Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

How To Wind Up The Body To Deliver More Force

Jaime Cevallos Part-2 Interview: What are the 3 most Important Things to Consistent Power?

 

 

In case you missed any of the 3-part series…

Here’s what we’re going to discuss in Part-2 of the Jaime Cevallos interview:

  • What are the BIG-3 for consistent power?
  • How do you wind up the body to deliver more force?
  • What is the Main Thing that Separates the Great Hitters from Average?
  • What are the 3 most Important Things to Consistent Power?

The following is the transcription of the above video.  You can find Jaime Cevallos at the following places:

Enjoy!

 

What are the BIG-3 for Consistent Power?How To Wind Up The Body To Deliver More Force

Joey Myers  00:06

…the application of it basically. And in the beginning, there was the big three is what I call it. So that was showing the numbers, so hitters showing their numbers to the pitcher, there was the downhill shoulder angle. So that’s the side bend side of it. And then there was the hiding of the hands.

 

Joey Myers  00:20

And I know you came to kind of a conclusion about that front arm shape being barred out or even slight bend, but pretty close to being barred out. So, the hands don’t necessarily they used to teach walk away from the hands, right? So that to me is translated as the hands going back towards the catcher, but it’s actually should go back at an angle back where we say hiding the hands from the pitcher. So, the hands should end up at landing somewhere above or behind the back heel.

 

Joey Myers  00:49

So if the pitcher is watching this hitter, and again, go look at Mike Trout, go look at JD Martinez. Go look at Mookie Betts. Look at all these guys and you’ll see them number one, showing their numbers. Number two, not all of them have a downward shoulder angle but many of them do; Miggy Cabrera, Ted Williams if you want to go back in the day, a lot of hitters in the Stan Musial, they used to say that it looked like he was a little kid peeking around the corner. Right.

 

Joey Myers  01:16

And it was that the showing numbers part of it. And you see them all hiding their hands. So, from the minute they start to at landing, you see their hands disappear. So those are the big three and what’s happening fascia wise is we’re taking the front shoulder, we’re taking the front shoulder and we’re bringing it down and in towards the back hip.

 

Joey Myers  01:37

So that gives you that slight down angle and it gets you… we’ve evolved showing numbers to more creating neck pressure. Because every hitter is different, you and me being a little bit older, although we do a lot of movement work on our own body so we probably move better than people our age. But a lot of hitters are different in how far they can get their head here because one of the biggest…. one of the biggest things that people hated was showing the numbers was that, well, it pulls the hitters eyes off the ball.

 

Joey Myers  02:04

And yeah, if you do it too much, but the head’s got to anchor down in a position, so if I go sideways, so the head’s got an anchor in a tracking position, not necessarily square off to the pitcher, but intercept where the balls coming in.  All Dr. Peter Fadde’s stuff and head anchors and then we just pull that shoulder underneath as far as you can. And that’s going to create some tension in the neck.

 

Joey Myers  02:28

So it’s like a wringing towel, like we’re wringing a towel out. So, where your head is on top, the top hand and that your shoulders are the bottom hand, and we’re just wringing as far as we can. We’re taking that spine, that section of the spine, and we’re just bringing it as hard as we can until landing and then we just let it go.

 

Joey Myers  02:44

So it’s kind of like, I call it more of a spring than some people call it rubber bands like get the rubber bands really tight and then let them go like a rubber band system. Kind of but it’s more it’s more spring, springy. So those are the big three if you connect the dots between what fascia is what the spinal engine is, it’s easy way to think about it is a wringing towel, like you’re wringing the towel, it’s loading that system up and then letting it go.

 

Joey Myers  03:10

And like I said, I ran quite a few swing experiments that proved that showing numbers versus not showing numbers, you add between four to six miles an hour bat speed, and I can’t remember if I did a ball exit speed one, but bat speed and ball exit speed are very similar. They’re like first or second cousins. So it’s very translatable. The down shoulders added four miles an hour of speed. And the showing numbers I think was three miles an hour, or one to two wasn’t quite as much. The big one was showing the numbers or creating that neck pressure.

 

Jaime Cevallos  03:41

So what this does is it winds up the body so that you can then deliver more force…

 

How do you Wind up the Body to Deliver more Force?

Joey Myers  03:48

Yes, yeah, it takes the slack out of the system. So slack being a little different than what how the human body because we talked about it’s more compression tension forces that’s taking slack out, but it’s almost like If you think about a car that goes into a ravine and then you have a Jeep with a winch on the front that you can take the cable, hook it up to the bumper of the car that’s been dropped in the ravine and to pull that car out, right, so you turn the winch on…

 

Joey Myers  04:15

And if you have slack in the cable that’s connected to the bumper, and you turn that winch on right away, because there’s slack in the cable, it’s going to just pull the bumper off, it’s not going to pull the car out of the ravine.

 

Joey Myers  04:25

So what you have to do first is after you hook it, hook the bumper, is you got to slowly take that slack out of the cable of the winch line and then turn it on and it’ll pull the whole car out. So that’s slack versus no slack. Some people out there have been on a what a toboggan on the lake, and you’ve been on a boat pulling you along, and you’re holding on to the ski line or whatever you hold on to the ski bar, right and they’re pulling you along.

 

Joey Myers  04:52

And we had a buddy who did this with us. And at the time, I was super strong. I was lifting a lot and he goes I’m going to do it as hard as I can to you, alright do it, bring it, bring it, man. So, he got it to where he’s pulling me at first. So, there was no slack in the line; line was nice and tight. And then he got me to where I started coming up to the side of the boat. So, he kind of slowed it down a little bit. And then I started kind of floating up and started putting slack in the line and then he floored it! And boom, and that I held on and there was one time I think I ended let go, but that amount of force all at once. It was a slack in the line.

 

Joey Myers  05:30

Oh my gosh. So what happens is…

 

Jaime Cevallos  05:34

You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself.

 

Joey Myers  05:36

Right? Yeah, dude, we were like 25 years old, right? ever get hurt. But that’s the thing. So when youth hitters, a lot of times what I see is these coaches say, keep your shoulders square. Don’t show your numbers to the pitcher for all these different reasons we can go into some other time, but they want the shoulders square. They don’t want you tilting them. They don’t want you turning them in. They want them square and then they want the hips to do everything.

 

Joey Myers  06:04

And so what’s happening is it’s putting slack in the system. Because to take slack out we just talked about is like that wringing towel, we have to wring the towel and then let it go. And that’s where you get a nice powerful move, consistently powerful move, and it’s safe on the spine versus the opposite where the coach wants this shoulder square doesn’t want any turn it in or down or anything like that. And they want the swing powered by the pelvis or the hips, they say explode the hips, load and explode the hips.

 

Joey Myers  06:34

And what happens there is you’re taking the equipment of the lower back, the set of five vertebrae is in the lower lower back, who actually are not made to rotate. They’re not made to, they’re not built to rotate the bones. Okay. All they can do is flex and extend. The rotation that you see is about seven to 12 degrees and this is via Tom Myers, and a pretty prominent, I can’t remember his name right now, physical therapists been around forever in the strength conditioning world [Charlie Weingroff, DPT, CSCS, a physical therapist, a trainer in New York City, and is pretty high up on the human performance food chain], seven to 12 degrees of rotation is all it’s allowed because of the muscles surrounding those bones.

 

Joey Myers  07:13

So that’s the rotation you see is that set that seven to 12 degrees rotation, you see, is because of the muscles surrounding the bones.  The thoracic spine, so shoulders and then the rest of it that attaches up to the top of the lumbar, the lower back is made to rotate is actually made to rotate 40 degrees, four-zero in both directions.

 

Joey Myers  07:34

So I should be able to do a good moving human body can move 40 degrees to the left and rotate 40 degrees to the right. So when you employ a part of the body that isn’t allowed to rotate, to rotate and to not only rotate but explode, like absolutely explode. Now what happens is we start wearing holes in the lower back, we see back spasms. We see herniated discs. 

 

Joey Myers  07:35

We see all kinds of stuff in the swings we were referring to earlier about the barrel moves the body, not the body moves barrel. So those ones that are teaching barrel moving the body, what I see in those swings is I see these hitters on Twitter where their back is arching their arching and you can almost draw for righties, you can draw a reverse C shape. And for lefties, you can draw a C shape like from their head, down their back and out their leg because they’re arching so much you can see this kind of C shape going on.

 

Joey Myers  08:32

And the problem with that is extension is okay, so if you arch your back in just a normal, a normal sagittal plane like a front to back plane, like you do a lunge or squat in a normal extension is fine. An arching of the back is fine. You see a gymnast when they swing the bar when they’re swinging under the bar, right? You’ll see them go into a globally flexed position where their spine kind of looks like this and then as they swing through, they go into a globally arched and global just means the whole body is arch. There’s not one little point that’s arched, say like in my head if I went and I just dropped my head back and I went into an extended position with my neck and not using my body as well, that’s that would be a local extension.

 

Joey Myers  09:17

Those aren’t usually good when they’re coupled with their rotation. So, when the hitter is going into an arched position, that by itself isn’t troublesome. But the minute you add a rotation in with that, now, when you arch you’re pushing the vertebrae together in your back when you arch. Okay, now that again isn’t a big deal, but the minute you start rotating, now you’re grinding and that is a problem and that’s what I see when you teach hitters the barrel moves the body and to snap the barrel back way back here.

