Discover how to teach a kid to hit for power by hitting a baseball, fast pitch, and slow pitch softball better, farther, and harder with the Catapult Loading System.
Why I Teach Hitters To ‘Show Numbers’ (And Maybe You Should Too)
Question: How does ‘Showing Numbers’ to the Pitcher Effect Bat Speed at Impact versus ‘NOT Showing’ them?
Aaron Judge (Showing Numbers), unloads a solo home run to center field on 10/17/17 to put the Yankees on the board in the 7th inning.
Using the Zepp (Labs) Baseball app, I wanted to use the Scientific Method to analyze if a hitter showing their numbers to the pitcher at landing adds to or takes away from keyswing performance metrics like Bat Speed at Impact, Time To Impact, and Attack Angle. This swing experiment is revisiting two other experiments done analyzing the same thing.
Background Research
Since we’re REVISITING two previous swing experiments on ‘Showing Numbers’ versus NOT, here are the original posts and data to get you up to speed:
Now, let’s see how the Ball Exit Speed averages compare:
76.02-mph BES when ‘NOT Showing Numbers’,
77.32-mph BES when ‘Showing Numbers’,
That’s a 1.3-mph average INCREASE when ‘Showing Numbers’, and
Translates between 5.2-feet to 7.8-feet of EXTRA batted ball distance – depending on if you calculate using 1-mph BES = 4-feet of distance OR 1-mph BES = 6-feet of distance.
In this experiment, if you look at the ‘NOT Showing Numbers’ swings, they were actually ‘Showing Numbers’. In other words, the subject in the swing experiment, Preston Scott, already shows his numbers well causing a challenge to not show them. Therefore on the ‘Showing Numbers’ swings, he showed them more. I think that’s why we didn’t see as much of a difference in Ball Exit Speeds.
In 2014 ‘Show Numbers’ swing experiment, this was what the averaged out Zepp data looked like:
Bat speed for NOT showing numbers at landing: 73-mph,
Bat speed for showing numbers at landing: 79-mph (+6-mph),
Highest bat speed for NOT showing numbers at landing: 82-mph,
Highest bat speed for showing numbers at landing: 88-mph (+6-mph),
Hand speed max for NOT showing numbers was: 27-mph, and
Hand speed max for showing numbers was: 29-mph (+2-mph).
Between both swing experiments, we saw an average Bat Speed at Impact increase between 5 to 6-mph. In 2016 we saw a .003 second drop in Time To Impact ‘Showing Numbers’, while in 2014 we saw a .003 increase.
The research on increasing bat or ball exit speed can be seen in the following two books on springy fascia and spinal engine mechanics:
For those versed in Anatomy, for explosive movement on the Transverse Plane (twisting), there must be a protraction of the front scapula (‘showing numbers’), and a retraction of the back Scapula (what’s often referred to as ‘Scap Row’). Scap Rowing by itself doesn’t engage full range of springy fascia.
Hypothesis
Based on the above research, I’m expecting to see a dramatic bump in Bat Speed at Impact, Hand Speed Max, and possibly a reduction in Time To Impact. I think Attack Angle and Bat Vertical Angle at Impact will remain unchanged.
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This is the SwingAway Bryce Harper model hitting station used for the ‘Showing Numbers’ experiment.
Zepp Baseball app (to measure Bat Speed, Hand Speed, Time to Impact, & Attack Angle),
SwingAway Bryce Harper model hitting station,
GS6 android phone to record swings, and
33 inch bamboo bat.
Setup:
SwingAway Bryce Harper bungy suspended ball was set equal to the landing foot, and ball height was about knee height.
I broke each swing down into three steps: 1) Get to landing, 2) Pause for 2-secs, and 3) Swing. The reason for this was to better control whether I was showing numbers or not.
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. ‘Showing Numbers’ was letter ‘A’, and ‘NOT Showing Numbers’ 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 ‘Showing Numbers’ swing shoulders were set to about 2’o’clock, if pitcher is 12’o’clock. The ‘NOT Showing Numbers’ swing shoulders were set to about 12’o’clock.
Data Collected from Zepp Baseball App:
Data Analysis & Conclusion
Zepp data analysis comparing the averages:
Bat Speed at ImpactINCREASE of 3-mph ‘Showing Numbers’,
Hand Speed Max DECREASE of 1-mph ‘Showing Numbers’,
Time To Impact INCREASE of 0.014 ‘Showing Numbers’,
Bat Vertical Angle At Impact DECREASE of 4-degree ‘Showing Numbers’, and
Attack Angle INCREASE of 6-degrees ‘Showing Numbers’.
The drop from previous ‘Showing Numbers’ swing experiments was surprising, in addition to a small 1-mph drop in Hand Speed Max. There was also a slight increase in Time To Impact. The interesting numbers were the ones that indicate Launch Angles, both Bat Vertical Angle at Impact and Attack Angle. We hadn’t experienced such a dramatic uptick in those in past experiments.
A couple notes…
The past two experiments were done in a cage, off a tee, so I could see ball flight, and maybe that had an effect on the swing metrics.
Some hitting coaches speak highly of Time To Impact and want to reduce at all cost, but I disagree. There’s a healthy range for that, you don’t want it too short or too long. I’m not going to get into why here, maybe in another post.
To explain the dramatic increase of the barrel’s upward trajectory in ‘Showing Numbers’, I may have been getting more of a downward shoulder angle at landing.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/aaron-judge-showing-numbers.jpg295700Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-10-20 09:00:262023-09-16 05:29:03Teach Kid To Hit For Power By Hitting Baseball Or Softball Better, Farther, & Harder With Catapult Loading System
The following is the Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting mechanics video transcription. After you enjoy this analysis, then check out Part-2 Here.
Enjoy!
0:05
Hey, what’s going on? It’s Joey Myers from the Hitting Performance Lab, and in this Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting mechanics video, we’re going to go over a couple things.
0:13
First, we’re going to start with a couple fan graph points of interest, and then we’re going to go over how Fernando Tatis Jr. uses Catapult Loading System principles. And lastly, we’re going to touch on how he stays sideways using his lower half.
