Hit It Here

I’m fired up.  Baseball season is here!  I’ve already been to a college baseball game this season.  The high school season starts next week.  Youth baseball teams are cranking things up.  With all of the activity, my website, blog, email, and phone have been buzzing with activity. 

With training leading up to this season, I’ve found myself focusing a lot with players on reinforcing the key element to the best and most productive baseball and softball swing and that is matching the swing plane with the plane of the pitch.  Swing LEVEL…to the ball.  The BALL, not to the ground.  You know, like the best players in the game do?

If you swing down on the ball, then you are “intersecting” the path of the ball giving yourself a small window of timing for contact.  A more productive swing would be to attempt to match the plane of your swing to the plane of the pitch.  Having the bat on the same plane as the ball as long as possible opens up your window of timing for making contact. 

This illustration shows the windows of potential contact.  Why would any hitter consistently give themselves the smaller window of contact?  It simply makes sense to swing on the pitch plane.

Can you be on plane perfectly everytime you try?  No.  That’s why you see various types of hits.  But attempting to swing level to the ball increases your line drive rate which in turn raises your batting average.  Line drives equal a high batting average.

Swinging on the pitch plane is so important I am constantly brainstorming new ways to train players to do it.  I have several new techniques I am using very successfully with players.  Coming soon to my website, HitItHere.net , you will be able to see videos of training techniques for swinging on plane and other important mechanics of a good baseball and softball swing.

Hey, it’s baseball and softball season.  Yes!

So is hitting to all fields valuable?  Absolutely!  Most certainly! But ultimately where is the most damage done?  Just something to think about.

I was at a high school level ball game recently. Of the two teams playing, one was filled with a group of very cocky players. They were cocky and CONFIDENT. What’s interesting is that the players on this team had some of the worst baseball swings I have ever seen in my life. But they were confident as all get out.

It’s an interesting phenomenon to observe that a player can have horrible mechanics but have supreme confidence(cockiness is a good word to describe here) and still be able to hit the baseball successfully. Alex Rodriquez successfully? NO! No, as I watched the game none of these players really scorched the baseball but they did swing confidently at it and put the ball in play often finding holes and blooping hits all the way to a 14 to 2 win.

These players’ potential to play at higher levels is limited with bad mechanics. Ultimately, they will reach an end to their success(and subsequently their confidence) as they move to higher and higher levels of baseball. These were high school players. Obviously, they are going to have some success at the high school level.  Reaching the collegiate level is probably out for most of them because of their technique, but one or two of them may reach that level. Then that’s probably it. I once had a collegiate player over for some training and his mechanics were awful, but he was playing Division I baseball. Why? More than likely he was extremely confident up until this point but now was crashing and burning at the collegiate level. He also had a load of natural ability that had carried him this far too. However, he had reached his peak and I remember telling him that if he has sights on playing professionally he needed to change what he was doing mechanically. And he did have the desire to play pro ball.

However, even if a player works on and gets mechanically sound, I believe that any player(no matter what age) will struggle if they don’t learn how to be confident. If they are not confident and their new mechanics aren’t “working” for them, then they will blame the mechanics or the teacher or both and will keep searching for that “perfect” way to swing to insure success. When what they really need is confidence training in order to raise the game and to be successful.

So is learning the proper mechanics the “answer” to being a good hitter? I teach the mechanics of the best players in the game and I am supremely confident in what I teach. Let’s say however that I took a player from the team of confident hitters with bad mechanics and we started working on fixing his mechanics. IF he is able to sustain his confidence, look out. He should excel in a big way.

What if though(and this probably goes higher the younger the player is) the player starts “thinking too much” about executing the proper swing mechanics? What if he starts over-analyzing his swing and trying to hard to make things happen with his new swing? Questions and doubt may start building within him after a bad(weak) hit or a strike out. He then starts asking himself, “Am I doing it right?”. “Am I performing my mechanics correctly?” If the results are not there, then the player will assume that he is not swinging “correctly” and there begins the process of over-thinking, over-analyzing, and confidence shrinking. And I believe the downward spiral of his hitting results and confidence will continue to fall.

What’s interesting as I think about the team of cocky confident hitters is that I don’t think they realize that they suck. Their mechanics that is. They seem to have no idea how “bad” they are and they play as if not to care. They are just confident. On the contrary, they are pretty good because they THINK they are in spite of what they don’t know.

