Hit It Here

Posts Tagged ‘hitting’

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.

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.

The greatest difference between a linear and rotational hitter is their approach to the ball.  Leveling is the technique that gets the bat into the path of the ball and is irrefutable as to whether it is really happening, because it is.  Dipping the back shoulder, dropping the barrel of the bat level to the ball and swinging slightly up through the oncoming pitch.  Yes, dipping the back shoulder is part of good hitting.  In fact, done properly it is ESSENTIAL. The next time you hear someone say “don’t dip your back shoulder” or “he is dipping”, this is a clear sign that they have no clue of the real proper principles of good hitting. They’ve just heard it and are repeating is because they think it sounds good.

The process of the elbow working up and around the body is an essential part of leveling and the only way a player can ever get the barrel where it needs to be.  Whether it is Pujols on a pitch up in the zone or Big Poppy dropping down on a low one, one thing remains the same – they get “level to the ball” and they are “swinging up” through it.

Ted Williams wrote that the ultimate contact point is made when the barrel of the bat and ball meet at a 90 degree angle. Another term that is used to describe ideal impact is hitting with your hands “inside” the ball and squaring the barrel up on the ball.  A couple things have to happen to make ideal impact; one, you have to let the ball travel deep enough into the hitting zone and two, your front elbow has to move up and around your body.

Transfer the weight

• Dip in the back shoulder(forward & down)
• Front elbow goes up
• Swing is going up
• Hands are inside the ball
• MLB players and the top college softball players use rotational mechanics whether they know it or not. Most don’t even know it.  The very same mechanics that Ted Williams used and the great hitters before and after him.  The best hitters in baseball are doing exactly the opposite of what a large majority of coaches in this country are teaching.  They don’t swing down. They are not trying to hit grounders.  Do you think for a second that Pujols ever goes up to the plate looking to hit the ball into the ground?