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Fernando Tatis Jr. Hitting Mechanics Fan-graph Stats…
0:30
A couple things worth noting in the fan-graphs article, as you can see that he is 6’3″, 185 pounds. I may be wrong but that’s about what Ted Williams was coming into the league. You could see comparing his 2019 and 2020 seasons, obviously 2020 is going to be quite shortened and 60 games season.
0:53
You can see that with almost half of the amount at-bats, plates appearances. He’s got almost as many doubles, and almost as many homers as he did in 2019, where he played in 84 games. And then you can see in his line drive, ground-ball, fly-ball rates that again, this is about half the amount of games in 2019, he played in, and then he’s got about half or so that he’s played in 2020.
1:24
You can see that, of course, these numbers, the data is going to be a little skewed because there’s lower data points, but you have a 22.4% line drive rate league average is 20. Got 16.3 here this year, ground-ball percentage is about average last year 46.6%, or 43% is average. So he’s a little bit above average. A little bit even more above average of 48.2 this year, and then his fly-ball rate has gone up from last year. He’s at 38, or 30.9%, which league average tends to be, league averages about 34%.
1:58
And then he’s almost about average on his fly ball percentage but increasing about 5% from last year to this year. Again, we’re talking lower data points.
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2:07
Alright, let’s really dig into this Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting mechanics video, we’re going to look at the Catapult Loading System principles. The best view for these, for most of them, is from the pitchers view. Just to give a little context to this pitch, you can see the location is about up and in, up and in part of the strike zone. And the pitch, you can’t see it on the screen. I can’t see it on the screen, but it’s flashing a nine, here. So it’s 90 plus for sure. 92. There you go 92 miles an hour.
Neck Pressure – Showing Numbers
2:34
And now let’s check out and one of the big principles is showing numbers or what we call neck pressure, creating neck pressure where the head becomes an anchor point anchors in a tracking position. That front shoulder scap protraction for those kinetic nerds out there, is coming underneath the front chin, shoulder’s sliding under the chin, head is holding it’s anchored tracking position.
3:01
And you’re going to see Fernando Tatis Jr. in these hitting mechanics, you can see him show his numbers on his back because of what that front shoulder is doing moving underneath to pass the chin.
Hiding Hands – Scap Pinch
3:14
The other thing he’s doing the other big one is the scap pinch. Some of you might know it as a scap row. You can see the back elbow will peek out behind him. Again the head is at an anchor point and he is doing like a rowing motion with that back arm and scap, and you’ll see that back elbow peek out from a pitchers view. Does a very good job.
3:41
We also call this like wringing the towel out, so the head is the top one and the neck, and the shoulders are at the bottom and we’re wringing the towel out. The head anchors in a tracking position and the shoulders rolling beneath and their limitation… They’re limited by how much the head allows them, front shoulder allows the front shoulder to come in, and then it’s also about the back shoulder retracting the scapula retracting back. It’s all limited by the head in the tracking position.
Downhill Shoulder Angle
4:09
The other big principle of the three big Catapult Loading System rules is a downhill shoulder angle. Now Fernando Tatis Jr. in his hitting mechanics, he doesn’t really get a really high back elbow, you see some hitters like trout will do to angle those shoulders down. He actually keeps his back elbow about the height of his back shoulder.
4:32
But you’re going to see this front shoulder dip down a little bit almost like we talk about to our hitters, like the alligator when greater less than signs. So the front shoulder and hip becomes a closed alligator and the back shoulder and hip becomes an open alligator.
4:50
So we want to close the alligator on the front side, so we angle the shoulder slightly down again, slightly down between 6 to 10 degrees down and that goes for both fast-pitch softball and baseball slightly down. If you do it too much, you’re going to end up with a big fat uppercut, slightly down, and then we turn from there. Okay, those are the big three of the Catapult Loading System principles.
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5:13
Let’s touch on, see how he stays sideways with that back foot. In baseball and softball, we’re dealing with 90 degrees of fair territory. So we have to manage our bodies effectively within that 90 degrees.
5:29
To do that we can’t over rotate our lower half rotation is okay, at the lower back but not too much. 7 to 12 degrees of rotation is what the lower back the lower lumbar is allowed. Seven to 12 degrees of rotation. The bones in the lumbar aren’t made to rotate, they’re only made to flex and extend. You can check it out, research it. They aren’t made to rotate. The rotation that you see is from the muscles surrounding the bones.
5:58
So we want to allow the lower half to decide our directional force or guide our directional force between the 90 degrees of fair territory. So we do not want our hitters over rotating. What we commonly see is that back foot over rotating.
6:14
But you’re going to see here, in this Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting mechanics video is, you’re going to see that back heel not rotate all the way over like you see a lot of young hitters do, and he’ll actually push it backwards. You can see it going backwards right here. He gets it almost to vertical, and then he pushes it backwards.
Shifting Foot Pressure?
6:33
We call this at Hitting Performance Lab, shifting foot pressure. So what generally happens is we’ll see foot pressure on the outside of the back foot, at this point at the stride, all the way to the touchdown, inside of the front foot.
6:47
Then when stride touchdown hits, you’re going to see Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting mechanics, he is going to shift his foot pressure to the opposite sides of each foot. So where he’s inside the front foot, outside the back foot. Now you’re going to see him shifting to the inside of the back foot, outside of the front foot.
7:07
Simple move sideways. You can practice this in your bedroom just shifting back and forth like a dance, shifting your footwork back and forth. Each foot sideways is going to be opposite of the other, where the foot pressure is. So as the swing starts, you’re going to see foot pressure outside. Again, back foot. It’s going to shift to the inside of the back foot outside of the front foot. You’re going to see him stay inside, see the back heel, you might see it get close to vertical but you’re never going to see it pop over towards the plate.
7:40
And then you’ll see him actually shift it even farther backwards behind him where we say trying to line up this back butt cheek with the back heel, see the outside of the front foot foot pressure, see it go from inside, to outside, and then the back foot… we’re going from outside to inside. And then as he’s swinging here, you’re going to see that back he’ll push even farther behind him.
8:07
You can see the bottom of his cleat here, again, remember this pitch was up and in. So you’re going to see more the bottom of the cleat, especially when it’s middle in possibly middle up depending on how close the ball is, you’re going to see the ball or the, you’re going to not see as much of the bottom of the front cleat if the ball’s middle away or middle down.
