While this is nothing particularly revolutionary or even new for some, when it comes to softball hitting it can’t be emphasized enough. There is a very specific sequence or order for the movements in the swing: first come the hips, then the shoulders, then the bat.

The reason I bring it up is that it’s easy for players to slip back into old habits – ones that are hard notice unless you work with hitters all the time. Usually the hitters know the proper sequence as well. Yet there’s something about holding that bat in your hands that makes hitters want to get it going too early.

When I’m teaching lessons, sometimes I will see a player who normally hits with good power struggling to make strong contact. Upon closer examination, I’ll see that the shoulders are turning either along with the hips, or even slightly ahead of the hips. There is a certain look to the swing when the upper body is getting ahead, even by a little bit.

At that point, I will ask the hitters “what’s the sequence?” She’ll repeat it back: hips, shoulders, bat. Once she has everything going in the right order, the power returns and all is right with the world.

Getting the body parts moving in the right order is critical for quality at bats. Remember that sequence – hips, shoulders, bat. It absolutely makes a difference.

As you can no doubt tell from the title of this blog, and the posts, I am a fastpitch softball coach. I coached some baseball back when my sons were playing, but haven’t really done anything with baseball or boys in probably 10 years. Time flies!

But, of course, those who teach what I teach always say that there is no substantial difference between the baseball and softball swing. There’s just hitting. I got a chance to test that this spring, when I worked with my first baseball player in a long time.

Jack came to me as a result of my working with his older sister Emma, a high school freshman who the previous summer season had had some trouble getting the ball out of the infield. After working for a few months, she had quite a turnaround, eventually jacking “seven or eight” over the fence home runs and just hitting the heck out of the ball in her high school season. She did so well, in fact that her dad once mentioned how “a couple” of her home runs went too high and just barely cleared the fence. Wouldn’t you love to have that be your biggest worry?

In any case, Jack’s mom gave me the lowdown. Jack loves baseball, she said. In fact, he wears something with the Cubs logo on it every day. (I told her that could be his problem right there, wrong role models.) He was playing ball in the spring but really struggling at the plate. He is also under-sized, so was not going to be able to rely on strength to overcome his issues.

“I would just love for him to hit his way on base once before the season is over.” she said. So that became the goal: Quickly rework Jack’s swing and approach to the plate so he could hit the ball out of the infield and get on base. Adding to the challenge, of course, was Jack usually only got to bat once each game.

We first got together on a chilly, rainy May evening. I looked at how he was swinging, then proceeded to teach him the same mechanics I’d taught his sister. He was a quick and enthusiastic learner. He worked diligently at learning to drive his hips first, followed by the shoulders and then the bat instead of arm swinging the bat into the zone. Your basic sequence.

I ended up working with him for three or four more lessons in a short period of time, again on all the things I teach my fastpitch students. In his first game after we started working he hit the ball hard but still got out. His mom said it was an improvement, though, over what he’d been doing.

A couple of weeks later Emma came out for a lesson and shared some great news. Jack had gotten three hits in his last three games! So we not only hit the goal, we exceeded it by 3X. I told her “I guess that means the next goal is extra base hits.”

So there you have it – a little more anecdotal evidence that what works in baseball works in softball, and vice versa. For my part, I’m glad Jack was able to hit his way on base. It gives him a nice foundation and some happy thoughts moving forward. As they say in Cubland, wait until next year!

Earlier today I was working with a 12U player named Sydney on softball hitting. She’s a lot of fun to work with because she’s very intense and focused, and really tries to absorb everything we’re working on.

As I was throwing front toss to her, I could see she was ahead of a lot of the pitches. I tried to explain the importance of timing to her, how she wasn’t hitting the ball as hard as she could because her bat was already slowing down by the time she hit the ball.

Part of that explanation was drawing a bell curve, with the optimum spot to hit the ball being at the top of the curve. I showed how if you’re too early, or too late you’re further down the curve, and thus have less power. It made sense to me, and Sydney dutifully nodded her head as I said it. But I doubt it really made much of an impression, or much sense to her.

As I walked back out behind the screen I had a sudden inspiration. I told her to imagine a banana. I asked her what the best color is to eat a banana. The answer was yellow, of course. I then told her that swinging too early was like the banana being green, and swinging too late was like the banana being brown. That seemed to help her visualize it better, and she started hitting the ball harder.

A banana is something pretty much everyone can relate to. We’ve all seen them green, yellow and brown (disgusting). It helps players visualize time, or rather doing things at the right time.

