Heavy balls? Total control balls?

[dmcwhinnie]

I agree with the people that said that it can be good before the game if you have a limited area to warm up in. What I like to use to get the idea of hitting the ball hard is a heavy bag (the one that boxers use). I would have the hitter swing and hit the bag hard and then check to see where their body was at contact. I would check out their backside (not their butt), their back hip, their back foot. I wanted to see if they were unlocking their back hip and what they were doing with their back foot. My grand daughter is a big girl, but is not hitting the ball all that hard and I discovered that she is kind of squishing the bug with her back foot. If you do that you will have a tendency to open up too early. Watch her weight transfer. Does she transefer the weight from her back foot to her front foot and then rotate or does she rotate when her weight is istill on her back foot. If she pivots on her back foot she will fly open and have a hard time hitting the outside pitch.

 

[CloudofDust]

You sound like the VP of Marketing for Total Control Sports.. LOL. I'm yet to see a coach coaching mechanics on every swing during warm up before a game and have any success with it. Over-coaching mechanics during a warm up before a game is not the best approach IMO.

What can I say? I've been amazed at how some of my players have gone from hitting slow rollers that barely make it to the pitching circle to smoking line drive at 3B. I attribute a lot of that success to the heavy balls (fyi, I don't use the TCB brand).

As for over-coaching swing mechanics, I don't really have a choice. I had 6 girls that had never played softball before and had no idea how to hold a bat, much less swing it. This is 8U coach pitch and, since I'm pitching, I get the opportunity to watch every swing. It takes a loooong time for these girls to remember what to do on their own.

 

[julray]

What can I say? I've been amazed at how some of my players have gone from hitting slow rollers that barely make it to the pitching circle to smoking line drive at 3B. I attribute a lot of that success to the heavy balls (fyi, I don't use the TCB brand).

As for over-coaching swing mechanics, I don't really have a choice. I had 6 girls that had never played softball before and had no idea how to hold a bat, much less swing it. This is 8U coach pitch and, since I'm pitching, I get the opportunity to watch every swing. It takes a loooong time for these girls to remember what to do on their own.

The rapid improvement is likely due to having never playing ball before.... to playing a full season.

 

[big_bruiser]

I like the 12 oz heavy balls for my kids. We don't judge by how far the ball goes but go based off the sound it makes off the bat. If it makes that "WHAP!" sound and it makes it past me or if I catch it around my face we are happy. I switch between the 12oz balls and whiffles and I get a much better gauge on how hard they are hitting the balls from the weighted balls. However I still use the whiffles more because I can throw them a little harder and my kids enjoy putting one off my face every now and then!

 

[Lemond]

Not showing these to critique the swing (random person on you tube search), but this shows the feedback I generally look for in addition to the overall swing mechanics we are trying to pay attention to:

Ball should resemble this (No donut):



Not this (Donut):



In the top video, without going through the impact dynamics with @pattar, if the TCBs were to hit on or below the taper (is this what was being referred to as off the hands earlier?), you would see the ball almost completely wrap around the smaller bat diameter at that point.

I might be wrong, but I would suspect that this would actually absorb more of the energy of the impact, and so should NOT travel farther than a clean hit off the sweet spot, unless, as has been alluded to, the impact time is so large in comparison to the impact at the sweet spot, that the ball becomes essentially thrown by the bat at that point.

However, if that were the case, I think you would see an exaggerated effect of the ball travelling to the left of the pitcher (RHH), where if the mechanics were sound and the impact were on the sweet spot, I'm seeing the balls coming straight at the pitcher.

So, again, I think that I can use that as another obvious indicator that the batter's mechanics are not correct.

Again, just a tool with a limited scope of use, but I think worthwhile to keep in the toolbox.

Oh, and a good wiffle ball game on a windy day can be CRAZY fun!

 

[SquaredUp]

I have the TCB 74 and 82 balls. I like the smaller 74 ball for tee work, but use an old one piece aluminum bat so as not to wreck expensive multi-piece bats.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

[julray]

Not showing these to critique the swing (random person on you tube search), but this shows the feedback I generally look for in addition to the overall swing mechanics we are trying to pay attention to:

Ball should resemble this (No donut):



Not this (Donut):



In the top video, without going through the impact dynamics with @pattar, if the TCBs were to hit on or below the taper (is this what was being referred to as off the hands earlier?), you would see the ball almost completely wrap around the smaller bat diameter at that point.

I might be wrong, but I would suspect that this would actually absorb more of the energy of the impact, and so should NOT travel farther than a clean hit off the sweet spot, unless, as has been alluded to, the impact time is so large in comparison to the impact at the sweet spot, that the ball becomes essentially thrown by the bat at that point.

However, if that were the case, I think you would see an exaggerated effect of the ball travelling to the left of the pitcher (RHH), where if the mechanics were sound and the impact were on the sweet spot, I'm seeing the balls coming straight at the pitcher.

So, again, I think that I can use that as another obvious indicator that the batter's mechanics are not correct.

Again, just a tool with a limited scope of use, but I think worthwhile to keep in the toolbox.

Oh, and a good wiffle ball game on a windy day can be CRAZY fun!

In the first video, do believe this to be the sweet spot?

 

[Lemond]

Nope.

 

[julray]

Nope.
View attachment 16423

Was it thrown?

 

[Lemond]

Was it thrown?

I presume so, but like I said, this was just a random result of a you tube search. No idea about anything else in the video, was just trying to illustrate the post-hit dynamic of the TCB after solid contact vs topping/bottoming the ball.