Home of Senior Softball-USA and Senior Softball World Championships
Advertisement: Queen Kapiolani Hotel

SSUSA Message Board

Message board home
Sign-in or register to get started
Online now: 9 members: AlexD, BoiseBat, Curly1, Mingo88, Runningwolfokla, Sean n, TABLE SETTER 11, jj1889, rfireman44; 13 anonymous
Change topic:

Discussion: End Load vs. balanced.

If all else is equal, does an end loaded bat give you more distance than a balanced bat or is it just a matter of comfort and preference? Thanks
Yes and Yes

A dik
I'd agree IF you can keep the same bat speed.
hummm, I was under the impression that the end load bats created more bat speed through the ball......but, what do I know!!

A dik
Mass, energy, velocity. Albert Einstein knew.
Personally I prefer balanced bats, but do use on occasion some el's. Depends on how much EL and bat weight.
Like everything, its personal, with no one size fits all.
Check out this page though it's BB and FP primarily same forces apply.

http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/bats/batw8.html

There are many others out there as well.

Comes down to heaviest without loosing bat speed IMO.
A fun thing to do is to get different bats with different weights and balanced and end loaded and then time your batspeed. The results are not always what you expect. Hombre, generally a balanced bat swings faster because the balance point on an end loaded bat is closer to the barrel end of the bat. Generally a bat swings faster if the balance point is closer to the knob. The formula for calculating force uses the square of the batspeed so generally the end loaded bat
puts more mass on the ball (good) but at a lower batspeed (bad) and vice versa. And just to really confuse things, hitting the ball slightly below center imparts backspin which creates an aerodynamic effect which gives more distance. If you can, borrow lots of bats and determines which bat gives you the most consistency hitting the ball hard. Unless you are an effective HR hitter, consistently hitting the ball hard will make you an effective hitter irrespective of distance.

From what I am seeing at different tournaments, is there are just as many Reebok Melee Red bats are being used as the Yellow version. Also the Miken UII Ultra black balanced bat (probably the most popular senior bat of all time) is still very popular. So whether balanced or end loaded both are about equal in popularity. It's just a matter of preference.





Sign-in to reply or add to a discussion or post your own message and start a new discussion. If you don't have a message board account, please register for a free nickname. It will only take a moment.
INTERNATIONAL
SOFTBALL
TOURS
NATIONAL SPONSORS
OFFICIAL GLOVE
OF SSUSA