So which is more important? Confidence or mechanics? It seems from my observations that confidence with bad mechanics can still have a degree(albeit limited) of success. YET, good mechanics with zero confidence and playing scared seems to have no chance to succeed.

Hmmm?

Exactly what is muscle memory and how do you create it for a specific thing you want your body to learn to repeat?  The term muscle memory is thrown around so loosely, but do those who use the term really know what muscle memory is and how to create it?  So many have just heard the term and simply repeat it because it sounds good.  First off let me ask, do your muscles really have cognitive power in and of themselves?  Do our muscles have brain cells embedded in them?  I think even those who throw the term around as if they really understand it would even admit the simple answer to that question.  That answer being No.  Our muscles do not have the ability to remember anything.  So where does the term muscle memory come from and how does one actually create it?

Muscles really only have two capabilities.  They can either be constricted(to varying degrees) or they can be relaxed.  That’s it.  So again, where does this “muscle memory” come from?  Well, it’s really BRAIN memory.  The brain is what is really “remembering” moves or has the “memory” of certain performed activities.  The brain sends electrical impulses to the muscles causing them to either be constricted or relaxed in order for the body to perform what it is being asked to do.  So it’s really the brain that needs to be programmed for memory of desired muscle movement not the muscles themselves.  They just perform what the brain tells them to.

So with this in mind that we really need to train the brain not the muscles in order to learn and repeat a desired athletic move, that begs the question of exactly how to do it.  To understand the answer, just think about the sensory inputs that the brain receives in order to learn.  Yes, the senses…Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Feel(Touch).  And of course, that sixth sense, Emotion.  The two most important here for programming “muscle memory” is sight and feel.  Sound or Hearing factor in here too from the instruction of what a coach may be telling a player to do, but hearing by simply being told how to perform an athletic move is a far distant second(if you will) behind sight and feel in training the brain for muscle memory.

It is important for a player to “feel” what they are doing in their swing.  Feeling the swing as a whole and feeling what different body parts or muscles groups are doing is a powerful step forward for any player.  The ability to feel the “hands” for instance and how they are working in the swing is important.  Knowing where they(the hands in this example) are at each moment of the swing is important.  “Feeling” where they are and feeling what they are doing IS KNOWING their performance in the swing.  I tell students a lot to draw their attention to a certain body part and to “pay attention” to what that part is doing in their swing.  Paying attention to it(whatever it is) is to “observe” it without trying to change it.  Pay attention or observe it as I, the instructor, am observing it.  Feeling is important and is a powerful way to make mechanical changes or adjustments and to promote muscle memory.

Then there is sight.  Baseball and softball players being able to see themselves and what they are doing, be it in a mirror or on video is extremely important as well.  Seeing what they are doing helps them to feel what they are doing.  However, the players seeing what they are doing is not the only important visual sensory input to the brain that will help develop the much desired muscle memory.  It is also extremely valuable for players to take in the visual input of other players they want to emulate by watching video of that player(s) over and over and over perform at their best(or performing their best swing).  Don’t sell the value of this short.  I’m telling you, it is a scientifically proven fact that watching the best players perform at their best is a great(and in many ways untapped) way to train a player’s brain in their desired athletic endeavor.  Remember, it’s the brain that is trained for “muscle memory” not the muscles themselves.  The brain stores and recalls this information to send to a player’s muscles when it is time to perform.  Does just watching a little bit of video do it?  No.  It should be a regular “practice” of a player wanting to train their muscle memory.  Just like physical practice isn’t a one time(or few times) thing either.  Repetition.  Repetition. Repetition.

Oh yea, that brings me to physical REPETITION.  Physical repetition of course is critical.  Does physical repetition train the muscles?  No.  It trains the brain on the impulses necessary to send to the muscles to perform the desired athletic activity.

So technically, muscle memory is a myth.  It’s the brain that one needs to train to perform the desired muscles memory.  Remember that!

Principle #One – Weight Transfer

First of all, weight transfer is NOT a hitting technique, but rather an element of hitting.  There is back to front movement in a players swing process as part of hitting with any kind of consistency and power.  Sitting, squishing the bug is simply poor mechanics.

Watch the back foot – players are either on the tip of their back foot, or the foot is completely off the ground at contact.  This is what good weight transfer looks like and there has to be back to front motion in the swing. There is no sitting, there is no squishing.