 

Joey Myers  09:51

When I see those swings, I see those hitters arching their back and turning and it just makes me want to throw up because these coaches either, they’re, it’s like a cat, right? Cats are either really, really smart or they’re really, really stupid. And to me, it looks like those coaches don’t know any better. And they’re getting their information from some guy who doesn’t know any better, who knows better, but he’s not teaching the right thing and it’s just it’s horrible to see these young hitters doing that.

 

Jaime Cevallos  10:25

So, what you would say is the main thing that separates the great hitters from the average or the just the good has to do with this sort of building tension not creating slack in the torso area and the upper legs basically, of the body.

 

What is the Main Thing that Separates the Great Hitters from Average?

Joey Myers  10:51

Right, exactly. So if you go back and Ted Williams you look at Stan Musial, you look at even Babe Ruth, and not all of them have them have every single principle like they could have and they could have done better. You could even look at Tony Gwynn, right? There was an article I do that every time I put it up on social media, I said something in the article or in the headline to the effect of, could Gwynn have had more power?

 

Joey Myers  11:16

And I just did an analysis and took a look at his swing and pointed out areas where he could have maximized or optimized power. A lot of people don’t like that. You know, Tony, how could you be? You know, how many hits? Did you get the big leagues in? How could you take on Tony, when you don’t know what you’re talking about?

 

Joey Myers  11:31

I was like, no, it’s dude. It’s a thought experiment. I’m not going after the guy, right. He didn’t want to hit for power. Although, when he had his talk with Ted Williams, his power numbers sure went up a little bit because Teddy told him, Hey, you might want to pull the ball and own your pull field a little bit more. And that year after he had that talk with him, I think he went from like 11 home-runs a season I think he hit maybe 20 or 18 or something like that.

 

Joey Myers  11:54

But this idea that Ted Williams is probably one of the best one of the best at it, you see the showing numbers, or his in his case “the number” nine, you see his down shoulder angle. You see him hiding the hands. You see this locked out front lead arm when he started his swing.  Like he’s got it all, all of it.

 

Joey Myers  12:14

The only thing I don’t agree with that it’s not a bad thing per se. Extra motion, is the idea where he turned his hips in slightly. So, he kind of turned the hips in like he was turning towards the catcher. And I did this read a book you know that in high school and college and stuff like that because that’s where I thought power was in the pelvis.

 

Joey Myers  12:37

But if you think about, when I turn my hips in and I’m creating my neck pressure showing my numbers and I’m pulling the shoulder in well if my hips going away from my back hip, which I’m supposed to be taking my front hip and bringing or my front shoulder and bringing it to my back hip, with my back hip is going away and my front shoulder is chasing what you’re continually chasing. So, you never get to that point. Right?

 

Joey Myers  13:00

So if we just keep the pelvis in neutral, so belt buckle, pointing at home plate we don’t inward turn or anything, and just let the shoulders do what they do. Creating neck pressure showing numbers going into that position there. Then now we’re compressing where we need to and what happens is when you inward the pelvis and we’re seeing data on this, ZenoLink.com – Chris Welch.

 

Joey Myers  13:26

So he does a lot of experimentation. He’s kind of physical therapist guy, and very, very knowledgeable and he’s got a lot of data. He’s got force plates he’s got all this different stuff. And so, I had one of my online hitters went to him, Chris’s on the East Coast, went to him to go through all his testing evaluation stuff.

 

Joey Myers  13:45

And Chris was saying that this particular hitter’s barrel speed was super maximized behind him, which is again, the same people that teach barrel swings the body right so the barrel speed was increased or was maximized behind him, but by the time he got to impact it was slowing down. So answer that, how are we teaching something that’s actually slowing down your barrel by the time you get to impact…

 

Joey Myers  14:15

And there’s a couple different factors in that we can go into if you want, but that was the whole thing he was in inwardly rotating his pelvis and he was a lefty. So he was taken in rotating his pelvis in towards the catcher and then get to landing and then he would he would rotate, he would rotate back, you know the pelvis back and explode into the ball, but that was causing him to have a premature maximizing of bat speed. It wasn’t helping him it wasn’t maximizing his ball exit speed.

 

Jaime Cevallos  14:46

Now, so the most important thing, you mentioned three things, say those, again…

 

What are the 3 most Important Things to Consistent Power?

Joey Myers  14:54

The spine, of the spine?

 

Jaime Cevallos  14:57

Well, just that I think there were just three things that were…

 

Joey Myers  14:59

You’re talking about?

 

Joey Myers  15:02

Oh, oh, oh…the three things the big three, okay, so showing numbers or create neck pressure.  If I’m here, I’m here. So, my head anchors in a tracking position, shoulder comes pulling underneath as far as I can just like you’re wringing a towel out right, my head and my shoulders. I’m bringing that towel out, creating pressure in the neck. So that’s number one that’s showing numbers neck pressure.

 

Joey Myers  15:27

Number two is downward shoulder angle. From this view, is more of a slight down shoulder. So, it’s like you’re doing a side bend. So, the shoulders the back shoulder goes up, the front shoulder goes down. And with that, you don’t want it to be too much. The sweet spot there is like six to 10 degrees down so it’s not a lot, but what helps a lot of times is controlling where that elbow goes.

 

Joey Myers  15:54

I back this up a little bit, give you guys a little bit more room. If I can use my elbow to pull the elbow or pull the, or bring the shoulders down, steer the shoulders down. That’s a way to do it. But you can also focus on taking this front shoulder down and then towards that back hip that’ll help to create this down shoulder. Right.

 

Joey Myers  16:14

And what’s interesting in the swing, if we want our body to accelerate and decelerate properly, is we want the shoulders to start down. And then as we swing, then they’re going to tilt. This front shoulder starts down, left shoulder, and then as I swing, it’s going to go up. And then in my finish, think about the Ted Williams pictures and Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth and all these guys, how did they finish they end up finishing in this position.

 

Joey Myers  16:45

So what we should see is we should see… left shoulder starts down, pops up, and then it should end down. So down, up, and then down on the finish. You know those Ted Williams pictures where he’s like, position right. It’s this one, it’s his left shoulder as a lefty starts, or he starts here. His left shoulder here starts up, and then it goes down. And then it finishes up. Right. So that’s a proper accelerating decelerating into the spine. So that’s the second thing that’s the down shoulder.

 

Joey Myers  17:23

And then the last one is the hiding hands from the pitcher. One more time again. We got so if I start my swing, this way, you can see my hands and the minute I get to landing, I’m creating what you see this back elbow peeking out behind me. So that’s they call it a SCAP row, or SCAP load, SCAP pinch wherever you want to call it. So that’s the move there. Where now you can’t see my hands.

 

Joey Myers  17:49

And now what I’m doing is this front shoulder for those those Kines geeks out there. The front shoulder is a Scap protraction so the scalp is coming in the scapula is coming this way coming across. And then my back SCAP is retracting. They’re doing the opposite of each other protraction retraction, right?

 

Joey Myers  18:10

So if you watch any gymnastics, or Olympian doing a spin, ice skater, if they do a spin, that’s what you’re going to see. And a lot of people out there will say, Well, I like to scap pinch, but I don’t want this front shoulder coming in. And like you’re not, that’s not how the human body works, dude, you’re not getting 100% optimization out of the rotation.

 

Jaime Cevallos  18:35

So the showing numbers has been something that people didn’t want to do?  I was not aware of that…

 

Joey Myers  18:41

It was and still, yeah, it’s crazy.

 

Jaime Cevallos  18:45

Why did they say you didn’t want to show numbers?

 

Joey Myers  18:47

Good question. The irony by the way, these same people that don’t like it, swear by video, swear by video analysis. They say well we’re going to look and see what the best hitters do and that’s what we’re going to do.  And you see them do it. You can again look at Miggy look at Ted Williams look at Trout look at just look at the top 10 power hitters right now and even in the in the day, and you see all of them do it.

 

Joey Myers  19:13

So I don’t understand why they’re all about video analysis, but they choose to see what they want to see. Right. So what they say is the problem they say with it is that it takes the hitters eyes off the ball, but I just talked about, we create neck pressure. The head is the important part. That’s the piece that’s the anchor. It’s like a boat and I ask my hitters, what does an anchor do on a boat, it either stops the boat or it slows it down, right?

 

Joey Myers  19:37

So the head is the control piece. Wherever the head goes, the body follows. So the head takes a tracking position and anchors down and then it’s the shoulder that comes in as far as it can while we’re wringing the towel out. And that’s what’s going to get you to the show numbers.

 

Joey Myers  19:53

Now lefties if you watch lefties because the camera angle at Major League ballparks is slightly off center towards left field right… (To be continued in Part-3…)

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

How To Turn Garbage Teaching Into Predictable Power

Jaime Cevallos Part-1 Interview: Imagine Hitting Strategy That Is Safe For Hitters

 

 

In case you missed any of the 3-part series…

Here’s what we’re going to discuss in Part-1 of the Jaime Cevallos interview:How To Turn Garbage Teaching Into Predictable Power

  • How is your understanding of the swing different?
  • Where do you get the principles and where do you get the science information from?
  • How your understanding is different than how people are teaching now?
  • “And the whole, the swing starts from the ground up suddenly wasn’t correct to me.”

The following is the transcription of the above video.  You can find Jaime Cevallos at the following places:

Enjoy!

 

Jaime Cevallos  00:07

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here with Joey Myers. And Joey, just to tell you a little bit about Joey Myers. He played four years of D-1 ball at Fresno State, the member of the American Baseball Coaches Association, International Youth and Conditioning Association, and the Society for American Baseball Research.

