Zepp Swing Experiment: Here’s a Quick Way to Fix a Flat Bat at Landing (and WHY!)
Discover fundamental how to coach quick hands, contact, and power hitting drills, techniques for beginners, and basic youth drills for baseball and softball players in the 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 year old age range, in 2022. This Zepp swing experiment targeting a ‘flat’ bat at stride landing is VERY age appropriate for the ages previously mentioned.
Fundamental Baseball Question: How Does a Flat Bat at Landing Effect Bat Speed, Ball Exit Speed, & Time To Impact?
Using the Zepp (Labs) Baseball app and Pocket Radar Ball Coach, I wanted to employ the Scientific Method to analyze how a hitter’s “Flat Bat at Landing”, or toe touch, adds or takes away from keyswing performance metrics including Bat Speed at Impact, Time To Impact, Attack Angle, and Ball Exit Speeds.
Let me define what I mean by ‘Flat Barrel’ versus a ‘Vertical Barrel’…
A ‘Flat Barrel’ at landing is anything less than a 30-degree angle (like Cargo in the above video as an example),
A ‘Vertical Barrel’ at landing is anything more than a 30-degree angle.
Now that we’ve defined the parameters, let’s look at the…
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Notice where the “dot” is drawn on the two static images left side, and where it’s drawn on the two dynamic images right side. Photo courtesy: GymSmartsCommunity.com
My background research is more experiential, rather than academic.
I have hitters do a mini-experiment by holding the bat in their bottom hand, laid flat (parallel to ground) over their back shoulder. And then ask them to hold the bat, using the same hand, but vertical. I then ask them which bat position is heavier/lighter? Of course they say the vertical bat is lighter. I then ask WHY? And I get a few different answers…
What is the fundamental baseball answer? Because we’re not adding or taking weight away from the bat by doing this…
It has to do with center of mass of the bat in relation to the hitter’s. A ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ pushes its center of mass behind the hitter’s. A human’s center of mass is generally around the belly button. To find the bat’s center of mass you can balance it between your thumb and forefinger.
I’ve also observed when adjusting a hitter’s ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ to a more ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’, there’s a bump in Ball Exit Speed, which I measure at the beginning (before instruction is given) and end of a hitting lesson. My hitter’s also share they feel quicker to impact, have a little more ‘pop’, and that it’s easier getting the ball in the air.
It’s also interesting to note that I see quite a bit of early barring of the front arm when the hitter lands with a flat barrel. I also see the hitter “wrapping the bat” around their head. In my opinion this is a compensation to manipulate the shifted center mass of the bat from behind the hitter.
CLICK HERE to watch this fundamental baseball video on how to fix a ‘Flat Bat at Impact’.
Hypothesis
Look at the difference in bat angle at landing between Carlos Gonzalez (left) – “Flat” and Cody Bellinger (right) – “Vertical”. Just because a Big Leaguer does it doesn’t mean it’s effective or optimized. Oftentimes they succeed despite ineffective mechanics. Photos courtesy: MLB.com
In support of the Background Research above, I’m hallucinating that we’ll see a bump in Bat and Ball Exit Speeds, in addition to a reduction in Time To Impact. I also think that we’ll see a more positive move in the barrel’s Attack Angle.
Flat Versus Vertical Bat at Landing Experiment
Equipment Used:
Zepp Baseball app (to measure Bat Speed, Hand Speed, Time to Impact, & Attack Angle),
Yellow dimple ball feedback markers to keep starting footwork the same = bat length…I used two yellow dimple ball markers to make my stance setup consistent. One was placed inside my back foot, close to the plate. The other was placed one bat’s length ahead of the back marker.
Backspin tee was set one baseball’s length behind the front feedback marker, and tee height was about mid-thigh
We stayed as consistent as we could with keeping the ball height and depth the same for most swings.
I broke each swing down into a couple steps: 1) Get to landing, 2) Pause for 2-secs, and 3) Swing. The reason for this was to control the bat either flat or vertical at landing.
The two tests in the swing experiment were counter-balanced. Which consisted of eight blocks of 25-swings done in the following order ABBA BAAB. ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ was letter ‘A’, and ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’ was letter ‘B’. 200 total swings were completed in the experiment, 100 per test. Counter-balancing helps remove the “getting tired” and “warm up” factors.
The objective of ‘Front Facing Swings’ was to start the ‘belt buckle’ pointing at the pitcher, and to minimize pelvic movement.
Fundamental baseball Experiment Day-1 on 7/5 we completed 150 total swings (75 ‘Flat Barrel at Landing’ & 75 ‘Vertical Barrel at Landing’). Experiment Day-2 on 7/10 we completed 50 swings (25 ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ & 25 ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’).
We had to break the 200 total swings into two days, with the second day coming 1 week later, because of time constraints.
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Data Collected (Zepp Baseball App & Ball Exit Speed Readings):
‘Flat Bat Swings’ Days 1 & 2 side by side…
Flat Barrel at Landing swing averages of the averages: 76-MPH Bat Speed at Impact, 26.5-MPH Hand Speed Max, .209 Time To Impact, -32* Bat Vertical Angle at Impact, & 8.5* Attack Angle.
‘Vertical Barrel Swings’ Days 1 & 2 side by side…
Vertical Barrel at Landing swing averages of the averages: 76-MPH Bat Speed at Impact, 27-MPH Hand Speed Max, .206 Time To Impact, 30.5* Bat Vertical Angle at Impact, & 8.5* Attack Angle.
CLICK HERE for the Ball Exit Speed Google document. The findings?
Flat Barrel at Landing AVERAGE Ball Exit Speed = 79.01-MPH
Vertical Barrel at Landing AVERAGE Ball Exit Speed = 81.08-MPH
Difference = 2.01-MPH Ball Exit Speed bump with more Vertical Barrel at Landing
Data Analysis & Fundamental Baseball Conclusion
Zepp data analysis comparing the averages of averages:
We saw NO change to Bat Speed at Impact between the two swings,
We saw a 0.5-MPH boost to Hand Speed Max when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw a .003 second reduction in Time To Impact when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw a +1.5-degree increase to Bat Vertical Angle at Impact when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw NO change to the Attack Angle between the two swings, and
We saw a 2.01-MPH increase in Ball Exit Speed when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’.
Based on the above Data Analysis it looks like my Hypothesis was proved right when it came to a boost in Hand Speed Max and Ball Exit Speed, and decrease in Time To Impact, but wrong when it came to Bat Speed at Impact and Attack Angle. I think the increase in Ball Exit Speed can be attributed to the decrease in Time To Impact.
When we see ineffective movement at the Big League level, we have to understand that these high level hitters are succeeding despite ineffective movements, not because of them.
Grab 'Finger Pressure' Video
Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/carlos-gonzalez-cody-bellinger-flat-versus-vertical-bat-e1499868435121.png265450Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-20 09:00:492022-04-20 19:51:21Fundamental How To Coach Quick Hands, Contact, & Power Hitting Drills, Beginner Techniques, & Basic Drills For Youth Baseball And Softball 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Year Olds In 2022
Part-3: How To Develop Powerful Wrist Snap Like Hank Aaron (Is Devastating Against Pitchers)
Youth hitting consistent power trainer for baseball, softball, and senior league softball located in Fresno – Clovis, CA. Discover wrist snap batting drills, techniques, and training for home use. This video is a sneak peak at a 1 on 1 private lesson, and we also do online lessons as well.
In case you missed the background information of Part-1,
Zack is a 14-year-old hitter from Visalia, California, which is approximately an hour drive from me, one way. And this is the first time I worked with him since about a year ago. We’ve had about half a dozen session together in total. And what I like about Zack is he asks a lot of really good questions during our sessions.
And before we started this session, Zack was having a challenge with hitting line drives. He was either hitting the ball on the ground or non-productive balls in the air.
DISCLAIMER about the video:
Fortunately the video quality is great because Dad used his GoPro, but unfortunately I wasn’t mic’d up, so the audio isn’t like some of my other videos.
We’re at a public High School on a Saturday afternoon, so there are other team noises, bird sounds, emergency vehicles, etc. going on in the background that can be distracting.
Sadly, a few coaches on the socials will be overly critical of this hitter, and I’m asking you to suspend judgement. The purpose of this video IS NOT about being overly critical of the hitter’s swing, it’s about the demonstration and use of sticky coaching principles.
Swing and coaching suggestions are welcome, but be nice coaches.
Now, for those coaches looking to learn and help their hitters get better…ONWARD…again!
A typically lesson I do, is organized like the following, from start to finish:
Dynamic warm-up,
Beginning Ball Exit Speed readings,
Record and analyze current swing,
Lesson, and
Ending Ball Exit Speeds readings.
Part-3 lands you towards the end of #4 above.
What you can look out for in above video
Training something new should feel goofy, that’s normal…if they feel no change in movement at the beginning stages of motor skill development, then they’re repeating the same old thing (about 0:45 mark)
The arch and hollow (hunched) positions in Gymnastics. “Hunch” can have a negative connotation, but reality says it’s a VERY SAFE position for a twisting spine to start in. CLICK HERE for a Zepp swing experiment that looked at the benefits of a “Hunched” spine. (about 1:55 mark)
Playing around with wrist snap variance using the target ankle resistance bands. It’s NOT a roll over, it’s like a “waggle” that golfers use pre-swing. Great defender against off speed and breaking pitches, AND increase BA by controlling the barrel. Keep main objective in mind: hit ball as hard and far as you can. (about 3:45 mark)
Working the Wrist Snap Variance Drill on the open field hitting targets. Hank Aaron was really good at this. Watch Hank Aaron video below and watch his wrist action at impact… (about 6:15 mark)
The Frog Tape bat…barrel awareness. Focusing on hitting a certain part of the barrel AND hitting it in a specific direction or target. (about 11:20 mark)
Discussing how switching bats between rounds forces a hitter to focus on adjusting their timing. Heavier/top heavy bats have to start sooner…lighter/balanced bats can start later. (about 15:30 mark)
Zack made the observation that Finger Pressure makes the Wrist Snap Variance Drill easier to feel. (about 17:30 mark)
Also, when it comes to sticky coaching principles, notice how I:
Move the tee positioning around after every swing (both high/low and inside/outside),
Vary soft toss heights and depths,
Vary mechanics on certain swings in a 5-swing round (I call these Varied Rounds), or practice one thing the whole round (I call these Block Rounds),
Ask quite a few feel, visual, and/or audio feedback questions AFTER round is over (think of it like a hitting quiz),
Keep my mouth shut during the 5-swing round(little to no feedback from me),
Don’t make Zack take a lot of swings during our time together,
Chunking certain movement together, so they don’t seem like separate pieces,
Have him change his bat size during rounds, and
Work with him on simplifying the juggling of a couple different mechanical cues.
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/over-shoulder-look3-blog.png401600Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-19 09:00:262022-04-20 04:56:21Youth Hitting Power Trainer For Baseball & Softball? | Discover Wrist Snap Batting Drills, Techniques, And Training At Home Sneak Peak | 1 On 1 Private Or Online Lessons In Fresno – Clovis, CA
“The locked out front knee is a more consistent method that results in a hard transfer of weight creating more power and less variation since it is the same every time. Coach Joe Brockhoff’s system is a great example.
I teach to lockout the leg when the heel hits the ground. I think if this method is causing too many ground balls there is something else going on with it. With the proper weight distribution and rotation throughout it is the most natural and consistent method.”
And I mostly agree. However, I think there’s some confusion about what the front knee position should look like at landing.