As a postscript to this story, when I asked Sydney whether the banana analogy helped, she informed me that she doesn’t really like bananas. So while I worked with her we changed it to strawberries – green for early, red for right/ripe, and brown for late. That worked better for her personally.

If you have a hitter who’s having trouble with the concept of timing, give this one a try. And let us know what explanations you’ve used to help hitters understand the importance of getting the bat to the right place at the right time for maximum power.

It’s been said that hitting a baseball (or in our case a softball) is the toughest thing in all of sports. And it does seem to be true.

You have so little control over what happens, or the outcome, that it can be extremely difficult to be successful on a regular basis. Which is why a hitter who fails 7 out of 10 times is called an all-star. Since it is so difficult on its own, you really don’t want to do anything to make it tougher.

Today I did a little experiment with a few hitters to help them understand what it means to carry extra baggage to the plate – literally. After having them hit off the tee I had them move to a front toss station. But before they got to hit I had them put on their bat bags or back packs – whatever they had with them.

They took a few awkward swings and then I asked them how it felt to hit with their backpacks on their backs. As you might expect, they found it to be rather difficult.

Then we talked about what the backpacks represented. It’s all those things that hitters take with them that they shouldn’t – all those worries that get in the way. Things such as:

• If I don’t get a hit soon the coach is going to bench me


• I don’t know if I can hit this pitcher


• There are runners on base and I have to bring them in


• Last time I struck out/grounded out/popped out


• Everybody’s counting on me


• My parents will be disappointed if I don’t do well

In my never-ending quest to help fastpitch hitters be more successful I’ve come across an interesting way of explaining how to get to that moment right before launch. It seems to be resonating with the hitters on my IOMT Castaways team, and with my students as well.

Essentially I tell them that when the front foot lands (toe touch), there can be two possibilities: you’ll either think oh yeah, or oh no. (This is the cleaned-up version; with my high school age students I use a more PG word.)

What does that statement mean? You’ve done your load, made your positive move into toe touch, and now it’s time to rotate and swing. If you’re in “oh yeah” mode, you realize you’re just ahead/right on time, and you’re feeling like “oh yeah, just bring the ball because I’m ready to hit it.”

If you’re in “oh no” mode, however, you realize that you’re late, and instead of taking your best mechanics to the ball you’re in survival mode. The ball will probably get too deep too fast and you’ll be doing anything you can to get the bat on it. Which more than likely will result in an out.

As a hitter you want to set your mind to work for that “oh yeah” moment. Learn the pitcher’s motion. See the speed she’s throwing. Figure out if she favors a particular location. Then use all that information to get to your oh yeah moment. It makes hitting a lot more fun.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an interesting video on YouTube showing soccer player Cristiano Reynaldo scoring goals in the dark. In that post I suggested a way to apply it to hitting by closing your eyes just after the pitch is thrown.

I have to admit, though, it was just theoretical when I wrote it. Being the adventurous type, however, I decided to take my own advice and give it a try with a few hitting students. Here’s what I found out.

It actually does work — with an older, more experienced hitter. Generally speaking, hitters with good mechanics who are 16 or older are capable of recognizing the path of the ball off front toss and making adjustments after closing their eyes right after the pitch is thrown. I did it throwing to different locations, and the ones who were successful were able to hit most of them. And not just tip it, but hit through the ball.

Younger players, however, had much more difficulty. They tended not to recognize where the ball was headed and would just guess.

That makes sense. I heard John Tschida talk about the stack of mental index cards players have that allow them to recognize situations and patterns more readily. The longer they play, the bigger that stack gets.

Seems like that was at work here. More experienced players have a better feel for where the ball is headed with minimal information because they’ve seen more pitches. They can tell by the arm circle, or the way the hand is pointed, or the first split second of travel where the ball is headed.

It was also a lesson for those older players, however. I told them if they were capable of doing that, imagine what they could do if they put that much effort into seeing the ball out of the hand and then still being able to see it as it comes in. That made sense to them.

So give it a try – and let us know if you get the same results.

You can tell by the name of this blog that it’s devoted to fastpitch softball. I try to provide information that helps coaches and parents help their fastpitch players.

But my guess is that at least some (if not many) of you parents also still play a little slowpitch softball yourselves. So for your benefit, I thought I’d pass along a little info that came to me from a manufacturer called jak’d, about their new bat called the Claymore. It’s a 100 percent composite bat, and the manufacturer says it has plenty of pop and a short break-in period. Also that it’s approved for play by USSSA.

This is not an endorsement since I haven’t tried it, but if you’re a player it might be worth checking out. And if you do, be sure to stop back and leave a comment letting us all know if it performs as-advertised. After all, we can all use a little extra edge in our games.