Sports Product Review

My oldest son will be a high school senior this fall and plans to play baseball in college. He’s always been a good hitter, but something happened recently that ratcheted him up notch. He began playing in a wood bat league. It was a blow to his confidence at first. The caliber of pitching was better than he was used to, and most of the kids had been hitting with wood all year. It took him a while to get his legs under him. Finally, it began to come together, and during his team’s most recent tournament, he was hitting in the number four hole.

Recently, his high school summer ball team began playing. They use aluminum. When he picked up the aluminum bat and went against lesser-quality pitching, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Through the first two games of the season he was seven for seven with a walk, before cooling off to 10 for 14 with three walks. The point is, I am absolutely convinced that hitting with wood makes a kid much better. There is no forgiveness – no fluke. You have no choice but to learn to hit the ball well.

The only problem is that he’s now on his third bat. And while they don’t cost as much as a good aluminum does, if you go through one every three weeks they do. So you can imagine how sold I am on MetalWood Bats, (www.metalwoodbats.com), an innovative combination of metal and wood that may revolutionize the bat industry.

You pick up the MetalWood and it just feels like a weapon. The combination of the quality wood they use and the metal handle gives it a trampoline effect when you swing. My son brought it to his recent tournament. I was watching from far away on a hill, and I started craning my eyes because it appeared that other kids were using it. Sure enough, it turned out that as soon as it came out of the bag, everyone else had to have a look. He told me that they were all guessing the bat must have cost $500-$600. (Actually, they’re $99.00). This was a big tournament and everyone wanted to do well, and we all know how superstitious baseball players are about their bats. Nonetheless, nearly everyone hit with it at least once. For several kids, it was the only bat they used all weekend. Some big-league-quality shots came off the barrel and I never worried once that it might break.

Last week we went back to Indiana to see some relatives. My sister teaches at a local high school and I wanted to work my boys out while we were on vacation, so she called the baseball coach and he unlocked the shed and the cage for us. What do you think I found in the shed, but a MetalWood. It made me think, “Why doesn’t every high school use these as part of their training?” I know that there are several reasons youth leagues don’t use wood bats, and one of them is replacement cost. I could see Little Leagues and Ripken Leagues transition into these in a heartbeat.

Any player who is serious about baseball should swing a wood bat as often as he can. There are lots of good wood bats out there, but the combination of quality, durability, affordability and cool you’ll get in a MetalWood is a grand slam.

Source: MetalWood Bats

So you’ve been wistfully eyeing those new irons because yours are showing their age, but the economy isn’t exactly conducive to making a major investment right now. There’s a way you can add new life to your existing clubs while making sure you can still afford greens fees.

The Groove Sharpener from Cozmo Sports (www.cozmosports.co.uk), brings out the best in those tired wedges by sharpening your clubs’ grooves. You can create more backspin with a more reliable striking surface, while staying R & A and USGA compliant.

Wedges wear more than other clubs over time as stones, sand and dirt all help to gradually reduce the grooves efficiency, diminishing the amount of backspin you are used to getting. The Groove Sharpener will remove the squashed metal and reshape the grooves, making your club more like when it was new. You’ll be able to hit the shots with the soft touch of a pro, without breaking the bank. The Groove Sharpener is easy to use, durable, and economy-friendly.

If you’ve been wondering what happened to your short game, don’t blame yourself. Blame those old, tired sticks. Of course, once you invigorate them with the Groove Sharpener, you’ll have one less excuse in your bag.

Source: Cozmo Sports

And for those of you who read last week’s review and said, “I wish they made something like that for my golf game,” we’ve delivered. Or, more accurately, Momentus Golf (www.momentusgolf.com) has.

The Momentus Strength Trainer is a terrific and easy-to-use training aid designed to create a stronger and more powerful golf swing by providing counter-balanced weighting technology, which allows you to work out with a heavier golf club for maximum impact while maintaining proper form.

