Bat Fitting and On Deck Routines with the Baseball Performance Lab

Welcome into another episode of Patrick Jones Baseball, where we find the best tools to build the best players. Hope everyone is having a great week. If you're listening to this on the day it's released, which is Monday, I hope you, uh, start— are starting out the week strong. I'm currently actually in Bismarck, North Dakota, so I'm pretty chilly. Hopefully you're in a warmer state right now than where I am, but This is a— this is an exciting episode. This is a unique episode. It's something that has been going on in the golf world for a long time, but in the baseball world, it's just now starting to become more endorsed, I would say. That's bat fitting. So if anyone out there has golfed before and is a serious golfer, you go and get your clubs fitted specifically for you. I don't golf, but I I talked to a lot of people who have, but we don't actually do that in baseball. Usually just go to Dick's Sporting Goods, grab a bat, take a couple of dry hacks, like, oh, this looks pretty good, and buy it. And that's it. What these guys are doing, who we have on the show today, the Bat Baseball Performance Lab, we have Liam Mucklow, who is the founder, and Micah Gibbs, who is the director of player development at Baseball Performance Lab on the campus of Marucci Sports down in Louisiana. And so what they're doing is they're taking the science behind what they did in the golf world, what Liam did in the golf world, and bringing it into the baseball world. And they've had— I mean, I can't even, I can't even tell you how many big leaguers have already been down to see them. Major League All-Stars, all sorts of people, because they're not guessing now and they have actual data that shows if players swing the bat that they're supposed to swing based off of how long their limbs are, based off of how hard they hit the ball. Based off a lot of the different things, and we'll get into this episode, that they're gonna—

they will perform better too.

So it's, it's coming in baseball. Hopefully eventually it'll get to a point where everyone will have access to some of the things that these guys are doing down, down at Baseball Performance Lab. But it's fascinating stuff. We also talk about on-deck routines and what are some better ways to maximize your time on deck versus just putting a donut on your bat and swinging it around a couple times and getting ready to hit that way. There's better ways to get your body ready to go and face 90+ or whatever it is, even if you're in high school. So I'm going to stop talking now. Well, I know, I'm sure if you're like me, you want to get to the episode and listen to Micah Gibbs and Liam Williams and all the great stuff they have to say about bat fitting and, you know, just the on-deck routines and Building speed. But if you haven't yet, before we do that, please make sure to head on over to patrickjonesbaseball.com/develop. If you want access to other pieces of content that I only put out via email, if you want to have— get access to my presentation on timing and how to help players with timing at the plate, head on over to patrickjonesbaseball.com/develop. All right, here is my episode with Liam Mucklow and Micah Gibbs.

All right, Liam, Micah, appreciate, uh, both of you guys coming on the show today.

Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks.

So Liam, first one question I wanted to ask you, I know you're— you get more of a golf background, but you're the— you are the founder of the Baseball Performance Lab. Like, what, what is it the process like, like, for if you have a golfer come in and like, how do you know what clubs that they should swing?

Well, I mean, golf, we've been at it for a while, so, you know, I think pretty standard protocol of most fitting centers would be, uh, first testing the player's current equipment, you know, identifying their current ball flight conditions compared to optimal. And then, you know, once we understand what areas there are for improvement, whether it's narrowing dispersion or optimizing distance, you know, from there we're able to start to make some educated selections of new products to test. And then of course go ahead and, you know, individually test each product, kind of refine it down where we want to go. And then especially with, you know, whether it's with drivers or with irons, then we get into the fine-tuning, you know, so tweaking loft by half a degree or face angle by a degree In irons, it'd be more, you know, fine-tuning the lie angle of the club and really just kind of trying to get each parameter of the golf club optimized for, you know, the intended shots that the player is trying to hit.

Are you measuring their, like, how long their arms are and, like, going over different physical measurements too to understand a little bit more about them?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so our standard, you know, we're doing the same thing in baseball now. We'll go from middle knuckle to elbow, elbow to shoulder, shoulder, we'll get wingspan, we'll get wrist to floor. Um, you know, and even those give us a, give us a pretty good idea of, you know, how the levers are gonna work over the course of the swing.

You mentioned loft there, which I, I've heard a lot of people talk about that. Could you kind of explain like what loft is? Just because I think there's a lot of people out there who don't really know what it means.