8:26
But you can see that shifting foot pressure beautiful for keeping the hitter effectively between the 90 degrees of the field. Alright, remember in this Fernando Tatis Jr hitting mechanics video we talked about:
Fan-graphs and a few stats there and how he’s 6’3″, 185 similar to the long lanky Ted Williams body back in 1938 or 39 when he broke into the league.
We talked about some examples of the Big Three the Catapult Loading System that Fernando Tatis Jr is using, and
We also ended on how he stays sideways using the shifting foot pressure and using his lower half effectively.
9:09
Make sure that we’re swinging smarter by moving better. And before I let you go…
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/fernando-tatis-jr-hitting-mechanics-2.png7201280Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-10-11 09:00:282022-10-11 21:26:48Increase Hitting Power: Teach Kid To Hit Baseball Or Softball Farther & Harder Using Catapult Loading System Like Fernando Tatis Jr Swing!
Learn how to teach a kid to increase power, hit a baseball or softball farther, and swing harder with the Catapult Loading System. Discover how in this Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, and Yordan Alvarez hitting mechanics swing breakdown…
Small Slugger Hacking Featuring Alex Bregman Hitting Mechanics
What we’re going over in this Alex Bregman hitting mechanics video:
Catapult Loading System(CLS) principles: Alex Bregman hitting analysis
Compare Alex Bregman’s use of principles to Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, & Ronald Acuna Jr.
I don’t agree with using technology to steal signs as these Astros did, but let’s look at their mechanics purely through the lens of mechanics. Look, they still had to hit in 81 games outside of Houston. Instead, consider how sound are they using human movement principles validated by real Science to hitting a ball?
All these guys, excluding Alvarez, are considered small sluggers. They swing a big stick without not a lot of gifted-ness in the size department. How? The following make up the Big-3 of the Catapult Loading System:
‘Showing numbers’ also known as ‘Neck Pressure’,
‘Downhill shoulder angle’, and
‘Hiding hands’ from the pitcher.
There are other Catapult Loading System principles like Hollow, Finger Pressure, One-Joint Rule, etc., but these are the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to building more consistent power. Now, some guys exhibit all of these, or a couple, but the closer to all a hitter can get to, the more power they can generate.
The following free video takes care of #1…
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Increase-Power-Hit-Baseball-Or-Softball-Farther-Swing-Harder-With-Catapult-Loading-System.png423800Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-09-26 09:45:282022-10-03 19:02:47Teach Kid To Increase Power, Hit Baseball Or Softball Farther, & Swing Harder With Catapult Loading System | Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, & Yordan Alvarez Hitting Mechanics Breakdown
“Braves star Freddie Freeman gives in-depth tutorial on how to hit off a tee” Video
If you liked this Freddie Freeman swing analysis, then you may want to take a look at this…
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/freddie-freeman-swing-analysis-e1570509855677.png492500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-07-19 09:45:442022-07-19 22:47:42Fix Swing Loop, Dropping Barrel, And Pulling Vs Hitting Opposite Field With Power For Baseball, Softball, & Slow Pitch | Do Stay Or Keep Hands Inside Cues Work? | Overload/Underload Bat Training Workout | Freddie Freeman & Ronald Acuna Jr. Analysis
Dustin Pedroia showing numbers but stepping in the bucket. Photo courtesy: ESPN.Go.com
Discover how to drills to stop a batter from stepping out of the box and into the bucket for baseball and softball players. What is stepping out of the box mean and should a hitter step when batting?
I took Mixed Martial Arts classes before it was considered MMA back in Junior High and High School. We practiced A LOT of grappling and lock & holds. One thing my Sensei (teacher) used to say when grabbing someone on the wrist, the common opponent response is to pull back, or fight against the resistance…
This week’s Dustin Pedroia video post will look at this fighting against the resistance concept. I’ll show you how fix stepping in the bucket using a little known human movement science technique called Reactive Neuromuscular Training (or RNT).
In this video blog post, we’re going to discuss:
Problems with stepping in the bucket,
Stepping out as a legit hitting strategy? And,
The #1 fix to stepping out.
Dr. Mark Cheng, kettlebell and corrective movement training expert, calls RNT “reverse psychology for the body”. He adds that “RNT operates on the premise that the body will do what it needs to maintain balance – homeostasis”. Essentially, we’re going to be training what Dr. Mark Cheng refers to as “feeding the mistake”…
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.
Stepping in the bucket is most prevalent at the Little League and youth softball levels. It’s when a hitter strides or steps away from home plate, which creates a big hole in their swing on the outside part of the plate. Contrarily, it can also be used as a legitimate strategy (crowding the plate) at the higher levels – we’ll get into that in a bit. At the youth levels, it can be caused by a few things:
Look at Dustin Pedroia’s back foot compared to his front. Use batter’s box inside chalk line as a point of reference. Photo courtesy: BattersBox.ca
Let me be clear, I’m not condoning the use of stepping in the bucket. In all youth hitters, it needs to be fixed. BUT, I’m going to show you an example of a player who uses it to his advantage as he crowds the plate…
2nd-baseman Dustin Pedroia from the Boston Red Sox. According to Baseball-Reference.com he’s 5 foot, 8 inches tall. 165-pounds, soaking wet. In a 162-game average season, Dustin Pedroia hits 15 homers and 45 doubles per season. His Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP – .307) and On-Base Plus Slugging% (OPS – .810) are above average.
Imagine what Dustin Pedroia could do if he was 6-foot, 200-pounds!
His home ballpark is Fenway, where it’s 315 feet down the left-field line. Very advantageous to a right handed hitter. How does stepping in the bucket work for him?
He’s almost crowding the plate (look at back foot in photo to right),
Because of #1, stepping out helps clear his pelvis before landing,
Shows his numbers a long time, and
As a result of #3, he can hit the ball to the opposite field like Derek Jeter.
