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

Optimal Hit More Line Drives Launch Angle For Homerun Distance Like Joey Votto For Baseball & Softball Hitters

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Discover the optimal hit more line drives launch angle for home-run distance (25-30 degrees) like Joey Votto for baseball and softball hitters, and…

Joey Votto Explains Why Coaches SHOULD NOT Be Obsessed With Launch Angles

 

 

The Josh Donaldson interview last year was awesome, but I think THIS interview with Joey Votto may be better.  It doesn’t have the same let-the-beast-out-of-cage feeling that Donaldson contributed, but I feel Votto gives us more of a glimpse into the true art of hitting.  What Votto shares confirms what my hitters have been working on this past off season…line drive barrel control.  Precision.

Look, I love teaching my hitters the process of how to increase Ball Exit Speeds and to get the ball off the ground (optimal Line Drive Launch Angles), but as Joey Votto says, it’s not the whole story.  And this is where I’ve been lying to you for a couple years.  Actually, not lying, just not sharing the whole story. 😉

Let me explain…

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My friend and professional golf instructor Lee Comeaux knows golf, and brought this idea of “precision” to my attention a few years back.  He understands springy fascia and the spinal engine, which is a PLUS.  Also, over the past few years he’s mentored his teenage daughter to hit .600 in Texas fast-pitch softball leagues.  But most importantly, he comes from a sport where precision is king.  Ask any golfer if they’re as obsessed about Ball Exit Speeds and Launch Angles like we are, and they’ll look at you as if a third eye grew in the middle of your forehead overnight.

What good is Ball Exit Speed if the ball is not going towards the hole?  And Launch Angles matter depending on the distance to the target.  And by the way, the angled club face kind of takes care of Launch Angles for golfers anyway.

Put yourself in a golf mindset for a moment.  Imagine thinking about hitting, like you would golf?  Precision.  In the above interview, Joey Votto mentions the best hitters can hit the ball where they want, when they want.   This may not be 100% true in games, but during Batting Practice most surely.  How many of your hitters can do that?  Not many of mine, but we’re working on it.

Precision.  This is not being talked about or taught in today’s baseball and softball circles.  How to control the line drive.  The height AND width of it.  Why are we so obsessed with the vertical aspect of the field and not the horizontal?  So many coaches out there believe a hitter can’t have power without sacrificing swing quality.  An increase in power doesn’t have to dampen Batting Average and/or increase a hitter’s Strikeouts.

Precision.  How to control the line drive.  It’s not easy, but it CAN be done.  Hitters CAN have a high Batting Average (even though BA isn’t a good indicator of value anymore, according to Sabermetrics), power numbers, and low strikeout totals.  And I think Joey Votto touched on what I feel is just the tip of the iceberg.  Here are the few key things to look out for in the above interview:

  • This idea of Precision. Controlling the line drive.
  • Setting hitting goals and reverse engineering purpose of the swing.
  • The idea of using a batted ball as feedback to make adjustments (not new for golfers btw).

Without further adieu, here are…

 

My Joey Votto Interview Notes on his 2018 Hitting Approach

  • About 0:20 second mark, Votto believes talking Launch Angles isn’t telling the whole story, how complete you are as a hitter, rebuts Josh Donaldson’s “ignore coach if he tells you to hit a ground-ball” comment, all fly-balls are not good fly-balls,
  • About 1:30 minute mark, Votto talks about how hitters like Donaldson, et al. can hit a ball with any trajectory to any part of the ballpark, he uses golfer with a bag of clubs metaphor, doing anything you want at anytime is the story we’re not telling, best hitters can do everything – he brings up Mike Trout (diverse array of skills),
  • About 3:00 minute mark, Eric Byrnes asked Votto how his approach has changed since coming into league in 2007, give away less pitches, anytime he takes a swing there’s intent or purpose to each swing (not being reckless), since he’s aging as a player, Votto isn’t able to make up for swing inefficiencies he could with a young athletic swing,
  • About 4:30 minute mark, Byrnes asks Votto how he is super-human with his walk to strikeout ratio when the league really doesn’t care about inflated K quantities, making a conscious effort to cut down on K’s, goals – looked to Sabermetrics to see how he could hit .340 or .350 last year and math said he had to strikeout a bit less, mentioned a few years prior his goal was to get on base half the time (OBP would = .500), chokes up, the “con” was it led to softer contact at times, ability to foul off tough pitches, buys a better pitch later in the AB, spreading out, seeing ball a little deeper,
  • About 6:50 minute mark, Votto was asked about how he has the highest batting average in his first AB, how important is starting game off with good momentum, separated each AB like it’s their own thing, focusing on one AB at a time, every single game over an entire season, sticking with plan in the long run, Jay Bruce “to hit homer, you have to miss homers”, focus on process,
  • About 8:40 minute mark, Byrnes asked Votto, “I have a 6yo boy at home, what’s the #1 thing you’d teach him about hitting?” Let the ball be your feedback.  Spending too much time on mechanics, ball is going straight in the air, ground-ball, in the air, is the ball coming off 4-seam, on a line with backspin, story about watching Albert Pujols with Cardinals on a line with backspin.
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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Top-6 Baseball Quotes From John Wooden & Michael Jordan About Failure, Learning, Not Giving Up, And Success

Discover our top-6 non-baseball motivational quotes from John Wooden and Michael Jordan about failure, learning, not giving up, and success.

Baseball Batting Quotes: Hacking “Failure” With Michael Jordan

It’s a blessing and a curse.  It empowers people to do GREAT things, while others, it imprisons to mediocrity.  One word can offer us a detour, and at the same time can make us feel like we’re at a dead end.

How we look at this one word can make suffering feel like a learning process.  Or can make us want to quit, and never try again.  What’s ‘the word’?

We’ve heard Ted Williams say that “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in sports.”  The word, ‘Failure’, has separated Hall Of Famers from players getting just one  cup of coffee in “The Show”.

What follows are SIX of my favorite inspirational quotes on Failure. I wish this was something that was put in front of me when I felt my struggles were insurmountable during my playing days.  So, please share this baseball batting quotes post to your social media, to spread the word, you never know who they’ll help.

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What’s more…

Not only are these my favorite quotes on the topic of Failure, but they were the TOP-6 baseball batting quotes when I posted them to my Hitting Performance Lab Facebook fan-page and Twitter page.  “Like” and “Follow” me there (if you haven’t already) because I posting more great hitting content daily.

The baseball batting quotes are arranged from least to most engaged with on my Facebook fan-page.  Let’s start with…

#6:

Baseball Batting Quotes: Maxwell Maltz

#5:

Baseball Batting Quotes: John Wooden

#4:

Baseball Batting Quotes: John Wooden

#3:

Baseball Batting Quotes: Denis Waitley

#2:

Baseball Batting Quotes: Michael Jordan

And #1!

Baseball Batting Quotes: Sumner Redstone

Here’s what I feel the #1 mistake is…we treat Failure like it’s a terrible thing. When we are conditioned to look at Failure as a bad thing, then we stop trying.  Or at best, become standoffish when  giving it another shot because the pressure begins snowballing.  There’s no release, just build up.

Young hitters NEED to be encouraged to tinker and test.  To make their own adjustments.  To look at Failure as feedback.  To question the status quo.  This is where creativity and problem solving flourish!

Here are FOUR other articles or books that I love, related to the topic of Failure:

  • “5 Reasons To Stop Saying “Good Job!” by Alfie Kohn – blog post that the title is self explanatory.  After reading, you’ll see why this can lead kids to the “Failure as a dead end” mindset.
  • Golf Flow by Dr. Gio Valiante – sports performance psychologist, Dr. Gio, who works with the top PGA tour players. This book has nothing and everything to do with the baseball.
  • The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle – how the body learns, and that greatness isn’t just in our DNA code.
  • Brain Rules For Baby by John Medina – John brings up some great research and study, and one in particular says that telling a kid, “You’re so smart!” will handicap them, rather than saying, “You must’ve worked hard for that.”

As Tony Robbins says, “Where focus goes, energy flows.” So focus your attention on Failure as only a feedback mechanism.

