Sport-Specific Training: An Example Analysis
Sorry I’ve been away for so long, I’ve had a bit of writers block. I’m not a professional writer, just a coach with (hopefully useful) insights and observations and analyses. It’s hard for me to “grind out content” just for the sake of it, when I’m not inspired by a topic that comes up in my coaching practice or that I see at the gym or online. That said, I do want to stay in touch with my readers more regularly, so you can help by suggesting topics in the comments on my posts.
OK, that said, let’s get to the meat of today’s post: An analysis of an example of sport-specific training, and why I’m not convinced it has much value.
Swinging A Heavy Bat/Pipe
The example comes from Lillian Martineau, who is going to play softball for Georgia Tech next year. A quick glance at the Yellowjacket’s wiki page suggests they’re a successful Division-1 team who have a solidly winning record, win their conference and conference tournament fairly regularly, and have the conference player of the year reasonably often too. Not an easy or trivial team to make. Lillian is obviously a good player.
Now here’s the video that prompted this article: Lillian posted this the other day on her twitter, showing her using a 5 lb pipe-bat in the batting cages, with the caption: “38inch, 5+lb pipe bat. In my opinion, a heavy bat is an absolute must!”
However Lillian isn’t a unique trailblazer with this strategy. When I played ball growing up, it was common to swing 2 bats when in the on-deck circle so the one bat would feel lighter and move faster when you faced the actual in-game pitching, or at least that’s what we thought. In this 2022 Cincinnati Enquirer article, Reds prospect Drew Mount talks about using a sledgehammer for a similar purpose. “I don’t know if there’s any science behind it,” Mount said. “I just really, really enjoy swinging it.”
Mount hasn’t made the major leagues yet, but some pretty well known players have done the same thing. Dave Parker and Willie Stargell, both great ballplayers, were known to take cuts with a sledgehammer while on deck, and Barry Bonds used one early in his career 15 years before he broke the single season home run record.
While not exactly the same as swinging a 5 lb pipe for 12” softball batting practice, they share a similarity: using a much more heavily weighted implement of similar size and shape to a baseball bat, to improve your swing or ability to hit in-game pitching.
Now I can’t lie, standing in the on-deck circle with a big ol’ sledgehammer slung across your shoulder looks cool and badass as hell. But the question is: Does it actually work?
Sport-Specific Analysis
Despite it being a tactic employed by some great players, I don’t find this convincing as a tool because I don’t see the mechanism by which it would improve your ability to hit. The analysis splits into two basic parts: Strength and movement pattern/skill.
The issue is that
A 5 lb bat isn’t heavy enough to make you any stronger, but
Is heavy enough such that it’s a different movement that doesn’t practice the highly specific movement pattern and skill needed to actually swing a regular bat.
I’ll elaborate on each of these points.
The Strength Side
First the strength side: I don’t know what Lillian can lift, but let’s just imagine a theoretical competitively athletic but not strength-specialized college level softball playing woman who can press 115 and bench 175. A five lb pipe isn’t nearly enough to produce stress that yields a strength adaptation. It’s too light and there’s no viable progressive overload. No one adds a few ounces at a time and eventually swings a 55 lb bat. So this kind of tool lacks the requisite conditions to make a ballplayer stronger.
As I’ve written about before, since strength is the basis of power and most other athletic capacities, that is one of the key underlying traits for athletes, including baseball and softball players, to work on in order to improve their game. It’s a clear mechanism by which one can become a better hitter, all else equal.
Based on our analysis above, however, it doesn’t seem like swinging a heavier implement has the ability to help in that regard.
The Skill / Movement Pattern Side
Next we’ll address the other possible mechanism by which swinging a heavy bat, pipe, or sledgehammer might help: the skill side.
If you’re good at throwing a baseball and have tried to throw a shot (as in shot put) or a big rock, you know it quickly becomes a totally different movement pattern. The same applies to a basketball and a medicine ball, even if they’re the same circumference. You can’t practice one by doing the other. It doesn’t take a lot of deep contemplation to understand this: when the specific movement pattern and in-game skill relies on moving a relatively light implement very quickly, precisely, and accurately, substituting that by practicing with a heavy implement which definitionally cannot be moved nearly as quickly, precisely, and accurately - doesn’t provide proper preparation of the in-game skill and movement pattern needed to succeed. You’re practicing a movement pattern which you won’t ever do in the game, and at a speed which would leave you proverbial miles behind the 8-ball if you tried.
So it seems to me that swinging a heavy bat/pipe/sledge is neither useful strength training for general physical preparation, nor is it skill-specific practice for swinging the bat you’ll use in actual in-game hitting situations. In short, it doesn’t accomplish anything.
But All These Great Players Did it!
As superficially convincing as this is, there have been professional and even all time greats at various sports who swore by something that was nothing more than feelings. From lucky drawers and rackets, to whatever nonsense LeBron is doing here - relying on personal testimony of athletes who usually can’t explain or teach how they do what they do, is unreliable. I wrote more about this issue in this article, when discussing the shortcomings of bro-science.
Could It Possibly Help?
I am also not a doctrinaire theorist. Theory has to match the real world, which is one of my consistent critiques of the evidence-based bois who dismiss anything not in a peer reviewed study as worthless anecdote. To me, if there was a sufficiently large and convincing body of strong anecdotal evidence outside of just some coaches saying, “My players who do this are pros, so trust me,” or a player saying, “I don’t know if there’s any science behind it, I just really, really enjoy swinging it,” as Mount did, then I’d be very open to revisiting. But I haven’t seen that.
So absent that, I wouldn’t have my ballplayers do this. I would, however, get them brutally strong on their lifts, while making sure they’re practicing the finely tuned skills of batting in a way that matches what they’ll need to do in a game.