Yeah, sure. So, you know, um, a club with 0-degree loft would be, you know, sort of like a, you know, vertical. Perpendicular to the ground plane, you know, and then each degree of inclination back from that would be considered 1 degree of loft. So for a driver, you know, the club in the bag that hits it the farthest, the majority of lofts in play for amateur golfers would range anywhere from about 8.5 to 12.5 degrees of loft. Uh, we get all the way up to the pitching wedge, you know, which should be the highest lofted club in a normal iron set, and that would be usually about 46 degrees of loft. And from there we get to the highest lofted club in the bag. The lob wedge would be, you know, 58 to 62 degrees of loft. And so essentially the, the more loft on the club creates a glancing blow on the golf ball, which is going to cause a higher launch angle and more spin rate, both of which will cause the ball to fly a shorter distance and stop faster when it lands, have less roll.

Micah, what's— is there any difference between what you do on the baseball side and what Liam just described when he's fitting someone for golf?

I mean, all the principal things that we do are based off of the way they did it in golf. That was a good blueprint that we've started with, and there's obviously some things that are a little bit different with baseball and golf, but in terms of just measuring the athlete, we follow the same Same procedure. Yeah.

No, I was just going to follow up, and I just wanted to ask, like, how do you equate for— like, obviously, I know you played. You were a 3rd-round pick out of LSU and played professionally. And obviously, you know just how mental hitting is, and I don't— I've never— I don't golf. It's just sad because I live on a golf course. But how do you take into account when you're fitting someone, like, what feels good for them? It may not be as optimal as it— like, it may not be the optimal, you know, bat for them, but if it feels like— how do you go about that process?

Yeah, so part of the fitting process is we will take into account the subjective scoring of each swing but also the bat. So after then, at the very end, we'll see how they like it. We'll have them rank the bats at the end before showing them the results. It's pretty frequent that a player actually performs better with one of their lower-scoring bats subjectively. And it's been pretty, pretty positive, the reaction. A lot of times they're like, you know what, okay, I've been feeling good about this one bat, but obviously it's not working. That's why I'm here. I'm going to give this other one a shot. The one thing, especially at the pro level, that is a little easier too is being able to change, change the knob in the, in the handle to fit their preference of what they like to feel in their hands. And that can also make that change a little bit easier.

Liam, what surprised you about going into the baseball world? Ooh.

I'd say the biggest thing that surprised me was there was no inferential metric to describe how one bat swings compared to another. That was a shocker.

Yeah, I know before we started recording, you guys are literally like the only people that I've really encountered who are doing this kind of stuff from like a science background, like science-based, and it's amazing. I mean, I know you guys haven't been doing it for too long, but I assume that players probably from all over the country are coming to you guys to work to see like what bat they should be swinging based off of what's going to be optimal for them.

Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty crazy list of players we've had the opportunity to work with. You know, and I mean, a huge part of that is, you know, right out the gates being able to be partners with Marucci Sports has been, I mean, I don't know, sometimes it feels like an unfair advantage versus, you know, other people trying to do it. Because, you know, I'm sitting here, I don't know if you can see some of the construction after the flood. There's, you know, one of the durability cannons is right behind us. We've got their MOI and compression testers for all the metal bats. You know, our lab is literally just on the other side of this wall, and we're about 20 steps away from Woodlakes. So, you know, to be able to come up with, with some crazy idea, actually be able to make it happen, then test it, find out if it works or doesn't work, has been— it's been a huge leg up. I mean, quite frankly, I, I don't think I would have taken such a big step away from the golf industry if we didn't have such a strong partner to start off with.

When you're working with, as I know you guys do with stuff with wood bats and metal bats too, and Liam, I've heard you talk about how like, because you know, if you understand the BPI, you know, the balance point index, a player can go from a 32-inch to a 33 to a 34-inch BB core and not change anything, you know, from a technical standpoint and their timing be the same too. Like, how did you, how did you come about like finding the BPI to begin with?