 

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

Best Training Equipment, Aids, Tools, Programs, & 15 Books On Youth Hitting Coaching Strategy For Fixing Baseball And Softball Swing

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Discover where to find the best training equipment, hitting aids, tools, online programs, and 15 books on youth hitting coaching strategies for fixing the baseball or softball swing…

Baseball Equipment Training for Hitters: Never Suffer from Paralysis by Analysis Again

Baseball Equipment Training for Hitters

This is a shortlist of the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on educating myself about how the human body moves…

I often get asked about baseball equipment, books, and other resources to use, from coaches about hitting.

From hitting aids…to hitting programs…to hitting books.

There’s a potential for exponential growth in this information age, for coaches.  There’s no excuse not to succeed nowadays.  As Tony Robbins says,

“Where focus goes, energy flows.”

I wanted to share a list of equipment, books, and other resources that have helped in my own baseball training equipment for hitters journey.

I do a ton of research and study to find only the best.  The key is, does the information or hitting aid hold up to the modern human sciences?

At the end of this post, I’d like to hear from you.  What baseball training equipment for hitters (or for coaches) did I leave out?

By the way, this “guide” has as much to do with softball, as it does for baseball.

Think of this post as the definitive guide to baseball training equipment for hitters…

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.

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Baseball Training for Hitters: Books

Baseball Equipment Training for Hitters: Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers

Anatomy Trains, by Thomas Myers

  1. Anatomy Trains, by Thomas Myers – this book changed my hitting world.  Probably the best book for understanding the way humans move and how to optimize it.
  2. Dynamic Body Exploring Form, Expanding Function, by Dr. Erik Dalton et al. – a collaborative of distinguished movement author experts.  Even if you read a couple of the articles in there, you’ll be farther along than the conventional coach.
  3. The Spinal Engine, by Dr. Serge Gracovetsky – he cuts to the heart of the main engine in the swing.  I want to warn you though, the information is jargon thick.
  4. Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance…, by Dr. Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza – this book is a beast.  The Golden Rule for hitters?  You have to train like an athlete first, THEN a baseball or softball player.
  5. The Golfing Machine, by Homer Kelly – Kelly was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing during the Great Depression.  He fell in love with golf and began applying engineering principles to the Golf swing.
  6. Make It Stick, by Peter C. Brown – the science of successful learning.  This book changed how I train hitting forever.
  7. The Science Of Hitting, by Ted Williams – need I say more?
  8. Disciple of a Master: How to Hit a Baseball to Your Potential, by Stephen J. Ferroli – written in 1986 as an answer to the Ted Williams book The Making Of A Hitter.  Ferroli was a bio-mechanical expert who gave more detail to Williams’s study.  It’s an easy book to digest.  When I was reading it, it was interesting how eerily similar our approaches were because of science.
  9. The Making Of A Hitter, by Jim Lefebvre – particularly the part when he talks about the swing being a combination of Centripetal & Centrifugal Forces.
  10. Positional Hitting: The Modern Approach to Analyzing and Training Your Baseball Swing, by Jaime Cevallos – his observations are great, but applying the information via his drills prove to be a challenge.
  11. Heads-Up Baseball : Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson & Ken Ravizza – one of the best books on the mental side of hitting.
  12. Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way Of Baseball, by Sadaharu Oh & David Falkner – from the Japanese baseball career home-run leader (he hit 868 homers!!).
  13. The Captain: The Journey Of Derek Jeter, by Ian O’Conner – great example of hard work and dedication paying off.  Not to mention one of the better human examples of ethics and morals.
  14. One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season, by Tony La Russa – great insight into the game within the game, and great how-to example for coaches from a man who didn’t amount to much as a player in the game.
  15. Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, by John Wooden – I actually haven’t read this one yet, but have read through quite a bit of Coach Wooden’s stuff.  My college baseball Coach Bob Bennett used a lot of his coaching principles.  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t include one of Coach Wooden’s books as a resource for coaches.  By the way, this is the best rated on Amazon.com.

 

 Baseball Training for Hitters: Hitting Aids

Baseball Equipment Training for Hitters

TheStartingLineupStore.com

In March of 2011, I put together an online store selecting the best 9 hitting aids on the planet.  It’s called TheStartingLineupStore.com.  I won’t go into all of them here, but I wanted to highlight my top-4 sellers:

  1. Rotex Motion – helping hitters move better, so they can move better.
  2. The Kinetic Arm – protective shoulder and elbow sleeve that reduces compression in the UCL (Ulner Collateral Ligament) and shoulder.
  3. “Don’t Let Good Enough Be Good Enough” T-Shirt – one of many cool hitting themed t-shirts.
  4. “Goliath” end-loaded heavy wooden bat – get benefit of swinging end loaded heavy bat AND wood, so you’re hitters can get stronger and control the barrel better.

Top-4 essential baseball training equipment for hitters…

  1. Zepp Baseball App (Zepp doesn’t make this anymore, so check out SwingTracker or BlastMotion) – the Zepp device attaches to the knob of the bat, and registers bat speed, ball exit speed, hand speed, swing path, attack angle, etc. to the coordinating app on your phone.  It carries a hefty price tag at $150, but for coaches serious about running swing experiments, it’s a MUST!!  CLICK HERE for an experiment I did using it.
  2. Coaches Eye App OR HudlTech – slow motion analysis for your phone.  Both apps are compatible with both the iphone and android.  I have the CoachesEye.  Both are free I believe.
  3. Powerchalk – web based motion analysis.  You don’t have to download any software to your computer.  The free membership comes with:  1) The ability to upload ten separate videos to your own Video Locker, 2) Two-minutes of recording time per analysis, 3) 10-slot video locker, and 4) Upload and share video content.

If you digest the baseball training equipment for hitters book suggestions alone, you’ll put yourself in the top 1% of hitting coaches, instructors, and trainers.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said:

“The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

And don’t just stop there.  Read player biographies and auto-biographies of past players like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Joe Dimaggio, etc.  That being said…

 

I Want to Hear Your Baseball Training Equipment for Hitters Thoughts…

What baseball training equipment for hitters (or for coaches) did I leave out that should be included in the definitive guide?  Please comment in the “Leave a Reply” section below…

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NCAA & NCSA College Softball Recruiting: What Hitting Coaches Look For And How To Get Recruited 2023

NCAA & NCSA College Softball Recruiting: What Hitting Coaches Look For And How To Get Recruited 2023 | Pitch Recognition Training & Drills To See Ball Better

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Learn about NCAA and NCSA college softball recruiting about what hitting coaches look for and how to get recruited in 2023.  Also, discover what pitch recognition training and drills to see the softball better from a division one college softball hitting coach…

Podcast Interview With Division-1 College Softball Hitting Coach Justin Lewis

 

 

In this softball practice drills interview with Justin Lewis, Softball Hitting Coach for the Fresno State Bulldog softball team, we’ll be looking at…

  • How did you get to being the hitting coach for Fresno State softball?
  • What do you do when you come into a new program?
  • What are you looking for when recruiting hitters?
  • Do you guys do game planning?
  • Do you have your girls hunt the rise ball?
  • Softball practice drills: do you do pitch recognition stuff with the girls?
  • You’re getting ready in a short amount of time? What’s high priority right now?
  • Anything else that you’re working on?

Coach Justin and I ran into each other a few years back when he was doing his Coaching Minds podcast.  Justin is a good friend of mine, so I think you’ll enjoy learning about softball practice drills and many other things a coach has to deal with coming into a program during COVID…

Below is the audio transcription of the interview.  CLICK HERE to download the transcription PDF. This is one of 24 expert interviews included in my new Swing Smarter book.

Enjoy!

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Pro XR Dovetail Handle Wood Training Baseball Bat Swing Review: Is It BETTER Than an Axe & Puck?

Pro XR Dovetail Handle Wood Training Baseball Bat Swing Experiment Review | Vs Axe & Puck

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Learn safety benefits of the Pro XR dovetail handle wood training baseball bats and whether there is improved performance in this swing experiment review. Are Pro XR handled wood bats better than the Axe or Puck handled knob bats?

Does a Modified Bat Handle Increase Bat & Ball Exit Speeds?

