Category Archives: Hitting
Softball hitting: being early to be late
In the past I’ve written about the need to get your front foot down on time when hitting. It’s critical to ensuring you can drive through the ball, because if you’re late you end up defending against the ball instead of attacking it. Which is pretty common, especially when the pitcher can really bring it.
Product Review: Pocket Radar Ball Coach
If you are into pitching at all, or work with pitchers, you’ve probably heard about the Pocket Radar. It’s a device about the size of a mobile phone that makes it easy to gun pitch speeds, overhand throws, exit speed of the ball off the bat and (allegedly) the speed of car w
hizzing through your neighborhood.
I recently upgraded from the original Pocket Radar to the new Ball Coach version. While it’s an $100 more expensive than the original, I feel like it’s worth the extra money. The Pocket Radar Ball Coach retails for $299, which is still considerably less that a Jugs or Stalker gun – and it does a very comparable job.
The thing that got me to upgrade (other than a $100 rebate being offered for sending the old one back) was the ease of use. With the original Pocket Radar you had to time pushing the button just right to get the maximum speed. It was as much an art as it was a science.
The new version takes that timing issue out of it. In other words, it’s radar speed measurement for dummies. With the Ball Coach version, you point the unit at the source of the pitch, hold down the big blue button (as opposed to a red button on the original) and keep holding it until you get a speed reading. Nothing could be simpler.
When I first got the new version I immediately tried it next to my Jugs gun. While they didn’t always match exactly, they were always within 1 mph of one another. Sometimes the Pocket Radar read higher, sometimes the Jugs gun did. But close enough for my purposes.
The real acid test, though, came this past weekend when I took it to a couple of games and (somewhat) discretely timed the pitchers from behind the backstop. In one case I was well behind it. But it seemed to give me good readings on all the pitchers.
Another advantage to the Pocket Radar Ball Coach is the ability to have it automatically take up to 25 reading in automatic mode. You can set it up on a tripod or a mobile phone holder, click through to automatic mode, and it will give you the readings. You can then page through to see what the player got – which is great for batting practice, pitching practice or whatever.
If you’re reading this in Canada, or anywhere else that uses the metric system, you’ll be glad to know the Pocket Radar Ball Coach can be switched to read in kilometers per hour. The instructions explain how.
The Pocket Radar Ball Coach comes with a handy soft shell pouch that clips onto your belt. That’s another nice upgrade over the original, which came with a hard shell case you had to keep in your pocket. I still kept mine in my pocket, but it takes up less space. In addition to the case it also comes with a wrist strap and a pair of AA batteries (Eveready alkaline batteries, not those cheap no-name ones that often come with many electronics these days.
If you’re at all interested in measuring speed I can highly recommend the Pocket Radar Ball Coach. With its (relatively) low cost, high accuracy and ease of use it’s a great investment.
What a difference a good bat makes
Last night I was working with a 12U player named Grace on her hitting. We’ve been working together for a while now and she has developed a very nice, powerful swing. But it wasn’t until last night that she really got to enjoy the fruits of her labors.
You see, her old composite bat has been on its last legs for the last few lessons. In fact, in the previous lesson she wasn’t getting much pop on the ball at all, despite using a technically solid swing. Her dad mentioned he thought it might be cracking, and sure enough when we looked at it there was a small crack that got larger as the lesson went on. The decision was made right there for Grace to get a new bat.
And there it was last night – a brand new bat, still in the wrapper. It was an inch longer than her old bat, and I also recommended she move from a -11 to a -10, mostly because no one should use anything lighter than -10 unless they’re really small or really young (in my opinion). So now in addition to having a brand new bat, she was swinging an extra couple of ounces.
The difference was immediately noticeable. On her very first swing she drove a line drive that, had we been outside instead of in a cage, would’ve gone into a gap in left center. She continued popping them that way – even catching me in the leg once when I didn’t jump behind the protective screen right away.
There’s no doubt that Grace and her dad feel like they got their money’s worth in investing in this new bat. The same swing mechanics are delivering much better results.
Can a new bat deliver better results even without a good swing? Sure, sometimes. But when you combine today’s technology with solid fundamentals you get the kind of hits that make it fun to go to the plate.
What about you? Do you have any new bat stories to tell? Have you ever experienced that instant upgrade in the quality of hits?
Where to go to choose your hitting models
It’s often been said, here and elsewhere, that one of the most important things you can do during lessons is compare what you (or your daughter, player, etc.) is being told to do against what the best players in the world do. If it doesn’t match it, it’s probably not the way to go.