In this baseball hitting mechanics for youth post, I want to address my top-6 reasons for landing bent:
Engaging springy fascia in the legs,
Pitch adaptability to off speed pitches,
Shrinking the strike zone,
Using Ground Reaction Forces,
Getting eyes closer to lower pitches in the zone, and
How humans change directions and planes of motion…
And, at the end, I wanted to clean up WHY I like my hitters to straighten their front leg at impact, however please note this IS NOT an absolute, especially when looking at a hitter like Cody Bellinger (he’s not the only one who does this)…look at the catcher’s glove which shows pitch location (down)…
1. Engaging Springy Fascia in the Legs
Watch Thomas Myers, from his book Anatomy Trains, explain the importance of fascia (said like Fashia).
If you aren’t analyzing baseball hitting mechanics for youth based on the rules of fascia, then you’re wasting your hitters’ time.
It’s not enough to base the swing off firing fast twitch muscles fibers. Repeatable power is in how we load fascia and fast twitch muscles.
For our purposes in this post, a hitter MUST be bending the knees at landing to engage, what Thomas Myers calls, the Spiral & Deep Functional Lines extending down as a stirrup under the feet.
My friend Lee Comeaux, who works with professional golfers out in Texas, has studied Thomas Myers’s book more extensively than myself, and he’s found the amount of bend in the knees at landing must add up to 45-degrees.
Same with the arms.
But my baseball hitting mechanics for youth point is, there has to be some bending in the knees at landing to activate the springy fascia contained in the legs. And the amount of bend will depend on the amount of Forward Momentum, and whether we’re talking a fastpitch or baseball hitter.
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Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
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In the above baseball hitting mechanics for youth video, I use Hanley Ramirez to demonstrate how important the bending of the front knee is to making timing adjustments to off-speed pitches. CLICK HERE for the full HPL post.
In his book Positional Hitting, Jaime Cevallos called the hitter bending into the front knee at landing, or to buy more time, the:
‘Cushion’ (normal timing), or
‘Double Cushion’ (off-speed timing).
JK Whited and Chas Pippitt of the Baseball Rebellion calls it ‘pushing the pause button’.
And we typically see this if a hitter is sitting fastball, and adjusting to off-speed or breaking balls.
3. Shrinking the Strike Zone
Watch the above baseball hitting mechanics for youth video I did February 13, 2014 of Barry Bonds ‘getting shorter’. It’s received over 47,789 views on YouTube. You can also find this ‘getting shorter’, OR shrinking the strike zone, approach with (pay attention to the action of their landing knee)…
Josh Donaldson
Jose Bautista
Mike Trout
Bryce Harper
And, Dustin Pedroia
Please do a baseball hitting mechanics for youth experiment for me…
Go into your bathroom with a bat (don’t worry, I’m not going to make you swing it)…
Get into your stance facing the mirror, as the pitcher…
Now, draw a line on the mirror just above your head, using a dry erase pen.
Okay, so now stride and land with a straight front leg… (make sure you have an athletic gap between your feet after striding).
Note the gap between where the top of your head is now, and the line you drew on the mirror.
Now, stride and land with a bent front leg,
How much of a gap there?
If you observe this little experiment with your hitters, you’ll see how we’re effectively ‘shrinking the strike zone’ by landing, what I call, ‘shorter’.
Grab 'Finger Pressure' Video
Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
Watch Chris Welch from Zenolink give a simplified background on Ground Reaction Forces (or GRF’s).
Basically, you push into the ground, and the ground pushes back, with equal and opposite force.
It’s VERY difficult to harness GRF’s when your knees are straight.
Try jumping as high as you can with straight knees.
Try running as fast as you can with straight knees (you’d look like Forest Gump with his leg braces on!!!) lol
Try defending a forward in basketball…
…a soccer striker…
…and an offensive Lineman on “the line” in football…
…with straight knees.
My baseball hitting mechanics for youth point is, you have to be athletic to hit. And landing with a straight front leg doesn’t allow the hitter to optimally use GRF’s.
This also goes for the hitter’s stance. I like my hitters to start with bend in their knees, regardless of the width of their feet.
5. Get Eyes Closer to Lower Pitches in the Zone
Taylor Gardner of the Backspin Tee brought this to my attention. Watch what happens to the first baseman’s head when receiving a throw…
The first base person strides forward toward the incoming ball, and bends the front knee (‘gets shorter’) to get the eyes closer to the ball.
A hitter MUST do the same thing, although the ball isn’t coming straight at them like the first baseman in the video.
The pitch is coming in sideways.
And to be more consistent with hitting the ball hard, we have to teach our hitters to bring their body – somewhat – down to the pitch’s level.
In other words, you don’t hit a low pitch consistently well by landing on a stiff front knee.
6. How Humans Change Direction & Planes of Motion
Pay attention to how Armanti Edwards and other NFL wide receivers change direction while doing a “Route Tree Session” with trainer Gari Scott…
Watch them run routes from a big picture point of view. In other words, not looking for any specific arm or leg angles.
Watch them ‘get lower’ when changing directions, or cutting.
They land on a bent plant leg, then push off the same leg, extending it, to accelerate again.
Three main planes of motion. Photo courtesy: goldsgymwebsterny.wordpress.com
There are three main human planes of motion:
Saggital – divides the body into right and left halves
Frontal (a.k.a. Coronal) – any vertical plane that divides the body into ventral and dorsal (belly and back), and
Transverse (a.k.a. horizontal plane, axial plane, or transaxial plane) – is an imaginary plane that divides the body into superior and inferior parts. It is perpendicular to the coronal and sagittal planes.
In changing from one plane of motion to the other, there MUST be a ‘getting shorter’ of the body’s stature, as the athlete plants and pushes off the ground to change directions.
The wide receivers above are changing from the Sagittal (front to back) to Frontal (sideways) Planes. While a hitter changes from the Frontal (sideways) to Transverse (rotational) Planes.
In other words, just like an NFL wide receiver goes from a bent plant leg to straight at push off, a hitter MUST go from a bent landing leg, to a straight leg at ‘push off’. You don’t see these wide receivers keeping a ‘slight bend’ at the end of their push off.
So this brings me to the million dollar baseball hitting mechanics for youth question,
Grab 'Finger Pressure' Video
Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
CLICK HERE for a Zepp experiment I did where I looked at the Discus technique of ‘blocking’. ‘Blocking’ is basically the action of going from a bent front leg at landing, to straight at impact.
I took 100 swings landing bent versus landing straight with the front leg…
Results?
As you can see, landing bent with the front leg, then moving to straight at impact, added an average of 6-mph of bat speed!
CLICK HERE for another HPL article I did on ‘blocking’ analyzing Edwin Encarnacion’s swing.
Okay, so now that you’re following me on this,
Let’s look at the function of the front leg at impact, and WHY I choose to teach my hitters to straighten it versus keeping it bent…
Homer Kelly wrote The Golfing Machine. He was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing during the Great Depression, and fell in love with golf, and applied his engineering principles to the golf swing.
About ‘Knee Action’ Homer Kelly says:
“The slant is up in the direction of a straightened Knee. The slant of the Hips affects the degree of the Hip Turn. Actually, the primary function of Knee Action – as with Waist Bend – is to maintain a motionless Head during the Stroke.”
There’s a lot going on in that statement that you can run with…
But did you catch the bolded part?
We slant our body up in the direction of the straightened knee. And this is assuming we’re working with enough bend in the back knee during the turn.
In other words, the pitcher is throwing downhill, and also yes in fastpitch the ball is falling down by the time it reaches the last 20% of ball flight.
Photo from “The Science of Hitting”, book by Ted Williams
So if the hitter wants to be consistent, they MUST match the downward pitched plane with a positive barrel attack angle (barrel traveling up to impact), not negative (or down).
And according to Homer Kelly, the front knee must get to straight before impact, in order to slant the hitter (or golfer) up.
This is WHY I teach my hitters to land bent, then straighten the front leg at impact. Big Leaguers don’t all do this of course.
There are many BIG slugger examples of keeping a slight bend in the front knee at impact, Mark McGwire and Mark Teixeira to name a few…
But I work with A LOT of smaller hitters that can’t afford to be mechanically ineffective at driving the ball. I base my hitting program on human movement principles that are validated by science. Not on theory, philosophy, or what I think is right or wrong.
I hold my hitters’ swings to a higher standard. A standard that’s validated by science.
Grab 'Finger Pressure' Video
Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/planes-of-movement1.jpg18722268Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-16 09:48:402022-04-16 16:48:35Proper Front Foot Stride, Knee, Leg Position When Batting In Baseball & Softball | Hitting Drills To Keep Feet Still During Swing
Mickey Mantle: How To Increase Batted Ball Distance When You’re Not Throwing A Javelin?
Check out Mickey Mantle’s bat lag. Photo courtesy: LegendaryAuctions.com
This post looks into Mickey Mantle’s left handed swing, hitting home runs. We do swing analysis, look at his height compared to current players, strength, and share a bleacher report article with his switch hitting left right split stats. We’ll also compare his swing principles to an Olympic Javelin thrower!
Since publishing the YouTube video, it has amassed over 148,241 views and 500 video “Likes”.
The basic premise of the above video is to compare Mickey Mantle’s right handed swing mechanics to Czech javelin thrower, Jan Železný’s throwing technique. Jan is a world and Olympic champion and world record holder. He also holds the top five javelin performances of all time…according to Wikipedia.
In the video, I brought up my favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quote many of you have seen me post before:
“As to the methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.“
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
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And, some of The Mick’s dingers have been the talk of folklore, claiming to have traveled over 600-feet!
Although with the computation of Metrics now, as Christopher Harbour, a YouTube reader commenter on this particular video, put it:
“The farthest official home run in MLB history was hit by Babe Ruth in Detroit at a distance of 585ft. Mickey’s longest shot was 510Ft. It was often claimed to be much farther but that distance was the distance AFTER the ball rolled. This info is proven by SABR historian Bill Jenkinson.”
Whatever the case, it’s still amazing that a guy of Mickey Mantle’s stature, can hit a ball over 500-feet! We don’t see Giancarlo, Miggy, or Trout doing that.
And by the way, everyone thinks Babe Ruth was this hulking mass of a guy…he was only 6’2″, 215-pounds. And according to the above comment, launched the longest dinger 585-feet!
So what was Mickey Mantle doing mechanically making him so special that we as coaches should be teaching our younger hitters?
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
Click the button below to access the FREE video that's been downloaded over 30K times!!
Mickey Mantle on the Un-Weighting Principle (or Forward Momentum)
Look at Mickey Mantle’s shifting foot pressure… Photo courtesy: http://s685.photobucket.com/user/BillBurgess
I said in the video that The Mick’s back knee wasn’t floating over his ankle, but that’s simply not true. This was knowledge residue from past baseball experts I was listening to at the time.
What Mickey Mantle did really well was shifting his foot pressure.
We can see from the moment he lifts his stride foot to that foot touching down that his foot pressure looks like this:
Back foot pressure – is on the outside, and
Stride foot pressure – is on the inside.
This is similar to a story one of my readers, Stephen Reid, shared about prolific golfer Ben Hogan (5’9″, 145-pounds), saying in an email:
“A friend of mine worked at Shady Oaks in Dallas where Hogan played and practiced. Towards the end of Mr. Hogan’s time of ‘grinding it out of the dirt”, he was allowed the opportunity to sit and watch him hit balls. He said that Mr. Hogan started talking about the stance, and he stated that the way he thought it would come to pass in the future would be that both feet at address would both be turned slightly towards the target- 30 to 45 degrees. By turning the right foot in at address, the golfer would essentially be putting a governor on his/her right side.