 

 

Baseball Hitting Drills for Contact: ProXR Bat Experiment

ProXR bat knobs are similar to an axe handle, but are more rounded…

In this baseball hitting drills for contact bat knob experiment using the Zepp (Labs) Baseball app & Bushnell radar gun, I wanted to use the Scientific Method to analyze what would happen to Bat and Ball Exit Speeds when using the same model and sized wood bat, but the only difference being that one bat has a regular knob, and the other a ProXR knob.

 

Background Research

Baseball Hitting Drills for Contact: ProXR PSI comparison

A Washington University study found there was a 20% to 25% reduction in compression forces in the hands when using a ProXR technology.

My fascination with this all started when Grady Phelan, the Founder and President at ProXR, LLC, wrote this LinkedIn post titled, “Baseball’s Broken Hamate Plague“.

After I reached out, Grady was open to the idea of doing a Zepp and Ball Exit Speed baseball hitting drills for contact experiment.

Grady shared the following research about his ProXR technology over email…

“One of the experiments we did early on with ProXR, as part of our due diligence before we went to market, was to measure the compression forces in the hands during a swing. I was fortunate enough to be able to work with some researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, Bio-Mechanics lab here in St. Louis. We connected a conventional bat and a ProXR bat to digital pressure sensors and had a batter take some swings. We were able to dial into the area of the hypothenar (the heal of your hand below your pinky) and compare the difference in compression.

What we found was a 20% to 25% reduction in compression forces when using a ProXR technology. The peak compression happens immediately AFTER intended contact when the hands roll over the central axis of the bat and the knob.  The smaller peaks in between the high compression peaks are from the batter getting the bat back into the load position and we took out the time in between swings to condense the chart.”

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

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Around the same time, I saw this USA Today article titled, “Dustin Pedroia is on a hot streak with an odd-looking bat designed to help hitters“.  I asked Grady if this was his bat, and he replied:

“Pedroia is actually using something called an axe that is being put on a Victus bat. There is some minor confusion in the market given the axe’s similar look with ProXR.

Here’s the top-line difference between ProXR and the Baden product: if you’ve ever swung an actual axe (chopping wood), which the Baden product is based on, you know that the swing path is linear, meaning it drives the hands to the point of contact AND (this is probably the most important point) the swing ends at contact. This is critical. The oval shape of an axe handle and the general configuration of the axe handle evolved over thousands of years specifically to drive the axe head to the point of contact (this also applies to swords, hammers and other linear-path swing implements). The oval shape locks the hands into alignment with the swing path and PREVENTS the hands from deviating from that swing path. In sharp contrast, you know a baseball swing is rotational – meaning the bat must fully rotate around the batters body and the hands MUST roll over the central axis of the bat to compete the swing. This gives hitter the ability to both, make adjustments during the swing and complete the rotational swing path. Putting an oval axe handle on a baseball bat is counter-intuitive to the requirements of a rotational baseball swing. Imagine trying to adjust your swing on a breaking ball or change-up when the shape of the handle is resisting those adjustments.
In contrast, ProXR was designed from the ground-up specifically for a rotational baseball bat swing. It reduces compression in the hands and gives batters improved performance. Additionally, we tested our designs before we went to market and continue to do ongoing research and testing. As a side note, ProXR was accepted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011 because it is the first angled knob bat ever used in regular season games.”

Hypothesis

Based on the ProXR technology research, I was convinced the bat would alleviate compression forces in the hands, particularly the hitter’s bottom hand.  However, my biggest question was, are we sacrificing performance to be safer?  I think the ProXR technology, although safer, will sacrifice some performance.

The reason I labeled this a “baseball hitting drills for contact” experiment will become clear in the “Notes” section of the post, so stay tuned…

 

Baseball Hitting Drills for Contact: ProXR Bat Knob Experiment

Equipment Used:

  • Zepp Baseball app,
  • Bushnell radar gun,
  • ATEC Single Tuffy Tee,
  • Flip Camera,
  • 33-inch wood bat model 243A with regular knob, and
  • 33-inch wood bat model 243A with ProXR knob

Setup:

  • All swings for the baseball hitting drills for contact experiment were taken off the tee.
  • 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 plus two baseballs in front of the back marker.
  • CLICK HERE for the Google Drive excel document with all the Ball Exit Speed (BES) readings and calculations.
  • We deleted radar gun mis-reads that registered below 30-mph on the gun.
  • Therefore, we deleted 3 mis-reads from the ProXR bat knob data, and averaged all ProXR BES readings to 97 swings.
  • Also, we deleted 2 mis-reads from the regular bat knob data, and averaged all regular bat knob BES readings to 98 swings.
  • The two tests in the baseball hitting drills for contact experiment were counter-balanced.  Which consisted of eight blocks of 25-swings done in the following order ABBA BAAB.  Swinging the “ProXR Knob” were letter ‘A’, and
    “Regular Knob” were letter ‘B’.  200 total swings were completed in the experiment, 100 per test.  Counter-balancing helps remove the “getting tired” and “not being warmed” up factors.

Data Collected (Zepp Baseball App):

Baseball Hitting Drills for Contact: ProXR Bat Knob Experiment

A slight baseball hitting drills for contact advantage goes to the ProXR Knob…

 

Data Analysis & Conclusion

ZEPP READINGS:

  • Avg. Bat Speed at Impact increased by 1-mph using the ProXR knob bat,
  • Avg. Max Hand Speed didn’t change,
  • Avg. Time to Impact decreased by 0.004 swinging the ProXR knob bat,
  • Avg. Bat Vertical Angle at Impact decreased by 2 degrees using the ProXR knob bat, and
  • Avg. Attack Angle decreased by 4 degrees using the ProXR knob bat.

BUSHNELL BALL EXIT SPEED READINGS (CLICK HERE for Google Excel Doc):

  • Avg. Ball Exit Speed decreased by 0.4-mph using the ProXR bat knob, and
  • Top out Ball Exit Speed was 93-mph using both the ProXR and conventional bat knob.

Notes

  1. In ProXR founder Grady Phelan’s initial testings of professional players, some of the players recorded a 3 to 10-mph bat speed increase using his ProXR knob.  Now, I have a theory as to why my numbers were much smaller…
  2. For all 208 swings I was playing with two baseball hitting drills for contact mechanical elements in my swing: 1) squeezing the bottom three fingers of my top hand only, from the moment I started my swing (picked up my front foot), through impact.  And 2) having more of a “hunched over” posture at the start of the swing.  I did this for all swings, so as not to “muddy up” the experiment.
  3. The finger pressure may have neutralized the affect of the ProXR knob, since most of the “shock” at impact was taken by my top hand.  Whereas a normal hitter not using top hand finger pressure would absorb the shock in the hamate bone, in their bottom hand, using the regular knob bat.
  4. Playing around with both baseball hitting drills for contact elements of #2 above, I compared the Ball Exit Speed numbers from my previous experiment looking at the difference between the Mizuno Generation ($200 bat) to the Mizuno MaxCor ($400) bat where I wasn’t using the two mechanical changes.  Interestingly, my average Ball Exit Speed with the $400 alloy MaxCore was 83.5-mph and top out exit speed was 90-mph.  With the wood bats, my average Ball Exit Speed was 89 to 90-mph, and my top out exit speed was 93-mph.  That’s a 6.5-mph jump in average & 3-mph boost in top out exit speed using a wood bat over a non-wood!!  That’s 26 more feet on average, and 12 more feet in top out distance added using finger pressure and the “hunch”!
  5. By using the two principles in #2 above, I was able to hit the “high-note” more consistently.  I also had less “mis-reads” in this experiment, using the radar gun (5 total out of 208 swings), versus the Mizuno bat model experiment (18 total out of 200 swings).  This is why I labeled this experiment “baseball hitting drills for contact”.
  6. After about 50 swings in the the ProXR bat knob baseball hitting drills for contact experiment, I could tell you what my Ball Exit Speed readings were going to be after each cut, +/-1 mile per hour.  Crazy!

The Bottom Line?

Well, according to the baseball hitting drills for contact ProXR bat knob experiment data, it looks like the ProXR knob holds a slight edge in performance versus the convention knob. Coupled with the fact that the ProXR knob reduces compression forces on the hands by 20 to 25% has me convinced that ProXR bat knob technology is a can’t lose tool for a hitter’s toolbox.

