Opinions on Baseball-Style Swing in Softball

Is the baseball swing similar enough to softball or are they two different animals?

I noticed several teams in the WCWS this past year that most of the players were not swinging the traditional swing. And they were hammering the ball.

Many of the local area teams I watched last year are not batting the way the elite college teams are; TB and HS included. What's the difference?

 

Too many people in this area still teach hands to the ball.
Lower body mechanics are not stressed enough.
For those that do teach lower body mechanics many do not each it correctly.
Too many people do not understand the physical differences between male and female and how to teach to the female anatomy.
I am sure you have watched teams warm up and watched how they throw, a huge amount of players are not taught how to throw, and as you know throwing and hitting are directly related, if you cannot throw correctly you will have a very difficult time hitting the ball with power.

 

I would think that the softball community has figured out what works at the highest level of the game should work at all levels, but the physical difference between the college athlete and the youth leaguer comes into play and that would be the only difference their should be.
As far as the whole baseball - softball swing mechanics goes the only thing that matters is how do we create bat speed. Traditional hands to the ball breaks the kinetic chain of command and thus does not result in enough bat speed to generate the power we see in the traditional baseball swing, the lower half going before the upper half and the hands, clears the way for the shoulders to rotate and to keep the hands back which are along for the ride, a role they should play as the body absorbs energy from the ground up and then out thru the object in hand.
The major difference between youth and college is in order for you to be able to use your body in set way you need to be connected from the mind to the muscle, something that most people who do not weight train do not know how to do, there for advantage college athlete, weight training many days a week and contunious reps in the cage, creating muscle memory.
As far as the hands to the ball thing goes, that is not just in softball , I see baseball guys instructing that to baseball players as well. Thats fine if all you want is contact, just dont expect many xtra base hits.

 

Trying to get kids around here leading with the lower half brings some strange looks and comments. Having the hands at throwing position when in launch position gets negative comments calling it a baseball swing. And don't even mention coil.

Believe it or not, there are many still teaching squish the bug.

But there are some willing to think outside the box.

 

???

a swing is a swing is a swing..............

anyone that thinks there is a difference, should be coaching soccer...

 

Some believe there is a difference. Many who don't necessarily believe there is a difference teach it differently.

How many batters do you see hit from a dead stop? How many do you see hit with the bat almost touching the side of the face? How many stride and separate? And on and on.

The top colleges are changing, as evidenced by the WCWS last season. The power game is on.

 

I think that the whole softball swing transition started to change when the pitchers were moved back 3ft a few years ago. Some could say up until then it was just making contact that counted, but with the extra distance came extra time to react and then the swings started to change as well.
I think Sports Science did a piece on reaction time a few years ago and the softball reaction time was still the smallest of the pitching sports, due to speed and distance.

 

Absolutely correct! Swing a bat and hit a big ball or swing a bat and hit a little ball, physics is physics.

 

finally a smart man.............

 

Now, if we can just convince the rest!