Blast Motion Partners With WBSC Europe For Hitting Growth

Blast Motion's hitting improvement platform puts a premium on swing analytics to develop an individual player's swing. Kruno Karin, World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Europe president, believes hitting is the area where European players need to grow to compete on a world stage. The two entities have come together with a new partnership.

"Hitting is one of the key areas where Europe needs to improve in order to compete better against the top countries globally," Karin says. "This agreement and technology and services provided by Blast are part of our development plan and its building blocks."

As part of the new partnership, Blast Softball and Blast Baseball become officially available for all WBSC Europe Federation members. Over the next few weeks, Blast will host a series of introductory webinars with virtual product demonstrations to showcase the product and help coaches and players implement the Blast Motion swing analytics via a mobile app and cloud-based software into their programs.

"Blast will provide comprehensive training to European baseball and softball coaches during the next three years to help develop our hitting," Karin says. "Blast Motion coupled with coaches' guidance will be a big step forward for the European baseball and softball development."

Blast says their technology can help WBSC coaches evaluate and improve a player's swing through the company's automatic swing quality assessment reports, video analysis and comparisons, 3D swing tracer visualizations and leaderboards tailored to their teams and areas of focus. Blast is used in softball across a range of major NCAA schools and already partners with USA Softball. The product is also seen in most MLB development programs.

The core of the Blast Motion technology provides motion analysis and performance insights. Blast includes over 250 million swings in the company's database to help build on improvement insights.

By combining the biomechanics of movement with sensor data from a player's bat, video capture technology and cloud-based software services, Blast analyzes swings in softball and baseball to optimize an individual swing in a variety of areas, including bat speed, attack angle and hand speed.

"Our mission aligns with WBSC Europe's goals of promoting the increased development and expansion in baseball and softball training for its players, coaches and organizations for all levels of the game," says Mike Woods, Blast Motion's vice president of business development and strategic partnerships. "By partnering with the best organizations and governing bodies in the world, we're allowing a new generation of players to use the same technology used by pro teams, providing them with the opportunity to pursue their dreams of playing in the big leagues, getting college scholarships or simply making the team."

Based in California, Blast Motion also offers a cadre of drills and training videos designed to help athletes "train smarter and get better faster."

Tim Newcomb covers gear and business for Softball America. Follow him on Twitter at @tdnewcomb.

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