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

Coaching Relationship Psychology: How To Motivate Young Baseball & Softball Athletes | Talking To Players Before Game Or On Losing Team Examples

Discover coaching relationship psychology about how to motivate young baseball and softball athletes.  Learn how to talk to players before a game or that are on the losing team.

How To Coach Lowly Motivated Players…

In this post, we’ll answer the following popular reader question…

“How to coach lowly motivated players?”

What follows is an excerpt from my highly rated book on Amazon with 54 book reviews – average 4.5 star rating, The Science Of Sticky Coaching: How To Turn Ordinary Athletes Into Extraordinary…

Section 1, Chapter 12: KNOWLEDGE: Motivating The Elephant

FOUR Fool-Proof Ways to Unlock an Athlete’s Communication Style

From the International Youth Conditioning Association (IYCA), I wanted to share with you four categories of player ability and temperament.  These are keys to igniting player motivation:

  1. Low motivation-low skill,
  2. Low motivation-high skill,
  3. High motivation-low skill, and
  4. High motivation-high skill.

Learning these guidelines will allow you to understand and communicate more effectively with each of your players, or setting them up in similar learning groups.

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.

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Low motivation-low skill – DIRECT

This type of player probably never played the sport before, or not very long.  How do you appeal to this type of player?  By being direct with your instruction, and having a purposeful direction for them.  If you come across this type of athlete on your team at about the 10-12+ year old mark, then a good solution would be to refer them out to a trusted private instructor to “catch them up to speed”.

Or, communicating to the parent the need to work with them at least 5-minutes per day, 4 days per week.  Make the commitment small so they don’t get overwhelmed.  These kinds of kids NEED repetition.  Like with throwing and catching, just having them throw a ball against a wall at the park can be enough.  Within 60 days of starting this, the kiddo WILL make tremendous progress.

Low motivation-high skill – INSPIRE

These players may find themselves at the top of your lineup, but may be a part of the hyper-parenting trap.  They may be out there to please mom or dad.  These players need to be put on a pure praise-for-effort diet (“you put a lot of hard work into that”, “great work”).

Whereas before they may have been getting praise-for-effort’s evil twin: praise-for-intellect (“you’re so smart” or “you’re so talented”).

Praise for effort will make all the difference.  John Medina said one study showed how a scientist once got a chicken to turn the pages of a book – like he was reading it – by using continuous praise-for-effort.  True story!

Actively inspire and encourage them.

High motivation-low skill – GUIDE

This is the “Rudy” of the team.  You remember the movie Rudy right?  If not, then rent and watch it on Netflix.  There usually aren’t too many of these, but when you have one, consider yourself lucky because they can inspire YOU and a whole team.

Another movie you can watch to further drill the idea is Radio with Cuba Gooding Jr.

One year when we played Stanford they had an honorary-player resembling the character Warren from the movie Something About Mary.  He wore headphones everywhere he went during batting practice.  At times, we had to protect him from batted balls when he was on our side.  I thought this “player’s” inclusion said A LOT about Stanford’s program.

I’m not saying seek out kids with Developmentally Delayed Syndrome for your team, the preceding were just examples.  You know what I mean.

Use guidance and goal setting with your Rudy’s.  Get them to improve their skills through baby steps and tracking.

High motivation-high skill – DELEGATE

These are fun players to watch.  And you won’t have many of them, they’re kind of an anomaly.  They’re ones you don’t have to worry about on the field.  With these players you want to make them a part of the decision making process.  Practice drills, lineup creations, etc.  Assign them to be the bridge between players and coaches.  Seriously listen and consider their feedback.

They may be the Team Captains, the highest honor of any team.  Think of Derek Jeter from the Yankees and Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox.  These players are held to a higher standard, and represent the team on and off the field.  But make sure they make good decisions both on and off the field.  They MUST be a role model.

Some are leaders-by-example, and some are more ‘rah-rah’ in nature.  I was a leader by example.  I didn’t like being a cheerleader in front of the whole team all the time, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Every player will be wired differently.

I hope these four fool-proof ways help unlock your Athletes’ communication styles:

  1. Low motivation-low skill,
  2. Low motivation-high skill,
  3. High motivation-low skill, and
  4. High motivation-high skill.
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Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Improve Youth Mental Game Toughness Skills Training For Baseball Or Softball Player Using Fixed Vs Growth Mindset Psychology By Carol Dweck

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Learn how to improve youth mental game toughness skills training for baseball or softball players using a fixed vs growth mindset psychology by Dr. Carol Dweck…

A Fixed Mindset May Be Dangerous To Your Hitters

 

 

Growth Mindset versus Fixed Mindset

Fixed versus Growth Mindset illustration photo courtesy: KaylaCelliott.com

Nothing is more frustrating – and disappointing – than running into a Fixed Mindset coach…

All you get are excuses…excuses…EXCUSES!!

Think about the Fixed and Growth Mindsets, from Dr. Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, like the operating system for your computer or mobile device.  Each Mindset (or operating system) will take you down a different path to problem solving.

Some may say, well, the examples you give are reveal “closed minded coaches”, not a Fixed Mindset.  I disagree.

Look, I’m sure at times there are some closed minded Growth Mindset coaches, but I’m willing to bet my first born on that there are exponentially more closed minded Fixed Mindset coaches.  You see, closed mindedness is a subset of a Fixed Mindset coach, NOT a Growth Mindset one.

Before I get into taking you through the story, I wanted to let you know what I have for you:

  • An 8-min, 25-sec video from Trevor Ragan outlining the difference between a Fixed v. Growth Mindset (video above)
  • Address 7 DEVASTATING Fixed Mindset coaching EXCUSES that are killing the progress of smaller power hitters, and
  • The Fixed versus Growth Mindset Introduction from my new book.

SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:

Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.

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

Right Course For You? Take Quiz Now

Back to the story…

I ran into a couple of them on social media this past week about the promise I make in my Catapult Loading System book: How To Teach 100-Pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-Feet.

Particularly, they were commenting that Hudson White, the hitter I covered in this blog post, weighing 130-pounds hitting the ball 398-feet – and that includes wood – was an over-exaggeration.

To their credit, they did concede it’s possible.  But then oh man, here came ALL the excuses, taking credit away from the hitter’s dedication to his craft…

  1. “The bat was hot”,
  2. “Isn’t the norm, or has athletic ability – I wouldn’t take credit for that”,
  3. “Average kids don’t use there body’s efficiently as someone with above average athleticism can regardless of training”,
  4. “Only in batting practice and not in games”,
  5. “130-pound hitter wouldn’t make our Varsity team”,
  6. “Working with the exception, not the rule”, and the kicker comment about hitting ground-balls…

“I’ve never played or coached this game from a text book or a state sheet and never will. I do just what I’m doing here, I talk shop with knowledgeable people. Scouts, college coaches, minor league players and coaches and once in a blue moon with hitting instructors. I have very rarely come across any one of them that is as passionate about getting the ball in the air so much. Most of them try to keep things as simple as possible, which means barrel the ball, hit it hard. Period. No emphasis on air v ground, just barrel it.”

Addressing Excuse #1

Hudson White has hit balls over 398-feet with a Hickory wood.  My over half a dozen hitters tripling their body-weight in batted ball distance (i.e. 100-pounder hitting ball 300-feet), are not using hot bats, and neither did Hudson at the National Power Showcase Home-Run Derby Competition put on my Brian Domenico at the Texas Rangers ballpark in Arlington in 2016.

Addressing Excuses #2 &3

What does athleticism mean exactly? What are your rules that say one kid is athletic and another is not? I’d hallucinate yours are different than mine.  However, the question is, can we make a seemingly nonathletic kid average or even above average athletically?  Not all, but I think we can make EVERY kid move better.  And next week’s post interview with the founder of the Bosu Ball, David Weck, will shine more light on how to do this.

I brought up examples of Michael Jordan, Tim Tebow, and one of the best cricket players in the world weren’t able to or currently are not doing well enough to make it to the Big League level. It can be argued these are non-baseball athletic examples, but you’re saying above average athletic ability is one of the main causes for young hitters tripling their body-weight in batted ball distance.  It’s speculation.