He also reasoned that by doing this, the player would create the tension and brace with the right side and would create a strong coil that would not allow for any “over-coiling or over-swinging”. Therefore, you would be presetting the coil or brace of the right side in a controlled manner and would not allow oneself to overturn in the backswing. Conclusion was that the energy from a strong brace and controlled coil, the golfer would create greater energy in the release of the right side while creating greater swing speeds through impact.”
As Mickey Mantle’s stride foot lands the foot pressure shifts as follows:
Back foot pressure – moves to the inside, and
Stride foot pressure – moves to the outside.
Mickey Mantle is also most certainly picking up his stride foot and leading with his hip forward. Just pick out a point of reference in the background, and track how far his hip moves forward. He’s effectively ‘un-weighting’ his bat, or getting a “head start”, to make the transfer of linear momentum into angular (or rotational) easier.
And we can clearly see the Javelin Thrower, Jan Železný, using forward momentum sprinting down the track before slinging his “arrow” A LONG WAY.
The Catapult Loading System
The ‘Springy X Pattern’ I developed through reading the book Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers. Watch the following FunctionalPatterns YouTube video of Thomas Myers talking about the concept of Tensegrity, or Tension Integrity:
It’s the idea that there are compression and tension forces acting within the body at all times. In the Mickey Mantle video, I talk about imagining a big ‘X’ on his chest and back…connecting one shoulder to the opposite hip. The fascial lines are a little more complicated than this, but let’s take a general look at how this works…
When Mickey Mantle pre-loads his torso – before turning – we see his lead shoulder come down and in towards his back hip (one leg of the ‘X’ shortens), while the rear shoulder and front hip move away from each other (other leg of the ‘X’ lengthens). And the reverse is true on the backside.
This is evidenced by tracking his LEFT shoulder:
Pre-loads DOWN before Final Turn,
Unloads UP during the Final Turn, and finally
Reverses DOWN during the follow through to decelerate rotation.
CLICK HERE for an interesting article titled “Muscle Power Golf?!…NOT!” by Kelvin Miyahira (big thanks to Stephen Lowe for the link). It talks about how the swing – whether we’re talking baseball/softball or golf – IS NOT about activating fast twitch muscle fibers, but engaging the springy fascia. It’s a rant that I wish I did FIRST!!
Other Interesting Resources from Mickey Mantle YouTube Viewer Comments & More
Gabriel Pennington – “Mantle’s massive strength came from blue collar work, swinging a sledgehammer in a lead mine (on top of freakish genetics). Couple that with the workman mentality of your best never being good enough and you have a lethal combination for an athlete.”
koryguns – “3.1 seconds to first. Legend has it when he was a rookie in 1951 they decided to have a foot race among the team. Mantle beat everybody like they were standing still, puked, and apologized to Stengel for being out of shape.“
Also, here’s slow motion video of his left handed swing…
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
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Discover how to teach aggressive batting for a baseball or softball player that is struggling to pull the trigger. Oftentimes this comes in the form of freezing at the plate. This has mostly to do with the mental side of hitting, so we’ll discuss mental hitting drills to build confidence if a player may be hitting well in the batting cage or at practice but not so much in the games.
Here’s A Quick Way To Get Your Hitters More Aggressive At The Plate
I answer the reader question of: “How to get youth hitters to be more aggressive to hit and not look to walk?”
There were times when I was playing Fall Ball as a Sophomore in High School, privileged to be playing against Juco competition, that I found myself falling into an 0-2 hole quite frequently. I’d say to myself, “WTFudge, why have I been in the hole my last 4 AB’s?”
Then, I’d make a conscious decision to swing at the first pitch, no matter what the pitch was, or where it was located. In other words, I decided to make a bold adjustment, going from being too passive at the plate, to being too aggressive…
In hopes that with future at-bats was I would land somewhere in the middle. In those days it was just a feeling that I got. Fast forward to a few years ago, a good friend of mine Bob Hall, whose son Quin (a physical incarnate of Bo Jackson), had just finished performing at an MLB scouting camp in Canada. Quin was about 15 years old at the time, and Bob shared the advice Quin received from one of the leading scouts at this camp.
And this is what we’re discussing in the above video:
The Hunter mindset, versus
The Fisherman.
My goal with this video post is to give coaches a practical strategy to use with your hitters (that I use with mine), which will give them a solid game plan at the plate.
PLEASE NOTE: like anything else, you have to work with your hitters on this at practice, if they have any chance at getting better at it.
The Hunter Mindset
Vlad Guerrero – “The Hunter”. Photo courtesy: ProSportsBlogging.com
What does a hunter do?
They stalk their prey.
When would we use this mindset against a pitcher?
When they’re around the strike zone.
We SHOULD NEVER default to such hitting rules as, “NEVER swing at the first pitch.”
This is how I dug myself into holes during my career.
CLICK HERE for this Beyond the Boxscore article which asks the question, “Does hitting performance change based on the number of pitches a hitter sees during a plate appearance?”
Look at what happens to Batting Average in:
0-2,
1-2,
2-2, and 3-2 pitching counts…
Like a snake, strike fast when a pitcher is around the zone.
Think of some of the greatest Dominican, or Latin America, hitters. As the saying goes, “You don’t get off ‘the island’ unless you swing the bat.”
The Fisherman Mindset
Barry Bonds – “The Fisherman”. Photo credit should read DOUG PENSINGER/AFP/Getty Images (Newscom TagID: gettylive963981) [Photo via Newscom]
What does a fisherman do on the boat all morning?
Sit…AND wait.
When would we use this mindset with a pitcher?
When he or she cannot find the zone.
This approach requires a little more plate discipline not to swing out of the zone, AND
To know the strike zone.
Because when the pitcher throws one over, the hitter MUST be trained to jump on it.
Think about Barry Bonds from 2001 to 2004. According to Baseball-Reference.com, he walked a total of 755 times. That’s an average of 188 BB’s per year!
What’s more…
He hit a total of 209 homers, for an average of 52 dingers per year, in the same span. Last time I checked PED use DOES NOT help with plate discipline.
How about his consistency over that same time period?
Bonds’s Batting Average over those four years, starting with 2001 was: .328, .370, .341, and .362 respectively.
How about how many times he struck out?
We have power hitters like Chris Davis and Ryan Howard routinely striking out 200+ times per season.
How about Bonds…?
2001: 93 K’s
2002: 47 K’s (he struck out one more time than homered)
2003: 58 K’s
2004: 41 K’s (he hit more homers than struck out!!)
By the way, his 162-game average strikeouts are 83. 83!!! Over 22-years in the Big Leagues!
My point is, when Bonds got his pitch…he GOT IT!
He knew how to be a ‘fisherman’.
But can plate discipline be taught?
Sure it can!
It’s a muscle in the brain, and like any other body muscle, can be focused on and strengthened.
Here are my favorite 4 resources for training vision, tracking, and plate discipline:
Struggling to get your hitters ON-TIME in games? Discover HOW TO build effective laser-focused timing, so your hitters can be ON-TIME more often. These principles are validated by REAL science.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/How-To-Teach-Aggressive-Batting-For-Struggling-Baseball-Softball-Player.png423800Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-15 09:00:252022-08-15 17:34:31How To Teach Aggressive Batting For Struggling Baseball & Softball Player | Freezing At The Plate? Hitting Drills To Build Confidence If Hits Well In Cage And Practice But Not In Game
STOP Pulling Off The Ball, Increase Batting Average, and Boost Power By Using The Closed Stance?
What’s the best batting stance for power? How do we STOP a hitter from stepping in the bucket (out of the box) when hitting a baseball or softball in 2022? This post will shine light on how to see the ball better, keep the front shoulder in during the swing, and will suggest the best batting stance for power…
I know, I know,
Some well meaning coaches will think, “Well, a closed stance cuts off a hitter’s vision, and/or restricts hip movement”…
I get it. I used to believe the same thing a couple years ago,
…But what I found in my research was counter-intuitive, yet very promising for hitters.
Giancarlo Stanton using his “closed stance”. Photo courtesy: MLB.com
You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
My process is to chew and digest the science, observe how elite hitters apply the movements, and then try it out!
As you’ll soon find out, Giancarlo Stanton did his homework before making this particular change in his swing.
Since there may be many of you raising the same objections I started with, I wanted to discuss:
Addressing the above “Study of Planes” video, then we’ll move on to…
Analyzing the small change that has netted BIG results for Giancarlo Stanton this season.
Study of Planes
My good friend Seo Perales shared the above video with me a few years ago. By the way, he’s a multiple level black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu.
We love comparing notes because we both like to seek and explore human movement principles that are validated by science. The only difference is, in his line of work as a Jujitsu instructor, he wants to learn how to break down the body, and I’m into maximizing its effect.
The above video demonstrates the science of movement planes. What are considered weak and strong planes of movement from a Judo perspective.
I think you’ll find the video enlightening.
Now, you may be thinking, “A Judo video? Really?! What can I learn from a video about Judo?”
If you find yourself camped out in ONLY baseball or softball circles, then you’re missing out on A LOT of useful information that will take your hitters to a whole other level.
The video is very applicable to hitting.
Furthermore,
My good friend Lee Comeaux from Texas, who teaches professional and amateur golfers, also brought the power of movement planes to my attention about a year ago…
He told me draw an “X” in the batter’s box from opposite corners, and have the hitter stand on either line when hitting. He’s very versed in Thomas Myers’s book Anatomy Trains. He says hitters standing on one diagonal leg of the “X” encourages the springiness of fascia. He taught this to his 15yo daughter, who has hit over .600 the last couple years playing Fast-Pitch Softball in Texas, which is one of the hotbeds for both baseball and softball competition in the country. Oh and by the way, she also hit a half dozen homers as well.
The second part of this post, I wanted to share the tipping point in addressing Giancarlo Stanton’s new closed stance…
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You can go there and read the full article, but I wanted to tease out the quotes from Giancarlo Stanton (and some of David Adler’s commentary), and how Stanton arrived at the batting stance change…
“I just said I was going to try it. Honestly, I had about 30 minutes of work, maybe 45 minutes, before the game,” Stanton told MLB.com Sunday, when he crushed his Major League-leading 45th home run against the Mets at Citi Field. “And then 10 minutes before the game, I was like, ‘This feels more comfortable.'”
Stanton was already having a helluva year, so it’s interesting to me that he made the change when he did, typically a change like this follows a slump. However, this wasn’t a spur of the moment decision – like it sounds from that quote – he did his homework, which you’ll read about shortly…
“My best striking position is closed,” Stanton said. “It’s not smart to try to completely change something in the middle of the season. But if you are 100 percent committed to it … well, you’ve got to be. You’ve got to trust what you’re trying to do. If you change something, you want results right away, otherwise you try to go back. But I trusted it completely and let it ride.”
Sounds contradictory doesn’t it? To have the attitude that you can’t completely change something in the middle of the season – especially when you’re already doing well!! But then he says you MUST commit to giving the change time – that is – IF you’ve done your homework beforehand.
I’ve heard some parents and coaches say mid-season changes aren’t smart. I don’t like to think that way…WHY? Because if you don’t guide the hitter, the hitter will make changes on their own. And if they don’t get highly resourceful on the subject, then this could lead to DISASTER with all the junk hitting info on the net these days.