Principle #2 Hips & Core

As a hitter, you’re goal should be to have practiced your mechanics so repetitively that they eventually become second nature.  I was reading in a book on muscle memory this week and it said it takes about 400 hours of repetition for a skill to become FULLY automatic.  That’s a lot.  So if you are looking for a shortcut, you might want to consider an easier athletic endeavor.

The more a player works on their skill the more second nature it becomes.  You want to(and should, beginning right now no matter what level you are at) step into the batter’s box and think only of hitting the ball and where you want to hit it.  NOT HOW in terms of mechanics you should hit it.  If a player is thinking about their mechanics during  live game swings, then their chances for success are being severely diminished.  The odds are already not in the hitter’s favor, why decrease them further?

Think about the animal kingdom.  If a lion had the cognitive ability of man, it’s hunting effectiveness would be greatly reduced as it would be thinking about HOW to attack it’s prey rather than working from conditioned reflexes.  A lion doesn’t think about how far or high it needs to jump or fast it needs to run in order to catch it’s prey.  They don’t think about what is exactly the proper technique or take lessons on it or question what it did wrong when the prey gets away.

Contrast that with a human with our left side brain power and think about the professional golfer.  Cognitively(with the left side of his brain), he contemplates pin placement, prevailing wind conditions, uphill lie, downhill lie,  and strategy when preparing for a shot.  Then they execute their shot(from the right brain) without thinking about the mechanics of their swing by letting it come naturally.  The weekend golfer, on the other hand, uses his cognitive abilities not to think about playing strategies so much but rather about the fundamentals of his swing and how he should execute them correctly.  The weekend golfer reduces the swing to it’s component parts by thinking about the back swing, hip action, wrist break, arms, legs, and so on.  This results in stress and tension in the muscles causing the player to become a victim of “paralysis by analysis”.  He is trying to perform using the left brain instead of the right.

Such is the same with the baseball and softball player.  Even if a player has reached a point from practice and repetition that the required muscle memory is built in for their best swing, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN(certainly not at it’s fluid best) between the white lines when the pressure is on IF the player is  not confident, relaxed, focused, calm(not nervous), or is afraid(fear ridden).  Nervousness and fear manifest themselves from thinking too much or over-analyzing.  Worrying(or having fear or nervousness) about what might happen or what has happened is devastating to the ability to relax and to perform at ones peak.

Read the last few sentences again.

The only time an athlete performs their best in an athletic move like a swing is when they are totally and completely confident and RELAXED.  If any measure of nervousness is present, the muscles will not be as completely oxygenated as they need to be for smooth performance.  As the degree of tenseness increases, performance plummets.

Ever wonder why a player performs like a animal in practice, but looks lost when they step into the batter’s box during games?  Who hasn’t seen the player who crushes the ball at practice but can’t hit during games?  We all have.  At practice, there’s nothing to be afraid of.  They step into the box relaxed and hit great.  Come game time however,  fear, nervousness, and worry about results rear their ugly heads and the results speak for themselves.  If you’ve ever wondered why this is true about a player, then now you know.

Players that learn how to be confident, focused and RELAXED are your peak performers.

RELAX!  And HIT!

The newest and greatest training device for young hitters…

…may be EARPLUGS!

So many young hitters and even some of the not so young hitters are so confused at the plate. Why? They are hearing so many people in the ears telling them what to do and what not to do mechanically WHILE AT THE PLATE. When they are standing in the batter’s box is not the time or place to be working on mechanics. It’s already hard enough for hitters to make the necessary adjustments needed to what the pitcher is throwing them without their head swimming with what every coach(and parent, sometimes not even their own parent) within ear shot telling them what to do or not to do when in the box and when they swing. It’s no wonder so many young hitters struggle not only with their swing, but even more tragically with their confidence.

The problem is that most of the time they are hearing a variety of different cues: “swing down”, “keep your elbow up”, “don’t dip your back shoulder”, “keep your head down”, “you’re pulling your head out”, “stay tall”, “stay back”, “swing level”, “quit doing (this)”, quit doing (that), (insert one you’ve heard or said here); …and to add confusion to confidence destruction, some of the things they hear are physically contrary to each other and to actual physics itself. Have you ever tried to “stay back” AND “swing down”? Have you ever tried to “swing level” on a pitch at your knees?

