Stop Striking Out Baseball Softball Drills To Keep Eye On, See, & Hit Ball Better When Batting
Learn how to stop striking out with this baseball and softball drills to keep eyes on the ball, see it, and hit the ball better when batting.
Andrew McCutchen Hit Ball Better Swing Breakdown
…of the Do This For Longer Drives series, we’ll talk about:
- Breaking the One-Joint Rule,
- Whether Cutch is ‘kinking the hose’, and
- How-To re-pattern the impact position.
Breaking the One-Joint Rule
From the book, Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance, Dr. Kelly Starrett (KStar) says:
“The musculature [in the spine] is designed to create stiffness so that you can effectively transmit energy to the primary engines of your hips and shoulders. If you don’t preserve trunk stiffness while moving from your hips and shoulders, you will lose power and force. The is the basis for the one-joint rule: you should see flexion and extension movement happen at the hips and shoulders, not your spine.”
Is Cutch ‘Kinking the Hose’?
Just as kinking the hose while watering the lawn stops the flow of water. Bending at the spine halts the transfer of energy at impact. KStar says this about losing head-spine alignment:
“Hinging at one of the segments [vertebraes in the neck]…when we put a hinge across the central nervous system, the body recognizes that as a primary insult, or threat to the body, because you’re basically guillotining or kinking the nervous system. You’ve kinked ‘the tube’, so it [force production] just drops off.”
How-To Re-Pattern the Impact Position
Follow this 12-week exercise progression (at least five days per week):
- Super plank – week one: 1 set, hold for 30 secs, week two: 1 set, hold for 45 secs, week three: 2 sets, hold for 45 secs
- Loaded super plank – week four: 2 sets, for 30 secs, week five: 2 sets, for 45 secs, week six: 2 sets, for 60 secs
- Hip hinge with stick (patterning) – week seven: 2 sets X 12 reps, week eight: 2 sets X 15 reps, week nine: 3 sets X 12 reps
- Loaded hip hinge (dead-lift) – week ten: 2 sets X 12 reps, week eleven: 2 sets X 15 reps, week twelve: 3 sets X 12 reps
Maintain head-spine alignment. Perfect reps. Use Coach’s Eye or Ubersense phone app (free) for feedback. CLICK HERE for Part-4 for the #1 power fix…also, CLICK HERE if you missed Part-2: the faster turn.
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There is only a black screen when you are doing the kinked hose test…The text shows up where it says to watch how he can resist, but there is no video. Would definitely like to see the demonstration.
Nick!! You weren’t suppose to see the post yet 😉 For some reason it published earlier than I wanted. I’ll fix the video for tomorrow. You’re gonna love it!
Joey … I love your presentations and your take on how athletics should be taught. You are right 100% of the time, because scientific facts and the forces of nature can’t be suspended, or discarded. There are no short cuts and no ways around it. If you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, it is assured that you’re going to hit the ground – just like if you create angles of pull off neutral of a single mechanical axis – you’re going to loose energy. The body will recruit muscle to support the joint to protect itself – and that’s muscle that can’t be used to facilitate the movement. Human beings move primarily as a result of reflex actions. You can’t train that out of a player, and why would you want to even try? In the case of Cuth here, I think the ‘kink’ is very late in the process, and he’s already well into it, so it’s not going to affect his overall power to any measureable degree; the destiny of the ball is fait accompli. But the point is there and it’s a good one. Thanks Joey.
I think what you said is very important, about how the brain will recruit muscles to protect a joint when a player gets out of a neutral position with the body. And of course in this video, we’re talking about head-spine alignment. When the body falls out of a neutral position, other hitting “gurus” don’t realize that this is where energy is transferred [to protect joints], and as a result, takes away from energy left in the barrel to transfer into the incoming ball. I agree Cutch is kinking the hose later, however I think he is making that compensation because he arm bars first. Maybe fixing his arm bar and getting him to turn faster, head and spine alignment may return to neutral. Your thoughts…