Bat Speed or Arm Velocity Training: Which is More Difficult?

Bat Speed Or Arm Velocity Training – Baseball adopts new technology slower than other sports. Football, basketball, and even golf are all ahead of baseball with respect to adopting and implementing new technologies.

Weighted Ball (overload/underload) training was debated for years within the baseball community. Now almost every program in the country has adopted it as a standard. It just took a lot of time and a lot of arguments.

Bat speed training is the exact same concept. It works for all players at any age. Why haven’t teams adopted it in the same way? Here’s what we’ve found:

1. Measuring true bat speed is more difficult than pitch speed

   1. The swing is on an arc making it hard to measure true speed

   2. Typical doppler radars (pitch velo. radars) are ineffective measuring the bat

   3. The margins of error are too large with knob-based units

   4. Knob based units use a “best guess” as to what part of the bat they’re actually measuring.

2. Teams and coaches are simply afraid of what they don’t understand and weren’t taught when they were playing.

   1. Many teams and coaches are afraid of players actually swinging as hard as they can because they believe it leads to bad mechanics.

   2. Coaches are afraid that bat speed training will lead to players pulling off and trying to hit home runs all the time when it comes to live at-bats.

   3. Coaches believe that bat speed training should be done with a moving ball.

3. It’s not a metric that’s widely discussed or used to compare players yet because it’s so hard to measure.

   1. Scouts throughout history have judged bat speed using the “eye test”.

   2. Exit velo. gets much more attention as a metric because you can use a typical doppler radar to read the ball speed off the bat.

Here’s how the Bat Speed Recon addresses all those problems:

Measuring true bat speed is more difficult than pitch speed.

The Bat Speed Recon is very simple in its design as it measures the TIP of the bat using a reflective sticker placed on the end. As the tip passes through two LED emitters placed directly before contact, the BSR measures the time it takes to pass through both emitters and instantly displays an accurate bat speed. No guessing, no outliers, reliable to 0.1 MPH every time.

Teams and coaches are simply afraid of what they don’t understand and weren’t taught when they were playing.

Swinging as hard as you can is truly the only way to increase bat speed combined with overload underload training. It’s the same as arm velocity training. In order to throw harder one must practice throwing hard often. In order to run faster, one must run fast often.

In addition to the overall bat speed increase, we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in contact rates because increased bat speed often leads to increased bat control, especially in younger hitters.

Training bat speed with a moving ball is actually counterproductive because it adds multiple variables that won’t allow a hitter to operate on the edge of their ability level. For instance, it’s hard to swing at 100% every swing when pitch location and barrelling the ball are a concern for a hitter. Bat speed training is best done off a tee.

It’s not a metric that’s widely discussed or used to compare players yet because it’s so hard to measure.

Measuring the actual bat speed in a game accurately would be near impossible as of now. However, the main idea to understand is more bat speed equals more exit velocity period.

Now that the Bat Speed Recon is available to the public, scouts, players, coaches, and parents are able to compare and raw bat speed from one hitter to the next.

Think about it along the same lines as pitch velocity. Just like the magic number used to be 90 MPH (probably more like 93 today) for pitchers. The same will be true for hitters but the magic number will probably be closer to 95-100 MPH with their game bat.

Bat speed training is the easiest way to give your players the edge they’ve been looking for. Easily gain 5-7 MPH of average bat speed in one 6 week training period. Turn outs into hits, singles into doubles, and doubles into home runs this offseason using the Bat Speed Recon.