What players should  hearing during game time situations and especially when they are actually at the plate are simple things like “look for something you can hit hard” or “make contact and put the ball in play”. Before a player goes to the plate, I like the simple phrase “Don’t try to do too much just look for a good pitch to hit and put a good swing on it.” Save the intensive mechanical and technique instruction for practice and the cage. Another simple encouraging comment is simply, “Let’s go! Make contact and put the ball in play”. That’s it. Tell them what you want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do. For example, “Hit the ball hard somewhere”… “Let’s go! Hit a line drive”… “Hit the ball to the right side, let’s move the runner”… “Drive one to the gap”… “Keep your focus on the ball and put the ball in play”… “Make contact”… “Drive this run in”… (insert your positive message of what you want them to do here)…

There’s an old story of a pitcher in a tight situation that was facing a big hitter and his manager came to visit him on the mound. The manager didn’t say much. He just said, “Whatever you do, DO NOT throw him anything on the inside half of the plate”. The manager returned to the dugout. The first pitch… a fastball on the inside corner… Going, Going, GONE! Instead of planting the seed in that pitcher’s mind of where he shouldn’t throw the ball, wouldn’t it have been better to say something like, “Keep the ball low and away on this guy. You can do it”. I think so.

You would be surprised. A lot of young hitters have a very good natural swing and the ability to make on the fly adjustments until some coach(es) and/or parents come and take it away from them with either bad hitting “instruction” cues or even good ones but at the wrong time. The problem with even the good ones(as far as mechanical or technique cues) is that the hitter is often hearing contradictory messages coming in the other ear. Now their head is swimming while confidence in what they can actually do is taking a nose dive.

The time to for a hitter to work on their hitting and their swing is at practice and in the cage. And by the way, for those who think ONE practice a week and/or ONE trip to the cage a week is good, you should know that the best hitters in the world take batting practice and work on their technique every day! What does that tell you about hitting? It’s HARD! Hitting a is a lifelong pursuit. It is something that must be constantly worked on with lots of repetition. Write down this simple phrase and put it somewhere that you see it everyday… Repetition Is The Mother Of Skill.

When it comes to actual instruction and the things we say to hitters or ask them to do, do we tell them why? If a hitter is given a piece of advice, tell them exactly why that is the best thing for them to do. We should show them, demonstrate, and explain why what we’re showing them is proper and what they should expect from such technique? How about evidence? Do we show them visual evidence that what we are telling them to do is what the great hitters do? Show them a picture of Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, or Derek Jeter doing what you are asking them to do. Show them. I can hear it already… “these kids are not ARod, they should not be trying to be him or trying to do what he is doing. He’s a home run hitter.” First off.. why not? Secondly, okay then show them Derek Jeter. He’s not a home run hitter. Derek has never hit more than 24 HRs in a season and he’s only topped 20 HRs three times. He’s just a career .317 hitter at the big league level. Show Derek. I guarantee you that Derek’s and ARod’s techniques are scary similar.

If you don’t want your son/daughter/hitters to try to hit like the MLB hitters, that’s okay. Show them some pictures of the best collegiate hitters or of the best high school hitters that you know. You might be surprised if you compared the best high school and collegiate hitters to the best big league hitters at what you might see. Similarities! OR… if you don’t want to show them evidence of the best hitters at the high school and collegiate level, then show them evidence of average to below average hitters in their sport. It’s up to you, but show them some visual evidence that what you are telling them to do is what is right.

I guarantee you kids are not stupid. They watch SportsCenter. Many have Tivo or some kind of DVR. They can stop, rewind, and slowmo. They can see the contradictions of what they often hear and what they are actually seeing the best hitters doing. Unfortunately, the highlights are almost always certainly the best hitters of the sport doing what they do. There aren’t too many Highlights of the average or bad hitters so if that’s what you want them to show them, you’ll have to do that yourself.

Finally… Don’t overreact to one at-bat or one game or even a few games for that matter. I doubt the Yankees hitting coach made any major changes to ARod’s swing or approach when he struck out FOUR TIMES in one game this season(three of them LOOKING!). It happens. It ALL happens. Watch any big league game and you’ll see it all… Strikeouts(swinging and looking)… Pop ups… Fly Balls… Ground Balls… Line Drives… Long Fly Balls.. Bloopers… Dribblers… Bleeders… Texas Leaguers…Home Runs!… Every hitter does all those things, save only for the home runs. Don’t overreact or over coach, and in doing so you will give them a better chance to build confidence and succeed. Give or get them good instruction from someone who teaches what the best players at ever level are doing. An instructor’s nice resume is just that. Nice. Check out what an instructor is teaching and as Mike Epstein says just ask yourself one simple question in regards to what a coach is telling them to do. And that is… “Does this make sense?”…

Bottom line… Give your young hitters a consistent, SIMPLE, positive message about their technique and abilities.  OR…Buy them a set of earplugs and keep doing what you are doing. Either way, they’ll be a better hitter.  

