Two that were the worst performers in any physical conditioning drill ,either strength or speed, hit really far compare to others. They are all within no more than 2 inches of height and ballpark 10 lbs of weight. I'll see if we can test the bat speed.

Farm Strong?
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
I haven't measured their bat speed. However, to the naked eye, it looks noticeably slower. As for the strength test, those were just generalized activities that they have done in our winter conditioning program. Two that were the worst performers in any physical conditioning drill ,either strength or speed, hit really far compare to others. They are all within no more than 2 inches of height and ballpark 10 lbs of weight. I'll see if we can test the bat speed.

Physics tells us that only three things matter at contact, bat speed,ball speed and where the ball hits the bat. So either these girls have better bat speed or are better at squaring up the ball (or both)..
 
Last edited:

CoreSoftball20

Wilson = Evil Empire
DFP Vendor
Dec 27, 2012
6,215
113
Kunkletown, PA
I have two pretty un-athletic girls that lack hustle and are not able to keep up in fitness aspects such as pushups and sprints with the other girls.

Firstly, do they lack hustle or are just slow? Completely diff things and I would be very annoyed if you assumed I lacked hustle because I was just slow. By the sentence, it just sounds
like they aren't in good shape or not very good at physical activities. As you being a coach, please be careful of the "lazy/lack hustle" term just thrown around if they just aren't in good shape
or kinda not coordinated yet, especially at 12U.

Like BT said, we used to call this country strong. Just because a person doesn't do pushups well, doesn't mean they aren't strong and cant outhit your labeled "athletes".
 
Last edited:
Jun 17, 2009
15,105
0
Portland, OR
Physics tells us that only three things matter at contact, bat speed,ball speed and where the ball hits the bat. So either these girls have better bat speed or are better at squaring up the ball (or both)..

Does physics tell us that acceleration of the barrel at impact is an important factor?
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
Does physics tell us that acceleration of the barrel at impact is an important factor?
Theoretically yes. However the force the player is exerting on the bat, which is related to acceleration, during contact is much smaller than the
forces generated during the bat-ball collision and hence are not nearly as important and are typically ignored in an analysis. This is why conservation of linear
momentum is typically used when in reality if one included the player generated force momentum would change after contact.
 
Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
My daughter's bones are made of tungsten. She weighs a ton and thus can't do push ups well at all. But she'll hit the ball a mile, far more than girls who are seemingly in better condition.

We live on a farm. Go figure. :p
 

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