Physical Size Associations to Offensive Performance Among Major League Leaders

This one goes out to a very smart old friend, Dr. Ryan Crotin, a PhD in Exercise Science who has worked for the St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles and LA Angels of Anaheim in various sports performance roles.  Here we are celebrating the 2008 New York Penn League Championship win with the Batavia Muckdogs:

In this 2014, Dr. Crotin looked at the relationship of physical size (BMI was main metric used) and offensive performance of MLB league leaders dating back to the 1950s. 

Over the 60 year period, size was positively correlated to performance, but something very interesting started happening in the 1980s where MLB players started to see a significant increase in mass relative to height among the league leaders.

Link to study 

The Effects of Various Weighted Implements on Baseball Swing Kinematics in Collegiate Baseball Players

Last 3 weeks have covered adaptations to weighted implement bat speed training over time (6-12 weeks). This study from Williams, et al. (2017) is much more recent and looks at acute changes to bat speed after warm-up (WU) protocols with different implements.

Basically, the study did not find a difference between 4 different WU protocols.  There was some conflict with previous research but the authors did a nice job discussing the different results, which were mainly attributed to studying different populations (D1 college players in this one compared to HS/recreational in others).

I also appreciate the description and explanation of “kinesthetic illusion” in this study because 75% of the players chose one specific WU protocol despite no significant differences being found in the actual results.

Lastly, I think it’s important to point out that a study like this may not produce statistically significant differences, but still show an actual difference (one MPH in this case).  And in the really world, even a small difference might be enough to improve performance. 

Link to article

Effects of Weighted Bat Implement Training on Bat Swing Velocity

     This study by DeRenne et al. (1995) reports the most significant bat speed improvement resulting from weighted bat training - a group of college players showed a 10% improvement in bat speed over a 12 week training period.  It’s short, 4-page, study that’s well worth the read (link at bottom of page).

    The training protocol included 4 training days per week with 150 total swings (15 sets of 10 swings).  Bat weights were alternated each set and the weights used were within 12% of the regular game bat (27-29 oz for light bats and 31-34 oz for heavy bats). Very interestingly, there was no other practice or training during the study so the improvements of the study are attributed directly to the weighted implement training.

    There were 2 implement training groups (one used coach BP, the other used dry swings) which both improved, but the BP group improved 4% more.  The control group used only dry swings with regular bat and showed a 1% improvement.

    Between the Sergio & Boatwright (1993) study covered last week and this one, there are a couple different training protocols shown to significantly improve bat speed in college-aged athletes.  This should provide some guidance for programming and also flexibility depending on the time of year and training resources available.  It’s possible to combine weighted implement training effectively with concurrent practice and resistance training, and also possible to focus solely on bat speed training with a higher volume of swings.

Link to article 

Training Methods Using Various Weighted Bats and the Effects on Bat Velocity

If you’ve never read a research study on baseball training, start with this one.  It’s just 3 pages long and gets right to the point.  College players trained to increase bat speed 3x/week for 6 weeks by taking 100 swings (20 sets of 5) with various weighted bats.  The players were split into 3 groups (regular bat, heavy bat only, and heavy bat plus fungo bat).  Each group improved bat speed similarly - they gained an average of 8% bat speed.

It’s also notable, to me, that this 6 week training block coincides with typical pre-season practice and my interpretation of the article is that the authors implemented the bat speed training in addition to regular practice. 

Link to study

Effects of Baseball Weighted Implement Training: A Brief Review

We’re starting a series on bat speed training research with a 2009 summary of literature from Dr. Coop DeRenne and Dr. David Szymanski titled “Effects of Baseball Weighted Implement Training: A Brief Review”.  This paper summarizes research on weighted implement training (heavy/light baseball and bats) for both pitching and hitting.  I’m posting summary of the bat speed training for practical purposes, but the  paper provides a a history of implement training going back to Soviet track and field from the 1970’s and 80s.  The list of references (there are 45!) in a paper like this is also very helpful if you are interested in learning more.

Here’s an adapted summary table of the research:
 

Happy to notice that each research study demonstrated successful results in improving bat speed!  We’ll take a close look at each study in the upcoming weeks…

Link to article