Product Placement: How The Ritend Swing Trainer Improves Bat Quickness
By Brentt Eads
March 22, 2024
Product Placement: How The Ritend Swing Trainer Improves Bat Quickness
In his playing days, Skip Lindemann was like most every player looking to get a competitive advantage on the field.
In his case, he benefitted from having what he describes as “an advantageous inside-out swing” when he played at Georgia College, a DII program in the Peach Belt Conference.
“It’s now called ‘hands inside the ball,’” Skip explains, “and my hitting coach Matt Fincher and then Kansas City Royal player and current Atlanta Braves Hitting Coach Kevin Seitzer helped me refine it.”
After his playing career ended, Lindemann was looking for a way to help hitters he worked with benefit from his successful approach.
“When I started being a high school hitting coach, I was trying to find a way to get the players to keep their hands inside the ball,” he recalls.
Feeling that the current products on the market were a bit pricey, Skip came up with a low cost – but high maintenance – idea.
“My friend Robert Saven had an indoor batting facility and brought me the CamWood Bat and I loved the concept but not the price ($100 and up). So, I started taping quarters to the bottom of a hold bat and the kids really started improving. But every other day that duct tape would rip, and we were picking up quarters!”
One day, the would-be inventor had a better idea that came to him in the morning… very early in the morning.
“I was on a 4:00 am run – I don’t sleep much! – and I came up with the concept. I had my brother, who is a mechanical engineer, draw it up for me and we made the first one out of plastic to see if it would work.”
The early results were promising so Skip made some prototypes and sent them to Fincher, his one-time hitting coach who is now the Head Baseball Coach at USC Upstate College in Spartanburg, S.C.
“If Matt wouldn’t have liked them,” Lindemann admits, “then I was not going to pursue it, but he called me and said I was on to something and that loved everything about them.”
The reception by other baseball and softball markets was equally positive.
“Today, we are in most of the SEC softball programs and in over 50 college baseball and softball programs,” the Ritend Swing Trainer’s creator continues. “More than 60 percent of our sales now are in softball because they have been teaching hands inside the ball forever.”
So what, exactly, does the training product do?
“The weight on the barrel pulls the hands away from the body causing casting which creates a long and slow swing,” Skip begins.
“We have several studies on the Ritend website including an ESPN Sport Science Episode. With the Swing Trainer, it feels like you’re quicker but you’re not. We want the players to use them on the on-deck circle, so they have great hands inside the ball before they get up to bat instead of using a bat weight on the end.”
The early test results were impressive: Peavy Baseball System in Atlanta did a study that showed an athlete’s use of the Ritend Swing Trainer in daily hitting routines could increase bat speed between 7-to-9 mph.
Another big endorsement came from the Louisville Slugger Hitting Science Center which found similar bat speed increases.
Skip says he sees it on the local level too in his hitting lessons.
“We also measure the players and see the same results with the Swing Speed Trainer,” he adds. “Hitters only need to do 15-to-20 swings a day.”
Another plus: the weight on the knob forces the players to pull their hands inside the ball. It also creates a correct bat path keeping the barrel in the zone longer meaning, as the inventor explains, “that if you swing earlier then you pull the ball, if you’re on time, then it’s up the middle and if late, the ball goes to the opposite field.”
“I teach ‘swing quicker not harder,’” Skip continues. “Once a player swings hard, the shoulder and hips fly out and they drop their hands. It’s a late and slow swing with weak ground balls or pop-ups.”
“Because the weight is on the knob, it forces the player to pull their hands inside the ball making them quicker and, also, because of the weight it makes them stronger. Again, we have several studies on the website published by a lot of people smarter than me!”
Expect to see the Ritend systems continue to grow in popularity; the patent for the products was just finalized on Feb 6, 2024 “so been waiting before we really pushed it to the market,” Lindemann adds.
“We are in over 10 DBAT locations and starting to gain traction. Now, with the patent in place. We are really pushing to take to market. We are on the Hitting World website and are getting on more each week.”
— Brentt Eads, Line Drive Softball
*****
Click HERE to contact Skip and get more information on the Ritend products…
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