So, let’s find out…
The #1 Fix for Stepping Out
As mentioned earlier, we’re going to infuse the Stepping in the Bucket Drill with RNT. Or what Dr. Mark Chang refers to as “feeding the mistake“. Here’s how you set up the Dustin Pedroia Stepping in the Bucket Drill:
You’ll need a workout band of light resistance from your local Sporting Goods store,
You’ll make a slip knot for the ankle,
The other end a partner can hold or can be secured using a wall anchor in the garage like in the video,
You want the band pulling the foot in the direction of stepping out (“feeding the mistake”),
At landing we want alignment with the heels.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dustin-pedroia-fix-stepping-in-the-bucket.jpg300300Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-05-18 09:30:452022-05-19 05:09:24Drills To Stop Batter From Stepping Out Of Box And Into Bucket For Baseball & Softball Players | What Is It & Should Hitter Step When Batting?
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.
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.
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.
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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…
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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]
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The following is the continued transcript to the perfect baseball swing webinar part-2… (about 18-minutes reading time)
‘Showing Numbers’ and ‘Neck Pressure’
00:07
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.
00:16
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 close to toe touch. Notice the numbers on their back.
00:33
Now the righties, because the camera in the major leagues isn’t straight on center-field because you have to see the pitcher and the hitter, it’s slightly off centered towards left.
00:43
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. We’ll talk in a little bit how we’ve refined it to creating neck pressure. but notice these.
00:57
Perfect baseball swing webinar experiment results of 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, BlastMotion taken over and SwingTracker.
01:05
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 that speed was increased on average by four to six miles an hour. That’s bat speed.
01:27
Bat speed is the close cousin to 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.
01:46
Here are three others, you can probably notice these ones again, jerseys might have changed. JD Martinez, on the left, you have Aaron Judge in the middle, and you have Altuve on the right.
01:57
I know I’m as big against the whole cheating thing, as probably many of you are with Houston, the Astros back in 2019. But Altuve, being 5’6, 5’7, he does a lot of these mechanical things correctly. Regardless of whether you knew the pitchers coming or not, he still got to be able to hit it, as far as he does, which I think that year up, you hit 30 plus… 35, even with the playoffs in the World Series, I think he got close to 40 home runs that year.
02:32
Even though you know it’s coming, the guy is 5’6, he’s not Judge who is 6’8. You can’t just write the guy off for “Oh, he’s gifted”. There’s a lot of things that he’s doing in his swing that are very effective when it comes to this perfect baseball swing webinar – spinal engine mechanics. That was showing numbers.
‘Hiding Hands’ from the Pitcher
02:51
The second part, it was the third part, we’re going to get to the second part of the big three and the second one of the big three, but the other one is we call hiding the hands from the pitcher.
03:01
A lot of times what you will see is at the start of the swing, you’ll see the hitter’s hands, and then by toe touch as you can see, all three of these hitters are pretty much a toe touch or right at toe touch. You’re not seeing their hands, they’re hiding them.
03:15
You can see Judge, they’re kind of behind his head over here, Altuve is the same, JD Martinez behind his head, but from where they start with their hands, where their hands are at. Before the pitcher starts or gets in the wind up to when they’re at landing, there’s this move the hands to go back, and it’s not towards the catcher, it’s actually back at an angle behind the hitters heel or over the hitters back heel, that’s where the hands need to go.
03:43
We see this idea of hiding the hands, now in the swing experiments with that, we found between a one to three mile an hour average increase in bat speed with hiding the hands versus not hiding the hands.
The second one we’ll talk about here in a second, it’s called downhill shoulder angle, but I wanted to go into the three basic principles of locomotion. There were three books that ruin my life when it comes to hitting in a good way.
04:13
The first one I mentioned was Thomas Myers book Anatomy Trains. The second one was called Dynamic Body by Dr. Erik Dalton, D-A-L-T-O-N. It was a collaboration of different authors that were all along the same lines of springy fascia, Spinal Engine and locomotion, that kind of stuff.
04:30
In that book, Dynamic Body, I found Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s book The Spinal Engine. This is out of the spinal engine, the little thing on the right, which he’s talking about a pitcher and talking about side bending, which is downhill shoulder angle, and he talks about axial rotation, which basically means shoulders moving opposite of the pelvis.
04:30
When we walk as humans. our left leg comes forward when our right arm comes forward and the opposite happens. Left arm comes forward our right leg comes forward. That is axial rotation, your shoulders turn opposite your pelvis, and it’s like this gear shift that just does this when we walk, our shoulders and our pelvis and they move opposite each other, almost like winding it up, unwinding, winding, unwinding.
05:15
The axial rotation, shoulder, pelvis separation, the side bend, or downhill shoulders, and then the third move of the spine is flexion extension. If you go into an arch, you’re extending your spine, you’re hyper extending your spine, if you just stand in neutral, your lower back has a slight curve to it, or at least it should, if it does not, then we’ve had surgery to correct something we put pins in or something, or maybe we’ve got a lower back that’s compromised, but we should have a slight curve in the lower back.
05:46
Dr. Serge Gracovetsky calls it “lordosis”. Just standing there in neutral, with that curve in your lower back, you already have extension in your back, it’s not hyper-extension, it’s just extension.
06:00
Flexion would be if you were doing a crunch, and you were to go the opposite direction and you flex your spine. You think about whales, they go this way with their tail, right? That’s flexion extension of the spine, sharks go side bend, you see this right here, they do a little bit of both, but that’s the good example of side bending.
06:17
We use all three of those when we walk. We already have lordosis or that little bend in the lower back. We drop our shoulder into a side bend, and that helps us to initiate the axial rotation where right arm comes forward as the left leg comes forward.
06:31
The story that really got me with this was Dr. Serge had a patient, you see this gentleman on the left, he was born without any arms or legs. He walked on what’s called the ischium the bottom of the pelvis, and you can see him here in this perfect baseball swing webinar.
06:50
What he did was he hooked up electrodes, not to shock him but to measure his muscle activation and his ligament activation. He said if you watch and you can go on YouTube, and you can put in Dr. Serge Gracovetsky, try and spell it the best you can.
07:07
It’s kind of a goofy name, spinal engine, and he’s got a video on there that’s like an hour long, and you can watch I think it’s around the four-minute mark or three-and-a-half-minute mark, his show has a video of this gentleman locomoting.
07:21
What’s crazy, if you remember, this is from birth, this wasn’t the guy who had arms and legs until he was 18, got in a car accident or got a bad disease or virus or something where he had to be amputated, he was born this way. It was from the start.
07:36
If you covered the lower half of his pelvis to know he didn’t have legs and you watched him move, you would swear he had legs. That begs the premise locomotion is from the beginning.