David Adler did fantastic research illustrating the evolution of Giancarlo Stanton’s closed stance in this Tweet:
You’ve seen how Stanton’s closed his stance by now. But it’s still cool to look at the different stages this season. All these are home runs pic.twitter.com/1xxFGgwIUL
“Stanton’s closing of his batting stance has correlated with his massive power surge. On June 18, he had 17 home runs in 282 plate appearances; since June 19, he has 28 in 236.
When Stanton hits from those positions [open or straight up], his front side can come open before the pitch arrives, leaving him exploitable.
The closed stance is a natural counter. When Stanton is already turned inward to start, his rotation drives him into the pitch, instead of causing him to fade away from it.”
By the way, for those not doing the math:
From start of season to June 18th, he hit 1 homer every 16.5 plate appearances, and
From June 19th on, he hit 1 homer every 8.4 plate appearances…
He cut his rate in half!!!! The closed stance was the ONLY change to his swing in that time frame, so this makes an interesting case study with a decent sample size of plate appearances. See for yourself with the following David Adler Tweet:
Even w/ Giancarlo Stanton’s new closed stance, his swing’s the same. But his feet force him in, help him stay on the ball. L: Aug. R: April pic.twitter.com/v5eXYpq5YB
David Adler adds some terms of comparision you may be familiar with…
“With his adjusted stance, Stanton has been driving the ball in the air more often. His rate of fly balls and line drives, per Statcast™, has risen from 41.5 percent prior to June 19 to 50.3 percent since. Stanton’s average exit velocity on those balls has increased from 97.6 mph to 100.8 mph, the highest in the Majors over that time.”
I don’t care that Stanton is a beast, if you increase your Line Drive and Fly Ball Rates (Launch Angle), and Ball Exit Speeds that much, you’ll make a lot of Ground-ball teams VERY VERY upset. Small hitters CAN and DO take advantage of this formula too. Statcast has given hitters the cheat codes to increase offensive productivity!
Furthermore, in the Adler article…
“[His stance] gets him in the position he wants to be in. It looks like it’s keeping him on the ball more, and he seems like he’s seeing it better,” said Christian Yelich, who’s played alongside Stanton as long as any current Marlin — since 2013, when he was 21 and Stanton 23. “Some guys have different problems than others. You go about fixing them or covering them in different ways. It’s all about feel. That’s what works for him, that feel.”
Look at that bold sentence once more because that is one of the most critical keys to this whole thing. Yelich is also tapping into making extreme adjustments, for example, Stanton’s challenge in the past has been pulling off, maybe because of when he tragically got hit in the face a few years ago. Whatever the reason, the extreme adjustment (a closed stance), helps him stay on the ball longer.
CLICK HERE for a video I did on how to make adjustments…the scientific term for this is “Paradoxical Intention”.
Now, here is where the article gets into the research that brought Giancarlo Stanton to the point of taking the stance change seriously…
“But at a level of the game where emulation is fundamental, success begetting imitators, Stanton found his prototypes: Nolan Arenado, Matt Kemp, Adrian Beltre, prominent hitters who do close off. He recognized past greats, too: Hall of Famer Andre Dawson works as a special assistant to the Marlins, and he hit with a closed stance in his playing career. Stanton didn’t copy the technical aspects of their batting stances, but their accomplishments gave him precedent to actually make the change himself.“
Some on Twitter have written this change off as a band-aide, avoiding a true fix. A true fix? Are you kidding me?! Cutting his home-run per plate appearance rate in half IS NOT a true fix!? Dude!! Success leaves clues. These people are saying Giancarlo Stanton is “playing to the slice”, where a golfer who chronically slices the ball will angle his body at setup so they don’t have to fix the real problem…which is not squaring up the club face at impact.
This is a poor attempt to protect an inflexible teaching philosophy, and sheer laziness on their part to get educated on their craft they claim to know a lot about. You instructors seriously think Giancarlo Stanton is not “squaring the ball up” at impact since June 19th and is just “playing the slice”? That is laughable. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
This is the problem I have with instructors with inflexible hitting systems…they’re WILLFULLY IGNORANT to experimenting with things that could push their hitters forward, especially movements validated by science. We’re ALL in this together, and we’re ALL helping hitters. It’s NOT about your ego or protecting “your brand” coaches.
But I digress…
Here’s some insight into Giancarlo Stanton’s thought process with the change…
“I just know the guys with success,” Stanton said. “Arenado and Kemp, those guys, you know you can have a high average with it. So that kind of gave me the green light to try it…I knew it could work. Not very many people did it. But I know people like Hawk and them did it in the old days — and it worked for them, too.”
The Bottom Line…
A day or two after re-tweeting Homer Bush’s Tweet about Giancarlo Stanton’s closed stance, I received this response from @Omaha_Outlaws4…
I understand your objections that a closed stance may cut off a hitter’s vision, and/or restricts hip movement. You’ve heard me talk a lot about “keeping the back foot sideways”, well, this plays right into that.
Matt Nokes is religious on restricting hip movement to the point of impact with keeping the back foot sideways. Homer Bush agrees in this interview. So are the Backspin Tee guys Taylor and Jarrett Gardner. LIGHT BULB! The closed stance does this naturally.
The main benefit of restricting hip movement at impact (includes keeping back foot sideways) that you’ll hear from Nokes, Bush, and the Gardner Brothers, is to keep the barrel in the hitting zone longer. This increases BA and Slug%.
Here’s my advice:
Chew and digest the science,
Observe how elite hitters apply the movements, and then
Try itout!
If it doesn’t work after giving it the ol’ college try, then toss it.
As many of you know, I will gladly eat crow and change my hitting system IF you can show me the science, swing experiments, and many elite hitting examples that I can’t ignore the issue.
This is an informal Part-1 to a Zepp swing experiment I’ll be doing on the Giancarlo Stanton closed stance in the near future. So stay tuned…
Grab 'Finger Pressure' Video
Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/giancarlo-stanton-closed-stance-e1503613446475.png338500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-04 09:10:442022-04-05 20:52:52STOP Stepping In The Bucket & Out Of The Box When Hitting A Baseball Or Softball 2022 | How To See Ball Better, Keep Front Shoulder In During Swing, & Best Batting Stance For Power?
Discover how to use the legs when hitting a baseball or softball in the 2023 year. Does a powerful swing depend on footwork, hitting against a firm front side or a straightened front leg, front foot, or do the hips play a big role. Learn batting drills to optimizing legs ARE NOT what you may think…
Answered: “How To Get My Kid To Stop Rising And For Him To Utilize His Legs More During Batting?”
Here’s what we cover in the above video:
Legs DO NOT equal power – water polo example,
What is leg function in swing & Adjusting to pitch height,
Distance between the feet equal more control over line drives,
GRF’s but not as much as you think,
Buying time – back foot sideways, directional force, & pushing the “pause” button, and
How to utilize the legs in the swing?
Hey, what’s going on. It’s Joey Myers again from ‘Hitting Performance Lab’. In this video, we’re going to answer the following reader question:
“How to get my kid stop rising, and for him to utilize his legs more during batting?”
Now this is a question that comes either through a form, survey, or email or even from my local lessons. The coaches out there in the high schools tend to meddle a bit too much, subscribing to the hitting myth that: ‘it’s all about the legs’, or ‘you need to use your legs more’.
In this video, I want to talk about what that means, and what is the function of the legs…
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Legs are only 20-30% of the consistent power equation, and most of that is in the function of the pelvis. If you’re a coach and power is the deficiency in your hitter’s swing, then it’s the spinal engine you want to focus on. The Catapult Loading System is where 70-80% of consistent power is found. The best example I like to share can be found in water polo.
What is Leg Function in Swing & Adjusting to Pitch Height
Now a couple things, one is they help to adjust to pitch height. If you’re looking at hitters like Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers, Joc Pederson of the Dodgers, Corey Seager, looking at Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs or some of the past players like Adrian Beltre or Pedroia. When the pitch is down in the zone, you tend to see them bend their front knee to go down and get it. They tend to do that consistently on those pitches, those lower in the zone pitches, not locking out their front knee like many teach.
I’ve seen these same hitters Rizzo, Bellinger, I’ve seen them with a bent front knee hit balls 440 to 460 feet. So, locking out the front knee IS NOT all about power. So, this raises a question of, if you want a hitter to use their legs more often because you think it has to do with power, well that is just not true – that’s not what we’re seeing. So, adjusting to pitch height, and you can study the hitters discussed as examples.
Distance between the Feet Equal more Control over Line Drives
Distance between the feet, this is a big one, that we can use the legs or utilize the legs to allow hitters to hit more line drives. The problem happens when, say if we are teaching our hitters to skip their back foot that they end up skipping their feet too close together. Or it could be they don’t stride that much. They don’t skip at all and, so their feet tend to be closer together. What we want is what you see with the top 50, top 100 hitters in the big leagues….
You’re going to see distance between their feet. So, whether that is a longer stride and their front foot moves away from their back foot. Whether they don’t skip but they don’t stride as much, you still see that wideness of their feet. You see them scissor, you see different things like that, but what they all have in common, all the top hitters in the big leagues, is they have distance between their feet. When the feet come close together, it makes the hitter taller, which this reader is asking how to keep the hitter from “rising”. The taller the hitter gets, the more in the ground the ball is gonna get hit.
If the hitter knows better, and they try and get the ball in the air, even though they have narrow feet during their turn. Then they’re gonna do something unnatural with their hands to try and get under it, which we don’t want them to do either. Because that is going to cause uppercuts. It’s going to cause inconsistencies in their swing path.
GRF’s, but not as much as you think
I just mentioned that hitters don’t have to lock their front knee out for power. When you think about ground reaction forces (GRF’s), they DO play a role. I’m not taking away from ground reaction forces, or saying “Oh, well the legs don’t do anything in the swing”.
No, they do. It’s about a 20 to 30% increase in power by using the legs. Most of that though is in the pelvis, and the rest in the spinal engine. I tell my hitters that the spinal engine, their combination of your shoulders and how you use them. Neck, shoulders, and pelvis account for about 70 to 80% of the power. That gets you to the wall. The legs help get you over the wall. So, you do need the legs, and it’s like what Dr. Serge Gracovetsky, the author of the ‘Spinal Engine’ said, that locomotion, the arms and legs aren’t necessary for locomotion, they’re an enhancement, they help enhance movement of the spinal engine.
So, we’re not taking away from the legs, the use of the legs, and how they can benefit the swing. It’s just that they’re an enhancement to the spinal engine, the taller the player is, the longer the levers, the more the force multiplier at the end of that lever. So, guys like Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are gonna have longer levers, if they lengthen those levers at impact. When we’re talking about the front arm shape, they’re gonna hit the ball pound-for-pound, apples-to-apples swings farther than Jose Altuve with the locked out-front arm. It’s just because the longer limbs enhance more, they’re more of a force multiplier.
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Buying Time – Back Foot Sideways, Directional Force, & Pushing the “Pause” Button
Buying time. So, the lower half, the legs can help buy time. Jamie Cevallos in his book ‘Positional Hitting’ way back, I think it was in the early 2000’s or mid to late 2000’s. He talked about this idea of a ‘Cushion’. You’ll see a hitter especially, if they’re looking fastball, and they see a curve ball or changeup. You’ll see them actually bend, sink, or cushion into their knees. They use their knees by bending them to buy them a little bit of time to get on time a lot better. It’s pushing the ‘pause’ button.
The other thing we want to do to buy time, is keep the back foot sideways.
