whiphit, rope bat drills

[class_of_2012]

Make sure the ball is at the sweet spot of the bat. 32 inch bat ball is at 28 ". Plus as Tim stated. Many drills. If you roll your wrists early, it will punish you! Make sure at the beginning they have a helmet! I use 3/8 inch rope. I made a bunch this weekend. Cut bat at 14 ".
Bottom line if you don't have a good first move you cannot hit a ball off the T.

so for a 34" bat would the ball have to be at 30"? thanks!

 

[KAT]

ok I have a question. When you say drill the handle...you mean drill the handle the long ways and you pass the rope to the outside of the knob and say...knot it or ? Then you make the rope the length of the bat your kid (s) uses, after its passed thru the ball? Is the ball at the sweet spot or at the end? We havent done this before but it sounds perfect for what my kid is doing.

 

[class_of_2012]

ok I have a question. When you say drill the handle...you mean drill the handle the long ways and you pass the rope to the outside of the knob and say...knot it or ? Then you make the rope the length of the bat your kid (s) uses, after its passed thru the ball? Is the ball at the sweet spot or at the end? We havent done this before but it sounds perfect for what my kid is doing.

the ball is installed at the sweet spot of whatever size bat your daughter uses, so the rope bat will necessarily be shorter by 4" or so than a regular bat. a good way to test for the sweet spot of a bat, is to gently bang the barrel against a door frame/threshhold, using only one hand at the end of the bat. start at the end of the barrel and continue down to the shaft. when you hit the sweet spot, the bat will bounce of the door frame more lively and will deaded the more you move away from the sweet spot. an old baseball coach taught me this trick when he was teaching me how a wood bat had a smaller sweet spot than a composite bat.

i also believe he meant to drill a hole at the end of the knob so you can slip a rope in there. basically you are replacing the barrel of the bat with a rope and ball, similar to the whiphit bat for sale commercially for $99:

The WhipHit Bat

i assume you take a reciprocating saw (sawzall) and slice the barrel of the bat off (yes i've used a sawzall before when helping my dad!).

also take a look at the rope bat and hinge bat:

Photo 28 of 31, Analysis

sorry i can't paste the images directly since i am at a public computer that doesn't allow this.

 

[JC heir]

I drilled the end of the bat-(the knob) with a 1/2 in hole & passed a 1/2 in rope through & knotted it. The weight on the other end is an old rubber pitching machine ball. I have a pic, but am too computer dumb to post it. would be glad to email it to someone who can post pics. Lane

 

[tmolina]

ttt

Here is a pic of JC heir's rope bat:
View attachment 36

 

[SBFAMILY]

In the picture the only thing you are missing is the knot below the ball, to keep the ball in place.

 

[sean]

I have made a few with dog toys instead of rubber balls. The dog toys are softer (for beginners) and come with a heavy rope. After a few sessions the girls can use the ball type.

 

[Mark H]

These things (whiphit, rope bat, medicus bat) are wonderful tools. As you use the whiphit, make sure the swings look like high level hitter's swings rather than doing something contrived to get the ball on the rope to the ball on the tee.

 

[SBFAMILY]

Professor Adair stated in his book, "If the path of the hands is known or could be predicted you could put a ball on the end of a rope and hit a ball with it." This is why we created the WhipHit so you could focus on hand path while directing the ball on the end of the rope to the ball on the tee or taking batting practice with it. You are always trying to use the sweet part of the bat on every pitch or every swing.

This is a cut and paste of comments made by the inventor of the whiphit. I thought it would add to this discusson.

 

[Mark H]

I don't disagree with any of that but I would say the main point Adair was trying to make was unrelated to sweet spot accuracy but rather related to momentum path efficiency/the bat should be swung parallel to shoulder rotation and to say the bat should be swung rather than pushed as too many teach.

I should add that certainly swinging in one single efficient plane does add to accuracy in terms of centering the ball with the bat. I'm saying Adair's point was unrelated, in this analogy, to sweet spot accuracy along the length of the bat, as desirable as that is. I've read in the past couple of days about the length of the whiphit bat being customized to your bat's sweet spot length. This makes a little more sense though I remain skeptical. I do find the value of the whiphit to be high, just not for sweet spot accuracy work IMO. I can see though where the goal of hitting ball to ball would keep the hitter working with the device far longer than otherwise and I'd say the value of the ball on the end of the rope is in that as opposed to the medicus bat or rope bat. My experience in learning and teaching tells me working on the ball to ball accuracy may result in big gains in areas they aren't even focused on like swing plane efficiency.