Hit It Here

Archive for the ‘Baseball Softball training’ Category

How you start your swing either has you in a good position to adjust to pitches in all four corners of the strike OR limits you ability to the adjustments you might need to make on a particular pitch.

So what is the best way to start you swing? I tell players I work with to remember U-U-I. That stands for Up, Up, and In.

The first U or Up is for the positioning of your body with the “Up” really meaning “Upright”. You want to be upright on your axis with the shoulders pretty level at the very beginning of your rotation to the ball. This combined with the other “U” which mean to keep your HANDS Up close to your back shoulder or right at the top of the strike zone.

Why do you want to to be Upright with your hands Up around the top of the strike zone at the beginning of your swing? Let me answer that question with some other questions. Which adjustment is easier to make? Adjusting from high to low or low to high? In other words, is it easier to be in a position to hit the high pitch and adjust for a lower pitch OR to immediately drop your back shoulder and hands to be in a position to hit the low pitch and then adjust back up for something high in the zone? Sure, it’s obvious the easier adjustment is high to low.

We’ve all heard the expression don’t dip your back shoulder. In fact, I recently posted a video on this blog about that very thing. At the start of your swing is where an immediate drop of the back should is bad. Be Upright and Up with your hands to be in a position to adjust from high to low. Read more on the good dipping and bad dipping of the back should HERE.

The “I” in U-U-I is for In. In, meaning to keep your hands in close to your body and staying inside the ball. Why is this good? Again, a few questions to answer that. Which adjustment is easier to make? Adjusting from inside to out or from outside to in? In other words, is it easier keep your hands in and be able to hit the inside pitch and then adjust from inside to out for a pitch on the outside part of the plate OR to immediately let your hands get away from your body to be in position to hit an outside pitch and then adjust back in for something inside? Again, the answer is obvious and that is it’s easier to adjust from inside to out.

So what’s a good position for the start of your swing(rotation to the ball)? U-U-I. Up(right), Up, and In. Doing so puts you in the best position to hit in all four corners of the strike zone.

There is so much junk out there on hitting and hitting mechanics. And I literally mean junk. One might call it crap. I watched a video today of a guy who is a minor league hitting coordinator for a Big League baseball club who said that the swing should come through the hitting zone flat & level, not down or up. Can someone please tell me how a hitter can perform this guy’s swing on a pitch at the knees??? And this guy coaches at a high level of baseball. He then proceeded to have a high school player demonstrate the swing(in slo-motion) which had NO RESEMBLANCE whatsoever to one single player of his own Big League club.

Have you ever seen a big league hitter on his best swing ever swing like these silly illustrations below? Watch a big league game and count how many times you see players swing like this. In watching a months worth of games, I would be shocked if you needed one finger to count on.

You know this game is not much fun hitting a buck fifty. If you want a really low batting average, then hit a lots and lots of ground balls. And do it by modeling your swing after this example I found to demonstrate the baseball swing. Swing like this and you will certainly have a low batting average with little power if any AT ALL.

Then I found this quote from a guy who actually played at a fairly high level of baseball. “…The actual swing path is a downward motion from the cocking position to the ball at the strike zone. As we have all heard at one time or another, baseball is a game of inches. Therefore, actions must be done as efficiently and effectively as possible. In terms of the swing the hitter must take the most direct route to the ball (shortest distance between two points is a straight line), which is the downward chopping motion…”

Why don’t we teach what we ACTUALLY see the great hitters ACTUALLY performing in game situations? I do. That’s exactly what I teach. Try the swing from the following video instead.Watch this compact powerful swing of a player from the Cleveland Indians organization.

Or…follow the examples and quoted hitting advice above. Just know, however, that teaching, instruction, and advice like that are the key reasons why interest in soccer by young athletes is exploding. Because this game is no fun hitting a buck fifty.

Today’s post covers a key element to good hitting mechanics and that is keeping the arms flexed to contact or staying connected. Great hitters DO NOT pre-extend their arms in their swing. As you will see they stay connected to their body and flexed with their arms to contact and THEN they extend through the ball. Don’t let broadcasters on TV baseball games fool you when they talk about a hitter getting their arms extended. If the announcer actually happens to know any better, they really mean extending their arms through contact NOT BEFORE. Watch and see…

Check out this video and analysis of the mechanics of one of the big league’s greatest hitters. Call it what you want. Rotational hitting, the rotational swing, the big league swing, the perfect swing, etc. It doesn’t matter what you call it, the swing speaks for itself.

Today’s post includes two videos.  One explores whether great hitters DO dip their back shoulder or if they hold to the oft repeated cliche’ of “Don’t dip your back shoulder!”  The second video is a demonstration of the shoulder dip and how it shouldn’t and SHOULD BE DONE in a good sound baseball swing and softball swing.

DipppingScn

So what’s right and what’s wrong in how the back shoulder dips?  Watch Part II here:

Rotational hitting…What is it?

My simple answer is that it is simply the big league swing.  Prior to 2000, no one even knew what rotational hitting was.  Now there are experts on every street corner.  The facts are that Mike Epstein in his diligent study of the art of hitting isolated the core movements of the game’s greatest hitters  and defined their baseball swing mechanics in a term he coined Rotational Hitting.

You can call it what you want.  Call it the rotational swing.   Call it a hybrid swing.  Call it weight shift hitting.  There are many “names” now that other people have come up with, but I call it the big league swing.  After all, that’s what it is.  Rotational hitting as Mike Epstein defined it encompasses and engulfs ALL of those other names that some are calling it.  It IS the big league swing and that’s what Mike Epstein Hitting teaches.

The bottom line is that there are really only TWO methods of hitting.  A hitter is either Linear or he/she is Rotational with their swing mechanics.  Now both techniques have elements of the other in them.  Linear has some rotational and Rotational has some linear.  The fact that each has elements of the other makes all of the other “techniques” or really names that  people are calling baseball swing mechanics simply irrelevant and ficticious.

So let’s define the Rotational Swing and the Linear Swing.

A rotational hitter establishes a stationary axis with the dropping of the front heal and with the front leg and they rotate around that stationary axis .  This hitters “stays back” with their upper body.  The head and chest do NOT come forward.  They a very steady and do not lunge forward in the direction of the pitcher.  You will occasionally see this happen is when a hitter is completely fooled by a pitch and they break through their axis lunging forward in an awkward attempt to make contact.   So the rotational hitter rotates around a stationary axis and stays back.

The linear hitter does not establish a stationary axis and they do not stay back.  The linear hitter continues moving forward throughout their swing in a straight forward(linear) movement finishing their swing out over the top of their front foot or even slightly forward of it. 

The linear hitter typically swings in a downhill plane while the rotational hitter is typically taught to swing on the plane of the pitch(see this recent post) because those swing planes match each technique.  A linear hitter trying to swing on the pitch plane is very awkward and doesn’t work well with all of the moving parts of this technique.  Likewise, the rotational hitter swinging on a downhill plane is also an awkward unproductive swing.  Staying back and swinging down do not match.

So to summarize the two basic baseball swing mechanics…The rotational hitter stays back and the linear hitter comes forward.  See it’s not as complicated as many desire to make it out to be.

And remember, Rotational Swing Mechanics are simply the Big League Swing.

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 proper baseball swing and fastpich 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.  It IS the proper baseball swing.

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?