We talked about this idea of directional force, Matt Nokes, he says that to hit a ball 400 feet, it takes 8,000 pounds per square inch of force in one direction. In hitting, both in baseball and softball, we have 90 degrees to work with. The other 270 degrees is in foul territory, it doesn’t do a hitter any good or a team any good to play in that 270 degrees outside of a fair territory. We have to stay between the 90s, we have to stay between the lines. If you think about a bowler, every single professional bowler out there, “scissors” their legs.
I’m not saying that all hitters have to scissor. I just give my hitters that option. But if you think about bowlers, they bowl between a two-foot Lane. I don’t know if that’s correct or not, but it’s somewhere around that. They also put a spin on the ball, so if they over rotated their lower half, not keeping their back foot sideways, they’re over rotating their pelvis. Then what you would see is that ball bouncing into the outside lanes. Try scissoring your legs, then try and open your hips up more, and it’s almost impossible.
You want to make sure that we’re creating directional force, and that’s another thing the legs do. They help us stay between that 90 degrees, and use all 90 degrees effectively. That comes in handy at the higher levels when hitting to the opposite field is a lot more important, and when we see shifts. Most of the time, hitters are not very good about going the other way. You can see the hitters that do go the other way very well, their batting averages seem to be higher.
How do we Utilize the legs in the Swing?
Now again, if it’s power you want, this isn’t the place. You want to look at the Catapult Loading System, and harness the power of the spinal engine. If you want a majority of power, 70-80% of consistent power.
Getting Shorter, Staying Shorter
To properly utilize the legs in the swing, you want to look at getting shorter and staying shorter. You see most great hitters when you draw a line over their head before they stride, by the time they get to stride landing, you’re gonna see distance between where they started, and where their head is at stride landing. You’re gonna see what we call ‘Getting Shorter’.
Then as they swing, it’s almost like that bottom ladder rung they create at landing, they tend to stay under that line. What we do is, we could take a PVC pipe. We can put it at the start of the hitter swing, before they even stride…we can put it maybe at their nose or their chin, and we can have them practice getting the top of their head under that PVC pipe. As they swing, stay under that PVC pipe. I’ve also had my hitters get next to a piece of furniture that’s about the same height, then have them stride, and get their head to where, now they’re under the top of that, say dresser or whatever, or picture frame, could be anything around the house.
When they swing, do some slow motion swings, and they stay under that line. That’s a way to get shorter, stay shorter.
Okay to “bend the knee”
It’s okay to bend the knee, I also get my hitters to do this if necessary. We don’t really practice this, but I tell them it’s okay to bend the knee, if the pitch is down in the zone.
Distance between the feet
Also working distance between the feet, you can either get them to stride longer, or you can cut down on their skip. We usually try to manipulate one of those two things or both things to get that distance between the feet, so that allows them to hit more line drives or at least control their line drives.
Keep back foot sideways
Then keeping their back foot sideways. You can use the VeloPro, they use it in pitching a lot. But in hitting, we use the VeloPro.
We tell the hitter to make sure they keep their back foot, their back heel on the ground as they swing. Almost like you would see with George Springer, or Altuve, or Mike Trout, any of those kinds of hitters or in softball Sierra Romero. They keep their back heel on the ground and it turns sideways, so they stay sideways. They do a better job of staying between those 90 degrees.
One last thing on keeping the back foot sideways, as mentioned, scissoring helps with that as well. So, that’s something that you can play around with, and let your hitters’ experiment with.
Hope this answered the question of “How to get my kid to stop rising, and for him to utilize his legs more during the swing”. Make sure that we’re swinging smarter by moving better, and before I let you go…
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/use-legs-more-in-swing-e1573766476979.png259500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-04 09:01:082023-01-04 19:58:27How To Use Legs When Hitting Baseball Or Softball 2023 | Does Powerful Swing Depend On Footwork, Firm Front Side Or Straight Leg, Front Foot, Or Hips? | Batting Drills NOT What You Think
Are you looking for 1 on 1 or small private group hitting lessons for baseball and softball players in the Fresno and Clovis, CA areas? Or are you looking for the best private online batting instruction and swing analysis in 2022? We do training for both adults and youth. This 20-min part-1 video webinar will give you a little taste of what we’re about…
Increase Consistent Power In 2-Weeks: Baseball Trainers Webinar Part-1…
Please text me at: 559-709-5808 (Joey) if you’re in Fresno, Clovis, or general California area to setup private 1 on 1 instruction or small private group lessons.
CLICK HERE for a link to Our Story and testimonials.
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Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.
The following is the transcript to the baseball trainers near me webinar… (about 18-minutes reading time)
Joey Myers 00:06
Get cozied up to technology over the years, because of the online thing, it is what it is.
Joey Myers 00:14
Let me let these people in. Welcome everybody that are coming in here. Some are coming in by phone.
Joey Myers 00:25
We have a lot of information today, I’m going to try and get through it really quickly, within 30 minutes. It will be good information.
Joey Myers 00:32
If you have any questions, I know, I have a lot of questions, a lot of great questions that Neil relayed over to me, from many of you. There’s a lot of them, like I said, 40-50, something like that.
Joey Myers 00:42
I’m going to do my best to really get through those quickly. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to go through them in depth, but if you have any questions after this, feel free to reach out and email me at Joey, J-O-E-Y, like Joey from friends, at hitting performance lab dot com, and I’ll have that at the end of this too. You don’t have to worry about downloading it into your brain. If you have any baseball trainers near me webinar questions, please, and I will answer them, have them ready.
Baseball Trainers Near Me – Our Story
Joey Myers 01:08
I think we’re adding them here. As they as they come in, we will add them. Today, we’re going to be going over something, about 2012, towards the end of 2012, is when my son, who’s now going to be turning eight in three days.
Joey Myers 01:28
When he was born, and the wife was doing the midnight, every two hours, three-hour milk feedings. I had a book called Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers, same last name. I’m sure on the family tree, we are related in some way, but I don’t know him like I would know my brother or my uncle or anything like that.
Joey Myers 01:50
Thomas Myers’ book Anatomy Trains was something that really changed everything, how I teach hitting, and how I’m going to teach hitting, and you will hopefully get to see a little bit of that in this baseball trainers near me presentation. So again, welcome.
Joey Myers 02:04
Thank you again, Neil, for putting this thing on and keeping you already to go. Hopefully, we can get a lot of information in and if you got to go, we’re going to record this, don’t worry, we will get that out. I’ll get the recording out to Neil and he can get it out to you guys, so let’s get going.
Joey Myers 02:19
This is the baseball trainers near me seminar, teleseminar, whatever you want to call it, how to teach 100-pound hitters who consistently drive the ball 300 feet. This was something that I didn’t just cook up and create a product and go. This came to me with the results that my hitters were getting, and hitters were soon to be, what other coaches were learning, and were applying with their hitters.
Joey Myers 02:44
Brought to you by Hitting Performance Lab, that’s my website. You got Neil over at MaxBP. One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, you might know that gentlemen,
“As to the methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is sure to have trouble”.
Joey Myers 03:15
Now this is an important quote, because it distinguishes between methods and principles, principles are rules. Think about playing Monopoly, you got to know the rules of the game before you can play the game. The principles to hitting can come in the form of bio-mechanics, physics, engineering, those are the principles that we tend to stick with.
Joey Myers 03:42
What we’re going to be talking about today, case studies, why legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation, discover the springy fascist secret, how to turn the spine into a safe ball crushing machine. We were talking about this with Neil, I talked to him yesterday on the phone, he was having some back pain with his baseball golf swing, and we’ll see if we can get to that in this, but I really want to focus on more of the power side, but we want to make sure the swing is safe, we will talk about that.
Joey Myers 04:17
Before we get there, let’s add some more people in here, probably have Neil do this. That’s right. Thank you for joining everybody. All right.
Joey Myers 04:35
The first question usually when you go to a wedding is how do you know the bride? How do you know the groom? So, how do I know MaxBP? Well, it first started with the Sandlot Slugger, and then MaxBP acquired Sandlot Slugger, and that’s where we connected, and I connected with Neil. That’s probably been, I don’t know, Neil can probably say on this five, seven years ago, maybe, that this happened. Is that about right, Neil?
Neil McConnell 04:58
Yes, that sounds right. We’ve been around about 11 years; Sandlot Slugger ran probably about 14 years ago. Somewhere in that mix.
Joey Myers 05:08
I know them because we started the starting lineup store dot com, where I started it back 2010. I was grouping a lot of the hitting aids that really love to work with my hitters that are proven, whether it’s through science or just data, and MaxBP, Sandlot Slugger at the time, the MaxBP is one of those hitting aids, I call them the best hitting aids in the world, on the planet. That’s how I know Neil and MaxBP.
Joey Myers 05:38
I played four years division one baseball at Fresno State from 2003, I just want to give just a little bit, I’m going to probably rush through this because I know most year, just cut to the chase. I think some of you that don’t know me, would be good to just take a gloss… Over 15 plus years in the corrective exercise industry, and those are some of the alphabet soup that I have certification wise.
Joey Myers 06:02
What’s funny is in college, I was a criminology major and I really fell in love with kinesiology. I wish if I did it over again, that’s what I would have done, but I’m mostly self-taught. I used to train people, I wrote a 2018 Amazon bestselling book, Catapult Loading System, that’s the title of this baseball trainers near me webinar.
Joey Myers 06:24
How to teach 100-pound hitters, how to consistently drive the ball 300 feet, and that started me on this journey that this stuff really works, because you really start to get in with a lot of other coaches reteaching the same information, and you really get to see this stuff.
Joey Myers 06:42
It’s not just me and my hitters, or my magic, but other coaches are able to do the same thing. I’ll have a cool little bonus for you guys, free bonus that you can grab this book at no cost on Amazon. At the end of this baseball trainers near me webinar, we’ll talk about that.
Joey Myers 06:58
We’ll get a couple more of these, about almost 30,000 online courses, lessons and books product sold online, over 333 blog posts at Hitting Performance Lab dot com, giving away over 8500 copies of Amazon best selling book…
Joey Myers 07:19
We applied human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting the ball. Like I mentioned, I played four years of division one baseball at Fresno State. I didn’t play pro ball, I didn’t play major league ball, but I played probably more than 95 and 98% of the baseball population.
Joey Myers 07:34
I don’t say that to brag, I say that most of the teaching that I teach has nothing to do with how I was taught. I do use some of that stuff. I do use some of the cues and different things like that in certain circumstances, but most of my stuff, if not all of it, is validated by science.
Joey Myers 07:53
The other thing, that we talked about is, I’m working on a new book that’s going to be published, we are working on January- February of 2021. It’s called “Swing Smarter: Science-Based Hitting Training, Built to Understand How, Why and the Reasoning Behind it”.
Joey Myers 08:09
Those are all things that we stand for and set us apart from a lot of the others that you’ve probably read, heard, watched out there, purchased their products, watched their YouTube videos.
Case Studies
Joey Myers 08:19
Let’s get started, case studies, so the only reason I got, I’m not here to brag, and I could give you a hundred other ones, but I want to give you an example since Neil talked about that there’s a huge smattering of different people on this call. There are parents that are just coaching their kids, there are team coaches that are coaching a group of kids from 14 to probably 30 plus in high school, professional and there are instructors out there like myself, there are probably academy owners out there.
Joey Myers 08:27
I just want to put it up front on the people that we help and how these human movement principles that are validated by science can help anybody.