 

Jaime Cevallos  00:31

He’s a certified Youth Fitness Specialist, a Corrective Exercise Specialist and a vinyasa yoga instructor and certified in Functional Muscle Screen. Joey was frustrated with his own hitting in college and wanted to figure out a better way and now he’s the author of the Amazon bestseller the “Catapult Loading System How To Teach 100-pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-feet“.

 

Jaime Cevallos  00:55

Joey and I have known each other for a few years now. Joey and I were both fans of Tim Ferriss work. And I was in the Four-Hour Body and Joey heard of me there. And that’s one of Tim Ferriss books and reached out to me and we started chatting. This was maybe five or so years ago. And so, we’ve had a relationship talking about business and baseball and what our strategies are as far as what we teach and all, and just get an understanding of his ideas of the movement. And so, Joey, thank you for coming on.

 

Joey Myers  01:52

Yeah, thanks, Jamie. Thanks for having me. And I got just in case we need any examples or need a demonstration, I got my bat here.

 

Jaime Cevallos  02:00

Nice Yep, I got mine too. You know, we’re all set. Um, so, the first thing is what are your thoughts as far as the way the swing is taught out there? How is your understanding of the swing different? And I guess another way I could phrase this is, how is it different from how you understood it in college? And then maybe also how is it different from what you see being taught out there?

 

How is your understanding of the swing different?

Joey Myers  02:39

Yeah, good question. So being taught in college it was the whole down through, swing down, swing through type thing that we often see and hear the Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez is saying that they swing down or Mike trout says he gets on top of the ball. And those were after I got enlightened a little bit. Those are very frustrating cues to hear because “swing down!” That’s what I was taught and I didn’t make it to the big leagues like these guys, I was taught the same dang things and it didn’t work.

 

Joey Myers  03:07

So fast forward to 2013, I we had our first kid a boy, Noah, who is now seven, so seven years ago, and in the sleepless nights the getting up six times a night, the wife was feeding Noah, and the wife made me feel guilty to go back to sleep, which I go to back to sleep really quickly. So she, she felt like, “Hey, you need to be up to if I’m up!”

 

Joey Myers  03:35

So in those nights, I picked up a book I think I was trying to fix something in my own body because of the swinging and things I was in fitness at the time. And so, I picked up Thomas Myers, his book Anatomy Trains.  And Thomas Myers, we aren’t related directly, but I’m sure somewhere in the family tree were somewhere directly related. And I read through that book. It took me shoot, I had to read over pages for three or four times…

 

Joey Myers  04:12

Curious, you know that was something that you and I have in common. We have this passionate curiosity for the swing. And that just started a big, long deep rabbit hole that I went through. So, Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains, then it went to there was a book called Dynamic Body and it was a collaboration of different authors that were in that springy fascia Rolfing type of genre in the fitness industry.

 

Joey Myers  04:36

And in that book that steered me over to Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s, The Spinal Engine. So, what I was finding before I started going down that rabbit hole was a lot of the probably in the journey that you’ve been in recently in researching other people and what they teach. It was a lot of things being taught, retaught things that I was trying to reteach myself and it wasn’t working.

 

Joey Myers  05:01

And so I figured oh well, it’s probably user error. And then finally getting through a lot of that information I started, the lightbulb went on, I was like, you know what, maybe there’s something to the human movement principles or rules to human movement. And when you look at it through the lens, you look at hitting through the lens of human movement science, say, physics, or biomechanics, or engineering or anything like that. It changes the game.

 

Joey Myers  05:30

So I always tell the, my coaches that follow me, I say, hey, you need a better standard for your hitters. It can’t just be the same, what I call garbage over and over, that doesn’t work doesn’t really have much experimentation behind it. So that got me into what my thing is now is applying human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting a ball. So that’s where I’ve fast forwarded to where I’m at now.

 

Jaime Cevallos  06:02

And when you say that applying human movement principles, where do you get the principles and where do you get the science information from?

 

Where do you get the principles and where do you get the science information from?

Joey Myers  06:13

Good question. Jamie, turn your camera a little bit. You got a little bit of a glare from the sun. Oh, better. There you go. There you go. That’s better. Good just for the readers out there when they’re listening to you talk.

 

Joey Myers  06:29

So the principles, the big, big ones that really opened my eyes were from Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s The Spinal Engine. So Dr. Serge is a physicist and electrical engineer. He took one of the biggest I think, case studies for me that sold me on the whole thing was he had a, I don’t know if he’s a patient client, but whatever, but he was a quadriplegic. He was born that way. So yeah, I think he had nubs for arms. He walked on the bottom of his pelvis. I think they call it the ischium.

 

Joey Myers  07:00

And he had hooked this gentleman up to… put pads on his spine along his spine to measure muscle output to measure the connective tissue output. And if you watch this guy walk and if you just go on YouTube and you put “Serge Gracovetsky Spinal Engine”, it’ll come up (video above). It’s an old video. It’s like in the 80s, I think mid-80s, late 80s. And if you watch this, it’s about the four-minute mark. So, he’s got video footage of this gentleman walking and if you cover up his lower half like his pelvis basically and just watch him move. You would swear the guy wasn’t a quadriplegic.  You’d swear yet legs.

 

Joey Myers  07:43

So he was born without legs and arms, and he was moving like normal people move, but without legs and arms. And so that was to me. I was trying to look for the foundational the foundation of the foundation and locomotion is what Dr. Serge talks about.  So, without locomotion, we aren’t human. And he talks about three different and these are the principles, he talks about three different spinal movements, movements that the spine can do…

 

Joey Myers  08:11

There’s flexing, so just imagine yourself arching your back, right, but your lower back is already in a has a slight curve to it anyway, so it’s already started off, if you just stand there and don’t do anything, it’s already started off in an extended extension, sorry, extended position, they call it lordosis. The second one, why they put extension and flexion together. So, flexion would be like you doing a crunch where you’re crunching up and you’re bending your back that way. So those two he puts together, those are number one.

 

Joey Myers  08:44

Number two is side bend. So it’s just going side to side. And then the third one, the last one is called axial rotation, which just means that your shoulders can move independent or not independent but your shoulders move one way and your pelvis moves. That’s why our right arm and left leg comes forward at the same time.  We don’t walk with the right arm and the left leg coming forward the same time. So that is basic locomotion and all three, or four, all three of those movements happen when we walk.

Joey Myers  09:15

And from the minute we start walking… The reason in the beginning, it’s so hard for the baby to get into the toddler stage is because that lower back doesn’t have the curve in it yet. It’s actually straighter if not more flexed, because they’re in that that crunch position. And then it’s them trying to create that musculature to create that curve in the lower back. And so, once they get that they get more steady.

 

Jaime Cevallos  09:43

That’s I’m sorry to interrupt. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I didn’t know that that that the curve at the bottom of your spine, takes a little while to develop. That must be an ontology recapitulates phylogeny type of thing where we were crawling, in the beginning, and then we needed that curve for upright walking.

 

Joey Myers  10:05

Yep, yep. Yeah, because think about it in in the wild where you have a good example of side bending are sharks. So, sharks when they swim, it’s this this movement, right? And if you look at whales our fellow kin, mammals, right? They’re extension flexion so their tails this way dolphins same thing, right? Dr Serge talks about a lot of this.  And then if you watch dogs it’s similar it’s like you see this move that goes like this it’s up and down side to side, butt goes one way head the other.

 

Joey Myers  10:40

And what’s interesting is there are three sections of the spine. You have the C the cervical, you have the T the thoracic, which is the middle the biggest part 12 full vertebra in the middle, and then you have… so there’s seven in the top part and the cervical, two of them we can’t see because it inserts into the skull. Then you have the 12 of the thoracic, which is the biggest part of the spine. And then you have the lumbar which is five, five vertebrae.

 

Joey Myers  11:05

And what was interesting to me is if you look at the curve so the neck so imagine the neck is curving this way, the thoracic part curves the opposite can’t see it here we go through this way. So the, the thoracic curves the opposite way. And then the L the lumbar lower back curves the same way as the cervical so it’s like C, C and then you have backwards C in the middle. Interesting how everything was designed.

 

Jaime Cevallos  11:36

Wow.  So keep going about how it’s different from your understanding is different from how you understood in college or how people understand it right now.

 

How your understanding is different than how people are teaching now?

Joey Myers  11:54

Yeah, that’s a good one. So connecting the dots of today and I know you’ve been doing your research and stuff.  There are swing people out there and I won’t mention any names. Most of you out there listening to this will probably know who I’m talking about. But they talk about that the barrel moves the body. The body doesn’t move the barrel.  Which if you have a human movement foundation, you hear that and it’s automatically ignorant automatically.

 

Joey Myers  12:27

So the people that are saying that have no clue how the human body moves, and if they claim that they’ve read and understand Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s Spinal Engine, that’s a lie. It’s a con job because and you can go and look up David Weck, who, WeckMethod.com. He was the inventor of the bosu ball, most of you out there have been to a gym you see that ball that’s got the big bubble on the bottom and the surface on the top and it’s makes exercises really hard to do.

 

Joey Myers  12:58

So he was the inventor of that and then over the last probably four or five years, he’s really gotten into the spinal engine stuff. And the guy’s a sharp guy, you go on Instagram. He’s really, really active on Instagram. Very, very sharp guy. And he’s all about spinal engine. And you have so many others like what’s his name Dr. Joe LaCaze, he’s RotexMotion. There’s a another one. I can’t think of his name right off the bat. But he he’s got a system. It’s all based on body, there’s a lot of spirals in the body.

 

Joey Myers  13:31

For those parents out there, those coaches out there that want to get involved in this, but have no clue how to start. If you just understand those three types of spinal movement, from there you can pretty much figure out how everything else is supposed to move. So when you have somebody that says that barrel moves the body, that doesn’t make sense, because human movement we’re fighting gravitational forces, but movement starts from the middle out is what we call it, not from the ground up. It’s from the middle out from the spine out basically.