Well, it started with bad math that became better math that's now good math. But, you know, it was literally early days back up at our golf lab in Toronto with a bunch of production model wood bats. And, you know, we repurposed some golf equipment. We were building a database of the mass and physical properties. We just finished paying independent league players $50 each to hit these 8 bats in our motion capture system and on our launch monitor. So at this point, the only thing we knew was that, you know, changing the bat would change performance. And so I called, uh, I called down to one of the guys at Marucci and just asked him, I was like, hey, how do I match this 33-inch JD20 to a 34-inch AM22? You know, he kind of laughed at me and said, well, I thought that's what you were figuring out. And I was like, oh, okay. So that's where we just started to look at the properties of the bat. And first thing we did was build a formula and then kind of test it, subjectively test it with players and say, okay, hey, close your eyes. Okay, here's an 80 BPI, here's an 85 BPI. What do you feel? It was pretty crappy. And then got a little bit better. It got a little bit better. Was fortunate enough to pull in a friend of mine from the golf world named Dr. Sasha McKenzie, who's helped quite a bit. And, you know, it's got us to the point we're at now where, you know, when we're, you know, when we're going through working with players, yeah, if we hand them a 33 and a 34-inch bat, both BPIs are 84, you know, 80% of MLB players literally can't feel any difference. Hmm. You know, what comes down to it, I guess, what, you know, we feel, um, you know, as an athlete, we're, we're swinging the center of mass, right? And so, you know, where that center of mass is, is like one of the most important things that people aren't talking about.

The scale is 0 from 0 to 100, right?

Yeah, that's right.

And then, but, but there's no like the higher isn't necessarily better.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and that's one of the education points, you know, is we'll get players, okay, what's a good BPI? I'm like, oh, well, what's a good color? You know, or what's your favorite type of cake?

Yeah.

You know, so it really is about, you know, what works for the individual, you know, and things we, you know, think about if you've got, if you have a player with longer arms, you know, and then you have a player with shorter arms and they both have the same bat, you know, when we're swinging the arms and the bat, those center of mass of all of those objects, you know, kind of work in tandem. So oftentimes we have players with longer levers that are performing better with lower BPI bats because it's almost like moving the center of mass of the bat closer to the hands offsets some of the additional arm length that that person has in proportion to their torso.

Mm, okay. That's fascinating. I like that. Micah, when you were, when you were playing, because I had heard this before too, I mean, just recently, like the power hitters, they swing the, the end-loaded bat and like the guys who don't have as much power is more like evenly distributed. In your testing, has that actually been true? Is that actually factual?

No, not at all. I mean, to an extent, there's some like, I guess, basic truth to the understanding of like a stronger player is going to be able to handle more end-loaded and therefore because of that, maybe get more exit velocity or power or whatever. But I know as a player, before any of this was anywhere close to being out there, it was always that same thing. Like, power hitters would use big barrel and loaded C243 model type wood bats, and then the contact guys would use like the little P72, like smaller barrel bat. And it's kind of funny because we're kind of tending to, to see the opposite being true of what bats players should be using. And then, like William was saying, it actually comes down to the physical build of the player more so than, uh, this— I mean, the strength obviously plays a part, but I mean, we've seen guys that are, uh, just crazy specimens of athletes that are swinging very hand-loaded or balanced bats, and guys that wouldn't really scare you if they walk through the door swinging more end-loaded bats. So is there any—

oh, go ahead. Sorry, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I was just saying, is there any benefit. So there's no real benefit if I have a 33-inch, 32, and I go up to a 34, 33 and swing it just as hard and just as fast. Like there would be no necessarily increase in power, exit velocity.

No, there definitely would be if everything else stayed the same. If my swing speed stayed the same, everything stayed the same, but the bat just got longer and heavier, that extra mass is going to add a little bit of exit velocity.

Well, I'm gonna— sorry, I wanna jump in here for a second because when you're, when you're making a length change like that and a mass change, there's going to be a significant movement in the center of percussion of the bat. So, you know, if you also relocated contact point to center of percussion, yes, we'd see more exit velocity. But, you know, when you look at the— it's a very steep drop-off of exit velocity as that contact point starts to move away on wood. Right. It's not like the cool stuff that can be done with composite bats where you've got, you know, a significant portion of the barrel flat that has optimum performance. Again, I think that's one of the, one of the things people need to consider a little more about wood bats is aligning their impact point, you know, or impact pattern. Because I guess, you know, I like to think we're not shooting a rifle here in baseball. It's, you know, it's a shotgun. But to the actual center of percussion of the bat will make the biggest difference.

Is it true or false? Because I heard this when I was playing, you always want to swing like the opposite side of the label. You want to make contact with the opposite side of the label. Micah Gibbs, did you hear that too?

Yeah, no, it depends on, uh, depends on the bat properties. With a maple, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where you hit it. Obviously the barrel's preferred. Um, yeah, but, uh, but yeah, in terms of aligning the label, it doesn't matter. With, uh, with ash though, it would. And then in that case, it's more about the grain than the label. I know they've been moving the label around for certain reasons, but with Ash, you want to hit always with the grain.

