Interested in increasing your bat speed in the weight room? Click here for our “remote” strength training program for position players.
How to increase bat speed is a topic that gets a lot of attention and interest from our baseball players. Today, we’re going to review 6 topics and related exercises to increase bat speed in the weight room that are paramount and should be addressed in any training program: Continue reading “How to Increase Your Bat Speed in the Weight Room”
There are many ways to skin a cat, however, often one is the most efficient. Although each player’s swing looks different, great hitters achieve the same goal by putting their body in the best position to hit. Given the complex nature of hitting and its many co-dependent variables, hitting drills that help create efficient movements will make it easier to recreate a consistent motor pattern. Continue reading “3 Hitting Drills to Pattern an Efficient Baseball Swing”
The world of hitting is changing and it’s changing fast. As new technology is working its way into the world of baseball at break-neck speed, the information becoming available is opening the eyes of both baseball coaches and strength coaches alike and across multiple avenues as well. But once again as in pitching, this extremely explosive sport, leads us back to anatomy and the body’s ability to move through space quickly. So explosive in fact, that we are looking at microsecond movements only measurable by K-vest Baseball motion capture technology. Continue reading “K-Vest Baseball is a Game Changer for Training Ball Players”
Hitting an MLB fastball requires the application of a huge amount of energy in the blink of an eye, roughly 130 ms to be exact. That’s about a 1/8th of a second. Only through a coordinated series of contractions involving not only muscles but joints and connective tissue traveling up the kinetic chain into the hands and ultimately the bat can we achieve adequate bat speed and quickness to hit a baseball traveling at speeds north of 90 mph. This article is meant to familiarize you with the 2 distinct phases (stride and swing) and 15 positions in baseball hitting and baseball swing mechanics that we review when analyzing video. Continue reading “How to Analyze Baseball Swing Mechanics in 15 Steps”
As an athlete, you are not able to move efficiently if your body isn’t in a position to do so. Incorporating assessments, strength training and data analytics into how we train players is a bit of an art. Since each and every player is different in every way, the key is to parse through the information and determine which pieces are relevant for each player. Below is a typical assessment for position players at our facility and it’s broken up into several sections:
Let’s review these with some specificity… Continue reading “How We Assess Hitters at RPP Baseball”
RPP Baseball is a high performance baseball training facility located in Paramus (Bergen county), New Jersey. From the weight room to our pitching and hitting programs, we utilize the latest in technology, in a holistic and data-driven approach which allows us to assess, train and re-assess players on an ongoing basis. Our athletes are walking testimonials as to the power of our highly customized programming. Below is a summary of our extensive services for pitchers and baseball players: Continue reading “New Jersey’s Most Comprehensive Baseball Training Facility”
In my previous internship before RPP, part of my responsibilities included watching Minor League baseball games. After my first few games, I noticed a recurring trend, every player wore a Blast Motion Baseball sensor during the game. As I saw more organizations’ Minor League teams, not all had their players wear the sensors; however, the idea behind it was simple, data collection.
At RPP, we use Blast Motion sensors for the same purpose, and this allows us to help identify and develop athletes’ inefficiencies. The only difference is we do not have the ability to collect data from athletes’ in-game at-bats. Therefore, we collect data from batting practice at our facility and are still able to get a good picture of what an athlete does well, and what they struggle with.
Continue reading “Blast Motion Baseball Metrics, Rotation, Angles and Power”
I wanted to bring to your attention a recent Podcast that I participated in with Patrick Jones Baseball. Patrick is one of the premier hitting coaches in the US and he has been running a podcast for quite some time. We covered a wide variety of topics but here are a few that stand out:
An efficient swing path allows a hitter to keep the barrel in the hitting zone from approximately the back of home plate all the way through contact and ultimately into extension where the bat should continue to stay on plane with the flight of the ball. Once competition reaches higher levels (i.e higher throwing velocities, better ball movement), an athlete’s “preferred posture” becomes a necessity to create a more optimal vertical bat angle and allow the athlete to better adjust to pitches higher or lower in the zone. Continue reading “Training Players with the K-Vest for Improved Swing Mechanics”
According to HitTrax, well-hit balls are generally hit within 24″. On the other hand, a 93 mph fastball takes 1.585 milliseconds to travel those same 24” once it reaches homeplate. We’re not dealing with a lot of time and every millisecond counts. So, let’s review exactly what can happen during those 1.585 ms! First, let’s define the baseball swing plane and what it means to “be on-plane” so we’re all on the same page… Continue reading “An Analytical Look at the Baseball Swing Plane”