 

Joey Myers  13:31

If you read Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains, he talks about the spiral line that comes across the chest, and it comes back down around the butt and then you see one that comes under as a stirrup under the foot. And so when you understand any…you don’t have to be, like again, I was self-taught. I just was curious passionate curiosity about everything. You don’t need to know the language per se, but if you can understand the concept of just locomotion.

 

Jaime Cevallos  14:40

Wow. I came to that realization a couple years ago myself. And the whole, the swing starts from the ground up suddenly wasn’t correct to me. It’s more that it starts in the center of your body and shoots in two directions, almost like they’re working against each other.

 

“And the whole, the swing starts from the ground up suddenly wasn’t correct to me.”

Joey Myers  15:07

Yep.  That’s a great observation man. And I know you’re smart Dude, you like to think outside the box philosophically. And that’s exactly what’s happening. So if we take this idea of springy fascia. So fascia is, if you foam roll, that’s what you’re trying to do. If you foam roll your IT band and it hurts like the dickens. If you haven’t done it in a while. It feels like somebody’s stabbing a knife in the side of your leg, right?

 

Joey Myers  15:37

So fascia is a cotton candy or spider webby like material that your bones and muscles float in. It also gives muscles their shape. It’s almost like if you think about it, the grocery store if you buy a bag of potatoes, the potatoes are the muscles. The bag itself that the potatoes are wrapped in is the fascia. It’s connected. There’s a sheet, or one line anatomy train that attaches the top of your eyebrow goes all, it’s called the backline. Goes over the head and go straight down the back butt, hamstrings, back of the calves and attaches to the bottom of your or the back of the ball of your foot. It goes through your arch in there.

 

Joey Myers  16:15

So that’s one whole sheet and there’s nine different ones, I think is what Thomas Myers talks about, that are all intermingled interweaved. You have this idea of compression tension forces. This fascia is comprised of compression tension. Compression force is just a, say a piece of granite on or a brick on a brick, right brick on a brick, they exert forces against each other. That’s a compression force.

 

Joey Myers  16:42

A tension force would be like a boom crane, you know a wrecking ball. You have the structure of the boom crane, you have the cable that, and it comes over and it holds the wrecking ball down here. So that cable that’s connected to the wrecking ball that’s a tension force, so you have force from the structure that’s pulling up and you have the Wrecking Ball and gravity that’s pulling down and you have this tensional force between the two.

 

Joey Myers  17:07

So with fascia you have both compression tension. What’s interesting is this is all Thomas Myers stuff is he says that granite has a very high, granite the rock, like if you had a countertop, granite countertops, that granite has a very, very high tolerance for compression. You can put a ton of weight on top of granite and it’s not going to break it’s not going to; it’s not going to snap break whatever.

 

Joey Myers  17:32

But it has a very low tensional force. So if you hooked up, you drilled holes in two sides of the granite so you had a countertop, a long countertop, drilled big holes in both sides of the granite hooked in like a big fat strong carabiner, you got the chain hooked up to a horse on both sides and you have the horses walk away or run away from each other. That granite’s going to pull apart because its tensional force isn’t very strong. But fascia in the human body is both strong compression and tension.

 

Joey Myers  18:03

So whether you’re in a good posture, good position or you have some bad juju, your body’s just not in that, right, you’re going to have those compression tension forces but they might be off a little bit and it’s going to create, it’s going to wear out like mileage on your…say your car, you got a front end that’s misaligned, you get the tires out like this. Well, you know, they’re guaranteed 80,000 miles if your tires were aligned, but since they’re misaligned, you might get about half the mileage on those tires…same thing with fascia, it’s going to over time if it’s off, then you’re going to wear out joints, you’re going to wear out shoulders, you’re going to wear out necks, you’re going to wear out lower backs, whatever.

 

Joey Myers  18:43

So it’s amazing when you dig into the fascia side and spinal engine, they’re both pretty related because without the fascia, it’s like they both are dependent on each other. The fascia is a connective tissue, the spine is what they’re saying bones are actually connective tissue as well their fascia, but fascia wound really, really, really dense. Bone does bend, but there’s a threshold till finally it breaks but it does bend.

 

Jaime Cevallos  19:14

Okay.  What would you say?  Is your understanding of the swing back then? We keep going off on?

 

What would you say?  Is your understanding of the swing back then?

Joey Myers  19:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how this relates to the swing is loading and unloading. This is the Catapult Loading System. This was the book you mentioned, that was the 2017 Amazon bestseller. This took power to a whole other level. And I ran the experiments when I was going through this, I was seeing what others were doing like Trout, and at the time Andrew McCutchen was doing well, and Bautista, Donaldson and all these guys.

 

Joey Myers  19:52

So I took that information, looked at the players to see how this was being translated how they were translated… (to be continued into Part-2)…

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Hitting Drills For Kids At-Home COVID-19 Challenge

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Hitting Drills For Kids: How To Keep Hitters Productive At Home Despite COVID-19

 

 

(Correction in above hitting drills for kids video: I said this started last Wednesday, March 25th, but I couldn’t get this up in time, so the next day it was!  CLICK HERE to view Today’s Hitting Workout Of the Day – WOD.

 

Self quarantine.  “Shelter-in-place”.  Losing a job.  Tireless work.  Medical care workers, military, police and fire departments.  Sacrificing sport seasons.  Seniors in High School and College losing their 2020 year.  Politicians bickering – as usual.

I totally understand.  It SUCKS.  And I’m sorry who’ve lost a job or loved one because of this nasty virus. My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your families.  I hope and pray things get better soon.

But you know what coach?  We’re going to get through this.  Together.  Genghis Khan once said:

“One arrow alone can easily be broken but many arrows are indestructible”.

I understand the uncertainty out there.  And if you’re like my family, we have two little blessings (7yo boy and 4yo girl), running around at home.  The challenge is, we have to keep them in productive mode, or else they’re fighting like cats and dogs.  And at the same time my wife and I are juggling work from home in good ol’ shelter-in-place California.

I’m not going to lie, it’s REAL easy to keep the kiddos on their devices all day.  But I don’t believe that’s the best thing for their little developing minds.  Same is true for the teen-osaurs!

Here’s what we’ll cover in this post:

  • How to keep hitters productive at home despite COVID-19,
  • At-home hitting drills for kids challenge rules,
  • Today’s Hitting WOD, and
  • BONUS extra credit to sweeten the deal…

SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:

Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.

Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.

Right Course For You? Take Quiz Now

 

How To Keep Hitters Productive At Home Despite COVID-19

One of my online hitting lesson dads posted this Twitter “to-do” list to keep the kiddos busy at home… (he elaborates on this schedule in the comments below)

I would be honored to be a part of your at-home schedule!

 

At-Home Hitting Drills for Kids Challenge Rules

WHEN

The challenge will run from Thursday March 26th, through Easter Sunday, April 12th.  Wishful thinking is that this COVID-19 thing is under wraps by then, and things become as normal as circumstances allow.

Check-in EVERY day at about 8:00AM pacific standard time.  That day’s Hitting WOD will stay up that whole day.  PLEASE NOTE: Each day I’ll take down yesterday’s Hitting WOD and replace with today’s.  So, if you’re busy, I’d suggest stopping in and at least taking notes, so you don’t miss out.

WHAT

Each day, I’ll update this page under “Today’s Hitting WOD” subheadline with a/an:

  • Featured post,
  • Expert interview transcription, or
  • Drill video…

…you can use this as hitting homework.  “Baseball with dad or mom” as Tyson put it in his Tweet.  Each day will guide you in one of 5 areas:

  1. Building more power,
  2. Hitting more line drives,
  3. Getting on-time more often,
  4. Moving better to perform better (body work training), or
  5. Sticky coaching cues.

Like Crossfit, think of this as a Hitting “Workout Of the Day” – or Hitting WOD.

HOW

Every single day, we’ll keep it simple.  I’m just asking at least 5-minutes per day to do the Hitting WOD.

By the way, on some days, I’m going to do random giveaways.  Online hitting lessons.  An autographed copy of my Amazon bestselling book. Possibly hitting aids.  We’ll see what happens.   The more you share this on the socials, the better chance you have at winning!  Best part is, it won’t cost you a thing!

 

Today’s Hitting WOD (DAY-17 and Final Day)

Today’s hitting drills for kids videos are coming to an end.  Sadly.  But the good news is… Today and tomorrow (Easter) I want to giveaway one FREE online hitting lesson from our own The Feedback Lab program…


How can you win?  Simply by leaving a comment below.  I pick a random comment and declare the winner on the Monday after Easter.  Good luck and I hope you all have a Happy and Safe Easter!  PLEASE NOTE: this offer is closed and we’re no longer taking winners.

 

BONUS Extra Credit to Sweeten the Deal

Hitting Drills For Kids: Swing Smarter Newsletter Monthly

Before this whole Chinese Coronavirus thing picked up steam, I was working on a low-cost monthly membership called Swing Smarter Newsletter Monthly.  I will be putting a TON of time and effort into each issue.

Once per month, we’ll be offering up:

  • One training tip video on how to fix a certain flaw,
  • One or two expert interviews from “mad” scientists like: Perry Husband, Matt Nokes, Taylor Gardner, Ryan Lehr, Dr. Tom Hanson, and many others,
  • 1-month in review curated content on Sticky Coaching or Moving Better to Perform Better, and
  • Hitting aid review, how it MUST be used for success, & discounts…

The monthly membership fee was going to be $9.95 per month.  We’re also offering a 30-day money back guarantee to take the risk away.  Cancel within that period and we’ll give you your money back.  No worries.  No questions asked.  No hard feelings.