William, are you— you know, this is going to be a question kind of actually for both of you guys in the baseball and golf world. In the golf world, can you objectively see, and have you been able to objectively see, when you see a— when you fit a player and then able to watch him and see what he gets, like, just in terms of scores on the golf course, improve over time? And then the same thing with baseball for Liam. Like, once you fit a player, does it automatically get— does it get better?

That's a fantastic question. So, um, interestingly enough, there has never been an empirical study in golf that, uh, that shows causality between club fitting and lower scores. So absolutely, we can see massive changes in ball flight But there hasn't been a study done that actually quantifiably shows drop in handicap attributed specifically to clubs. You know, I think in baseball, some of the things we saw this last MLB season were, you know, more impressive performance changes than what we've seen in golf, particularly for athletes at that level. You know, it's one thing you get a 14 handicap that comes in with a terrible driver fit. And you optimize their driver, they gain 25 yards. You can expect this, you know, maybe a 1 or 2-point drop in handicap. But some of the stuff we saw MLB players having massive changes midseason was pretty wild.

Well, that's what I was going to ask. Mike, just one sec. I just want to follow up real quick with Liam before I lose this train of thought. I don't know in golf, right? I know in baseball you play every day, right? There's games every single day. In golf, I'm sure these guys are playing all the time. Throughout the course of the tour and the more they play, I assume that their body would break down a little bit. Maybe their swing would get a little bit slower like it, you know, does at times in baseball. Would it be wise for them— do they change clubs throughout the year?

Sometimes, yes. You know, where there's greater change, you know, from week to week in golf is subtle shifts in club lofts. So if we take a look at a traditional week for a PGA Tour player, uh, you know, let's say they made the cut at the previous event. Sunday night is often a travel day. They'll, you know, get in late Sunday night. Monday is usually a pretty quiet day. They may just walk the course. They may just go hit some balls. Usually Monday, Tuesday, uh, players will be out there working with manufacturer tech reps or their coach and a launch monitor to just optimize their carry distances for whatever this environment is. You know, so, you know, you start the season up in Napa, California, you know, that's going to be a fair bit different than when you get to TPC Scottsdale, than when you get to Torrey Pines in San Diego. So there's a lot of that. When we look at the actual forces exerted to move a golf club versus move a baseball bat, it's— baseball bat takes about 2 to 2.5 times as much force applied to it in order to move it at what will be considered an elite MLB speed. So while there's, you know, I think a golfer will take a lot more swings, I feel like golf is a little bit more advanced in terms of the recovery and maintenance that players go through over the course of a season. So I don't see as much wear and tear on the majority of golfers as I do on baseball players.

Okay. I kind of, I thought that might be the case, but I was just curious. And then Micah, for you, I mean, have you, I know you guys have worked with a few different teams and a lot of different professional players. Have you tracked how they've done before and after they've gotten fitted?

Yeah, so we tracked a few of the guys. We obviously had a shortened COVID year a couple of years ago, so we were only able to track those 60 games. We compared those players that we— that fit through the offseason to another 60 games at the beginning of this year, and I believe 8 out of 10 improve their offensive WAR by at least 0.2, and I think half of them by like over 1. Whoa, like a full win above replacement offensively, which if we do the math on how much that's worth, that's, uh, I think we're undercharging people.

But, um, yeah, I was gonna say, Liam, you need to start charging more, man.

We're trying, we're trying.

So obviously small sample set, and then baseball sample size is everything. So we'll get to get another, hopefully, well Now there's a lockout, but hopefully we get another year to see some of those numbers increase. But I think what's interesting is, like Liam was saying, in golf versus baseball, that difference in how you're moving the bat and playing every day, traveling, all that stuff. Like we saw when I was at LSU, we actually tested all of our players one year on vertical jump the day of travel. Or the day before a series at home. And it was funny, like the highest jumps as a team was the year— was the series we swept the team that was ranked and we were unranked. And then the one with all the lowest jumps of the team, like as an average, was a weekend we got swept. So when we're looking at that, it's like if we're not taking into account recovery, like to the same aspect that golf is, yet most of these guys are swinging the same bat all year, it's kind of crazy to think about that they're using just one bat.

What about, what about pitchers too, right? Like, what if I come to you, Liam, and I got— I'm facing a guy who has 20 inches of vertical break on his fastball today, and then tomorrow I'm facing a guy with 20 inches of horizontal break on his fastball arm side run tomorrow. Would it make sense to have just two completely different bats for— I mean, the movement types are completely different.