07:51
As we start going from baby crawling or rocking, crawling to standing to walking, we learn how to locomote this way, this is the best way how to locomote. This gentleman really opened my eyes to wow there must be something here and where it got me to reverse engineer the swing.
Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar: Springy Fascia Secret
08:13
Discover the springy fascia secret. Springy fascia for those of you that don’t know out there, we got bones, we got muscles, but did you know, we have connective tissue? Part of that connective tissue is called fascia.
08:25
What is connective tissue? Tendons, ligaments, fascia, to cotton candy or spider web-like material that your bones and muscles float in. It gives muscles their shape if you’ve gone to the grocery store and bought a bag of tangerines in that, that fishnet type of bag, think of the tangerines as your bones, muscles, and your organs, and the bag being the fascia, so it gives muscles their shape.
08:52
Myofascia or fascia, if you’ve done myofascia release on a foam roll, you probably felt the pain especially if you do your IT band of that fascia when it gets really tight and clogged up. Cotton candy and spider web-like material, it’s made up of mostly collagen and elastin fibers, mostly collagen, but there’s elastin in there, collagen is very springy.
09:12
You’ve seen the Kardashians, how springy it is because they inject it in their face and their butt and everything else. It keeps everything nice and plump and tight. Bones and muscles float in this web, they’re composed of compression and tension forces.
09:27
You see a couple of these things you probably recognize as a kid or if you bought these for your kid, that Chinese finger trap and the geometric toys, although I don’t know about the Chinese finger traps nowadays, unless you go to some arcade and you can win tickets and get some of those things. Never thought you’d be learning about Chinese finger traps in a perfect baseball swing webinar!
09:42
The idea is compression forces a brick stacked up on top of a brick pushing down, each push against each other tension forces would be like a boom crane and you have the cable. You got the big wrecking ball at the bottom of the cable. You got the structure, the boom crane.
09:58
There’s a tension force being exerted on it by the structure of the boom crane and the wrecking ball itself. We have both of these forces, fascia that are acting within our body at all times and resembles more of this toy on the left, this kid’s toy, when you push one side of that toy down, it kind of shifts and changes it, one side opens up as you push on the other side. We got those two forces that fascia is into.
10:27
In Thomas Myers’ Anatomy Trains, we have three different systems. According to him, we have the neural which is brain spinal cord stuff, the fluid, which is your veins and your heart, and then we have the third one, and hopefully, if you got kids there, there’s no naked pictures here, but it can be a little bit unnerving.
10:47
We have a fiber system, which looks like this, they did a lot of cadaver work. This is what the fascial system looks like. It’s not just something that is magic and floats, they have done a ton of research on this, and this is your fiber system or your fascial net, it’s what Thomas Myers refers to this as.
Finger Flick & Wringing Towel Effect
11:05
What I want you to do is do a finger flick test. Thomas Myers came up or this is where I read this from. To show you the power of the springy fascia spinal engine system, what I want you to do, if you’re seated, I want you to take your right hand or your left hand, whatever your dominant, whatever hand is dominant, I want you to put it on your leg on the thigh of whatever side leg, I want you to take your index finger, and I want you to just pick it up by itself and try and slam it as hard as you can on your leg, do it three times, pick it up, slam it, pick it up and slam it.
11:38
That’s an example of muscle using muscle to do it. Now we’re going to use only the ligament, I want you to take your opposite hand, pull the right finger, or mine is right finger, pull your index finger back as far as you can, and let it snap against your leg, you might be able to hear it on the camera, on the computer three times.
12:01
That is an example of a 100% ligament driving that, you can probably already tell that you’re going to bet a bigger snap than you are when you’re using your finger muscles.
12:11
The last one is I want you to use a combination of both, use a combination of the elastic or collagen, the ligament tissue, you’re going to pull the finger back and as you release the finger, I want you to slam it. I found that that hurts a lot more than the other two.
12:31
What we talked about in the swing is we’re using a little bit of both, we’re using more of the ligament tissue, which makes it safe on the body, and then we’re using some of the muscle, the muscle isn’t required, but it does help.
12:45
When we talk about strength conditioning programs and that kind of stuff, that helps, but we want to make sure we get our hitters moving correctly first. A must you’re learning in this perfect baseball swing webinar.
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The other metaphor I like to use is the wringing towel effect. Imagine we got a wringing towel, like you see me in the picture, I got my bat here and to wring a towel, you got to turn one hand one way and the other hand the other way.
13:05
When we combine the springy fascia and the spinal engine, instead of two hands, like we only have two, if I had a third hand like Squidward on Sponge-Bob, I have a third hand down here facing the same direction as the one on top.
13:18
The one on top is my head and my neck, my C spine cervical. The one in the middle is my shoulder and my thoracic spine, the middle part of your spine, the 12 vertebrae, the bottom one is your pelvis and your lower lumbar, the head and your lower back, turn the same direction, they’re turning the same direction.
13:38
It’s the one in the middle, the shoulders and the thoracic spine are turning the opposite. Imagine a wringing towel, except with two hands, we’re using three like Squidward. As you can see here in this video, this is what we’re doing with the spine and we’re doing it in a safe manner.
13:54
Again, returning to our hitters here. We talked about all these guys, neck pressure, AKA showing the numbers. When it comes to the pressure, what we’re talking about is taking the head and we anchor the head in a tracking position, because when I used to teach this is just showing numbers that hitters were showing too much of their numbers, and now they weren’t able to see the ball.
14:16
We make sure that their head is the anchor and anchors in a tracking position, the shoulder, the front shoulder comes underneath the chin, possibly even past the chin as far as it can go, as far as the neck will allow the shoulder to go.
14:31
Wherever the shoulder stops, you got to stop, because then we start to pull the head off the ball. When we say neck pressure, that’s what we’re referring to. Head anchors show front shoulder comes underneath until it stops at landing.
14:47
At stride landing as you see what these hitters here, this is what they’re all doing. You can see what their head and I encourage you to go out on YouTube and go start looking for this. You’re going to see it, you’re going to see the head anchor, you’re going to see the shoulder coming underneath, that’s the first one of the big three in this perfect baseball swing webinar.
