Softball Hitting and Velocity
By: Casey Jamison
How Does the Velocity of a Softball Change Based on How you come to the ball for contact?
What I am doing now with my swing and what am I changing?
How am I going to make the change?
The Workout
- Load to contact twice, swing x 10 balls
- Frisbee toss x 10 balls
- Outside tee x 10 balls
- Top Hand and Bottom Hand x 10 balls each
The focus of these drills is to drive the knob of my bat towards the ball and keep my hips in tight until I have made contact with the ball.
How to calculate the results
The Equation:
mb(v1b) +mt(vt1)= mb(v2b)+mt(vt2)
m: mass
v: velocity/speed
t: bat
b: ball
1: speed before
2: speed after
What this equation means is, that the mass of bat times the speed of the bat, plus the mass of the ball times the speed of the ball equals the mass of the bat times the speed of the bat after contact plus the mass of the ball times the speed of the ball after contact.
When I was working on the calculations, in the end I was trying to find the speed of the ball after contact. I used a tee for all of the swings I did for finding ball speed so the speed of that ball will be 0 in the equation. To calculate the speed of the bat I used some technology I had at home that is call ZEPP. It shows the speed of the bat and many other things. I then used the graphs given for bat speed and used the speed of my bat at impact and the speed of the bat shortly after impact.
Using the equation above and the information above I received the results pictured below.