It does to me. Yeah. And that's, you know, like, I Micah is sick of hearing this. I'll date myself again, but back when I was a kid, I was a pretty decent pitcher. I just loved baseball. I was a geek who was studying and memorizing stats on the back of baseball cards. And looking back at it now, the only thing I know that couldn't be optimal would be using the exact same bat against Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson. It's just no way. Yeah. So those are the types of things that with You know, I'll say some of the more inquisitive players that we look at, yeah, it could be, you know, it could be something like altering length but preserving BPI so they can match the sweet spot up with that horizontal break. It could be making a strategic drop in BPI of 6 to 8 points to catch that high spin fastball. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, we think golf would be hard with one club.

I mean, Liam, do you guys get players who, like, come in and, like, ask those types of questions or get multiple bats for, you know, various times of the year?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the first ones that pops into my mind was, you know, a player that comes here once or twice every year who had a specific request of— was it— more vertical bat angle low in the zone. Is that what it was, Micah Gibbs? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, we went through normal testing protocols, measuring everything as we went. This player is very strong, so his strength levels kind of overrode normal changes we would see by increasing BPI. But as we experimented with different knob and handle diameter, memory serves me correctly, we found that narrowing out the handle allowed him to achieve his goal because it gave him more wrist mobility.

Where does grip strength, finger strength play a part in, in all of this? Like, was Ted Williams right all these years of just, you know, trying to squeeze a tennis ball like 9 million times a day?

Micah, you want to start with that one?

Oh, I would love to. Yeah, that's, uh, that's probably my, my favorite thing coming in and It was something I always— I was the same way because I read Ted Williams' book a long time ago, and my dad had me doing grip strength just to be able to watch TV as a kid. So that was always a big favorite of mine. But yeah, it's interesting the correlations we see with grip strength, whether it's top hand, bottom hand, which one's stronger, if there's a big difference. But then also, like we were talking about, I think a little bit earlier, it's like if there's a decrease in that because of an injury, I mean, that's That's pretty substantial. I'm probably going to go ahead and say that you should probably be using a different bat. Whether that— I mean, it could be a gain or a loss in grip strength, either one.

What about the knob, right? You hear the Axe for guys who have had some hand injuries. I mean, do you guys come in— do you guys make— are you guys— I don't know. I know for a while Axe Bat like was the only one who could make it. Can everyone make those now? The Axe Handle?

Uh, they have to have a license. So, uh, Victus, uh, does have Axe Handle bats. So we've had one player in particular, we, you know, had a bit of experience working with the Axe Handle. Uh, you know, we've done a little bit of testing on it. It's certainly, um, for certain, you know, delivery types, it, you know, can change wrist angles and change, you know, things like vertical bat angle and bat path for sure. Not always saying that's better, but it's different.

Liam, I've heard you talk a little bit in the past of hardwiring the brain for speed and recruiting motor units and things of that nature. And I find it fascinating, first of all, and this past season, one of the things that we would sometimes do for guys on deck, because I'm sure Micah Gibbs knows this pretty well, is You know, guys always have the donut on deck and it's really heavy and then you take it off. Well, sometimes for the guys that, that, you know, were willing to take the chance, you know, we would put an underload bat out there. So it'd be a lot lighter than their game bat or like a fungo bat. And they would swing that a few times and then go up to the plate. Is that the most optimal way to get those motor units firing right before an at-bat?

Um, I like that. Yeah. I'd be, I'd be part of the outliers that like that kind of stuff. I mean, not that this would happen. Mike and I have talked about this a lot, but, uh, if I was to design the ideal on-deck routine, I would probably have a trap bar and someone deadlift 325 pounds 3 times and then swing a fungo bat and then go.

Yeah.

So like the, the, like the heavy lifting would be like that potentiation. It's like lighting the fuse or turn the brain on like, okay, I need to use every single motor unit that I've got. In my body. And then the fungo bat's going to be like, speed, speed, speed, now go hit. It's like neural priming.

Micah, you think that's, uh, you think guys would be, would be willing to do that? I've actually heard— I'm not— I won't say the name of the team, but I've heard of one team who actually has done some stuff with like trap bar deadlift and things like that for guys in the hole before they get on deck.

I know there's a specific team, it might be the same one that we were talking to their coach and he was talking about the same thing. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, I could— I mean especially now with MLB clubhouses, how quickly those guys go in and out of the dugout. I mean, you could have something there in the hallway between, rep out a few reps of those, go grab a fungo, take some swings, and go up there. I mean, most of these guys are getting timing off on-deck circle. They're not trying to swing like a heavy bag, go through a program, but, yeah, whether that's, okay, it's my turn to go hit, let me go grab a couple reps and then hop out there. If I get to that point one day.

