Friday, August 28, 2009

What The Professionals Know About Batting Cages

By Scott Stevens

Every professional athlete who has ever been asked what they attribute their success too, has named someone who encouraged them to keep on practicing. About batting cages, it is said that use of a batting cage can improve your batting average. Where you live, as well as schedule conflicts can limit your accessibility to public batting cages.

The best way to improve your batting average is to practice, but not just to practice hitting balls. You should also practice hitting balls in specific areas, in specific ways. The easiest way to accomplish this is to score your sessions in the batting cage. Take three points for a line drive, two points for a grounder and one point for a fly ball. This also will give you a target to aim for on your next session.

One way to improve your accessibility to a batting cage is to build your own. You will need some space, typical batting cages range in size from seventy feet long, fourteen feet wide, and twelve feet high, to ten feet long, ten feet wide, and twelve feet high. Depending on the amount of space you have, you can come up with your own size. You will also need an additional five feet around the perimeter of your batting cage.

The materials you will need to build your batting cage are, batting cage nets, generally made from polyethylene or nylon, support tubes for the nets, aluminum is a good choice, PVC pipes and some concrete or cement.

Once you have marked out the outline you will need to drill or dig holes for the support poles. These poles have to support the weight of the net, so you should make them a minimum of three feet deep. Using cement around the poles will increase the stability of them. Once you install your top frame made from your PVC pipe, you simply attach the net to the top and drape it down.

Now all that is left in building your batting cage is to make sure your net comes all the way to the ground. You don't want to have to be chasing balls that are escaping under the bottom of the net. Also you will want to make sure you have left yourself a way to get in and out of the batting cage.

Now place the pitching machine inside the netting, and you're ready to start practicing your batting. Remember to use the scoring techniques to make practice more fun, and more effective. Get out there and practice, practice, practice. Before you know it your RBI's, runs batted in, will increase and you will get on base more and get out less.

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