You Have A Blast Hitting Sensor ... Now What?
"Technology is there to measure what you have been teaching." - Andrew Bartman (USA Baseball)
One of the best and affordable baseball development products out on the market today is the Blast Motion Hitting Sensor. This sensor helps a team find out information quickly to help improve a team's offense. From firsthand experience, this sensor is very helpful and eye-opening for both coaches and players.
What I would advise doing is to use the Blast sensor as an assessment every week to track the progress of what you are teaching along with keeping track of the improvement for each individual player. This will allow the whole team to understand where each player is at with their hitting development.
First off, there are a lot of metrics through this hitting system that is helpful with diagnosing what exactly needs to be fixed with a player's swing. With that being said, the Blast sensor collects its data based on contact off the bat. Several components must be taken into account. These three components to hitting that must be involved with the swing before diving into the metrics are having rhythm, being on time, and choosing a good pitch to hit. If one of these three aspects is done improperly, then the swing results will be unsatisfactory. If you have a blast sensor, refer back to the live video of the hitter's swing to see if one of those three aspects are off. If so then that is a good reason as to why the athlete didn't have as good a swing as expected.
Now that I have gone over three aspects that needed to be addressed, let's now assume you used the hitting sensor for the first time. Odds are you will be overwhelmed with all of the data. What I would advise is to create a sheet of definitions in easily understandable terms that will be easy for you to explain to the athletes you coach. The next thing I would do is have the target numbers of the level you are coaching at. For example for Attack Angle at the varsity high school level, Blast wants the player's swing to be between 0 to 15 degrees. Having the definition and proper numbers of where every swing should be at will be helpful to disperse information easily to your team.
After a day of testing, I would advise placing all of the hitters in groups based on their deficiencies. Something to take note of is that odds are most of your players will have deficiencies in multiple areas, so choose the deficiency that needs the most work on when grouping up the players. After you have grouped up the players allow for at least ten to twenty minutes or more before practice to have individual drills based on the Blast Team's drill library to work on each deficiency. Doing this every day based on that week's assessment will help the athlete improve upon the problem that each athlete has. Also, allowing the players to work on their deficiencies before practice will allow for the hitters to work on the team hitting routines and skills during actual practice.
In summation, to have success with this device, do your research. Once you have invested in a Blast sensor, create a document of metrics with definitions that you will use to assess the hitters along with the numbers you want each swing to be at for each metric. After doing this, go over each metric with the team and then explain the procedures you will be using with this sensor. After they have accepted this, do the weekly assessments and then group the hitters up to work on their deficiencies. Technology should be our friend to help improve our athletes faster than ever before. To sum it up even better, having technology is like having another assistant coach on your team, and as we all know, we would be grateful for that.
What I would advise doing is to use the Blast sensor as an assessment every week to track the progress of what you are teaching along with keeping track of the improvement for each individual player. This will allow the whole team to understand where each player is at with their hitting development.
First off, there are a lot of metrics through this hitting system that is helpful with diagnosing what exactly needs to be fixed with a player's swing. With that being said, the Blast sensor collects its data based on contact off the bat. Several components must be taken into account. These three components to hitting that must be involved with the swing before diving into the metrics are having rhythm, being on time, and choosing a good pitch to hit. If one of these three aspects is done improperly, then the swing results will be unsatisfactory. If you have a blast sensor, refer back to the live video of the hitter's swing to see if one of those three aspects are off. If so then that is a good reason as to why the athlete didn't have as good a swing as expected.
Now that I have gone over three aspects that needed to be addressed, let's now assume you used the hitting sensor for the first time. Odds are you will be overwhelmed with all of the data. What I would advise is to create a sheet of definitions in easily understandable terms that will be easy for you to explain to the athletes you coach. The next thing I would do is have the target numbers of the level you are coaching at. For example for Attack Angle at the varsity high school level, Blast wants the player's swing to be between 0 to 15 degrees. Having the definition and proper numbers of where every swing should be at will be helpful to disperse information easily to your team.
In summation, to have success with this device, do your research. Once you have invested in a Blast sensor, create a document of metrics with definitions that you will use to assess the hitters along with the numbers you want each swing to be at for each metric. After doing this, go over each metric with the team and then explain the procedures you will be using with this sensor. After they have accepted this, do the weekly assessments and then group the hitters up to work on their deficiencies. Technology should be our friend to help improve our athletes faster than ever before. To sum it up even better, having technology is like having another assistant coach on your team, and as we all know, we would be grateful for that.
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