Do you know hitting? Or swinging?

Well....one has to do with your stats and the other has to do with your ability to improve stats. Meaning, your swing gives you hitting potential, but actually hitting the ball requires more than just a swing.

But the first building block to becoming a great hitter that the next level needs requires a good swing. Implementation of that swing.....well, that takes thousands of at bats and a lot of failure.

Let's break down barrel weight, starting with movement. 

Human movement is based upon counterbalancing body parts to align towards one common CENTER of balance — not balance point. Since equal and opposite reactions must occur in any kinetic chain reaction, balance POINTS work against optimizing MOVEMENT.

As confounded by Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion, energy laws, and the Bernstein and SAID Principles, moving energy is all about the F=MA equation and kinetic chain reactions.

Staying dynamically balanced is the key to your pitching success, as this requires movement training that focuses upon developing a “counterbalancing act” within your kinetic chain reaction.

Hitters are basically moving energy from their bodies into the pitch. To do so, you need to create FORCE, and “force” is optimized through mass and acceleration. Hence F=MA.

Using common sense, if you have more mass and acceleration, you create more force. In hitting terms, the harder you drive and rotate, the more force you create into the bat, resulting in higher hand speed, power, and exit velocity. The key is knowing (1) when to push, (2) when to rotate, and (3) when to make contact.

Your kinetic chain reaction become efficient when your timing and sync (of the above) are optimized. However, learning how and when is highly dependent upon too many factors to discuss here.

The good news is the VPX Training Harness that we offer takes care of all the above instantly, as it aligns your motor patterning to maximize energy flow rates. In doing so, you bypass years of mechanical and athletic training.

KNOW YOUR BAT BARREL WEIGHT

Contrary to popularized hitting development, your swing is dictated upon how well you can control the (1) bat weight, (2) centripical forces of your bat barrel, and (3) how well you move energy.

Take a simple seesaw and you will see how the bat dictates your swing efficiency. When an object is moving, it creates forces that work against dynamic balance. In hitting, the harder you swing, the more centripetal force you create — and the more you have to support it or you will see mechanical and movement compensations.

Since protective reflex response protects your body subconsciously from outside stimuli, any imbalance will result in a slowing, dissipation, or locking of power and speed. Thus, you see collapsed back sides, lower halves, and/or premature rotating hips in energy overloads.

These energy overloads are being created by the centripetal forces of the club (your bat) that is being swung. Remember, counterbalancing is what maximizes athletic movement and F=MA.

Your bat barrel hits the baseball, and plate coverage is everything in hitting (not swinging). To further understand:

1. If your hands get to the pitch, but your barrel weight is dragging, you will miss the pitch, foul it off to the opposite side, or hit a weak baseball.

2. If your barrel does not get into a strong hitting position that maximizes force, blunt force, and direct energy, you will experience less power in your hitting.

Take the big leagues to understand why barrel matters:

1. At the major league level, over 62% of all pitchers throw outside or off speed with one strike or less.

2. At the major league level, over 72% of all batted baseballs are hit to the pull side with one strike or less.

The above statistics contradict today’s popularized hitting training to hit outside pitches the other way and pull inside pitches. Furthermore, to hit an outside pitch, you need to drag your barrel or swing later. To hit an inside pitch, you need to extend your barrel or swing earlier.

The above requires hitters to have two different contact points, two different barrel and bat positions, and two different rhythms to the baseball — all of which require two different swings.

It is impossible to hit this way and be effective. And if the best hitters in the game are not doing it against the best pitching in the game, common sense would state to stop doing it.

Barrel weight matters and the more you can throw your barrel at the baseball, the more you increase plate coverage.