Rapsodo Baseball & Softball Training Software
How does the Rapsodo software help youth players?
At DREAM Team Sports, we use Rapsodo because it helps to assess & refine (with the help of a coach or instructor) technique of youth hitters and pitchers; it's often said that it's "better to assess than guess" and Rapsodo provides intuitive, real-time measurements to help build better technique. Rapsodo is used by all 30 MLB teams and found at more than 1,200 colleges and facilities across the United States and DREAM Team is proud to be one of a handful of youth organizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that offers this cutting edge technology to our players!
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Rapsodo RapScore
RapScore is a quantifiable player development and evaluation tool that can be used to track player performance over time. It takes a player’s raw data and shows their strengths and weaknesses as well as how they rank against their peers.
RapScore uses Rapsodo’s existing HITTING and PITCHING technology to quantify a player’s personal metrics, and utilizes the principles of the 20-80 scale to rank players amongst their peers and evaluate performance. RapScore’s pitching algorithm compares an individual’s pitch metrics to the ideal form of that pitch type. At the end of the session, a player’s RapScore is calculated based on dynamic weighing of the pitches thrown. Hitting RapScore is determined using a player’s max and average exit velocity as well as launch angle throughout a certified session. These session metrics are compared by the athlete’s level and accurately placed on the 20-80 scale.
How does Rapsodo Hitting & Pitching software really work? Watch these videos for a tutorial.
Our Instructors are Certified & Trained to effectively teach players using the Rapsodo methodology.
DREAM Team believes that our instructors must be qualified to teach and get the most out of every moment when instructing players.
DREAM Team Rapsodo Instruction includes:
- Providing notes to the player's parents post instruction in Setmore & recording those notes for future follow up
- Providing slow motion video feedback with Rapsodo data overlay in the Rapsodo Diamond app (under the parent's login)
- Following up with each player in the Training Track (if the player is registered) with DREAM Team to ensure that they are progressively improving in their technique
Measured Hitting Instruction
According to the publication Popular Science, "Hitting a baseball is the hardest skill to pull off in sports" as it is (scientifically speaking) "a unique blend of physics and neuroscience [which] makes the skill astronomically difficult." Now, take the hardest skill in sports and apply that with youth baseball players; it takes time, practice, and understanding of how to break down & teach to a young player what to do to be a good hitter.
At DREAM Baseball, we use "old school" hitting fundamental techniques and combine them with "new school" optical technology including measuring Exit Speed, Total Spin, Spin Access, Launch Angle, and Exit Direction. One may say that gathering this intelligence is going "over the top," but what the data does show is what happens when a player makes contact with the ball (which is obviously the result of their bat path and overall hitting mechanics). More than anything, this helps pinpoint simple adjustments that can be made and then see results (when adjustments are made) of better back spin (which produces line drives as opposed to top spin which produces ground balls). This is just one application of using software to get feedback from this type of swing analysis. With all of this intelligence, we can track and make necessary adjustments, but again there's a balance of using the "new school" software with traditional (old school) hitting fundamentals.
From a development standpoint, the main question (as instructors) is "why would you guess when you can assess (with measurements)?" DREAM Baseball will incorporate these measurements into hitting fundamentals and (by putting it all together) make every hitting session a learning session and overall produce greater results.