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solipsta

I've always heard that you should get contact training first before you go for power training because you only gain power points when you make contact with the ball. Where does this refer to? I was training a rookie in the power cage. He has had very little (maybe one session) of contact training and he maybe hit 2 balls the whole session. He ended up with 18 power points for the session. So 18 points with only 2 balls hit? Or is the contact only needed in the ST to gain power points? I hope I have gotten my point across clearly enough so you all understand what I'm trying to say.

Another thing that is funny is that in this session, he got 24 contact, 18 power and 11 skill. In his session in the contact cage, he got 28 contact and 15 skill. So he got 10 extra skill points from being in the power cage. It's all very interesting...... Confused

Cheers
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tonyd · Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:31 pm Post subject:

good question, i've been wondering that myself.

Beaner · Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:32 pm Post subject:

I totally understand what you are trying to say. I sure don't have much of an answer though. I pretty much fly by the seat of my pants when bat training. One thing I have noticed is that once my guys were out of that "not being able to make much contact" phase, I pretty much train exclusively in the power cage and on the field for skill. Good question and I am anxious to see what others have to say as usual.
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Tight_Wads

I train as much contact as I can. Then skill as much as I can and then it comes to power training and it seems that on some of my players it shuts them down hitting if I over do the power. This is only with my top HR hitters. I would love to hear if this happens to other teams with there power hitters. Lately it's beeen tough giving out the right amount of power to each player. But I have 4 teams and I swear every one of these 4 teams has totally different needs. And I still don't know what they are......
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Mannheim Dragons · Guest Forum ID: -1

I have also seen this "shutting down" effect of overdoing power training of course it still could be just superstition.

As to what to train first with a new team:
I have a few very simple reasons for training contact first.
Let's say u start training ur player in power till he hits let's say 300 ft. now even though he'll have gained some contact skill during these session there are some things u have to consider:

You still need to train the player in the contact cage because without that the player will simply strike out no matter what his power is. Once you get his contact his power will have decreased again because, unlike in the power cage where u will also gain contact, in the contact cag players gain basically no power skill.
In the contact cage your player will also get a fair amount of swing skill which gives your young players a good start.
Even in the power cage a player will gain contact skill depending on the number of pitches he misses. So with lesser contact skill the power training effect of the power cage will decrease because more TP goes into contact.