Baseball Tips On Hitting: How To Know If Your Bat Weight Is Right

Not having the proper bat weight is an extremely common problem, especially with younger baseball players. Much too often, they have the improper bat weight and almost always it's because the bat is much too heavy! It happens occasionally with older baseball players also.

How To Determine the Proper Bat Weight You Should Be Using:

1. Grab the bat at the very end, holding just the knob and using all your fingers. Use your right hand if you are a right-handed hitter or left hand if you are a left-handed hitter.

2. While still holding the knob only, extend your arm and the bat out in front of you, with your palm facing up.

3. In other words, the distance from your shoulder to the end of the barrel of the bat should be about 5 or 6 feet total.

4. Hold the bat for about five seconds and if your hand quivers, the bat is probably too heavy. If your hand remains fairly steady, your bat weight is probably okay.

This is just a guideline but your actual swings at the plate should be your truest and most reliable indicator as to proper bat weight. It's unfortunate that some baseball coaches get involved in advanced baseball tips on hitting and too often overlook the obvious. Some players, especially young players, have way more bat than they can handle.

If you're usually getting the bat around quickly enough on average or slightly above average fastballs, there is a very good chance that you are just fine.
You can also see what weight the rest of your teammates are using. Usually the difference among players on a team is only an ounce or two. So, you should be in the ball park already. No pun intended. Basically, it should only require some fine tuning it by an ounce or so to your personal preference.

One of the best baseball tips on hitting is that if you are going to err, make sure you err on the side of the bat being too light instead of the weight being too heavy! Having a little "less bat" than you can handle is a very minor baseball hitting problem and is far superior to having "too much bat" and being constantly late on every pitch, where you will have no chance for a successful at bat.