Wood VS Aluminum?

All I'm gonna say is that I have gone from bench warmer, to starter after the switch to a wooden bat league... It helps seprate the hitters who make good contact from those who just make contact. So yes there is less contact, less cheap hits, and hitters will be forced to hit the ball better. Getting jammed hurts a lot though lol.

Using an aluminum bat after swinging with wood is like switching from a hand gun to a shot gun.

I'd like to weigh in on this. We left the Baltimore Metro league about 6 years ago, and joined an exclusively wooden bat league. I have found that it helps the good hitters, and can confuse the mediocre hitters. Let me explain.

Hitting with wood is far different, and requires keeping the hands inside as long as possible. This is a great thing for a player to learn and feel, since using aluminum is so forgiving.

However, I have found that come post-season, the players have a tendency to struggle using the aluminum. Not all, but many do. We have tried incorporating about 10 out of league games (using aluminum) in our schedule to help combat this, but we are still having the same problems.

Finally, I have had many college coaches (over the past 6 years) tell me it is next to impossible for them to analyze a player using a wood bat. The college game is aluminum, and therefore a player has a larger margin of error to work with. Quality of the wood bat material, player's hand strength, etc...all factor into their ability to use the wood.

I like the wood for batting practice and for training purposes. I just don't know if I think it is a great thing to use all the time, if they are going to have to use aluminum in the post-season.

Your thoughts are appreciated!

what about the weight difference?? if we use wood exclusively for a period of time. would it not start to develope slow muscle memory?????

catamount - good issue here. I think training with wood CAN be beneficial, as it forces hitters to concentrate on hitting the ball more cleanly. However, young hitters who aren't strong enough to swing the wood properly can develop very bad habits because the bat is swinging THEM! I like the composites myself, as I get the best of both worlds - we use these in the pre-season.

Great topic. We use wood a lot. We also use composits a lot. In fact, we wore out 3 composite bats this year. I had always heard that you couldn't do that. I think Knight Coach makes a good point about bat weights if you use wood. However, those appropriate weights are there. It just happens that players look at using a shorter bat with the proper weight as an embarassment. If your team makes a choice to use wood, then you have to budget for it and I didn't realize how expensive it could be because we broke a couple of bats right away. You also have to plan for the adjustment to aluminum sometime before the game. JMHO!

do any of you guys swing light bats (poles etc) in trying to build faster muscle memory?? we have been doing this the last couple of years, aluminum poles (lightweight) hitting gopl ball wiffle balls. i think it helps develope better hand eye coordination plus faster memory. we only do this with other drills, one hand drills one knee drills no stride drills etc. we also use wood on certain drills also. comments???

catamount36, we hit weighted bats which are weighted by wrapping athletic tape around the bat while also hitting lighter bats such as corkball bats. In fact, we hit a lot of corkballs. It is back to that overload/underload theory. I really believe in it and my players have done well doing it. It is hard to outline how but we try to incorporate all of this throughout the week while also using a thunderstick and many "half-bats" which are broken wooden bats which we fix up for one arm drills. I don't know much but personally I believe that overload and underload are very beneficial to hitters while also adding some variation to drill work. JMHO!

we do alot of the same things. i believe in overloading and underloading. however i think most of your overloading should be in the weight room, and you should always finish with the underloading, to prevent slow muscle memory. wake forest and clemson use a lot of 1/2 bat drills (where we got it from)

catamount36, we also hit the weightroom. However, we do a lot of plyometrics including intensive plyoball work. We weight our bats and I think that using athletic tape can enable you to overload in a way that you can set some of your older bats to various player strengths. BTW, I don't recommend that you just grab weighted bats to use. Be smart when you decide what weights each of your kids swing.

sounds like we are on the same page.