Joey Myers 09:04
At 14, a 130 pound hitter that was driving the ball 385 feet and by the way that was with a hickory wood bat. That wasn’t the hot metals that everybody says, “oh they always try and explain these case studies away”. This particular hitter, I think it’s Texas Tech, he got a full ride to Texas Tech, Hudson White is his name. I do have a blog post on him that is featured on my blog, but he’s one of them.
Joey Myers 09:31
Sixty-seven-pound hitter at the time, soaking wet. I think that 67 pounds, he had eaten a Costco chocolate muffin, that I think after he went to the doctor to get that measurement or something like that, he might have even been easy, 65 pounds before eating that muffin, but he was hitting the ball 180 plus feet and this is consistent.
Joey Myers 09:50
I always tell my hitters that I’m just the compass and the flashlight in the dark, you have to walk the path, I don’t have to walk the path for you, I’ve done that on my own. I’ve walked the path plenty of times, but now it’s the hitters that have to do that. They are 90% of this. I’m just the 10% that gives them the right direction to go.
Joey Myers 09:50
She put a lot of hard work in that summer, and she gained 10 miles an hour and ball exit speed, hitting a softball. We have an indie baseball player, he was pretty much out, he came to me, and in one hour, we increased, obviously baseball, plus 10 miles per hour and ball exit speed.
Joey Myers 09:50
This isn’t just a one flash in the pan time, 90-pound hitter driving the ball 300 feet. D-1 college fast-pitch softball player, she was a Fresno State in a summer, now with softball because the balls bigger, many you know in softball obviously, in baseball you should know bigger softball, heavier, more mass, and to gain 10 miles an hour in one summer in two and a half months is a big deal. That’s what she did, a lot of hard work.
Joey Myers 10:52
Now those things when they gain that much, the reason why, is because the principles we’re going to talk about today, the consistently power principles, and they were almost nonexistent in their swing. If you have a hitter who is nonexistent, you’re going to see these big gains using principles seen in this baseball trainers near me webinar.
Joey Myers 11:07
If you see hitters that have maybe a couple of these or one of these, you’re not going to see that kind of a gain, just because they’re not starting from zero. I want you to understand that this isn’t the norm. It’s not the norm when somebody started from zero but it’s pretty close. It’s between six and 10 miles an hour ball exit speed when they’re starting from zero, it’s what I tend to see.
Joey Myers 11:28
55-year-old slow-pitch softball optometrist online lesson, and he’s working with me and doing pretty well. I don’t have any gains on that side of it, but it’s interesting and 71-year-old senior league baseball player, I worked with him this week, he came up, he read my book, he said, “It makes sense, I love what you wrote. A lot of the other books I’ve read are hard to understand”. He’s an attorney, by the way. Attorneys usually are really into that jargon.
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.
He picked it up, he said “I love it”, it kind of come up. He’s from Ojai, in California, he drove about three and a half hours. For two days, we worked, and we increased his ball exit speed by nine miles an hour in one hour.
Joey Myers 12:09
The first day we really hit a couple of these principles hard the first day, and he gained nine miles an hour, plus, he had a little bit of back pain when we first started, and we got rid of it in his swing.
Joey Myers 12:20
Again, that’s something maybe we’ll talk about if you guys want me to. I’ve worked with major leaguers, whether it’s in person or they bought my courses and we’ve talked online through some of this stuff, professional hitters I’ve worked with in person, college, Juco, high school, junior high school, little league and senior league.
Joey Myers 12:38
This goes across the board, it doesn’t matter what level they’re at, these principles work, whether they are male or female, they work, it doesn’t matter. Human to human is basically what it works for. And you’ll learn these principles in this baseball trainers near me webinar.
Joey Myers 12:49
If you want to get a lot of the testimonials, and that’s just probably, I think it’s 50 to 100 of them on my website, I have more, I just had been lazy to get them up, but if you go to hittingperformancelab.com, if you scroll all the way down into the footer, you’ll see the about page and you can click that, read a little bit about me, and then scroll down and there’s a ton of testimonials there. You can go check out more of those.
Why Legs Fail and Spinal Engine Succeeds in the Power equation
Joey Myers 13:11
Enough of that, let’s start to transition in this baseball trainers near me webinar… why the legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation. Learning principles from water polo, maybe those of you out there have had kids that played water polo or have hitters that have played water polo. I have cousins and hitters that also did it, and the idea came to me, I ran an experiment where I wanted to have my pelvis facing forward, I was using a knob tracker, like a Zepp on my on my knob for those of you who blast motion, same thing, swing tracker.
Joey Myers 13:44
I was facing my hips forward, but I was just turning my upper body to be able to hit the ball. The experiment didn’t really turn out really well, but I tried to do it because my mobility in my spine or my shoulders and my pelvis weren’t allowing me to actually do the experiment like I should.
Joey Myers 14:02
We had the backspin tee guys, I’m really good friends with them since I met them. They did an experiment where they were jumping up and hitting a ball off the tee and dropping off of a chair hitting a ball before they hit the ground. They were doing a couple different experiments like that, and what they found was when their feet weren’t on the ground, and they were just using their shoulders in their thoracic spine, the middle of their spine, that their base when they had their feet on the ground ball exit speed…
Joey Myers 14:27
They had single-A ball players, they had indies or rookie ball, they had golfers that are hitting the ball 300 plus yards or 400 yards now and they had an eight-year professional pitcher who hits pretty well too. They were doing the experiment and they found that about 90 miles an hour was their normal control when their feet were on the ground, but when they were jumping up hitting or when they were falling and hitting, and doing their other things trying to take the lower half of the equation that their ball exit speeds were about 70 to 80% of what their control was, which was interesting.
Joey Myers 15:06
They were about 60 to 70 miles an hour versus the 90 with their feet on the ground. It got me thinking, and then somebody said, “well, that’s not a good experiment”, because you know, if you really wanted to do this, you had to hang from a harness, where your feet were hanging in, and then you hit it like that, like, well, who’s going to do that? Unless you’ve got access to a harness, like that, maybe at a farm.
Joey Myers 15:25
I was thinking, what athletes do throw or hit, from that kind of a position? I did a blog post, and it was titled “Is rotating back hip through the ball necessary for power?” Think about this baseball trainers near me webinar thought experiment.
Joey Myers 15:43
I don’t know if anybody has actually done this. I probably have to do this next summer, but think about that the fastest water polo throw, if you googled it, what do you think of that speed of that water polo ball. As you can see, the size of that ball is like a volleyball, Croatian Olympic water polo, male athlete, 60 miles an hour.
Joey Myers 16:15
As you can see floating in water, they’re not going down to the bottom and pushing up, they’re floating in water, so the lower half is minimal to almost zero friction with the lower half, so you’re not able to use a lower half like you are when you are standing on land, 60 miles an hour.
Joey Myers 16:31
Think about the pitcher, who is going down the mound, they got gravity, they got access to everything. Fastest pitcher, let’s just round it up to 100 miles an hour, so 100 miles an hour, on flat ground, falling down a mound is the fastest pitch.
Joey Myers 16:51
I know 102, 103, we can argue but say 100 easy numbers, so that water polo throw is throwing a big ball, that’s going to have an effect. Now, what happens if we put in that Croatian, male Olympic water polo player athlete, we put a baseball in his hand and have them floating in water and have them throw that baseball as hard as you can?
Joey Myers 17:13
What do you think that speed is going to be? It’s going to be a lot faster than 60 miles an hour, I can tell you. Is it going to be, instead of 60, is he going to throw at 70? Is he going to throw 80 miles an hour? Let’s be conservative and just say 70 miles an hour.
Joey Myers 17:27
You’re telling me in water, the fastest water polo thrower throws a baseball 70 miles an hour, while on land, the fastest pitcher throws 100 miles an hour. Easy numbers, 70% we can say, maybe conclude, that without ground reaction forces, that 70% of that velocity is coming from the pelvis, spine, and shoulder combination.
Joey Myers 17:56
Without ground reaction forces, we are very minimal when we’re in the pool. I say the spinal engines is responsible for about 70 to 80% of the power equation, and the lower half the legs and ground reaction forces are responsible for the other 20 to 30%. That’s what I say. Keep that in mind as we talk through this baseball trainers near me webinar and the spinal engine system.
Betts, Arenado, & Trout. Showing ‘dem numbers!
Joey Myers 18:20
Do you recognize some of these hitters? Some of them have changed unis, or one of them at least, Mookie Betts, he’s on the Dodgers now. Nolan Arenado is in the middle, Mike Trout.
Joey Myers 18:29
Notice the pinstripe on the side of their leg and how it connects into the belt. Notice the positioning of where that is. Pelvis is already starting to open; all these hitters are at toe touch or pretty close to toe touch. Notice the numbers on their back. Now the righties, because the camera in the major leagues isn’t straight on center-field because you get to see the pitcher and the hitter, it’s slightly off center towards left.
Joey Myers 18:56
Your righties, you’re going to see probably more numbers than you would see lefties doing the same degree of rotation. This started off as showing numbers, it’s what we called it, and we will talk in a little bit how we’ve refined it to creating neck pressure but notice these in this baseball trainers near me webinar.
Joey Myers 19:12
Swing experiments results with the big three. The first of the big three is showing numbers. When I used a Zepp back in the day, now Zepp is turned in blast motions taken over and swing tracker. When I did about two- three experiments showing numbers, we found that out of 100 swings not showing numbers and 100 swing showing numbers, that bat speed was increased on average by four to six miles an hour, that’s bat speed.
Joey Myers 19:40
Bat speed is the close cousin to the ball exit speed. They are not the same, but they’re like first cousins. Without bat speed, ball exit speed probably is not going to be there. We got to be able to swing the bat somewhat hard to get the ball coming off the bat as fast. There are three others…
To be continued in Part-2 to this baseball trainers near me webinar…
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.
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/baseball-trainers-near-me-2-e1609830540324.png281500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-04 09:00:262023-08-18 21:39:491 On 1 & Group Hitting Lessons For Baseball And Softball Fresno-Clovis, CA | Best Private Online Batting Instruction & Analysis 2022 | Training For Youth And Adult [VIDEO]
1) Can we improve launch angle hitting path (angle batted ball takes off the bat) for baseball and softball by swinging “down”? 2) What kind of swing plane drills or cues can we use to optimize batted ball distance? And 3) What is the ideal home run formula?
ANSWER – listen closely to Barry Bonds’ answers to Alex Rodriguez’s questions… (I’ve included my video stamped notes below)
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for Paradoxical Intention and CLICK HERE for how to properly teach ‘launch angle’ swing (not what you think)…
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for the ideal home run formula…
This baseball swing video where Alex Rodriguez interviews Barry Bonds was a two parter to this video post. Here are four of the interview’s finer points:
“X” factor. Why top hand and back shoulder have to communicate with front leg,
Per-fect swinging down because it’s easy to go up,
200+ Stikeouts as long as you hit 40-homers? And,
How bunting can ‘line up’ your hitting.
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.
At about the 1-min, 40-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the “Ferris wheel” v. “merry-go-round” swings. Bonds says he’s more of a down-angle swinger. “Down” means to flatten out the barrel path. Not talking about swinging straight down.
At about the 3-min mark, Barry Bonds goes into what he calls the “X” factor and the “center-line”. Back shoulder going to communicate with front leg. And front shoulder with back leg.
At about the 4-min, 15-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds if he hits off his back leg. Causes head to fly open, front shoulder, and uppercut. Bonds talks about using top hand as “guide” hand, bottom is power. Top hand (back shoulder) and front leg have to communicate. If they don’t, then head can pull open.