‘Downhill Shoulders’
15:03
The second one, we talked about the side bend or down shoulders. The experiment we did on this added on average when we had down shoulders versus flat shoulders added, on average four miles an hour of bat speed, and again, bat speed ball exit speed, they’re similar, not the same, but without bat speed, you’re not going to have ball exit speed.
15:23
You can see four these hitters right here, Miguel Cabrera, on the left, you can see JD Martinez in the middle, on the top Mike Trout in the middle, in the bottom and you got a new guy this last year, you probably all have seen him, he had a good year this year, Fernando Tatis Jr.
15:39
You have this slight downward shoulder angle, and I say slight. In golf, you’re going to see an extreme just because where the ball is. In baseball or softball, we can’t be quite that down because we got to be able to hit balls up in the zone.
15:52
When I say slight, I’m talking about 6 to 10 degrees down, it’s not a lot. I tell my hitters, this is 90 degrees, and then, 45 degrees, 22 and a half degrees, 12.25 degrees, it’s really small, but you can see the back shoulder is above the front shoulder slightly. You can see with Trout on the bottom, I know that picture is a little farther off.
16:15
You can see with Miggy, he’s about eight degrees, nine degrees. JD is probably around that six to eight degrees. Tatis is about six to eight degrees, and Trout is around that same.
16:27
Hiding hands, we talked about this already, so we won’t go too far into it. Hiding the hands here you can see also, we talked about being safe with the lower back.
Last but not least in this Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar: ‘Hollow Position’
16:39
What we do is we don’t like what we call Donald Duck butt or those of you that know Dr. Kelly Starrett from mobilityWOD used to be and now I can’t remember what he changed it to, but taking the pelvis acting like the pelvis is a bowl of water, and we don’t want to spill water on our front of our toes.
16:55
We don’t want to tilt our pelvis to water spilling forward, we want to tilt our pelvis or our water spilling on our heels. What you can see here, not so much with Betts, you can see Arenado you can see this belt loops are almost flat.
17:09
When you see the belt loops in more of an angle and that also depends on the hip hinge that the hitters taken as well but with Arenado you can see almost more of a flat, he’s taken the curve out of his lower back because he is spilling water on his heels.
17:23
Trout, you can see the same, he’s flattened it. Judge he might be a little bit curved. Altuve, you can see the same thing, and if I had a picture of Josh Donaldson, you would see flat when he gets at the height of his leg kick, his pelvis is flat.
17:41
If we go into a hyper extended position, what that does is that pushes the vertebrae of the lower back together. That’s not bad in itself, we see gymnast when they are swinging back and forth, they’re going from global flexion to global extension, flexion would be flexing the lower back, extension would be when they come through the bar and they’re extending into like a global arch position, that’s okay.
18:03
The problem is since we hit, we have to turn and rotate, we have to, so if you’re overarching, your lower back or your hitter’s back and then you turn, you arch turn, arch turn.
18:16
It’s not going to show up in your younger hitters, but as they get into high school, junior high, high school on up, they’re going to start experiencing back pain. What we do when we flex, when we spill water on our heels, and the term we use with our hitters is we take the belt buckle in the belly button, and we try and bring those two points together.
18:35
We hold those two points together through the turn, even into the finish because some hitters will release it into their follow through and they’ll get into that arch again, we’re still turning as we’re arching, we don’t want to do that.
18:47
If you can do the pinch, we call it the hollow pinch. If you look on YouTube and just look up hollow position, or hollow exercise, you’ll get some cool gymnastic exercises to strengthen that, but we want our hitters to maintain the short distance between the belly button and the belt buckle as we’re turning.
19:05
Now, when you do that, the opposite happens to the vertebrae when you’re arching, you give space or traction between the vertebrae, and now when you turn, you don’t have that friction you’re not bone on bone turning.
19:16
Over time, obviously it’s a lot safer, and it doesn’t take away from performance at all. The swing experiments we did on that, I think it added one mile an hour on average, it didn’t add a lot, but it makes the spine safe and when the spine is safe the brain is always about survival. It doesn’t care if you can hit a 4- or 500-foot home run or in softball, a 300-foot home run, it doesn’t care about your performance.
19:36
It cares about surviving, it cares about keeping your body safe, and if there’s an issue with your lower back or your knee, your ankle, your shoulder, it’s going to say, “You know what, Neil? I can’t let you go 100% on your swing performance, I have to cut you down about 80%”, depending on the severity of the issue, and Neil was talking about his lower back was hurting him in the golf.
To be continued in Part- to this perfect baseball swing webinar…
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…the application of it basically. And in the beginning, there was the big three is what I call it. So that was showing the numbers, so hitters showing their numbers to the pitcher, there was the downhill shoulder angle. So that’s the side bend side of it. And then there was the hiding of the hands.
Joey Myers 00:20
And I know you came to kind of a conclusion about that front arm shape being barred out or even slight bend, but pretty close to being barred out. So, the hands don’t necessarily they used to teach walk away from the hands, right? So that to me is translated as the hands going back towards the catcher, but it’s actually should go back at an angle back where we say hiding the hands from the pitcher. So, the hands should end up at landing somewhere above or behind the back heel.
Joey Myers 00:49
So if the pitcher is watching this hitter, and again, go look at Mike Trout, go look at JD Martinez. Go look at Mookie Betts. Look at all these guys and you’ll see them number one, showing their numbers. Number two, not all of them have a downward shoulder angle but many of them do; Miggy Cabrera, Ted Williams if you want to go back in the day, a lot of hitters in the Stan Musial, they used to say that it looked like he was a little kid peeking around the corner. Right.
Joey Myers 01:16
And it was that the showing numbers part of it. And you see them all hiding their hands. So, from the minute they start to at landing, you see their hands disappear. So those are the big three and what’s happening fascia wise is we’re taking the front shoulder, we’re taking the front shoulder and we’re bringing it down and in towards the back hip.
Joey Myers 01:37
So that gives you that slight down angle and it gets you… we’ve evolved showing numbers to more creating neck pressure. Because every hitter is different, you and me being a little bit older, although we do a lot of movement work on our own body so we probably move better than people our age. But a lot of hitters are different in how far they can get their head here because one of the biggest…. one of the biggest things that people hated was showing the numbers was that, well, it pulls the hitters eyes off the ball.
