I have been helping players increase their bat speed successfully for many years! Some of the concepts you need to understand is exactly how the neurological system works when you are trying to teach the body a skill or to move faster. Many times I hear “swing a heavy bat that will make your bat feel lighter” and in turn give you bat speed. Unfortunately it will make your bat feel lighter for a short period of time but within a few minutes that bat will feel exactly how it did before you swung the heavy bat. So, why is that? I like to explain this as it was a short term change meaning you didn’t tap into actually reconditioning the muscle fibers to move faster or to strengthen in any way. Our muscles are made of millions of fibers I will refer them to green (fast twitch) and red (slow twitch). When you swing or do something faster than you do normally you are training your green fibers to move faster and in turn when you add a load or weight and move a heavier object you are training your red fibers for strength. The idea is you want to incorporate a balance of under-load (green) and overload (red) training to properly recondition your muscle fibers. So, I like to begin many of my hitting sessions with overload (top barrel loaded & bottom handle loaded) to help stretch the muscles and then under-load and finish back to your normal weighted bat. I like to add approx. 10oz and subtract 10oz of your normal oz bat to the overload and under-load phases so example if you swing a 30oz bat then you want to use 40oz in the overload phase and 20oz in the under-load phase. Always make sure you finish swinging your normal oz bat! If you would like to receive your personal bat speed program that I put together you can do so by joining our all new training lab that has exclusive tips to improve bat speed.
AMOUNT OF WORK (mass moved) / OVER A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME= POWER
BONUS INSGHT: Another aspect you need to consider is MOI (moment of inertia) which is higher when you are lower on the bat handle. Think about the axis point which is where the mass (barrel) rotates around and as you lower the position of your hands on the bat it enhances the mass which in turn increases the MOI (when contact made) since there is in essence increased mass moving and vice versa if you position your hands higher on the bat it lowers the MOI since you are lowering the mass (bat is lighter) when it hits the baseball.
Post By Rick Saggese, XFS, CSAC