I’d argue “train-ability”, as referenced in the Heritage Study from David Epstein’s book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, as a more crucial element than above average athleticism in explaining why my hitters (and other coaches’) can triple their body-weight in batted ball distance.  Learning is learning, but they still have to learn the most effective mechanics.

Take for instance my 67-pound hitter blasting a 180-foot dinger – in a game – after working with me for 6-months.  When we first started he couldn’t hit his way out of a wet paper bag.  So in 6-months did he auto-magically go from below average to above average athletically?

Addressing Excuse #4

I have game footage film of two of my hitters tripling their body-weight in batted ball distance:

By the way, Temo now is around 135-lbs and is consistently driving the ball 370+ feet.  Also, Hudson White is driving the ball 400-feet in games as well.

Addressing Excuse #5

Are you KIDDING ME!?  To write a player off based on the “eye test” is ignorant. It makes me sad how many of these “under-weighted” young hitters are not being given a chance because some coach DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE how to get educated in all things effective.

Coach, if this is you, then you’re going to love the Introduction to my book that follows, on Growth v. Fixed Mindsets…

But first,

Addressing Excuse #6

This one made me laugh.  I responded back with something like, man I must be running into all these exceptions then!  Myself and the hundreds of coaches – who’re getting the same, if not better, results than I am by the way – teaching the same system, must be exception magnets!!! lol

Addressing Bonus Excuse #7

Look I agree, line drives and barreling the ball AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE should be every coaches objective for their hitters.  However, the question is raised, if you were to have your hitters miss, would you rather have them miss hit the ball in the air or on the ground?  I’m not going dive deep into this here, because I did that already in the Ground-Ball Rant, but I do want to say High School coaches (on down) are getting a false sense of achievement with the ground-ball because fielders aren’t what they are at the D1 and Pro levels.

Now, listen closely…

If you’re not teaching your hitters to consistently drive the ball (in the air), then YOU WILL HAMSTRING them at the higher levels, if they make it that far.  And by then, it’s too late.

I was just on the Coaching Minds Podcast by host Justin Lewis (Please follow him on Twitter @The_Coach_Mind), our interview I’ll be posting in 3 weeks or so, shared that he works almost exclusively with High School and College level fast-pitch hitters.

The horror stories he revealed the new hitters he’d get in college, reported they were only taught to slap the ball their whole life because of how “tiny” they were.  What happens to these girls at the college level?  When a hitting situation would come up to drive in runs, you know what the college coach does to these “tiny” slap hitting specialist?

They pinch hit them.

If ground-balls were so great, then why not let this slapping specialist slap?!  Ground-balls are her specialty!!  Let me give you a clue, ground-balls work less at the college level…and EVEN LESS at the Pro level.  Don’t let this happen to your hitters.

And after hearing ALL these excuses, it was refreshing to get this email message from a coach after watching my webinar (I can’t say he uses my system though, but the message speaks for itself):

“The 135-lb pound kid…that is good but not that impressive…not too many kids at the age of 12 and 13 that weigh 135 pounds…he should be hitting the ball that far…now the 67 pound kid…that is impressive (one of my players at 75 pounds can hit the ball 225)” – ulley13usparks (username)

Now, he was talking about my two 13u  hitters Eddie S. and Temo C. both weighing 135-lbs and driving the ball 370+ feet, and my 67-lb hitter I spoke of earlier in this post.  “…should be hitting the ball that far…”, man, how refreshing to hear.

This leads me to the MAIN ISSUE…the above excuses are from Fixed Mindset coaches.  The video above is fantastic education on the Fixed versus Growth Mindset debate in under 10-minutes.  Rest assured you’ll be a more effective coach after watching the video.  And if you like the video, then you’ll love Dr. Carol Dweck’s book Mindset.

And to drive the nail home, below I’m including the Introduction to my new book The Catapult Loading System: How To Train 100-Pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-Feet, that people are loving by the way…just read the Amazon book reviews so far.

Without further adieu, here’s the Fixed v. Growth Mindset Intro…

—–

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

– Eric Hoffe

Fixed Versus Growth Mindset Coaching

When it comes building consistently powerful hitters, this book will provide you with the pathway to get there.Hitting Training - Catapult Loading System Book

However, I think the most important aspect to bridging the gap between what the coach teaches and what the player absorbs has to do with Mindset…

Coaches can be split up into two groups.

  1. Fixed Mindset
  2. Growth Mindset.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, in her bestselling book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,

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

Here are some things you hear FIXED Mindset coaches saying,

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

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

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

These coaches find a way. They ask the right questions. They ask, “Why not?”  They don’t rest on elite-level playing experience or decades of coaching experience.

The objective of a Growth Mindset coach is to learn principles first, or “rules”. Then, design methods to stay within those lines, not the other way around. You’ll learn more about this in CHAPTER 1.

I’ll let Billy Murray give Growth Mindset coaches a word of caution in dealing with Fixed Mindset coaches on social media:

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

Why?

From Henry Ford:

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

One puts the forest before the trees (versus missing the forest for the trees), and the other is swatting a piñata with one eye blindfolded!

I get it, we all want to be heard and validated as being knowledgeable in a subject, but high credibility in the wrong place is highly misleading.

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

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

Don’t get me wrong, the last two points above have their place and CAN be effective in learning and seeing success patterns, BUT massive effort going in the wrong direction can be gross negligence.

Besides, it takes A LOT of effort in the cages and hours of video analysis to stumble onto the right answers.  But, I have a more elegant solution that will dramatically cut your learning time in half!

You’ll know what to look for, so you can SUPERCHARGE your time in the cages and also for when you’re doing video analysis.  You’ll read about this in CHAPTER 2.

Willful ignorance.

I heard this term on Facebook and love it!  People online defend their hitting philosophy and theories to the death, even if human-movement principles validated by science, reveal the opposite.

I mentally play the “What if…Strip” game with Fixed Mindset coaches…

WHAT IF this person NEVER…

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

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

  • What do they actually know?
  • Who or what have they studied? (Physics, Bio-Mechanical, Psychology, Exercise Science sources? Not baseball or softball)
  • What kind of consistent or inconsistent results do they get with their hitters?

We’ll get deeper into the Credibility Fallacy in CHAPTER 3.

Fixed Mindset coaches are stuck. They regurgitate the same information they’ve been taught in the past without question. They may even say their hitting philosophy is a science, but it’s not.  It’s a pseudo-science.  Their copy and duct-taped together hitting philosophy reeks of uncertainty. We’ll get more into that in CHAPTER 4.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes by Dan Farnsworth:

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

And it’s so true!

I can tell with 100% confidence that I have not:

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

So, why listen to me?

Because of:

  • What I actually know,
  • Who and what I’ve studied, and
  • The results my hitters are getting.

We’ll drill deeper into these points in the following CHAPTERS, but what I think is VERY IMPORTANT for those who never played ball past Little League or 12u softball,

…That you too, can be a hitting expert.

All you need is a passionate curiosity to learn and apply the human-movement principles that are validated by science, to hitting a softball or baseball.  I’m going to teach you how to conduct fool-proof swing experiments, so that you can use your findings to show people who won’t take you seriously.

You’ll learn my swing-experiment-blueprint in CHAPTER 4.

And I’m going to break it down for you, so don’t worry if you didn’t do well in science class back in school.

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

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

Lastly, CHAPTER 12 will walk you through, how to train these newly-learned hitting techniques. I believe the training is as important, if not more critical, than the mechanics you’ll be learning in this book.

I had a third-year pro-hitter drive up from San Diego (about a 7-hour drive for me, one-way), comment that he thought the training by itself was worth the trip! And he spent a fortune in time and money to work through a whole weekend with me.

What You’ll Learn

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

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

WHY is this Important to you now?

There are four reasons…

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

Nowadays, everyone is a hitting “expert”. How do we differentiate between an effective versus an ineffective approach? This is important because it’s not how PRO someone is, how many years of coaching they’ve accumulated, how many man-hours of video analysis they’ve done, or even how many hours of lessons they do in a given day. You can’t argue with science and powerfully consistent results.

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

Big difference between what’s “real” and what’s “feel”. When Mike Trout says he works at ‘getting on top of the ball’, that doesn’t mean Johnny’s coach should go out and share with his team this method. In fact, Mike Trout says this to himself to protect his swing from HIS naturally tendency to upper cut too much, like he says to ‘chicken wing’. The cues that MLB and professional hitters use are often lost in translation with the younger-end user.

