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”
How to Analyze Baseball Swing Mechanics in 15 Steps
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”
The Best of 2019 – Top Pitching and Hitting Related Articles
By Nunzio Signore (BA, CSCS, CPT, NASM, FMS)
Continuing with the most popular articles of 2019, here we go with Part 2 of this series, the most popular:
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- Pitching
- Hitting
- Other-Related Articles
Continue reading “The Best of 2019 — Top Pitching and Hitting Related Articles”
Creating Stability and Better Energy Transfer in the Swing
I was sitting with our Director of Hitting Evan Klugerman yesterday and he brought up a great point regarding efficient sequencing and mechanics when looking at K-Vest data. While collecting data for our high school guys, he was surprised at how many inconsistencies there were in sequencing from swing to swing within the same player profile, as compared to the MiLB guys he had been testing last year with the Orioles. I thought it would be a great quick blog. Continue reading “Creating Stability and Better Energy Transfer in the Swing”
How to Improve Blast Motion Rotational Acceleration Metric
Today, we’re going to focus on how we look to improve the Blast Motion Rotational Acceleration metric in a baseball player. Rotational Acceleration measures how quickly the bat accelerates through the zone from first move to getting on plane. A high Rotational Acceleration helps players create power at contact and provide for maximum amount of time to react to a pitch. While there are many variables that contribute to better rotational acceleration, in this article we’ll look at the big 3 we often see with young athletes in our facility: Continue reading “How to Improve Blast Motion Rotational Acceleration Metric”
New Jersey’s Most Comprehensive Baseball Training Facility
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”
Blast Motion Baseball Metrics, Rotation, Angles and Power
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”
Patrick Jones Podcast – Building Baseball Players
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:
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- Using strength / mobility to help adjust mechanics
- Velocity-Based Training (VBT)
- Reading kinematic sequence charts and related information
- Mechanical differences between loose and tight movers
Training Players with the K-Vest for Improved Swing Mechanics
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”
Assessing Baseball Hitting Mechanics with New Tech
As many of you know, we recently made additional investments in our hitting business by adding a Rapsodo camera system and a Diamond Kinetics SwingTracker. The combination of these pieces of equipment will allow us to substantially improve how we evaluate baseball hitting mechanics and train our players by: Continue reading “Assessing Baseball Hitting Mechanics with New Tech”