I mean, where do you see, like, where do you guys see yourself in, like, you know, Baseball Performance Lab in the next few years? I mean, do you think it's something where it's, like, more just well-known? Like, you guys want to, like, open up other places, like, around the country so more players can come get fitted? Like, what's your vision?

Oh, man. We're trying to figure that out right now. You know, I think ultimately I'll say the vision is that, you know, in 10 years from now, I hope that 90% of the market or more is getting fitted for a baseball bat, however that happens. You know, we always say it's the only piece of personalized offensive equipment, so you should treat it as such and, you know, make responsible decisions as to what you put in your hands every time. You know, we're currently in process of expanding our presence in Major League You know, we've got new offerings that are going out to teams. So, you know, like I said, hopefully there's a season so we can, you know, learn about the viability of this stuff. A lot of it right now is we're just, we're just trying to get better.

Yeah.

You know, Micah's sitting there in what's going to be our first commercial location that's opening here very shortly, and it's, it's really designed to give youth players the opportunity to come in and have you know, have access to the same level of bat fitting services and the same level of training modalities that we offer to MLB players. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if the market's ready.

If a player is at home and they can't get to you guys down in Louisiana, which I mean, hey, if you can, like, I don't know why you wouldn't want to go down there. I know I'd be down there for sure. But if they can't and they're just like a 12-year-old kid, you know, as a parent listening to this, how should they go about in terms of like, what's the simple, like, dummy-down version of bad fitting? Just like swinging at dicks in like the dick store and see if it works or not?

Um, it's— I mean, that's a tough question. I can tell you what it's not. I can tell you it's not holding the bat out for 3 seconds. I can tell you it's not putting it on your chest and grabbing the barrel. I mean, you know, I guess if I was to— okay, I'm trying to think here. I'm putting my baseball dad hat on. If I didn't do what I do and I just had my golf background, honestly, you know what I'd probably do? I'd probably go into Dick's Sporting Goods and I would probably take Dr. Scholl's Foot Powder Spray and spray it on a few demo bats. And then I would buy whichever one my kid has the most consistent impact point with, you know, and at that level at least he's hitting it hard, you know, and then if you hit it hard a lot, good things will happen. But it's, it's, uh, it's tough when we're coming from the, uh, why guess when you can measure, right? Right.

Micah, you know, you say that's accurate. Would you do the same thing if you were a If you had a kid.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough when— if you can't get any kind of exit velocity, batted ball data, strength testing, any of that stuff, it makes it a little bit more of a guess. I would— I mean, I would go out on a limb and say— or actually, I would just say email us. We can maybe see— we can get some info from you and help make that decision at least a little bit more measured.

Uh, so yeah, I mean, you can do a little bit of work, uh, you know, someone's really keen. I think, you know, one place, if, if they were to give us a vertical jump, seated chest pass with, uh, depending on the age, uh, 2 kilogram or 4 kilogram med ball, sit up and throw with a med ball, and yeah, grip strength, we could point them in a pretty good direction.

Liam, when you mentioned earlier about doing the trap bar on, on the on-deck circle or in the hole, because obviously it probably wouldn't— having 300 pounds on the on-deck circle trap bar would be pretty tough. But what about overload, underload bats to replace the trap bar? Because I mean, it's a heavier object, right? So wouldn't you make— wouldn't that be the same concept?

Uh, yeah, I mean, that would be a, you know, I think it would be it would be probably a more practical solution. You know, when I, when I go to the deadlift, I look at, uh, I just— not that a baseball swing doesn't recruit, you know, total body, but, you know, I think that static deadlift just really makes those large motor units light up and fire, you know, and activate to then go swing whatever the weight of bat is. Um, you know, so yeah, the, the overload would work. I mean I would probably lean towards, uh, grabbing two bats with heavy donuts on them and doing a few squat jumps instead. Um, you know, again, I'm just looking at something that's, that's a little more, um, I guess, you know, not that a baseball swing isn't explosive, but I'd say something, I feel like something at the start that's a little bit more of a linear movement can maximize the potentiation before we start to get into the rotary stuff.

He always makes it a weighted vest. Oh, I like the weighted vest on squat jump.

Oh, I like that. I like that. Micah, do you think that's realistic in a 162-game season for 600 at-bats?