Click the button below to grab access to Swing Smarter Newsletter Monthly…

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

23 Of Our Most Popular Hitting & Sticky Coaching Social Media Links In 2019

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Top-10 Most Popular Hitting Performance Lab Blog Posts Of 2019 (both Facebook & Twitter)…23 Of Our Most Popular Hitting & Sticky Coaching Social Media Links In 2019

  • #10: Teach: How To STOP Hitting Excess Of Ground-balls & Fly-balls – Perry Husband long form video interview discusses: “How do I get my son to stop hitting an excess of ground-balls (or fly-balls)?”, How swing intention is great, but its benefits can be suppressed by physical limitations, The key ‘tinker & test’ learning principle helping hitters learn faster, Why a hitting coach’s job is to eliminate their job, And much more!
  • #9: How To Turn A Beach Towel Into A Hitting Demonstration – short video is great way to help coaches and players understand taking slack out of the system, demonstrating the power of the spinal engine.
  • #8: Why You SHOULD NOT Teach Hitters To Hit Homers? – Perry Husband long form video interview discusses: Formal Introductions, Perry Husband & Joey Myers FB Jam Session #1 Carlos Pena and Boston Red Sox hitting coach phone conversation for segment on MLB Now Show, Bro-Science v. REAL Science, How to know who/what to follow, Demystifying Launch Angles, and Q&A…
  • #7: How To Use “3-Dimensional Hitting” To Optimize Timing, Using All Fields, & Launch Angles – The target rich environment of pitchers throwing into barrels results in ANY hitting approach being effective.  But what happens when the target rich environment disappears?  Read more…
  • #6: Discover Where An Elite Hitter’s Secret Weapon Is Found – short video discusses how most coaches understand the function of bones and muscles in the body, but don’t understand springy fascia. Simple demo you can use with hitters to help them understand the role of springy fascia…
  • #5: How To Make Teaching Proper Weight Shift In Swing More Understandable To Hitter – Perry Husband long form video interview answering: “Making teaching of proper weight shift in your swing and more understandable to the hitter?”Perry Husband & Joey Myers Hitting Jam Session #3, 1000’s of swing experiments confirm benefits of releasing backside: higher Ball Exit velocity, better ball flight, and swing consistency, How to fix hitters that over stride, Why ‘force plate’ studies DO NOT mean a darn thing, unless they correlate these two critical metrics, And much more!
  • #4: 5,000 Swing Experiments Validate Locked Out Lead Arm Is Superior To Bent – Perry Husband long form video interview discussing: Instructors confusing what “casting” is and is not, What if only fastball Mike Trout gets is what produces the 80.8-mph avg. BES, would that change his offensive stats? Hitter using bent lead arm comes at a cost, “Deep barrel dump” – great barrel path for down/away pitches, but TERRIBLE for up/inside pitches, And much more!
  • #3: Reaction Time Versus Timing (What’s The Difference)? – Quick 4-minute demo video coaches can use to teach their hitters the difference between reaction time and timing. Can timing be taught?
  • #2: Belly Buttons, Center Of Gravity, & Quick Way To Solve A Flat Bat – One of my favorite 3.5 minute hitting demonstrations helping hitters understand the need to stack the bat’s “belly button” above theirs. A flat bat at landing can cause 3 negative swing flaws, and how to fix…
  • #1: Is “Swinging Down” Okay Since Alex Rodriguez Said So? – Perry Husband and I do a hitting analysis of Alex Rodriguez’s hitting hitting analysis, and did he come off disconnected from describing the elite swing?

 

Top-13 Most Popular Non-Hitting Performance Lab Sticky Coaching Links From Our Facebook Fan Page…

#13

#12

#11

#10

#9

#8

#7

#6

#5

#4

#3

#2

#1

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

And before I let you go, please take 1-minute to enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of our Amazon Bestselling hitting book…

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Join 18,070+ Of Your Peers Applying Our Validated By REAL Science Hitting Principles

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HPL Hitting Clinics Coming To A California Spot Near You!

The above video was news coverage of a ball exit speed challenge we did at a local hitting academy.  Just a taste of what could be coming into your backyard…

For the past couple years, I’ve been asked by many out-of-town Academy owners and coaches to help put on hitting clinics.  With two young kiddos, I’ve had to decline the travel because I was needed at home.  Well, I’m still needed at home, but the ages of my kiddos are much more manageable (3 and 6yo).  My hitters and parents know, I’m VERY protective of family time, and is WHY I’ve chosen to build a primarily mobile hitting business.

I’m currently working on a new hitting book that will go into how to hit more line drives, while reducing strikeouts (due to release by end of summer), and am looking to go on an HPL California Hitting Clinic and speaking tour.

Since 2013, we’ve affected tens of thousands of coaches, in turn quite possibly affected hundreds of thousands of their hitters.  My goal with the release of this next book, hitting clinic tour, and going on the coaches speaking circuit is to affect hundreds of thousands of coaches, and in turn affect millions of their hitters.

If you don’t know much about us, then please CLICK HERE to visit our About page.  There are A LOT of unsolicited testimonials at the bottom of that page.

 

The HPL California Hitting Clinic Gory Details…Hitting Performance Lab California Hitting Clinics

In following, I’m going to be very open, honest, and transparent with the details.  If there’s a question, then please ask.  If you’re an Academy owner, hitting instructor, or coach who wants to host an HPL California Hitting Clinic, then here are the who, what, when, how, and whys:

  • NorCal, CenCal, or SoCal?  Yes, yes, and yes.
  • Indoor or outdoor.
  • Can be on the weekend or a day or two during the week.
  • Up to you which hitting theme you’d like me to teach on: Catapult Loading System (more consistent power without sacrificing swing quality), Pitch Plane Domination (hitting more line drives and reducing strikeouts), or Reaction Time Mastery (footwork, vision, tracking, & timing).  Or we could do a mix.
  • I’m only booking 1-2 clinics per month (starting in June), so scheduling is limited, and first come first served.
  • At least 20 hitters/coaches (this can be a mix).
  • Following groups are chunked for efficient age appropriate teaching: 11-13yos, 14-16yos, or 17+yos.  If these groups are mixed, then sessions will be disjointed, awkward, and move slow.
  • Baseball AND softball.  Mixing genders is okay, just make sure age appropriate chunking stays intact.
  • At least 4-hours required to make the trip (could be 2 hours, break for lunch, then another 2 hours).
  • *$30/hitter/hour, so with minimum standard, 20 hitters X $30/hitter-coach/hour, for 4 hours = $2,400 (that’s only $120/hitter for the time).
  • Academy owners, instructors, or coaches can charge above and beyond the $30/hour/hitter, if a “fee” is desired on your end, but that’s my minimum.  In other words, round up to $150/hitter/4-hour day and take a $30/hitter fee on top of mine, so your facility makes $600 (20 hitters X $30).
  • If it’s a 2-day, then my hotel, food, and travel cost will be added to the quote (depending on the area cost, that could be between $200 and $400 on top of my regular fee).
  • I only want to focus on California, but for those interested out of state, since a flying would be more time effective, then a round trip flight, hotel, food, and travel costs will be added to my quote (again depending on the area cost, that could be between $400 to $800 on top of my regular fee).
  • Also, there’s an opportunity to earn a 50% commission on my online video courses.  CLICK HERE to check out our affiliate program (and sign up!). While I’m there, I would promote YOUR affiliate program link, and NOT cut out the “middle man”.
  • I will also give a ONE-TIME 10% commission for each PAID Academy owner, instructor, or coach you refer for a HPL California Hitting Clinic.
  • Video recording of the clinic, and sharing of the information is okay just as long as credit is given, and you tag Hitting Performance Lab (@HitPerformLab, #HittingPerformanceLab, #CatapultLoadingSystem, #PitchPlaneDomination, or #ReactionTimeMastery).
  • After each clinic, I would love to get your advice on how to make the clinics better, and would be honored if you shared testimonials with me, either written or video, the latter more preferred.
  • Bottom line: I’m NOT looking to steal your hitters, I’m looking to enhance your business either online or offline and ultimately want you and your hitters to spread the good word. Any “extra” time we have together, I’d love to grab a beer or sweet iced tea, and talk about how to market your business better (no charge!).  I know a little about this: wrote an Amazon bestselling book, over 12,000 books sold or downloaded, over 18,000 products purchased by coaches, 40,000 coach emails, 34,000+ Likes on Facebook, almost 9,000 Twitter followers, almost 6,800 organic YouTube subscribers.  I’ve also been doing online hitting lessons since 2014.  Locally, I do small private group hitting groups (2-6 hitters/group) with over 30+ active weekly hitters, where I make up to $180/hour.  Six-figure per year business. Help me help you 😉

*Prices are subject to change, depending on demand, so the price reflected on this page at time of booking will be honored.  If price increases, then it increases for everyone.  $30/hitter/hour is for between 20 to 30 hitters/coaches.  Over that, my price is negotiable.

 

What’s the Next Step to Connect?Joey Myers

Remember #1 (of 2), I’m only booking 1-2 clinics per month (starting in June), so scheduling will be limited, and it will be first come first served.  Look, maybe you’re a parent or coach that cannot take advantage of this, but you may know someone who can, so here’s reminder #2, I will also give a one-time 10% commission for each paid Academy owner, instructor, or coach you refer for a Hitting Performance Lab California Hitting Clinic.  That could be at least a $240 finder’s fee!