At about 6-min, 30-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the advice Barry give him about not dipping his back shoulder too much. Bonds expects hitters to work chopping ball off ground during tee work. It’s easy to go up. Over exaggerate down on a consistent basis. “Per-fect” the down level swing.
At about 9-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about in today’s game it’s okay to strikeout over 200 times per season, just as long as you hit 40-homers. A-Rod asked Bonds how he developed the discipline and balance at the plate. Game has changed. Don’t blame the players, they adapt to the environment. In Barry’s day, had to hit .300, strikeout less than 100 times per season or you were sent down. Bonds was told growing up to be a great hitter. Home-runs don’t matter. Tony Gwynn was a big influence to Barry. Use line to line, that will open the gaps.
At about 11-min, 30-min mark, Barry and A-Rod talk about bunting against the shift. Bonds adds that bunting can always get you lined up for hitting. Playing “catch” with the baseball. Bunting slows things down. My buddy Aaron Miles tells a story about this.
At about 13-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Bonds that if he was graduating from Arizona in 2020, gets drafted by the Giants in a Sabermetrics heavy environment, would he have listened to his dad? Baseball is a eye hand coordination sports. Computers are limited on what they can predict.
At the 15-minute mark are Alex Rodriguez’s “takeaways”.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
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How Fast (or Slow) Until a Data-driven Swing Replaces an “Old School” One? (Baseball Analytics Shenanigans)
Baseball Analytics Photo courtesy: HittingNow.com
Why extremes are ALMOST never good
(Estimated reading time: 18-minutes)
Has the new way of baseball analytics changed baseball in 2022? Or are they ruining sports? I want to present a how to guide that translates data science metrics into hitting mechanics. Old school versus new school.
How did we get here with baseball analytics? The ‘Launch Angle’ era. Where did it originate? What was the tipping point of choosing Sabermetrics over traditional scouting? You’ll find out in the coming post. But first,
We’ll be discussing what a data-driven swing looks like – we’ll be covering:
Story of Minor League hitting coaches having almost ZERO hitting experience,
Pros of a data-driven swing,
Cons of a data-driven swing, and
How it’s bad (or good) to track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage.
Once upon a time in the Minors…
Story of Minor League hitting coaches having almost ZERO hitting experience
I have an interesting story to talk about. A true story. In an almost magical land called the Minor Leagues. At the time, a little birdy playing for a National league professional organization whispered in my ear. This little birdy told me…
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.
Their are budding baseball analytics hitting coaches sprouting up in some professional organizations – having almost zero hitting experience. No this isn’t fake news. These whirlybird propeller seeds are traveling by wind from the sparkling land of economics … planting their baby hitting coach seeds in fresh dark batter’s box soil. With a little gray water, bright sunlight, and the swift tap of a fairy’s wand… instantly sprouts an economics hitting fairy!
These magical Econ-hitting fairies are now happily coaching professional hitters on what they need to be feeling as a hitter … regardless of whether they’re hitting line drive after line drive … AND, with no more playing experience than Little League. Imagine the Mathlete schooling the High School Baseball Jock in everything hitting. And the Jock MUST listen or … YOU’RE FIRED!
Okay, so I may have embellished the story a bit. The Minor Leagues ARE NOT magical lands – just ask any Minor Leaguer. It wasn’t a little birdy that shared the story – it was a professional baseball human being. And sorry to kill your hopes and dreams, but magical Econ-hitting fairies aren’t born by adding gray water, sun, and the tapping of a fairy wand. C’mon man, everyone knows those aren’t real! Magical Econ-hitting fairies, I mean. Fairy wands are VERY real.
It is true though – how this story sounded in my head. It was an interesting story coming from a single-A ballplayer. That is, the state of professional baseball in the so-called ‘Launch Angle’ era. It does beg the question…
How are these baseball analytics Econ-hitting fairies, who have zero college, professional, or Major League experience, finding themselves coaching professional hitters on what they need to be doing, and how they need to be doing it? Listen, this may sound counter to what I just spent a few sarcastic paragraphs mocking. But listen closely…
As a coach you DO NOT need to have extensive experience to teach hitters to be effective in their movements. Just as long as you understand how to apply human movement principles that are validated by real science to hitting the ball. In other words, as long as you understand the rules of the human movement game, you can help hitters at all levels succeed, regardless of experience.
So what is happening?
From my understanding, these data-driven Econ-hitting fairies with extensive backgrounds in economics DO NOT understand the rules of the human movement game. Let me take you back to the future…
For those with your head in the sand the last two decades, there’s been a revolutionary baseball movement since 2001. Just after Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball. You may or may not have read the book, but may have seen the movie starring the always dreamy Bradley Pitt.
At the heart of the story is former General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane (played by Bradley Pitt). Beane reached out to Paul DePodesta, a Harvard alum, with a background in economics. And coincidentally had a knack for baseball statistics. DePodesta would soon become Beane’s first analytics department.
And it was here, Billy Beane transformed a low budget, bottom of the barrel, SEEMINGLY professional franchise known as the Oakland Athletics, into a real David and Goliath story. Beane and DePodesta used key player statistics to recruit. Stats that optimized scoring more runs, and as a result would win more games. Like how often a hitter gets on base – or On-base Percentage. And how often a hitter gets an extra base hit – known as Slugging Percentage. Think about it. How do you score more runs? Get more runners on base, and have hitters who can drive them in. Nowadays there are more advanced stats that measure run scoring value, but the point is this changed the game forever. For the better, and for the worst. I’ll get into why in the coming pages.
Furthermore…
This helped the baseball analytics powered A’s be highly competitive against top budget franchises. I apologize, but I’m going to spoil the ending … this was until other big market teams caught on. Oops! The cat was out of the bag. Yuge budget teams like Boston and New York were able to take the same system, but now pay BIG sums of money for the same undervalued players Oakland was getting at a steep discount. Yes, Oakland shot themselves in the foot. It wouldn’t be the last time. The jig was up. The A’s magic run was over. But not before Billy Beane and the A’s proved the system worked. Regardless of a franchise’s budget. Like a fairy’s wand, player valuation metrics transformed the game.
And it was a good thing at the time, because you had players and coaches still in the game or retired, that were helping teach the game through their personal experiences. They’re now considered “old school” coaches. Filling a gap on the coaching side of things that the Econ majors and analytics departments weren’t able to do. It was a healthy debate between old and new school methods. Friction and debate in a system are a good thing. But now this friction is like the political climate between Republicans and Democrats. Toxic.
This healthy balance of baseball analytics debate went MIA somewhere along the way. Like crabgrass in your lawn, metrics soon took over. Pushing many of the experienced baseball minds out of the game. Labeling them dinosaurs. Or maybe, the experienced minds couldn’t keep up. Or didn’t want to keep up. In my humble opinion, player valuation using metrics has its place. But it should not be the totality of scouting, recruiting and developing players. I’m not a Math-hater or numbers-denier. I love Math. Love Geometry, Economics, and Statistics. I did hate Algebra 2 though. My point is, data without context is not optimized. Data is a puzzle piece. NOT the whole thing.
Teaching hitters isn’t just about metrics. Doesn’t have to be completely data-driven. AND, teaching isn’t just about old school teaching methods. It’s a blend of both. Mutually inclusive. Not mutually exclusive. We can use data AND we can also use old school teaching methods to help hitters at all levels. We don’t have to be on one side or the other. You don’t have to be Tom OR Jerry. Bert OR Ernie. Han Solo OR Chewbacca. When it comes to hitting, the following will replace ‘Or’ with ‘And’.
Let’s make the Mathletes happy and discuss the…
Pros of a data-driven swing
Here are some pros to a data driven baseball analytics swing. Famed business management consultant, Peter Drucker once said,
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
You business owners and managers understand this. You understand that you can optimize certain operations. You can optimize certain metrics in a business, it could be using Profit First in finances, it could be building Software as a Solution (SaaS) in technology, it could be optimizing sales funnels in marketing. Optimization is working on the right things, and then doing those things right.
How can numbers help hitters? Swing experiments. In online marketing, we can run what’s called split A/B test. Meaning, we can test whether a green button gets more clicks than a pink one over a period of time. Like online marketing, we can split A/B test the swing by running swing experiments.
One of the things we used to accomplish this, when we started HittingPerformanceLab.com back in 2013, was technology such as the Zepp swing app, a knob tech swing analyzer. Like BlastMotion and SwingTracker today. We can compare key swing metrics, whether it’s bat speed, attack angle, or time to impact and contrast two different swing movements. It’s the ultimate baseball analytics split A/B test for hitters!
Here are the 5 steps to applying the Scientific Method to running swing experiments…
We start off with a QUESTION: “Are loose hands fast hands to a hitter?” We can do a swing experiment using a BlastMotion or SwingTracker bat knob sensor. And we can test that. We can test it comparing apples to apples.
We then form a HYPOTHESIS on how we think the experiment will turn out: “I think loose hands ARE fast hands”. And then,
We go down the rabbit hole of RESEARCHING other studies that confirm and deny our hypothesis.
Then we COLLECT THE DATA from using the Zepp, BlastMotion, SwingTracker, or a PocketRadar for measuring ball exit speed.
For example in our ‘loose hands are fast hands’ swing experiment … we would take one hundred swings with loose hands. And one hundred swings doing the opposite. In this case, using what we call finger pressure. So the top hand, bottom three fingers squeezed tight, eight out of ten squeeze, from the moment the hitter picks up their front stride foot, to the swing follow through. Then we counterbalance those swings. This helps remove any warm-up or getting tired biases out of the experiment.
We break the two hundred swings into twenty five swing chunks, and layer them so that loose hand swings are symbolized with the letter ‘A’, and finger pressure swings are symbolized with the letter ‘B’. Remember, each letter represents one 25-swing chunk. The first 100 swings will be broken into the following sequence: ABBA. And the last 100 swings will be broken into the following reverse sequence: BAAB. This is how to do split A/B testing, from a hitting perspective.
After all 200 counterbalanced swings, we extract the averaged out data from the BlastMotion, SwingTracker, Zepp device, or PocketRadar. Then we can base our CONCLUSION on the averages. Which factor, loose hands or finger pressure swings contributed to better bat speed, hand speed, time to impact, attack angle, etc.? By the way, Finger Pressure won out in our own swing experiments.
Simply put, here’s the Scientific Method…
Question
Hypothesis
Research
Data
Conclusion
Essentially, we use the above process, take one hitting myth, and test it against its opposite. Don’t get me wrong, no swing experiment is perfect. Experiment findings are based on probability. Experiments are repeated by others, and the findings are either proven or proven false. Over time, this increases or decreases confidence in the findings. The bottom line is this, using the Scientific Method may not be perfect, but it’s one step in the right direction. It gives us a process and path towards the truth. Take of from Peter Drucker: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
We satisfied the Mathletes – somewhat – talking about the Pros of a data-driven swing, especially when it comes to Moneyball. Billy Beane, all that stuff.
Now, let’s make the old school athletes happy and look at the…
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Outside of applying the Scientific Method to optimizing the swing, here are the Cons to a baseball analytics data driven swing. Typically, in a data driven swing, not enough attention is given to the context of the numbers.
I always say, numbers don’t have brains. People do. Here’s the problem … take the example of our Econ-hitting fairy story. Knowing zero about hitting. Having virtually zero experience hitting. Teaching hitters based on hearsay. Basically guessing on connecting the dots. This presents quite a challenge. It would be like asking me to re-roof your house … I have a lot of skill sets, but that ain’t one of them! You’d be better off making YouTube your friend and doing it yourself!