To do 3 squat jumps with a weighted vest on and fungo swings?

Yeah, on the on-deck.

Yeah, I would say one of my favorite quotes from an ex-strength coach was, "Don't be afraid of the weight, be afraid of the reps." So if we're just repping out 3 heavy squat jumps, that's not going to tax you nearly as much as even if you were doing 100 bodyweight squats.

I think, you know, one of the— one of my observations, you know, being a little newer into the baseball world too, keeps coming in is I think there's an opportunity for a lot of hitters to work smarter, not harder. You know, I think a lot of the fatigue comes from overtraining where guys have to get their reps in. And I feel like there's sometimes very little focus on what their reps actually are doing.

Yeah, I mean, I don't— I mean, the only golfer, the main golfer that I, I've heard of and have watched them do a lot of stuff is, you know, DeChambeau, you know, Bryson, who increasing speed, getting bigger, faster, stronger. I mean, I essentially— is that what you're talking about in the sense of like where I'm sure he's working really smart, increasing speed? Like I see him hitting golf balls in his house, you know, million miles an hour, but I'm sure they're— it's deliberate, right? I mean, I'm sure with his trainer, they're not just swinging just to swing. It's like there are certain reps and intent behind each one.

It's very, very purposeful, you know, and so it has been focused on speed. So, you know, that's why you see him doing the stuff he's doing, um, you know, going back to a baseball context, I think, um, You know, if a baseball player was truly trying to train or maintain speed, I feel like over the course of a season, I feel like they'd be better off to probably do a lot fewer swings than what they actually do.

Is there a range? Oh, go ahead, Micah. Sorry.

I was going to say, I think it's interesting. I feel like there's almost a curve to it where at real young youth levels, we don't— they don't hit a ton just because they're young. And then as they get a little bit older, they start repping up rep ranges in there, in the cage hitting all day, doing with, like you said, no purpose-driven work. And then it's funny because as they get to college and pro ball, I feel like those reps even start decreasing there because they realize it's about, like, what they're doing, not how much of it they're doing. And it's— people, I think people will be surprised at how little big league level hitters actually hit in terms of total swings.

Do you think for to get to the, to get to that level though, they had to take all those swings to figure out what they needed? Sure, for sure.

Over the course of a lifespan, it takes, I mean, with the, the rule, the 10,000-hour rule, there's definitely some of that when it comes, especially with something that's hand-eye coordination related. Um, what, what my kind of purpose behind all that is, is when, when we're at the amateur ages, we're taking all these swings with no reason, just because we think, oh, I'm doing a bunch of work, I'm getting better. Now, there's definitely a mental side to that that I'm sure definitely helps. But when it comes down to what they're actually working on, I think we spend so much time in like that mechanical, working on certain, like, my hands need to be here, my hands need to do all that stuff, and we don't spend enough time, I would say from probably maybe even younger than middle school, but through high school and college, on just getting faster and stronger. I've— there's— we've seen some baseline numbers as to strength levels that players need to have to play at the next level to play Division I baseball. There isn't a set standard for mechanics. Everybody's different. But yet we spend all our time with mechanics.

Liam, I've heard you talk about before, and I'm probably— I might mess this up, of like pull resistance or like when talking about like how strong a player should be to understand if— you know, I think— I hope you know what I'm getting at. But I'm just— I was listening to you. And I know, Micah, you actually talked about like, you know, that's why like doing curls and like things like that don't necessarily increase any power. But Liam, what specific— how would you actually test that? And what exactly were you talking about, if you know what I mean?