Is the Information in this Book for you?

First, we WILL NOT be talking about:

  • ‘Squishing bugs’,
  • ‘Swinging down on the ball’, OR
  • ‘Loading & exploding the hips’.

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

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

The House Rules

Here’s what I’m not promising…

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

Addressing point numbers one and two above…

Some of my 12-years-old and under hitters, weighing around 100-pounds, don’t start consistently driving the ball 300-feet right away. Some take 2.5 years to get to consistency, whereas before they do it “every once in awhile”. Other hitters, although rare, achieve this in less than 6-months. This seems to be the range for the hitters I work with.

It depends on work ethic and what David Epstein calls ‘learn-ability’, in his book, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance.

Addressing point numbers three and four above…

I encourage my hitters to work hard on the things we go over, and to keep on trying even after hitting major obstacles.

Most young hitters don’t do that. They just show up for a lesson or gather information and “get ready” to work…or they throw in the towel and quit at the first bump in the road.

It took a lot of hard work for my hitters to start seeing favorable hitting outcomes.

Interestingly, it was the work with my hitters that gave me the inspiration to write this book.

The bottom line is, I have no idea what your results may or may not be.

And it’s not my place to try to predict that. Your success is up to you, as always.

Onward…

—–

CLICK HERE to order your copy of The Catapult Loading System on Amazon today…

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How To INCREASE Hitting Power, Improve BAT SPEED, & Hit Balls Farther Every Time For Beginners

Increase Hitting Power, Improve Bat And Hand Speed, Hit Ball Better & Farther Every Time For Baseball & Softball Beginners

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Discover how to teach a kid how to increase hitting power, improve bat and hand speed, hit the ball better and farther every time for baseball and softball beginners.

How To Turn A Beach Towel Into A Hitting Demonstration

 

 

Here’s a great way to help coaches and players understand taking slack out of the system, demonstrating the power of the spinal engine.

We call it the “coiling” core, NOT the “braced” core most teach their hitters.  A braced core is fantastic in the weight room, but NOT in the batter’s box.  CLICK HERE for an interview I did with Bosu Ball inventor David Weck, where he takes a deeper dive into this.

Some understand the importance of shoulder-hip separation, but what most don’t know is that we MUST create tension in the neck – where the ‘C’ and ‘T’ sections of the spine connect, as well.

And here’s what most ARE NOT saying…an inward turn of the hips is not important, if not detrimental, to the beach towel effect of the spinal engine.

Many say the swing of Ted Williams resembled the twisting of a Barber Pole.  The above video clearly demonstrates what was happening in his swing that some observed.  CLICK HERE for a post I did on the swing of Ted Williams.

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

T-Ball Coaching 101 Hacks & Practice Plan Drill Ideas For Beginners 3, 4, 5, And 6 Year Olds

Learn tee ball coaching 101 hacks and practice plan drill ideas for beginning coaches who are coaching 3, 4, 5, and 6 year olds…

11 Little League Baseball TBall Drills & Tips, So You Can Be Confident You’re Preparing Players For The Next LevelTBall Drills Little League Baseball: How To Coach Tee Ball Without Going Insane

In researching this coaching tball drills little league baseball post, I did a Google search for “coach tee ball”, and one of the Google pre-populated search terms that came up was “coach tee ball without going insane“.  Apparently, there’s a book being sold on Amazon with the same title by a Robert Doss…who knew. 

I had to laugh because the dad of one of my online hitters, Lawrence Sutton Jr. (link is to his Perfect Game profile), shared over the phone he was pulling his hair out trying to coach his two twin 7yo daughters how to hit.  Let me give you a little context about [son] Lawrence…

You may remember [son] Lawrence in this post titled, “How 175-LB 15yo Is Consistently Hitting The Ball 400-FT With…BBCOR & Wood“.  Well now Lawrence is hitting those ugly yellow dimple balls out during batting practice.  He’s hitting baseballs over 360-feet…off a tee!  He’s registering over 94 to 96-mph off a regular tee using a PocketRadar.  He’s also hit balls in games over 425-feet. By the way, he’s about 6-foot, 1-inch, 180-pounds…and gets mistaken for a college Freshmen during unofficial visits, but he’s a Sophomore in High School!!

SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:

Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.

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

Right Course For You? Take Quiz Now

Let me repeat…so now [dad] Lawrence is trying to coach his TWO TWIN 7YO DAUGHTERS…yes, A LOT of patience needed.

Look, I can’t say my situation is exactly like [dad] Lawrence, but I do work with a lot of hitters from 6yo to pro guys and D1 college gals.  Half the hitters I work with are 12yo and younger, and the other half are 13yo and older.  In addition, my son Noah turned 5yo this past December…and this is his first year of tee ball…AND wait for it…I’m now helping coach his tee ball team.  BAM!  A lot of my parents said this day was coming.  Those who can’t see me right now, I’m tipping my cap 😛

In this little league baseball post, I wanted to share with you advice I offered [dad] Lawrence over the phone about “how to coach tee ball without going insane”.  I know some of you coaches out there can offer some advice as well, so please share below in the comments.

Here are my 11 little league baseball tball drills and tips (in no particular order):

  1. Patience through guided meditation apps
  2. Don’t have high expectations
  3. Have a long wick to frustration
  4. Failure is going to happen…A LOT
  5. Build fun into practices and games (joke with the players)
  6. Positive reinforcement training
  7. Minimal to NO mechanical teaching
  8. More emphasis on external cues
  9. Extreme adjustments
  10. Focus on throwing and catching
  11. Getting them ready for the next level

 

#1: TBall Drills Patience through guided meditation apps

First of all, if you’re not going to have the patience for coaching tball drills, then you’re not going to enjoy coaching.  Period.  There are two great guided meditation apps out there:

  • Headspace, and
  • Calm.

I prefer Headspace, which I’ve been using over the past couple years.  Minimal investment of money, and between 2 to 20-mins investment of your time each day.  Helps me focus better, think clearer, expose my creativity, and especially for coaching tee ball – become more aware when you’re losing it, so you can relax in a shorter period of time.  It’s totally transformed my interaction with my wife, kids, and hitters.

 

#2: Don’t have high expectations

David Epstein, in his book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, talks about “learn-ability”.  It’s the ability of an athlete to adapt and learn something new over time.  To help put coaching tball drills into perspective, the bell curve of young athletes looks like this:

  • Left hand side long tail = below average “learn-ability” athletes, take longer to learn something new (these are few),
  • Majority middle bell curve = average “learn-ability” athletes, take a reasonable amount of time to learn something new, and
  • Right hand side long tail = above average “learn-ability” athletes, take a very short time to learn something new (these are few).

Most of your little league baseball tball drills and expectations should be setup for the majority middle bell curve.  You’ll then want to have a regression-progression plan for your below and above average learners, which we’ll discuss later in this post.  The point is, set reasonable expectations, and understand what you’re up against.

 

#3: Have a long wick to frustration

If you haven’t noticed, kids pick up on frustration pretty quickly.  And oftentimes you can’t fool them.  Believe it or not, kids just want their adult counter-parts to be happy.  Studies show that when hot tempered anger or animated frustration enters the mix, learning stops.  The focus falls onto survival.

They’re modeling you when learning how to react to “speed bumps”.  And if coach (or mom/dad), is extremely animated when frustrated or angry, then they’ll learn that’s how you deal with it.  Guided meditation helps hide the mental meltdown button.  Here’s another powerful word I use often with my kids…and hitters…

The following YouTube video is Dr. Carol Dweck doing a speech on the power of “yet”…

 

 

I highly recommend her book Growth Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success.  The power of “yet” will help mold your little league baseball tball drills to be growth mindset oriented.

#4: TBall Drills Failure is going to happen…A LOT

Think back to when your kids were learning to walk.  Did you teach them a thing or two on how to do it?  What cues did you use?  Internal ones? External?  “Walk as hard as you can, as far as you can” cues?  NO!  Figure It Out (or FIO) and Gravity were their best teachers.  The best tball drills are designed with failure in mind.  A LOT of it.  Swing and miss.  Swing and miss.  Swing and miss.  And multiple that by 100 at this age!