Joey Myers 02:04
And yeah, if you do it too much, but the head’s got to anchor down in a position, so if I go sideways, so the head’s got an anchor in a tracking position, not necessarily square off to the pitcher, but intercept where the balls coming in. All Dr. Peter Fadde’s stuff and head anchors and then we just pull that shoulder underneath as far as you can. And that’s going to create some tension in the neck.
Joey Myers 02:28
So it’s like a wringing towel, like we’re wringing a towel out. So, where your head is on top, the top hand and that your shoulders are the bottom hand, and we’re just wringing as far as we can. We’re taking that spine, that section of the spine, and we’re just bringing it as hard as we can until landing and then we just let it go.
Joey Myers 02:44
So it’s kind of like, I call it more of a spring than some people call it rubber bands like get the rubber bands really tight and then let them go like a rubber band system. Kind of but it’s more it’s more spring, springy. So those are the big three if you connect the dots between what fascia is what the spinal engine is, it’s easy way to think about it is a wringing towel, like you’re wringing the towel, it’s loading that system up and then letting it go.
Joey Myers 03:10
And like I said, I ran quite a few swing experiments that proved that showing numbers versus not showing numbers, you add between four to six miles an hour bat speed, and I can’t remember if I did a ball exit speed one, but bat speed and ball exit speed are very similar. They’re like first or second cousins. So it’s very translatable. The down shoulders added four miles an hour of speed. And the showing numbers I think was three miles an hour, or one to two wasn’t quite as much. The big one was showing the numbers or creating that neck pressure.
Jaime Cevallos 03:41
So what this does is it winds up the body so that you can then deliver more force…
How do you Wind up the Body to Deliver more Force?
Joey Myers 03:48
Yes, yeah, it takes the slack out of the system. So slack being a little different than what how the human body because we talked about it’s more compression tension forces that’s taking slack out, but it’s almost like If you think about a car that goes into a ravine and then you have a Jeep with a winch on the front that you can take the cable, hook it up to the bumper of the car that’s been dropped in the ravine and to pull that car out, right, so you turn the winch on…
Joey Myers 04:15
And if you have slack in the cable that’s connected to the bumper, and you turn that winch on right away, because there’s slack in the cable, it’s going to just pull the bumper off, it’s not going to pull the car out of the ravine.
Joey Myers 04:25
So what you have to do first is after you hook it, hook the bumper, is you got to slowly take that slack out of the cable of the winch line and then turn it on and it’ll pull the whole car out. So that’s slack versus no slack. Some people out there have been on a what a toboggan on the lake, and you’ve been on a boat pulling you along, and you’re holding on to the ski line or whatever you hold on to the ski bar, right and they’re pulling you along.
Joey Myers 04:52
And we had a buddy who did this with us. And at the time, I was super strong. I was lifting a lot and he goes I’m going to do it as hard as I can to you, alright do it, bring it, bring it, man. So, he got it to where he’s pulling me at first. So, there was no slack in the line; line was nice and tight. And then he got me to where I started coming up to the side of the boat. So, he kind of slowed it down a little bit. And then I started kind of floating up and started putting slack in the line and then he floored it! And boom, and that I held on and there was one time I think I ended let go, but that amount of force all at once. It was a slack in the line.
Joey Myers 05:30
Oh my gosh. So what happens is…
Jaime Cevallos 05:34
You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself.
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Right? Yeah, dude, we were like 25 years old, right? ever get hurt. But that’s the thing. So when youth hitters, a lot of times what I see is these coaches say, keep your shoulders square. Don’t show your numbers to the pitcher for all these different reasons we can go into some other time, but they want the shoulders square. They don’t want you tilting them. They don’t want you turning them in. They want them square and then they want the hips to do everything.
Joey Myers 06:04
And so what’s happening is it’s putting slack in the system. Because to take slack out we just talked about is like that wringing towel, we have to wring the towel and then let it go. And that’s where you get a nice powerful move, consistently powerful move, and it’s safe on the spine versus the opposite where the coach wants this shoulder square doesn’t want any turn it in or down or anything like that. And they want the swing powered by the pelvis or the hips, they say explode the hips, load and explode the hips.
Joey Myers 06:34
And what happens there is you’re taking the equipment of the lower back, the set of five vertebrae is in the lower lower back, who actually are not made to rotate. They’re not made to, they’re not built to rotate the bones. Okay. All they can do is flex and extend. The rotation that you see is about seven to 12 degrees and this is via Tom Myers, and a pretty prominent, I can’t remember his name right now, physical therapists been around forever in the strength conditioning world [Charlie Weingroff, DPT, CSCS, a physical therapist, a trainer in New York City, and is pretty high up on the human performance food chain], seven to 12 degrees of rotation is all it’s allowed because of the muscles surrounding those bones.
Joey Myers 07:13
So that’s the rotation you see is that set that seven to 12 degrees rotation, you see, is because of the muscles surrounding the bones. The thoracic spine, so shoulders and then the rest of it that attaches up to the top of the lumbar, the lower back is made to rotate is actually made to rotate 40 degrees, four-zero in both directions.
Joey Myers 07:34
So I should be able to do a good moving human body can move 40 degrees to the left and rotate 40 degrees to the right. So when you employ a part of the body that isn’t allowed to rotate, to rotate and to not only rotate but explode, like absolutely explode. Now what happens is we start wearing holes in the lower back, we see back spasms. We see herniated discs.
Joey Myers 07:35
We see all kinds of stuff in the swings we were referring to earlier about the barrel moves the body, not the body moves barrel. So those ones that are teaching barrel moving the body, what I see in those swings is I see these hitters on Twitter where their back is arching their arching and you can almost draw for righties, you can draw a reverse C shape. And for lefties, you can draw a C shape like from their head, down their back and out their leg because they’re arching so much you can see this kind of C shape going on.
Joey Myers 08:32
And the problem with that is extension is okay, so if you arch your back in just a normal, a normal sagittal plane like a front to back plane, like you do a lunge or squat in a normal extension is fine. An arching of the back is fine. You see a gymnast when they swing the bar when they’re swinging under the bar, right? You’ll see them go into a globally flexed position where their spine kind of looks like this and then as they swing through, they go into a globally arched and global just means the whole body is arch. There’s not one little point that’s arched, say like in my head if I went and I just dropped my head back and I went into an extended position with my neck and not using my body as well, that’s that would be a local extension.