CLICK HERE to contact me via email, and then we’ll connect via phone to put something on the schedule. I’m looking forward to working with you, your coaches, and hitters 😀

– Joey Myers

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

What’s The BIGGEST Mistake Coaches Make In Boosting Ball Exit Speeds?

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“Best Drill For Being Out In Front All The Time. Always Makes Contact Way Out In Front, Weak Hits & No Power”…

 

Here’s the Hitting Jam Session Interview Collection with Perry Husband:

  1. Why You Should Not Teach Hitters To Hit Homers?
  2. [YOU ARE HERE] What’s The Biggest Mistake Coaches Make In Boosting Ball Exit Speeds
  3. How To Make Teaching Proper Weight Shift In Swing More Understandable To Hitter
  4. Teach: How To STOP Hitting Excess Of Ground-balls & Fly-balls
  5. 5,000 Swing Experiments Validate Locked Lead Arm Is Superior To Bent
  6. Overload Bat Training: Hitting Has To Work Butt Off To Resist “Casting”

Here’s what we discuss in this episode:

  • Short Intro’sPerry Husband & Joey Myers Hitting Jam Session #2
  • Most effective ways to boost BES
  • How to know “who/what” to follow – by doing swing experiments
  • Swing eval at home & future case study Jam Sessions
  • Q/A

You can also CLICK HERE to view the original video and comments from the Jam Session on Facebook.

 

Show Notes

  • At about the 30-sec mark, the whole point of these Jam Sessions, equipping coaches to do petri dish evaluations at home collecting data, bringing us this data, and we can help coaches get their hitters better using real data and human movement principles validated by real Science.
  • At about 5-minute, 30-sec mark, Perry answers what he thinks is the biggest mistake coaches make in boosting ball exit speed, watching videos on YouTube, the lead arm shape (bend or straighten?), locking out beforehand causes a chain reaction that stretches out rubber bands, going from bent to straight right at impact doesn’t optimally stretch out rubber, not most important thing – is a piece of the machine, a bunch of things pieced together.
  • At about 8-minute mark, addressing why a barred front arm gets a bad rap on causing “longer” swings, correlation DOES NOT equal causation in this case, a consistent front arm shape equals consistency at bat-ball contact, Perry talks about “laser” experiment comparing a bent lead arm versus a barred out front arm (about 11-min mark), interestingly laser was all over with bent arm versus closer to “line” with straight front arm, getting barrel in line and keeping it there, with front arm bend there’s too much free play, at least twice as good arm bar versus bend when it comes to consistency.
  • At about 13-minute mark, talk about the main benefits to a front arm bar, longer levers multiply force at the end of the lever, a longer swing IS NOT about a bent or straight front arm – it’s about when the barrel leaves the rear shoulder, end loaded heavy bats are fantastic for training barrel path for different pitch depths, look at hitters hitting 95-mph inside – they use shorter more compact swings (the barrel leaves the shoulder later).
  • At about the 17-minute mark, Perry shares another experiment where he used a ball attached to surgical tubing attached to an anchor, pulling ball back 8-feet, then letting go and measuring speed, then stretching the tubing back further, speed increases and ball hits wall sooner than the shorter pull back, Perry explains shortening front arm can help get on time but hitter gives up hard ball contact (70% their 1-arm max).
  • At about 20-minute, 30-sec mark, talking about when you’re teaching hitters, what is your hitting “operating system”?  Is your goal for hitters to increase hard ball contact?  Is it to reduce strikeouts?  Based on your hitting operating system, you’ll choose specific hitting mechanics that organize that support the specific operating system,  barrel path will change based on pitch depth, swing to match timing – reactionary hitting, the other side of the coin is to max out 100% on-time, 100% swing effective.
  • At about 25-minute, 30-sec mark, how do we know who to follow or what to follow, Perry goes over swing evaluation you can do at home (CLICK HERE for a PDF spelling this out), build a target – Home Depot tarp, 2-foot diameter circle, cut hole in middle of circle (1-foot) creating donut, bottom of target is inline with bottom of ball on tee, target is 10-feet in front of hitter, hit top of target roughly 20-degree, middle roughly 10-degrees, measure ball exit speeds, give points: 1-point for hitting it through the middle, hits outside ring 0.5-point, miss target = 0.  Out of ten swings good is 4/10 (or .400).  If not at .400, then something is missing.  Average ball exit speed should be around 90% of your 1-rep. max.  Plot where the misses are, and number which hits they were. (Ask Perry for blank diagram on this).  Measuring ball exit speed with Zepp, SwingTracker, BlastMotion, PocketRadar, Bushnell Radar gun,
  • At about 33-minute mark, Perry talks about use of imagination or visualization, physical changes are tough under competitive pressures of a game, practicing your game swing, changing intent changes the swing, i.e. hitter hitting pop ups, changing intent to hit a low screaming line drive helps brain organize body to change the swing without thinking internal cues.
  • At about 39-minute mark, imagine a bendy tube attaching the pitcher’s release to contact, we want the hitter to hit the ball back through tube the pitch came from, external cues versus internal cues, getting a ballpark of what the hitter is doing by setting hitter up on a tee that is positioned as a middle middle location, if hitter is pulling all the time or going other way too much or popping ball up too much or hitting a lot of ground-balls, along with ball exit speed measurements.
  • At about 42-minute mark, Perry asks me about the springy fascia, the idea of a “rubber suit” creating stretch in the suit as you twist up, springy ‘X’ pattern – ‘X’ on chest and back, compression and tension forces, Granite has a high compression rate but has a terrible tension rate, Boom crane tension forces can be found in the cable holding the wrecking ball, body uses both compression and tension forces, hitter’s front shoulder comes in and down (shortening chest leg of the ‘X’), other leg of the ‘X’ on the chest lengthens, on the backside – the corresponding legs of the ‘X’ does the opposite, Scapula Row?  Biggest mistake coaches make is forcing hitters to keep front shoulder straight instead of protracting the front Scapula, Arm barring front arm helps with ‘showing numbers’ AND ‘hiding hands’.
  • At about 60-minute mark, hitter lets go of bat hits 370-foot homer, while holding on hits ball 480-feet, pitch velocity and location were same, timing was a little different, Physicist Dr. Alan Nathan says once bat is in motion hitter doesn’t have to hold onto bat at impact – force is already there, locking out at impact helps transfer energy better, look at all the data on batted balls that go the farthest – they look the same, arm is locked out, test hitting a fully inflated basketball exit speed should be around 80% of 1-rep max – if not then losing swing effectiveness, Newtonian Physics v. non-Newtonian Physics, Physics is limited to Physics (external forces), Bio-Mechanics is limited to Biomechanics, etc.
  • About about 57-minute mark, Perry answers question: “Best drill for being out in front all the time, always makes contact way out in front, weak hits and no power?” Every pitch location has one ideal contact point, make swing in slow motion to find what’s optimal, body is reaching too much, one drill: the “Riiiiiight-Now!” Drill (“Right” is at release, where impact is the “now”).
  • HittingIsAGuess.com @EVPerryHusband, special offer for any of his online courses use: EV25 discount code
  • Special offer from me the FREE print Catapult Loading System Book, just pay $8.95 Shipping & Handling (retails on Amazon for $19.97): https://www.truthaboutexplosiverotationalpower.com/pl/60039
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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Discover Where An Elite Hitter’s Secret Weapon Is Found

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Here’s A Quick Way To Help Hitters Understand Springy Fascia Power…

Most coaches understand the function of bones and muscles in the body, but don’t understand springy fascia, which is:

  • A cotton candy or spider webby like material,
  • What bones and muscles float in,
  • What gives muscles their shape,
  • Made up of mostly collagen fibers (and some elastin) – ask the Kardashians,
  • To the human body as steel is to the building industry,
  • Great at resisting change in shape,
  • A material of the body that DOES NOT need much in nutrients (e.g. food) to move like muscles do,
  • An injury to connective tissue (springy fascia) can take over 200-days to heal, whereas a muscles can take only 90-days to regenerate,
  • Like the bag carrying potatoes you buy at the supermarket, whereas the potatoes represent the bones and muscles.

CLICK HERE for a post we did titled, “4 Tips On How To Train Springy Fascia”.  In the above video I use the Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains ‘snapping finger’ test to demonstrate the power of springy fascia.

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Our Top-11 Lessons Learned From 2018 Revealed

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How To Loosen Tight Hips, Importance Of Playing Multiple Sports From Steph Curry, Jalen Hurt Advice On Overcoming Adversity, & More! (Non-HPL Links)

Georgia’s Jansen Kenty hits game tying dinger in LLWS this year. His hitting coach teaches Catapult Loading System principles.

2018 was fantastic, and these were the HOTTEST topics on our social media throughout the year, according to you – the Hitting Performance Lab tribe.  Thank you ALL for the vote by: click, share, like, and comment – you guys rock!  My personal favorites were numbers: 3 (for selfish reasons of course 😉, 6, & 7… have a Happy and Safe 2019, and ENJOY the following 2018 lesson learned links…

 

#11 – Joe Maddon On The Importance Of Playing Multiple Sports

#10 – A Message To Parents: Why It Bothers Me That You Coach From The Stands

#9 – Too Many Kids Leave Sports Because Of The Car Ride Home

#8 – Parents Need To Stop Trophy-Chasing And Let Their Kids Learn

#7 – 8 Exercises for Tight Hips

#6 – Japan leaves touching thank you note and a spotless locker room after World Cup loss

#5 -Youth sports referees across the US are quitting because of abusive parents

#4 – #MannyMachado dirty or clean? “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.” – Heywood Broun 

#3 – Georgia Little League dad goes crazy for son’s game-tying HR – ESPN Video

#2 – Alabama’s Jalen Hurts Quietly Shows Young Athletes How to Handle Adversity

#1 – Steph Curry: Play Multiple Sports To Get Outside Your Comfort Zone

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

ATTN Coaches: Are You Throwing Dynamite In The Air & Expecting Rain?

