How to Choose the Right Length and Weight Bat with Michele Smith
Two-time Olympic gold medalist (Atlanta, Sydney) fastpitch player Michele Smith discusses how to decide the right length and weight for your bat. She has a wealth of knowledge from her years of experience as a professional fastpitch player. Get great face time with collegiate coaches and recruiters! Prepare for the 2013 softball season with a 3-day instructional camp based out of sunny Clearwater, Florida. Learn skills from the best in womens fastpitch while getting exposure to top coaches & players. Ages 8-18 welcome. You can find out more about this camp at the following link: www.MicheleSmith.com
Transcript
Hi, I'm Michele Smith. And I'm going to take a little time to talk with you about how to pick the proper length and weight bat. One of the things you should do is have your athlete or your daughter stand with her arms at her side and the bat at her side. And what we want is the length of the bat to be able to reach somewhere between the middle of the palm of the hand and the top of the wrist. So if the bat knob is down in the fingers then chances are the bat is too short for the athlete. So standing at the side you can see that this bat pretty good length for me. It would be fine. This bat as well. So this is a 32/33. So somewhere in this area would be fine. Now if you find that the bat is all the way up the arms like this. It's gonna be too long for the athlete. And that's gonna pose some problems. So that's one of the ways that you can make sure that the length of the bat is good, between the palm and the top of the wrist. The weight a lot of times what we like to do is just have them go ahead and pull the bat off to the side and hold it up. If they can hold it up for about ten seconds without it drooping down then you know that the weight of the bat is probably pretty good for them. And don't forget to use both the dominant and the non-dominant arm to make sure that they can handle the weight of the bat. So typically those are two really good ways to figure out if the length and the weight of the bat are a good fit for the athlete.
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