How would you grade your hitting sessions?
The first question I ask my clients is “What’s the goal of the hitting session”? Inevitably they will respond with “to put good swings together” or do good” or “feel good” or some other ambiguous response that they don’t even know. I ask this question because I like to challenge their mind. I like to challenge their way of thinking about batting practice. Most young hitters (myself included) will just show up and swing. That is it. And they will believe that because they took 40 swings, chatted with their friends, and barreled up the ball a couple times that their work is done. I see this pattern often and I would be doing my clients a disservice if i let this continue because if they are paying me to improve their skills then this isn’t good enough. This leads me to the topic today which is putting productive hitting sessions together. If we put productive hitting sessions together and keep doing this then improvement will follow. So the next question is “What is a having a productive hitting session look like”?
Productive Hitting Session
The example I like to use is if we have 100 baseballs in the bucket. We want to leave this hitting session having barreled up 80 out of those 100. What does “barreled up” mean? This means when you swing the bat and hit the ball it is on the sweet spot of the bat. This is barrel accuracy. This is the fundamental skill of being a great hitter. You can have the goofiest swing but it doesn’t matter if you can have barrel accuracy.
A productive hitting session will challenge 3 things:
1 – Your ability to concentrate on the task at hand,
2 – consistently barreling up the baseball,
3 – allowing yourself to get into a flow or rhythm where you are effortless swinging.
We will do this by taking the hitter through 10 positions that challenge your rhythm, barrel accuracy, eye hand coordination & ability to repeat the task (focus). This is so simple yet effective. This is done with 3 tools: short , long , heavy bats (Sport Specific training)
3 reps each
1 – step forwards
2 – step back
3 – step away
4 – step towards
5 – top hand
6 – bottom hand
7 – 45′ open
8 – 90′ open
9 – Rocking
10 – Regular swing
70% swing effort
I advise my clients to swing with an effort of 70% for majority of the hitting session. I have them do this for 3 reasons:
Reason 1 – slows down the mechanics of the swing and creates a better “swing feel”. Hitters get to know their swing better
Reason 2 – Reinforces barrel accuracy with the ball
Reason 3 – Focus. When you slow down everything you allow your mind to focus on 1 thing at 1 time.
“Catching the ball with the bat”
As Barry Bonds puts it ” you want to treat the bat like its a glove and your catching the ball with your bat”. My interpretation of this is catching the sweet spot of the bat or barreling up the ball. This is a fundamental skill.
Grading your sessions
At the end of each session I like to have my clients give me 1 thing they learned during the session and grade themselves.