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What Deserves The Label: “Bro-science Fixed Mindset Garbage”?

I want to share a story…

Right before the Great Depression hit the Oklahoma panhandle, rain was plentiful, causing Doctors and Lawyers to quit their practices and join the ranks of farmers to buy land and plant crops that were being subsidized by the US government.  In other words, the gold-in-them-hills was harvesting and selling wheat and other bumper crops.

Millions of acres of 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass were plowed under to make room for crops.  Fast forward to the beginning of the Great Depression, the rain dried up, and so did the crops.  Unbeknownst to the new farmers who moved to the area, typically rain was sparse in the location, and by coincidence, they had just experienced a rare wet 5-10 year period.

So now there’s NO rain.  And you know the 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass they cut down?  Well, it used to hold the soil down despite seasonal 60 to 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts.  So NO crops are growing now.  Grazing cattle have nothing to eat but tumbleweeds brought over by the Russians (people often sprinkled salt to eat them as well).  The livestock soon get sick and die.  Wind is eroding dry soil and tossing it up in the air.  The drought is fatal for the majority who stay, while other smarter – in hindsight – individuals move west.  Enter the “Dust Bowl”.

The farmers who stayed behind were so desperate for rain, they hired so-called rain experts to “create” rain.  The bro-science at the time went that an explosion in the air could bring clouds, and with clouds, rain would fall from the sky.  So what did these so-called experts do?  They sold the idea that if they lit a stick of dynamite and timed the throw just right, they could get the explosion that would bring water.

…And doggonit, it worked on the rare occasion, convincing everyone that this was a predictable-enough strategy for “creating” rain.  I know this sounds like a stupid idea, but you have to understand, the people were DESPERATE for rain.  However, nobody paid attention to the countless other times that followed, where it didn’t work and people lost limbs, fingers, etc. from timing the lit dynamite wrong.*

(*By the way, the above passage – in which I paraphrased – came from interviewed first hand accounts in the book Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History.  Fascinating stories of how a dust storm rolling in looked like a slow moving wet dog haired tornado turned on its side, miles high and wide.  True story.)

So what deserves the label: “Bro-science Fixed Mindset garbage”?

Hitting “bro-science” is:

  • Blindly trying methods, ignoring principles.
  • Like throwing dynamite in the air and expecting it to rain.
  • Running east looking for a sunset.
  • Missing the forest for the trees.
  • Shooting an arrow randomly and calling whatever you hit.
  • A bad decision waiting to happen.

Urban dictionary defines “bro-science” as:

“Word of mouth knowledge passed off as fact, primarily among bodybuilders + weightlifters. Generally spouted most by guys who have used loads of steroids and are huge, have no idea what is happening to their bodies and then share that same cluelessness with others who make the false assumption that their experience means that they have knowledge.”

Furthermore, Bodybuilding.com defines “bro-science” as:

“Broscience is the predominant brand of reasoning in bodybuilding circles where the anecdotal reports of jacked dudes are considered more credible than scientific research.”

You can easily substitute “bodybuilders”, “weightlifters”, & “bodybuilding” in the above definitions with “baseball” and “softball” hitting coaches.  It’s a Fixed Mindset. Believe it or not, I saw a comment on Twitter, with my own eyes, of a so-called hitting guru (I won’t mention him by name so as not to give him oxygen, but you would know him), claim what he teaches isn’t found in Science – Ha!!  True story.  He’s as fraudulent as those dynamite “rain men”.

Look, we have to be careful as coaches with the correlation equals causation link.  Just because the dynamite might have worked on the rare occasion, doesn’t mean it will work bringing rain on a predictable basis.

REAL Science, the opposite of “bro-science”, is held to a higher standard.  The Scientific Method, as a matter of fact.  Sure, there’s Bad Science out there, but we’re looking for testing, experimentation, and research showing that correlation and causation of specific inputs are more predictable, not less.  Just like how success leaves clues, so does failure.

A Growth Mindset coach will zero be hyper-focused on this.  Sure there are 100’s of ways to teach hitting, but if you had the choice to eat tomato soup with a spoon, fork, or knife, which tool would you use to be most effective?

Teaching hitters is the same.

By applying human movement principles validated by REAL Science to hitting a ball, you’ll be eating tomato soup with a spoon.  NOT shooting an arrow randomly and calling whatever you hit.  And definitely NOT strategically throwing dynamite in the air hoping and praying the explosion will make it rain.

The above video and following Chapter are from the Introduction to my 2017 Amazon best selling book: The Catapult Loading System: How To Teach 100-Pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-Feet, which has amassed over 100 Amazon reviews with an average 4.3 out of 5-star ratings!  Over 11,500 copies have been sold or downloaded.  The Chapter topic?  Growth v. Fixed Mindset coaches…enjoy!

 

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffe

Fixed Versus Growth Mindset Coaching

When it comes building consistently powerful hitters, this book will provide you with the mechanical pathway to get there.  However, I think the most important aspect to coaching has to do with Mindset.  Coaches can be split up into two categories:

  1. Fixed, or
  2. Growth Mindset.

…and which Mindset a coach falls into a majority of the time, can make or break a young athlete’s development.  Don’t believe me?  According to Dr. Carol Dweck, in her bestselling book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,

“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.”

Here are some things you hear FIXED Mindset coaches saying,

  • You can’t teach a Little Leaguer to hit like a Major Leaguer because they aren’t strong enough.
  • Hand speed can’t be coached.
  • Natural hitters are just born.
  • Hitting is subjective and is different for everybody (this leaves them off the hook if player doesn’t succeed with their guidance).
  • The greatest hitters just have great hand-eye coordination.
  • That 12u 100-pound hitter can consistently hit the ball 300-feet because they’re hitting with a HOT bat.
  • He/She can hit the ball hard and far because of their body mass.

All of those are to the contrary of Dr. Dweck’s definition of a Growth Mindset coach:

“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”

These coaches find a way. They ask the right questions. They ask, “Why not?”  They don’t rest on elite-level playing or decades of coaching experience.  The objective of a Growth Mindset coach is to learn human movement principles first, or the “rules”. Then, design methods to stay within those lines.  Predictably positive hitting results don’t work the other way around. You’ll learn more about this in CHAPTER 1.

I’ll let Billy Murray give Growth Mindset coaches a heads up in dealing with Fixed Mindset coaches:

“It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.”

I’m not saying Fixed Mindset coaches are “stupid”.  What I am saying, in my experience in dealing with them, is they let their ego and pride get in the way of helping hitters get consistently better.  They make emotional arguments, NOT rational.  Here’s more evidence from Henry Ford:

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, then you’re right.”

One puts the forest before the trees (versus missing the forest for the trees), while the other is swatting a piñata with one eye blindfolded and both arms pinned behind their back!  Trust me, I get it.  We all want to be heard and validated as being knowledgeable in a subject, but seemingly high credibility in the wrong place is misleading for everyone involved.

Some go to extreme lengths to IMMEDIATELY make their presence known. Here are some Fixed Mindset saying tip-offs:

  • “I’ve played [X-number of] years professionally and I should know.”
  • “I’ve been coaching for 30+ years, and this is why you should listen to me.”
  • “I’ve studied millions of hours of video analysis of only the best hitters. I know what I’m talking about”
  • “I’ve put a lot of work into the cages, and that’s how I know what I’m talking about”

Don’t get me wrong, the last two points have their place and can be effective in learning and seeing successful movement patterns, BUT massive effort going in the wrong direction can be gross negligence.  Besides, it takes A LOT of effort in the cages and hours of video analysis to stumble onto the right answers.  The problem I have with this process is it takes too dang long!  Especially for the new coach.  Rest assured, I have a more elegant solution that will dramatically cut your learning curve in half!  You’ll know what to look for, so you can SUPERCHARGE your time in the cages and when doing video analysis.  You’ll read about this in CHAPTER 2.

Willful ignorance.

As you probably already know, coaches defend their hitting philosophy and theories to the death, even if human-movement principles validated by REAL science, reveal the opposite.  Just like in Politics and Religion.  I mentally play the “What if I strip them of…” game with Fixed Mindset coaches.  WHAT IF this person NEVER…

  • Played in the Big Leagues…
  • Coached for 30+ years…
  • Studied millions of hours of video…
  • Put a lot of work into the cages…

…IF we stripped them of their primary credibility indicator(s), THEN I ask:

  • What do they actually know and why?
  • Who or what have they studied? (i.e. Physics, Bio-Mechanical, Psychology, Exercise Science sources? Not baseball or softball)
  • What kind of consistent or inconsistent results do they get with their hitters? (Truthfulness in scale is key).  Look, a blind squirrel can find a nut every once in awhile, but it’ll inevitably starve.

Don’t worry, we’ll get deeper into the Credibility Fallacy in CHAPTER 3, so you can navigate the red flags effectively.  Look, Fixed Mindset coaches are stuck, and what I find is they regurgitate the same information they’ve been taught in the past without question. They may even say their hitting philosophy is a science, but it’s not.  It’s a pseudo-science, or what I like to call a “because I said so ‘bro-science'”.  Their copy and duct-taped together hitting philosophy reeks of uncertainty. It’s a paper tiger.  A house built on sand.  Their hitters deserve better information…and can be better. We’ll get more into that in CHAPTER 4.  Consider one of my favorite quotes by Dan Farnsworth:

“Doing a thing and understanding a thing do not automatically qualify you to teach a thing.”