In today’s game, these hitters are in the Big Leagues because their statistics work for ‘Launch Angle’ era Econ-scouts. On paper, the numbers work. Aaron Miles played 9-years in the Big Leagues, from 2003-2011. Played for almost half a dozen teams. Most notable, he played with Albert Pujols on the St. Louis Cardinals. He was a switch hitting middle infielder and third baseman. Standing in at 5-foot, 8-inches, 180-pounds. Beautiful .281/.320/.352 career average slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage). Note that he played when the baseball analytics ‘Launch Angle’ era was just getting warmed up. When there was a somewhat healthy balance of old and new school. That’s the context.
Let me set the scene…
I’ve had a few enjoyable phone conversations with Aaron Miles over the years. Great dude. Not afraid to challenge the status quo. He told me a pretty revealing story once. Which will say a lot about the hitting times we find ourselves in. I asked him what decision he made in the past that now – looking back – he sees was a mistake?
He was slumping one year, and was briefly demoted. Before the demotion, he knew he was a small-ball situational hitting guy being smaller, faster, and a switch hitter. But with the demotion, he didn’t have much to lose, so he decided to air out his swing. Again, this was the start of the ‘Launch Angle’ era. Interestingly, he began smashing more extra base hits. At one point, a coach came up to him saying something to the effect of, “C’mon Miles, you’re a role player, don’t swing beyond your role”.
Remember, at this time there was still a strong old school hitting mentality present in the game. So what did Miles do? What any rational, logical, smart Big Leaguer would do in that scenario … he got back to being a role playing hitter. You see, the respect for the “numbers community” wasn’t as high as it is now. So in Aaron’s case, old school hitting was more representative of the times.
Here’s the point…
Here’s how Aaron Miles answered the question of what decision he made in the past that now – looking back – he sees was a mistake… In this day and age of rewarding hitters that get on base more often and get more extra base hits … he expressed that he would have given the “air-it-out” swing more time. Maybe he could have added another year to his career. Maybe 2? 3? 4 maybe? Who knows! Give up some strikeouts. Hit more dingers and doubles. This formula seems to work out better for hitters in the Launch Angle era.
Let me be clear. This blog post isn’t about giving up a hundred strikeouts and fifty batting average points a season to hit for more power. What we believe is having your cake and eating it too! Power AND average. Mutually inclusive, NOT mutually exclusive. Just like Batman AND Robin!
Getting back to our baseball analytics Econ-hitting fairy friends taking numbers out of context…
They’re looking at a hitter’s high ground ball percentage – say 50 percent, while league average is 43 percent. And they’re telling that hitter to get the ball in the air. You may agree with this. And I can see where you’re coming from. But there’s a catch…those numbers don’t mean anything, if you don’t understand what mechanics are causing a higher than average ground-ball rate.
Let me give an example…
Christian Yelich in 2015 had a ground-ball rate of 62.5-percent! Remember league average is 43-percent. Then, that rate steadily dropped in the years that followed 56.5, 55.4, 51.8, and in 2019 he finally arrived at a league average 43.2-percent ground-ball rate. Do you know how many doubles he hit in those respective seasons, starting in 2015? 30, 38, 36, 34, and 29 doubles in 2019 – where he had about 100 less plate appearances than prior years. Dingers? Starting in 2015 with 7, 21, 18, 36, and 44 in 2019.
Yes, hitting less ground-balls will lead to more extra base hits. But what in a hitter’s mechanics (or timing) cause an above average ground-ball rate? Do you know? Off the top of your head, what can you point to mechanically? Believe me, if you tell a hitter to get the ball in the air without looking at mechanical ground-ball choke points, then you’ll most likely get an extreme uppercut. Not to mention, most young hitters will make unnatural compensations to get the ball in the air. This collapses consistency! Low batting average and high strikeouts will be the ultimate result. Believe me.
Baseball analytics numbers by themselves are dumb. Numbers don’t have brains, people do. So hitting coaches have to understand how mechanics translate into metrics. Back to our Econ-hitting fairy friends. That’s the problem. Not having the ability to translate metrics into mechanics. To optimize the numbers, we have to understand the context. The good news for our Econ-hitting fairy friends? This can be learned and applied in today’s ‘Launch Angle’ era. Regardless of playing level experience.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
Click the button below to access the FREE video that's been downloaded over 30K times!!
How it’s bad (or good) to only track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage
There are some hitting coaches that will say tracking ball exit speed and launch angles in the batting cage is really dumb, is REALLY not smart. And then there are those who do it all the time. And their hitters are successful versus doing nothing.
Look, I treat the batting cage as a Laboratory. It’s a place to experiment. To work out the kinks. To be free to make mistakes and learn. Use data to measure and manage swing mechanics. Logical coaches get this. Others? They’re just guessing.
Same polarized perspective about tee work. Some coaches don’t like hitting off batting tees. Because at the end of the day, the hitter has to translate what they’re doing mechanically to a LIVE pitch. Agreed. But when teaching something new, a batting tee has its place. It can also help coaches understand cause and effect in mechanics. How? By isolating the variable. If you can’t isolate the variable, you’re guessing. And guessing is an anti-optimization strategy. If you don’t know what’s causing what, then how do you know what works and what doesn’t?
Isolating the variable? Brilliant.org defines it:
“Isolating a variable means rearranging an algebraic equation so that a different variable is on its own. The goal is to choose a sequence of operations that will leave the variable of interest on one side and put all other terms on the other side of the equal sign.”
I know, rough definition when comparing against baseball analytics. Let me rephrase … in relation to hitting mechanics, it’s finding out what in the swing contributes to the majority of power… Hitting more line drives… Getting on-time more often… How would one go about isolating those mechanical variables? I can tell you it’s not hitting LIVE pitching. WHY? Because LIVE pitching is too random. Humans. Pitch speed. Pitch depth. Pitch height. Pitch type. Pitch distance. Pitch reaction time. All this can be controlled in a swing experiment off a tee.
I believe, there’s a time and place for the tee. I subscribe to the Goldilocks Golden Rule – not too hot, not too cold…I like my hitters using the tee just the right amount. The brain has to organize in a certain way. With LIVE pitching, there is a lot of data collection the hitter has to take in. Pitch recognition. Tracking. Timing. Learning a new mechanic also taxes the brain. High cognitive load.
Consider this…
What if I asked you to write your first and your last name in half the letters. In other words, what if I asked you to write every other letter of your name? So for me, JOEY MYERS, I would write it as J-E-M-E-S. Now, I’ve never done that before. So, if I was timing myself, the first five out of ten tries would be slow. The more I practice though, the faster I’d be writing half my name. Why? Because I’m writing it in half the letters!
But it takes a little time for my brain and body to connect and figure this out. To learn how to do it. Learn how to do something that I’m not used to doing. It is the same exact thing when learning something new mechanically. Keep this in mind when thinking about your seven, eight, nine year olds learning something they’re not comfortable doing. Hitting off the batting tee is an okay thing to do in the beginning. When something’s new.
Again, the batting tee shouldn’t be something you spend a lot of time using, but it is a proper regression-progression when compared to dry swings, soft toss, or LIVE toss. In connecting tee work to ball exit speeds and launch angles … they give us a unit of measure off the tee with a uniquely controlled environment. Apples to apples comparison.
Launch angles are a data point. A lot of these coaches don’t like the launch angle swing. Well, launch angle is a number. The launch angle is the angle of the ball coming off the bat. It’s hard for hitters to control it. However, hitters can control their barrel Attack Angle. The angle the barrel takes to the incoming pitch. Launch and Attack Angles don’t have to be the same. And most likely they aren’t going to be. But hitters can better control the latter, not so much the former.
What’s measurable is manageable. We can use swing experiments to do it. Hitting off the tee shouldn’t be something we hang our hat on, but it is something that gives us a data point, a standard data point that we can give baseball analytics context to. Not like analyzing metrics without looking at context. Remember numbers don’t have brains, people do. What are the causes of an above or below average fly ball, ground ball, or line drive percentage? Home run to fly-ball ratio? Higher percentage of pulling the ball or going the other way too much? What is the mechanical causation-correlation relationship making those metrics above or below average?
We’ll find out in upcoming blog posts…
We covered A LOT:
Story of Econ-hitting fairies in the Minor Leagues – having almost ZERO hitting experience and knowledge. What’s going on here?
Pros of a data-driven swing – what’s measurable is manageable. Using the Scientific Method: 1. Asking a question, 2. Forming a hypothesis, 3. Doing the research, 4. Collecting the data, and 5. Formulating a conclusion,
Cons of a data-driven swing – numbers by themselves are dumb. Numbers don’t have brains, people do. Hitting coaches have to understand how mechanics translate into metrics. What does a hitter with an above average ground-ball rate mean? How do you bring him or her to average or below average? And…
How it’s bad (or good) to track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage – if you’re not collecting data and comparing with strategic swing changes, then you’re guessing. Tracking ball exit speeds, attack angles, and launch angles are part of data collection. And using a tee is essential when isolating the variable and teaching something new.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
Click the button below to access the FREE video that's been downloaded over 30K times!!
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/baseball-analytics-cabrera-launch-angle.jpg586600Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-03-30 06:42:552023-09-01 20:03:54Has New 2023 Baseball Analytics Changed Baseball OR Ruining Sports? How To Guide Translating Data Science Metrics Into Hitting Mechanics
, I wanted to employ the Scientific Method to analyze how a hitter’s “Flat Bat at Landing”, or toe touch, adds or takes away from key swing performance metrics including Bat Speed at Impact, Time To Impact, Attack Angle, and Ball Exit Speeds.
to measure Ball Exit Speeds,
to measure Ball Exit Speeds,
to record swings, and
. It’s NOT a roll over, it’s like a “waggle” that golfers use pre-swing. Great defender against off speed and breaking pitches, AND increase BA by controlling the barrel. Keep main objective in mind: hit ball as hard and far as you can. (about 3:45 mark)
, explain the importance of fascia (said like Fashia).
, Jaime Cevallos called the hitter bending into the front knee at landing, or to buy more time, the:
. He was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing during the Great Depression, and fell in love with golf, and applied his engineering principles to the golf swing.
by Thomas Myers. Watch the following FunctionalPatterns YouTube video of Thomas Myers talking about the concept of Tensegrity, or Tension Integrity:
by Bill Jenkinson
. He says hitters standing on one diagonal leg of the “X” encourages the springiness of fascia. He taught this to his 15yo daughter, who has hit over .600 the last couple years playing Fast-Pitch Softball in Texas, which is one of the hotbeds for both baseball and softball competition in the country. Oh and by the way, she also hit a half dozen homers as well.
is where 70-80% of consistent power is found. The best example I like to share can be found in 
’ said, that locomotion, the arms and legs aren’t necessary for locomotion, they’re an enhancement, they help enhance movement of the spinal engine.
’ way back, I think it was in the early 2000’s or mid to late 2000’s. He talked about this idea of a ‘Cushion’. You’ll see a hitter especially, if they’re looking fastball, and they see a curve ball or changeup. You’ll see them actually bend, sink, or cushion into their knees. They use their knees by bending them to buy them a little bit of time to get on time a lot better. It’s pushing the ‘pause’ button.
, and harness the power of the spinal engine. If you want a majority of power, 70-80% of consistent power.
, they use it in pitching a lot. But in hitting, we use the VeloPro.
by Thomas Myers, same last name. I’m sure on the family tree, we are related in some way, but I don’t know him like I would know my brother or my uncle or anything like that.