Yeah, so it's whatever I'm swinging, baseball bat or golf club, you know, think about— I want to take a look at, you know, how far, how far away is the center of mass of the object, you know, from my center of rotation, from my body. What's the mass of the object, and what's the, what's the rotational speed? And so it's, you know, it's pretty simple calculation there to actually calculate the, you know, calculate the g-forces. There is the outward pulling force, and then convert that back into You know, I'm from Canada, so I'm very comfortable in the metric world, but down here we then convert it back to pounds. And that essentially lets us know, like, what is the outward pulling force of the object, which then lets us know if we want to have stable rotation, how hard do we have to be pulling back on it. So, you know, uh, you know, one of the feels we'll talk about with golfers at times, especially when they have early extension or the baseball equivalent of losing space You know, in golf, we'll talk about them trying to pull the grip off the shaft. You know, so by the— in golf, by the time we get where the club shaft is, you know, about parallel to the ground, all the force that the golfer is exerting on it is really just pulling back to the center, right? So they're pulling in line with the longitudinal axis of the club. So in baseball, you know, I kind of referenced this earlier, while the implement is shorter and it's not moving as fast, it is so much heavier. You know, the total weight of a golf club driver is typically just under 1 pound. You know, we get up into 31, 32 ounce baseball bats. That's why it requires, you know, so much more strength to move at speed. You know, and I think, uh, you know, even going back to grip strength, you know, where grip strength is so important is, is that's the link between the bat and the body. And so even if you have tremendous rotary speed, but your grip strength is too low, you're not going to be able to actually channel that energy the body is creating out to the bat. It's going to— it's— you're just going to leak. Um, you know, where grip strength— where I think there's a little bit of a myth about grip strength in baseball is that, uh, higher grip strength will give better performance on poor contacted hits. You know, and working with, you know, working with Dr. McKenzie, you know, one of the things, you know, that we've learned from him is, I guess the reason as to why that's false is the contact interval between bat and ball is not enough time for the impulse of contact to travel back down to the hands and have any effect on bat movement through the contact point.

That's interesting. Very interesting. Micah, I mean, this past year I saw, I started to see some more players swing without a knob. Like it was just shaved off completely at the bottom. Did you, I don't know if you guys were the ones who started getting guys to do that, but was there like, what's the thought behind that?

I was just saying, you're referring to like the little, the mask that was underneath the hands?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, so Liam kind of came up with the name for that. We had, we had a bunch of different variations. Early on of that mass that was underneath the counterweight, the weight of, of the bat, to make it swing like, swing like a lighter bat even though the weight was heavier. So he named it the hockey puck. Kind of looks like a little hockey puck there under their hands. But yeah, so the first— I want to— I think the first person to take it into a game was, was that Jock Peterson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Over time, we've had a few more guys fit for it and use it for different scenarios and take it into games. And then, obviously, I think you saw there in the postseason him passing it around and using it, a couple other guys using it. But, yeah, that was just a way to kind of help offset some of that weight, but Liam can also take that a little further, too.

Yeah, I mean, it— I look at it as it's more than anything, it changes the center of mass of the bat, right? So it's a mechanism where we can pull the center of the mass, you know, even closer to the hands, which for certain players, it's a great match with their, you know, with their setup and their intent. You know, the players it works for, it works very, very well. And, you know, there's times when we put it into people's hands in the fitting environment, and it's crazy how bad it is. Like, really bad.

Well, I mean, Liam, they don't call you the mad scientist for nothing. I mean, you're out here creating this kind of stuff. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, we just make stuff up and hope it works, you know. I mean, the fun part is, at least, like, you know, we've got, we've got such a cool environment to do all this stuff, and Um, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work. It doesn't matter. Like, you know, it's just, hey, let's try it. Oh well, you know what the biggest thing we learned there? Let's never do that again.

Hey, fails, first attempt in learning, you know?

Absolutely. Yep.

Is there, is there anything specific or anything that you guys are looking into now or trying right now that you're like, this may be something cool?

I'd say some stuff with handle diameter.

Okay, I like it, I like it.

Oh, Micah Gibbs, you're on mute there.

Yeah, no, I'd say, yeah, few, few things handle grip related could be pretty interesting, um, for testing, but hopefully we'll have a year to test it and see.

Where, uh, where can people find out like more information? I know I was on your guys's website and I'll put the link up in the show notes, um, because I know you guys got some content, video content online for people who can't, you know, make the trip down to Louisiana. So I think I was looking at some of the stuff, it's really cool.

We've got, uh, you know, we've got a YouTube channel up there. Um, we've got back into construction and late last season we've fallen off a little bit on the content creation, so we'll get back on that. Yeah, we've got a few podcast episodes we've put out. If you go to, and I can send you this for the show notes, if you actually go to courses.mygolflab.ca, we do have some, some free baseball education stuff just talking about what is BPI, and there's a couple other programs about building speed and stuff there that people can check out.

Awesome. Wait, Micah, Liam, appreciate you guys coming on today. Fantastic information. It's, it's really is fascinating. And keep, keep up the great work, man. You guys are pushing the game forward. Um, clearly, I mean, I haven't seen anybody else do any of this stuff, so it's, it's really cool to see.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate you having us on. Yeah.

Thanks for listening to this episode, uh, with Liam Mucklow and Micah Gibbs at the Baseball Performance Lab. If you enjoyed this episode, um, if you've enjoyed another episode, please share it with someone.

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