It’s so true!  I can tell with 100% confidence that I have not:

  • Played Professional baseball,
  • Coached for over 30 years (yet!),
  • Studied millions of hours of only the best hitters on video, or
  • Put in as much work in the cages as others say they do…

So, why listen to me?  Because of:

  • What I actually know,
  • Who and what I’ve studied (outside baseball/softball circles), and
  • The predictably positive results my hitters are getting.

We’ll drill deeper into these points in the following CHAPTERS.  What I think is VERY IMPORTANT to know, for those who never played ball past Little League or 12u softball, is that you too can be a hitting expert.  Yes!  You don’t need professional playing experience (or even college!).  You can be new to coaching.  You don’t have to clock in millions of hours of video analysis.  You can even be new to instruction.

All you need is a passionate curiosity to learn and apply the human-movement principles that are validated by REAL science, NOT “bro-science”, to hitting a softball or baseball.  I’m going to teach you how to conduct fool-proof swing experiments, so that you can use your findings to show people who won’t take you seriously.  You’ll learn my swing experiment blueprint in CHAPTER 4.  And I’m going to break it down for you, so don’t worry if you didn’t do well in science class.

CHAPTER 5 will take you through the science of springy fascia and spinal-engine-mechanics. This is the WHY behind the methods we discuss in the later chapters. You can skip this one, but please return to it later, so you have ammunition for Fixed Mindset coaches who won’t believe the predictably positive results your hitters are getting.

CHAPTERS 6 through 11 will take you through the practical methods my hitters are using to consistently triple, or at least double, their body-weight in batted ball distance.

Lastly, CHAPTER 12 will walk you through how to train these newly-learned hitting techniques. I believe the training is as important, if not more critical, than the mechanics you’ll be learning in this book.  To give you an example of the value, I had a third-year pro-hitter drive up from San Diego (about a 7-hour drive, one way, without running into Los Angeles traffic), comment that he thought the training by itself was worth the trip! And he spent a small fortune in time and money to work through a whole weekend with me.

What You’ll Learn

Here’s what you’re going to learn in the upcoming pages:

  • Why hitting philosophy fails and principles that are validated by science succeed.
  • Why you shouldn’t make video analysis FIRST-priority, when modeling elite hitters.
  • What 30+ year coaching experience and pro players won’t tell you, and how the information source you focus on can dramatically cut down your learning curve.
  • How to become a hitting expert when you’ve never played higher than Little League.
  • There’s a BIG advantage to learning how the body actually loads (and it’s not what you’re thinking).
  • A simple method that helped Babe Ruth to consistently crush the ball with some of the heaviest bats ever used.
  • Elite-hitters revealing ways to hit balls with High-Exit-Speeds, swing after swing, using three elements even a 4-year-old can understand.
  • At last, the secret to transitioning grooved batting practice swings into game at-bats is revealed.

And to reiterate what’s new in the 2nd edition of this book:

  • This Preface addressing major objections to the first edition,
  • “How to drill” section at end of each Principles Chapter complete with drill video, sticky coaching cues, and STEP-BY-STEP breakdown to teach,
  • Appendix Chapters covering: science of successful learning, how to transition practice into game swings, is rotating back hip through zone necessary for power, how to smooth out ineffective swing paths, & hitting low in the zone and to opposite field,
  • Updating of each Chapter, new sticky coaching cues, metaphors to help get concepts, condensed paragraphs (more formal paragraph structure and less like I write for the blog), less bold font, and fixing of minor spelling mistakes,
  • And lots more links to free blog posts to see elite MLB hitting examples applying the principles.

WHY is this Important to you now?

There are four reasons…

Most “hitting stuff” we’ve learned is DEAD WRONG. It’s based off philosophy, theory, and “bro-science”, and with the technology available today, we can test the value of those hitting philosophies.

Nowadays, everyone seems to be Hitting Guru #57. How do we differentiate between an effective versus an ineffective approach? This is important because it’s not how PRO someone is, how many years of coaching they’ve accumulated, how many man-hours of video analysis they’ve done, or even how many hours of lessons they do in a given year. There are hitting academies out there teaching wonky information, working with literally thousands of hitters in a year, and one parent would be better off wiping their butt with the money. Don’t worry, we’ll help you navigate these waters.  You can’t argue with REAL science and predictably positive results.

“Confusion” between mechanical causation equaling correlation. Can you put backspin on a ball by swinging down on it (i.e. negative barrel Attack Angle)? Yes, you can. But, will the hitter consistently get the ball in the air that way? No. Unless you’re playing slow pitch softball.  In the case of hard-ball and fast-pitch softball, swinging down does not consistently put the ball in the air with authority, and IS NOT what the best are REALLY doing.

Big difference between what’s “real” and what’s “feel”. When Mike Trout says he works at ‘getting on top of the ball’, that doesn’t mean Johnny’s coach should go out and share with his team this method. In fact, Mike Trout says this to himself to protect his swing from HIS natural tendency to upper cut too much, like he says to ‘chicken wing’. The cues that MLB and professional hitters use are often lost in translation to the coach, and inevitably with the younger-end user.  We can use these cues too, but it depends on specific hitting adjustments.  You’ll discover what’s referred to in psychology as “Paradoxical Intention” in the Appendix Chapters.  This will teach how to make educated hitting adjustments.

Is the Information in this Book for you?

First, we WILL NOT be talking about:

  • ‘Squishing bugs’,
  • ‘Swinging down on the ball’, OR
  • ‘Loading & exploding the hips’ (this is harmful to your lower back by the way).

Second, this is specifically about how to apply human movement ‘rules’ to hitting a moving ball, and not about hitting ‘philosophies’, ‘theories’, or ‘bro-science’ that DO NOT predictably work in LIVE case studies at scale.

Third, the information in this book is based on the success my personal hitters have had both online and locally, plus literally thousands of coaches who’ve duplicated the results, if not bettered them, by using this system.

The House Rules

Enough of what this book is promising, now let me be clear about what it’s not…

  1. No “get powerful hits, quick”.
  2. No “do nothing, and crush the ball”.
  3. My results aren’t remotely typical.
  4. Most people who buy ANY “consistent power” hitting product, will not have success with getting consistent power in their hitters.

I addressed this previously, but it bares repeating…

Some of my 12u hitters and younger, weighing around 100-pounds, don’t start consistently driving the ball 300-feet right away. Some take 2.5 years to get to consistency, whereas before they do it “every once in awhile”. Other hitters, although rare, achieve this in less than 6-months.  It depends on good old fashion effort, work ethic, and the athlete’s ‘learn-ability’.

I encourage my hitters to work hard on the things we go over, and to keep on trying even after hitting major obstacles.  Most young hitters don’t do that. They just show up for a lesson or gather information and “get ready” to work…or they throw in the towel and quit at the first bump in the road.  It took a lot of hard work for my hitters to start seeing favorable hitting outcomes.  Interestingly, it was the work with my hitters that gave me the inspiration to write this book.

The bottom line is, I have no idea what your results may or may not be.  And it’s not my place to try to predict that. Your success is up to you, as always.

In following, you’re going to discover why the coach who understands human movement principles, can successfully select his own hitting drills. But the coach who tries drills, ignoring principles, will have trouble optimizing hitters.

 

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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Trevor Story 505 Foot Homerun

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Trevor Story 505 Foot Homerun: The Biggest Lies From Hitting Guru #57

 

Was it because of Coors field?  High altitude is part of the equation, adding about 5% to batted ball distance according to bat-ball collision expert Physicist Dr. Alan Nathan.  CLICK HERE, scroll down, and read under the subhead, “Effect of Altitude on Batted Baseballs”.  So the Trevor Story 505 foot homerun at Fenway would have landed about 480-feet from home plate. Still, not bad.

Trevor Story 505 Foot Homerun

Trevor Story 505 Foot Home run: check out him ‘showing those numbers’ & ‘hiding those hands’! Photo courtesy: MLB.com

Corked bat? CLICK HERE for a paper Dr. Nathan wrote studying the effects of corked bats on batted ball distance and concluded:

“Although the present study shows that corked bats do not result in longer home runs, it makes no statement about whether home runs might be hit more often with a corked bat.” – Top of page 577

Body mass?  According to Baseball-Reference.com, Trevor Story is 6’1″, 210-lbs.  The Trevor Story 505 foot homerun is the longest dinger in Statcast history, at Coors field, surpassing Giancarlo Stanton’s (6’6″, 245-lbs) record by 1-foot at the same ballpark.  Bat speed is a better indicator of batted ball distance than body mass…Dr. Alan Nathan said this to me over the phone.

Any other excuses out there besides good effective hitting mechanics? 😛  ANY hitter with the optimum launch angle, and hitting the right part of the bat is one of the best starts.

Hitting Guru #57 will have a hard time explaining some of the things in the above Trevor Story 505 foot home run video analysis.  We’ll be answering the question of how the Trevor Story 505 foot homerun happened:

  • Trevor Story 505 foot homerun (and the other 2 other dingers he hit in the same game),
  • Legs v. Spinal Engine – legs not necessary for locomotion, they’re an enhancement,
  • Locomotion of a quadriplegic,
  • Water Polo throw, and
  • Anthony Rizzo homer falling down.

Here are some Hitting Performance Lab posts mentioned in the video:

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