How does a beginner learn to swing?  How about a more advanced player who has a bad swing, how do they learn a new swing?  Let’s think for a moment about how a baby learns to walk.  Do we give them detailed mechanical or physical instruction on how high they must lift one leg and what is the ideal distance to step ahead of the other?  Do we go over the critical nature of the performance of the toes in walking and how each one must be used in order to move oneself in the most efficient and balanced manner?  Do we show them what a bad walking motion is and contrast it with a good walking motion?  The simple answer to all of the above questions is ‘of course not, that’s silly’.

Fortunately, most children learn to walk BEFORE they can be told HOW TO by mom or dad.  Rather, they see adults walking and they learn by seeing and by emulating in their own efforts.  Sometimes they lose balance and fall.  Do we then explain to them how they left their toes angled down to far resulting in them getting caught on the floor causing the fall(using a baseball “trusim”, they dipped their back shoulder or rolled their wrists too early, etc.)  Can you imagine the difficulty a toddler would have learning to walk if they understood such instruction and were actually THINKING with every step how high they are lifting their leg and how far to step and how each toe was angled in order to perform the PERFECT step?  It would probably prove to be the most excruciating and frustrating event of theirs and their parent’s lives.  Followed only in the frustration level of  when it came time to teach them  how to hit a baseball .

I think it’s important to tell players how to swing properly, but I think it’s even more important to SHOW them how.  Whether it’s personally or with pictures and video.  Doing all three of those is even better.  Show them stop action photos of the best hitters in their sport performing the moves that are important to a good swing.  I think pictures are great, but live demonstration and video are by far the best.  Videos of the best hitters in the world taking their best swings is a good teaching tool.  The problem for some coaches/instructors is that there are no actual videos of the game’s top players swinging what they teach because no one actually swings that way.  If your instructor can’t show you video after video of great hitters doing what they are trying to teach you, I would find someone else.

Find someone who’s goal is that you don’t have to think so much in order to learn,  and you learn how to not think so much when it comes game time.  Over-instruction runs rampant with young players.  I see it and hear it during games from coaches and parents and I’ve seen it with instructors  during lessons.  Sometimes we have to remember that less is more when teaching young players how to hit.  Less is more and keep it simple.  Over-instruction, especially during games,  gets players thinking too much. When it would be better to get them to think less and just let it happen from their practice reps and from the miracle of what the brain can do from watching the best players perform.  By the way, I suggest more of that.   A lot more. That is watching the best players perform their best swings.  Watch and learn.  It works.

Strive to get players to stop thinking so much(about their mechanics).  And take time to watch a baby learn how to walk(or remember when yours learned to).   But do both of you a favor.  Don’t tell him/her how to correctly position their toes.

Here are some frame by frame photos and the accompanying video of a 15 year student who is really in that hitting “envelope” we talk about with his swing.  This is definitely his “A” swing and that is the swing a player puts on a pitch when he/she gets the pitch they are looking for, in the area anticipated, and at the speed they were expecting.  When all of these factors come together, the results are usually very favorable in terms of how hard a player hits the ball.

Of course, there are those 8 players out in the field that sometimes mess things up by catching it.  A hitter however should ultimately judge how they are hitting by how hard they are hitting the ball NOT by the end result of any one particular hit.  Hit enough balls on the nose and the results will ultimately take care of themselves.

Putting an “A” swing on pitches isn’t always possible, no thanks to those darn pitchers always trying to mess us up.  After each hit, a player(or coach or parent) should ask themselves, was that my(his/her) “A”(best) swing?  A hitter’s goal is to put as many of their best swings on pitches as they can.  Although, sometimes a hitter’s less than best swings can have positive results including balls hit out of the park on what appears to be a horrible swing.  Watch SportsCenter.  You’ll see these from time to time.  These are the exceptions but they do happen.  Regardless, I always say look for a good pitch to hit and put A good swing on it.

This swing of Josh Fleck’s is most definitely his best swing:

Stance

Torque

Approach(Short 3)

Extension(Long 3)

Watch the VIDEO of this hit