PITTSBURGH – (3 min read) As part of Dr. Buddy Clark and Dan Koosed’s presentation at the 2017 ABCA Convention “How Technology Unlocked My True Potential At The Plate”, Mr. Koosed touched on a topic at the crux of today’s modern swing instruction: How to understand (and then teach) the ideal swing to achieve the best possible launch angle results.

As Mr. Koosed points out in the above video, combining high exit velocity with a launch angle between 10° degrees and 30° degrees will likely lead to the desired outcome. 

But if one is not able to spend thousands of dollars on modern-day, high-tech equipment that can measure that specific metric, how does one go about calculating launch angles in order to have the ability to properly teach it? 

As Mr. Koosed illustrates in our video, there is a quick, easy, simple way that involves turning one’s batting cage into a measuring device with just a few pieces of tape and a tape measure.

If we take a look at the formula from the above image and expound upon it, here are the numbers we get relative to launch angle in terms of the exact distance from where the batter is standing that correspond to a spot on the top of the cage:

• 30° degree launch angle => 14 feet
• 25° degree launch angle => 17 feet
• 20° degree launch angle => 22 feet
• 15° degree launch angle  => 30 feet
• 10° degree launch angle => 45 feet
• 5° degree launch angle =>  91 feet
• 0° degree launch angle => will never hit top of cage

For instance, if one were to take a piece of tape and put it across the top of the batting cage 14 feet away from where the batter is hitting, then that would equate to a 30° degree launch angle.

With this information, we can now judge to a degree (pardon the pun) the launch angles of the batter without having to ‘break the bank’ and thus, help the batter towards improving their swing and overall numbers in the cage (and hopefully on the field).

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Lastly, Diamond Kinetics Hitting Council Instructor Bobby Tewksbary has a nice visual representation of launch angles relative to how they look in his batting cage. With this can see exactly how balls hit with specific launch angles will fare from -5° degrees all the way to 50° degrees.