For hitting, one obvious place to go for comparison is Major League Baseball (ML
. The best hitters there are paid millions of dollars by willing owners who compete for their services, so there’s a good chance those hitters know what to do. (Whether they know what they’re doing is a debate for another day.)
Still, it can be difficult for some players to relate to baseball players. And there are always some coaches who think baseball and softball are two different games that only look similar, which means they think what works in baseball won’t work in softball. Not true, but it’s hard to change a mindset. So with that in mind, another good place to look for models of how to swing the bat is college softball.
How do you know which softball players (or teams) to follow? A good place to start is with the statistics.
This area on the NCAA website shows the stats for the top hitters in college. As I write this it’s late March 2014, so the link may have moved for 2015. But poke around a bit and you should be able to find it. You can who is leading in batting average, on-base percentage, home runs, slugging percentage and a whole bunch more. (It also shows some pitching stats.) Look at the leaders in various categories and the odds are you’ll find some hitters who really know what they’re doing.
There is also a team section that shows which teams are leading in various categories. Not surprisingly, Arizona is leading in batting average and slugging percentage, and #3 in home runs per game and overall scoring.
Now, we can debate all day long as to how much actual impact the coaching staff has on how their players hit. Unless you’re on the inside it’s tough to know for sure, although my guess is they work with them a lot. But if nothing else, a team with great hitting stats shows the coaching staff knows what to look for in hitters. So there’s a good chance those are again some good models to follow. Put the two together – the best hitters on the best hitting teams – and you’ve likely found some great players to use as models.
The other good thing about using college players as a model is their results are probably closer to their reality of what you can achieve. Although it’s good to look at MLB hitters, keep in mind there is a HUGE difference in game experience, practice time put in, athletic ability, strength, and learning abilities between a 28 year old MLB professional in the prime of his career and, say, a 12 or 14 year old girl who is still learning the game.
There is also a HUGE difference in the access to top-level facilities, video of every swing, access to coaching and, quite frankly, time and incentive to work on their swings between these two groups. A high-level MLB player has literally million$ of reasons to spend hours studying his swing and working to improve it. A young girl, even the most dedicated of them, is trying to work in hitting practice between school, homework, family obligations, other activities and all the challenges that go along with adolescence.
But a college player, while more accomplished and with more access to facilities, still has many other things happening in her life and competing for her time. And she’s not that far removed from being that 12 or 14 year old player. So while the college player’s swing may not be ideal just yet, it may also be more achievable.
The bottom line is don’t just believe what someone calling him or herself a hitting coach tells you. As Ronald Regan liked to say, trust but verify. (Side note: Regan said it about the Soviet Union, which was ironic because it’s an old Russian proverb.) Use those resources to see who the best college softball hitters are right now and compare what they’re doing to what you’re hearing. It could save you a lot of work heading in the wrong direction.
Study shows Vizual Edge makes a difference
A while back I wrote about a computer-based visual training system called Vizual Edge Performance Trainer (VEPT) that helps fastpitch softball players (among others) improve their ability to see the ball. While it can apply to any part of the game, of course it’s particularly important to hitters. After all, the better you can see and track the ball, the better chance you have of hitting it.
At the time, much of the discussion was anecdotal. I had a couple of players who used it regularly and saw improvement in their performance at the plate, but that’s hardly a scientific sample.
Now there is more evidence. <A href="/files/55650-48775/MLB_VEPT.pdf”>This study investigated the relationship between improving visual skills and the hitting performance of 352 minor league baseball players who used VEPT during the 2013 season.
The results support the fact that players with higher VEPT scores also had higher batting averages, on-base percentages, on base plus slugging percentages and lower incidences of striking out. Who wouldn’t like to add 15 points to their batting average while having fun?
With the high school season coming up in many states in less than a month, and summer softball just around the corner, it’s not too early to start working on your vision. Check out the study, and if you like what you see (no pun intended) head on over to Vizual Edge.
The hitting sequence – hips, shoulders, bat
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.
Reversing the baseball/fastpitch swing connection
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!
A way to explain the power zone in hitting
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.
Carrying baggage to the plate
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. In other words, all the outcome-focused thoughts. Hitters have to just focus on this pitch, right now, see the ball and hit it hard. Remain focused on their process and not worry about the rest.
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:
Putting on the backpack/bat bag is a great way to demonstrate how carrying extra baggage to the plate can get in the way of good hitting. If you have a hitter who is struggling, give it a try. It just might help them clear their heads.
That’s my thought. What have you done to help hitters regain their focus?
Softball hitting: The Oh Yeah v the Oh No Moment
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.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 