The uniquely-weighted design ensures that not only will you be strengthening your golf swing, but also synchronizing the proper hand, arm, and body movements to hit longer and straighter golf shots. You will increase strength and flexibility in the golf specific muscles, adding distance to your drives, greater control to your approach shots and confidence to your game.

We all know that when it comes to that game, you’ll take any secret advantage you can get. Momentus Golf makes a whole slew of training aids designed to help you improve behind the scenes. Your friends may not notice your new contraptions in the trunk of your car, but they will take note of your lower scores.

Source: Momentus Golf

It’s simple, really. Anytime you make things harder on yourself during training, you’re making it easier on yourself in the game. Baseball players have used a weighted “doughnut” in the on-deck circle for years. Now hockey players can employ the same philosophy in their workouts with The Complete Shot (www.thecompleteshot.com).

By incorporating added resistance to the natural shooting and puckhandling techniques, players will add to their muscle and hand quickness. This will create not only a stronger more powerful shot, but also quicker hands and wrists, enabling them improve their mechanics much more rapidly than with ordinary practice.

Simply slide the desired number of weight bars into the sleeves on the inside of the wrap and cover the sleeves, locking the weight bars in. Flip the cover over the sleeve, place the wrap on the stick shaft just above the stick blade and secure it with the Velcro strips and you’re ready to work out as usual. Anyone from Pee-Wee on up can use The Complete Shot.

Try taking twenty shots with The Complete Shot, then hit one without it. The stick is light as a feather. Your hands and wrists feel like Popeye’s. And you’ll believe you’ve got an NHL slap shot the next time you strike the puck.

Source: The Complete Shot

If you’re like me, you don’t really start paying attention to the NBA or the NHL until the playoffs begin. And why would you? The seasons start in October, they compete with MLB playoffs, the NFL, and college football and basketball, plus everyone makes the post-season anyway. But now, unless you find game number 34 of a 162 game baseball season more riveting, the NHL and NBA playoffs are the sports fan’s best bets. So when I can choose between hoops and hockey on TV, why does the puck win? Ten reasons, (in no particular order) below:

1. Momentum: Huge momentum swings in basketball take time. Yes, it is exciting when a team chips away at an eighteen point lead and narrows the gap to five. But teams trade momentum in hockey like Olympic table tennis players trade volleys. Listen to the crowd in a close playoff hockey game. Twenty thousand people yelling “Oooh” with the regularity of ocean waves crashing.
2. Minutes (as in two minutes): Two minutes to go in a basketball game? There’s time to take a walk, use the bathroom and make a sandwich before the excitement begins. Two minutes left in hockey. Better not get out of your seat. In two minutes the game will be over.
3. Overtime: Unless it goes into overtime. Imagine basketball overtime if the first basket won. Do you think there’d be some defense played? Combine sudden death with the most momentum-trading sport there is, and you’ve got instant thrills.
4. Checking: When was the last time you said, “Whoa!” out load about a good box-out under the basket?
5. Fans: No glamour, not there to be seen, just intense, ready to pound the glass and help their team win.
6. Players: See Fans.
7. Seven: As in Game Seven. They’re huge in both sports, but add the wild card that it might go into sudden-death overtime, and hockey is the winner.
8. Breakaways: Watch the majesty of a skater on a breakaway. The goalie hunching back into the net like a cornered rat, the player dusting off the puck while flying 60 MPH towards the net, looking for options and openings where there are none, and then finally finishing the job. Compare that to jogging down the court wide open and finishing with an uncontested one-hand slam.
9. Dunks: Which leads to dunks. I’m not impressed that a 6’ 11” guy with a four foot wing span can throw it down. Is there anyone that size who couldn’t? I don’t get why that makes # 1 on the list of Sportscenter top ten plays every morning. Give me a gorgeous one-hand wrap-around while attached to a defender any day.
10. Degree of difficulty: Oh yeah, by the way, they do it all on ice skates.

Source: NHL