I’m here to tell you, it’s okay.  They’re 4, 5, or 6 years old.  Even one of the best hitters to ever play the game said hitting a ball is one of the hardest things to do in any sport – Ted William.  You can’t get 7 wrong on a school test and climb the education ladder.  Hall of Famers get it right 3 out of 10 times in baseball.  Keep on a poker face (hold the judgement), give positive reinforcement during tball drills when they get a productive outcome, and encourage the heck out of them.

 

#5: Build fun into practices and games (joke with the players)

Play games at the end of practice like Total Bases, Last Man (or Woman) Standing, Russian Baseball (kind of like cricket), or any other fun game.  Use it as a reward if they get their work done.  Speaking of which, tball drills MUST not go any longer than 60-mins (preferably 45-mins).  Adults forget 4-6 year olds have the equivalent attention span of a gnat.  Keep little league baseball practices short and sweet.

I like to “flirt” with my players and hitters…not in a romantic way, you weirdo!  In a playful way.  I tease my Middle School and High School hitters about the video game Fortnight, and how all the pretty girls are looking to get 100,000 signatures on a petition to ban the video game because it’s robbing them of their “guy time”.

When we’re talking about running to different bases with the tee ballers, they learn about 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base, and FOURTH base…wait minute, is that right?!  I ask them if they have the key to the batter’s box.  Or if they could fetch me the box of curve-balls.  I tease the heck out of them on down times.  Keep them loose and on their toes.

 

#6: Positive reinforcement training

The best little league baseball resource for this is the book by Karen Pryor titled, Don’t Shoot The Dog:  The New Art Of Teaching And Training. Karen has trained dolphins, horses, dogs, and humans.  This form of training has taught chickens to turn the page of a book.  True story!  And trained two pigeons to play ping-pong.  Another true story!  Studies show we’re driven more by positive than negative reinforcement.  That’s not to say negative reinforcement training isn’t effective, because it is…give one chimpanzee an apple, then take it away, and they’re peeved!  Give another chimpanzee two apples, then take only one away, and they’re just as peeved!  However, if you want to build lasting habits, positive reinforcement training is the way to go.

Let me give you some examples of this:

  • My 5yo boy Noah gets any $1-2 candy at 7-Eleven immediately after school.  He also gets an ice cream scoop immediately after going to his gymnastics training.  He earns stickers for doing productive things, and after earning 10 stickers, he gets a toy of his choice within financial reason.
  • For the boring redundant parts of my business I play my favorite music in the background (right now it’s Eric Church, songs: “Talladega”, “Springsteen” & “Record Year”), and most times have a sweet green tea within reach.
  • Karen Pryor told a story in her book Don’t Shoot The Dog, of when her daughter took a night class for working professionals.  The Professor would always start the class off with the “Who finished last night’s homework?” question.  Only 25% of the class would raise their hands.  She’d then lectured the class on the importance of doing their homework.  After one of the classes in private, Karen’s daughter talked the Professor into praising those who did do their homework instead of belittling those who didn’t.  After about of week of using positive reinforcement training, 75% of the class were raising their hands after the “who turned in their homework” question.

You MUST read Karen Pryor’s book.  Your little league baseball coaching will never be the same.

 

#7: Minimal to NO mechanical teaching

(Get more information on the Backspin Tee, or the RopeBat at TheStartingLineupStore.com)

Above is my 5yo boy Noah hitting a Smushball laser in a Backspin Tee with a Ropebat.  Look at him ‘show those numbers’!

Remember, they’re 4, 5, and 6 years old.  I have local and online lesson requests from parents with kids in this age range I turn down.  And by the way, it’s possible to teach a 2yo how to hit a moving ball.  I did with my son Noah.  Not forced.  He loved the movie Sandlot at the time and got a little tee ball set for his birthday.  CLICK HERE for a little league baseball post on how I progressed him to hitting an under-hand thrown baseball sized whiffle ball using a long slim yellow whiffle ball bat.

I give the following advice to parents seeking swing help for their 4-6 year old hitters…

  • Being athletic in their stance.  Bend at waist, chest over toes.  Bend in the knees.  Start that way and maintain that position to stride landing.  It’s easier to teach if they’re playing other sports like soccer, basketball, gymnastics, dance, and/or martial arts.
  • Grip on the bat.  Handle of the bat lines up in the middle of the hand – base of the finger tips, top meat of the hand.  I’m not even concerned if their hands are together at this stage.
  • Balance when swinging.  They should not be falling toward or away from the plate.  However, we may use these cues to correct one side of the extreme.  In other words, if they’re falling away from the plate, then I would tell them to fall towards the plate, to get them to balance.
  • Fungo toss is great as a progression.  Hitter tosses ball up to him or herself and tries to hit it before it hits the ground.

That’s just about how technical I get with tball drills for hitting.

 

#8: More emphasis on external cues and variance

We do a lot of external cuing.  Hit the ball over there.  Hit the ball up or down there.  Hit the top half of the ball.  Hit the bottom half of the ball.  Hit the ball in on your hands.  Hit the ball off the end of the bat.  Hit the ball in the middle (sweet spot).  Try hitting this ball with this heavy bat.  Try hitting the ball with this Easton Pro Stix whiffle ball bat.  We hit from different distances providing we’re progressing to LIVE toss.  Reverse strike zone drill where they’re swinging at “balls” and taking “strikes”…they like it when I bounce it and they have to hit it!

What’s important is for them to try different ways.

 

#9: Extreme Adjustments

This works like magic.  Check out for following video that’s great for tball drills…

 

#10: Focus on throwing and catching

CLICK HERE for an audio interview I did with NCAA Division-1 Hall of Fame college baseball Coach Bob Bennett.  One of the questions I asked him was if my team was getting ready to win the Little League World Series, but only had 4-weeks to train, what would you work on.  And do you know how he responded?  Playing catch and pitchers throwing strikes (obviously, the latter is irrelevant to coaching tball drills).  Fielding ground-balls and playing catch are VERY important because 95% of coaches at the lower levels are teaching their hitters to hit ground-balls.  Why?  Because they know kids can’t play catch at that age!  If you want to win a lot of games, then obsessively teach your players to play catch.  Take advantage, this is low hanging fruit coaches 😉

 

And FINALLY #11: TBall Drills How To Get them ready for the next level

Coaches MUST maintain a Growth Mindset at all time, and should never just coach for the current level.  Like Wayne Gretzky said:

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Coaches MUST be looking forward when developing players…always.  My son’s Pre-K teachers are doing everything they can to prepare him and his classmates for Kindergarten this next year.  So why can’t Little League coaches prepare their troops for the big field?  So in the context of coaching tball drills, start using the progression I used with Noah in the aforementioned linked article on how to teach a 2yo how to hit a moving ball…

  • Hitting off tee is essential at first, but slowly shrink the diameter of the bat, moving the tee up or down after every swing, and use different size and colored balls.  Variance if your coaching tball drills friend.
  • Once they’re consistent hitting the ball off the tee, grab the fat plastic bat and beach balls!  Start underhand tossing, and as they start hitting the ball more often, then slowly shrink the ball down to baseball sized whiffles.  Once they’re hitting those whiffles with the fat barrel plastic bat, then start slowly shrinking the barrel diameter down.

This is a progressive winning strategy that worked for my son.  It may or may not take longer, but that’s the art of learning.  Embrace it.  Have A LOT of patience.  And coaches, go forth and make awesomeness…

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How to Improve Throwing More Accurately for Developing 8U Baseball & Softball Players

Improve Throwing More Accurately Fun Indoor Fielding Drills For Developing 8u Baseball & Softball Players

Learn how to improve throwing more accurately with these fun throwing and fielding drills you can do indoors with 8u baseball and softball players on up!

Throw The Ball: How To Teach Accuracy & Making Good Throws

 

 

In this video and post, I’ll be answering the question of:

“Throwing accurately making good throws”

This throw the ball video and post has nothing to do with hitting, but at the same time, has everything to do with hitters.  In it, we discuss:

  • Mechanics are a big part of this, but this video will not go into that (Texas & Florida Baseball Ranches & Top Velocity)
  • The art of “variance” – bean bag toss study
  • Depth and Lateral
  • Ground-balls and different wall targets at home
  • Belt-to-hat target game
  • Arm care program – Jaeger Bands

Hey, what’s going on. Joey Myers here from the ‘Hitting Performance Lab’. In this video, I’m going to answer a reader question. This is a big question, and if you have a hitter, they’re gonna be throwing – the throwing is a given of playing baseball or softball.

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To Throw The Ball: Mechanics are a Big Part of this…

It doesn’t really excite me to talk pitching mechanics, but I will direct you to some sources that you can go to that promote healthy pitching mechanics. It’s not all about velocity, velocity should come, it should be a byproduct, it’s really where you move the ball around the zone that can upset hitters timing. So, I will make a couple suggestions…

So again, here’s a question, throwing accurately, this reader needed some advice on “Throwing accurately, making good throws”. So, whether this is a player asking the question or a coach on how to put a practice together that promotes or encourages accurately making throws.

So, mechanics again are a big part of this. I would advise you to go to TopVelocity.net, and look into Brent Pourciau or go to the Texas or Florida baseball ranch.  You can go online and get some of their stuff. From what I’ve heard, I haven’t looked at it in detail, but what I’ve heard, a friend of mine Mike Gillen, who is my pitching guy locally. I send my hitters to him locally, who want to pitch. He teaches based off of top velocity’s stuff.

It’s a very healthy, not putting your players in bad positions with their arms. A lot of what I’ve heard is really good stuff, in addition to the Texas and Florida baseball ranches. I’ve heard good stuff; I’ve heard players that go in to have some arm pain or elbow pain whatever. They go in and start working their mechanics. They get so much better, they can throw without any kind of pain. So, any kind of program that has that as part of their focus and priority is a good program.

Don’t listen to some of those people out there, where to throw the ball is all about velocity, velocity and throwing hard. Because what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna be short-lived that season, that career is gonna be short-lived.

You want to be careful with arms and shoulders. So, with that being said, mechanics are a big part of it. But we’re not going to talk mechanics in this video…

 

The Art of “Variance” – bean bag toss study

I want to talk to you about the art of variance, this was a huge thing for me when I learned about it. I learned about it in Make It Stick by Peter C Brown, check it out, there were like eight principles, the “science of successful learning” is the subtitle. But the art of variance, it can be demonstrated in this way…

There was a beanbag study, they cited in the book. So, imagine that we’re in a grade school class, sixth grade, fifth grade, grade school class.

I think they were 11, 12 year olds. They split the class into two. For group one, they put a bucket that was three feet away, get those kids beanbags and have them practice throwing in that three foot bucket. That was for 15 minutes.

They had group two, they gave them two buckets, one was two feet away, and the other was four feet away. So, no three-foot bucket, there was a hole at the three foot, so only two and four. They gave them beanbags and had them practice for 15 minutes throwing in the two buckets.

At the end of the 15 minutes, they had them all test on a three foot bucket, which group…? Group one who is practicing on the three foot or group two who is practicing on the two and four foot buckets, no three foot. Which group, one or two, did better?

You probably think this is a trick question, and you want to pick the three-foot bucket, but you know that there’s something going on, and this probably isn’t true. Well, you are right because the three-foot bucket practicing half of the class, actually did not do better, they ended up losing to the part two group, that was two- and four-foot bucket part of tossing bean bags – second group half of the class.

So, why though, why did group two win? I asked my players this, and it’s because they had two frames of reference, a two and a four foot bucket. They didn’t have the three, but they can, when they go to the 3-foot bucket, they say, I know if I toss toss in a four-foot bucket, which would be over the three. I know what tossing in a two-foot bucket, which is just short of the three. I know what both of those feel like, so I’ll just throw it in the middle of both of those.

You see, they have two frames of reference, whereas the three foot bucket, they only have one frame. They had to either make it or they didn’t, but they weren’t practicing trying to throw it too far or too short. When we talk about the art of variance and practicing to throw the ball, we apply it to throwing, and throwing accurately.

Depth and Lateral – how to practice throwing accurately and making good throws at practice

What we did with my son, who is now going to be 7yo in December. We did it with his baseball ball team last season.

We had stations in our practices, and one of the stations was a throwing accuracy station. We have them lined up, three players at a time, I would toss a ground ball to one player, and we taped the numbers 1, 2, & 3 behind me on the chain-link fence in green frog tape. They were spaced enough apart, not being super close, you’re getting this variance of depth for them, this is to practice depth to throw the ball.

I rolled on the ground ball.  And at first, before I rolled it. I would say, I want you to hit number one. I’d go down the line. I will say, I want you to hit number two before I rolled it. So, they would get pretty good at being somewhere around the numbers, and then I would roll it.

A kind of a progression to that… I would roll it, and I wouldn’t tell them any number until I rolled it, and I would say “all right, hit two”. As they were fielding it, they’d have to make the decision, and look up and try and hit the target.

Then I was changing it up on them, that was the next progression. As you got these three players on the line, well we would move them, move kind of like in a volleyball game where the players kind of shift around. You want to move them around so they’re getting different perspectives of hitting the number one, two, and three.  It’s going to be different if they’re in the middle versus the left or the right side. So, you want them to kind of feel the difference of different positions of their body of where they’re at in space and time.

The other thing that we did was, it was more of a across the field drill as they got pretty good with the accuracy of hitting static targets.

Then we moved to create some depth for them. So, we would have a first baseman set up, but we’d have the real first base, we’d have a first base at about five feet down the line towards the home plate, and we would have another first base that was about five feet down the line towards right-field. So, it was just on the foul line, it was spread out this way laterally, then we had them practice kind of similar to what I just talked about. But they’re hitting two different targets laterally.

So, you got the real first baseman, and then you would work variance at depth. So, arm distance or being short of first base.

We would have real first baseman, we would have a first baseman about five feet more towards the pitcher, or towards the fielder throwing the ball. Then we would have a first baseman beyond the real first baseman, almost like an overthrow. So, I can under throw the ball overthrow, and then you have the first baseman changing positions, and each player is testing at different positions.

It’s almost like they’re getting six different frames of references as they throw the ball to first base.  This helped clean up throwing with a bunch of five-year-olds all the way up to seven year olds … this cleaned up throwing accuracy so quickly. It was amazing.  It was crazy.

 

Ground-balls and different wall targets at home

Wall targets at home…this is something that I’m gonna be doing at our house. We’re gonna have a swing open gate, right now it’s just kind of a small swing open, we’re gonna make a big swing open. On that gate we’re gonna put some kind of vinyl material, that’s not gonna ruin the wood. My son can throw the ball against the wall, and it’s not gonna ruin our fence, and we’re gonna create targets. We’re going to put targets up on the fence, as they field the ground ball, throw the ball against it, ball bounces back, we’re gonna have different targets up, down, middle.

He’s gonna get to pick a target before he throws the ball. Then throw, and try and hit that target. Just different targets, putting them up all over. So, that’s an idea at home that you can do.

 

Throw the Ball Belt-to-hat target game

Also, when we play catch. I learned this at Fresno State, you can use a belt to hat game. Players are playing catch down the line, if they hit the hat, it’s three points. If they hit the chest, it’s two. If they hit the belt, it’s one, and anywhere else outside of that range is zero. It’s called belt to hat game. So, that’s a good one that you could play while playing catch.

 

Arm care program – Jaeger Bands

Also before in this video, I want to make sure that you are aware of arm care exercises that you should have your hitters, throwers, and pitchers do. They’re never too young to start some sort of an arm care program. They need to take care of their arm, younger obviously not quite as needed as they are when they’re junior, high, and high school on up. But I recommend Jaeger bands, you can go on the – search Jaeger bands on Google. Find their website, go on, and check it out.

They have a lot of videos, I’m pretty sure they’re on YouTube. Just go on YouTube, and search, get to their channel. Jaeger bands channel, and they have tons of videos on how to do different exercises and things like that. Pick and choose, get a get a bunch of them, maybe five to ten of them. Doing them every day, make sure that you’re providing arm care for your little hitters. Hope you learned something in this video.

Make sure that we’re swinging smarter by moving better, and again this video was about “Throwing accurately and making good throws”. Before I let you go…

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