Joey Myers 09:17
Those aren’t usually good when they’re coupled with their rotation. So, when the hitter is going into an arched position, that by itself isn’t troublesome. But the minute you add a rotation in with that, now, when you arch you’re pushing the vertebrae together in your back when you arch. Okay, now that again isn’t a big deal, but the minute you start rotating, now you’re grinding and that is a problem and that’s what I see when you teach hitters the barrel moves the body and to snap the barrel back way back here.
Joey Myers 09:51
When I see those swings, I see those hitters arching their back and turning and it just makes me want to throw up because these coaches either, they’re, it’s like a cat, right? Cats are either really, really smart or they’re really, really stupid. And to me, it looks like those coaches don’t know any better. And they’re getting their information from some guy who doesn’t know any better, who knows better, but he’s not teaching the right thing and it’s just it’s horrible to see these young hitters doing that.
Jaime Cevallos 10:25
So, what you would say is the main thing that separates the great hitters from the average or the just the good has to do with this sort of building tension not creating slack in the torso area and the upper legs basically, of the body.
What is the Main Thing that Separates the Great Hitters from Average?
Joey Myers 10:51
Right, exactly. So if you go back and Ted Williams you look at Stan Musial, you look at even Babe Ruth, and not all of them have them have every single principle like they could have and they could have done better. You could even look at Tony Gwynn, right? There was an article I do that every time I put it up on social media, I said something in the article or in the headline to the effect of, could Gwynn have had more power?
Joey Myers 11:16
And I just did an analysis and took a look at his swing and pointed out areas where he could have maximized or optimized power. A lot of people don’t like that. You know, Tony, how could you be? You know, how many hits? Did you get the big leagues in? How could you take on Tony, when you don’t know what you’re talking about?
Joey Myers 11:31
I was like, no, it’s dude. It’s a thought experiment. I’m not going after the guy, right. He didn’t want to hit for power. Although, when he had his talk with Ted Williams, his power numbers sure went up a little bit because Teddy told him, Hey, you might want to pull the ball and own your pull field a little bit more. And that year after he had that talk with him, I think he went from like 11 home-runs a season I think he hit maybe 20 or 18 or something like that.
Joey Myers 11:54
But this idea that Ted Williams is probably one of the best one of the best at it, you see the showing numbers, or his in his case “the number” nine, you see his down shoulder angle. You see him hiding the hands. You see this locked out front lead arm when he started his swing. Like he’s got it all, all of it.
Joey Myers 12:14
The only thing I don’t agree with that it’s not a bad thing per se. Extra motion, is the idea where he turned his hips in slightly. So, he kind of turned the hips in like he was turning towards the catcher. And I did this read a book you know that in high school and college and stuff like that because that’s where I thought power was in the pelvis.
Joey Myers 12:37
But if you think about, when I turn my hips in and I’m creating my neck pressure showing my numbers and I’m pulling the shoulder in well if my hips going away from my back hip, which I’m supposed to be taking my front hip and bringing or my front shoulder and bringing it to my back hip, with my back hip is going away and my front shoulder is chasing what you’re continually chasing. So, you never get to that point. Right?
Joey Myers 13:00
So if we just keep the pelvis in neutral, so belt buckle, pointing at home plate we don’t inward turn or anything, and just let the shoulders do what they do. Creating neck pressure showing numbers going into that position there. Then now we’re compressing where we need to and what happens is when you inward the pelvis and we’re seeing data on this, ZenoLink.com – Chris Welch.
Joey Myers 13:26
So he does a lot of experimentation. He’s kind of physical therapist guy, and very, very knowledgeable and he’s got a lot of data. He’s got force plates he’s got all this different stuff. And so, I had one of my online hitters went to him, Chris’s on the East Coast, went to him to go through all his testing evaluation stuff.
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And Chris was saying that this particular hitter’s barrel speed was super maximized behind him, which is again, the same people that teach barrel swings the body right so the barrel speed was increased or was maximized behind him, but by the time he got to impact it was slowing down. So answer that, how are we teaching something that’s actually slowing down your barrel by the time you get to impact…
Joey Myers 14:15
And there’s a couple different factors in that we can go into if you want, but that was the whole thing he was in inwardly rotating his pelvis and he was a lefty. So he was taken in rotating his pelvis in towards the catcher and then get to landing and then he would he would rotate, he would rotate back, you know the pelvis back and explode into the ball, but that was causing him to have a premature maximizing of bat speed. It wasn’t helping him it wasn’t maximizing his ball exit speed.
Jaime Cevallos 14:46
Now, so the most important thing, you mentioned three things, say those, again…
What are the 3 most Important Things to Consistent Power?
Joey Myers 14:54
The spine, of the spine?
Jaime Cevallos 14:57
Well, just that I think there were just three things that were…
Joey Myers 14:59
You’re talking about?
Joey Myers 15:02
Oh, oh, oh…the three things the big three, okay, so showing numbers or create neck pressure. If I’m here, I’m here. So, my head anchors in a tracking position, shoulder comes pulling underneath as far as I can just like you’re wringing a towel out right, my head and my shoulders. I’m bringing that towel out, creating pressure in the neck. So that’s number one that’s showing numbers neck pressure.
Joey Myers 15:27
Number two is downward shoulder angle. From this view, is more of a slight down shoulder. So, it’s like you’re doing a side bend. So, the shoulders the back shoulder goes up, the front shoulder goes down. And with that, you don’t want it to be too much. The sweet spot there is like six to 10 degrees down so it’s not a lot, but what helps a lot of times is controlling where that elbow goes.
Joey Myers 15:54
I back this up a little bit, give you guys a little bit more room. If I can use my elbow to pull the elbow or pull the, or bring the shoulders down, steer the shoulders down. That’s a way to do it. But you can also focus on taking this front shoulder down and then towards that back hip that’ll help to create this down shoulder. Right.
Joey Myers 16:14
And what’s interesting in the swing, if we want our body to accelerate and decelerate properly, is we want the shoulders to start down. And then as we swing, then they’re going to tilt. This front shoulder starts down, left shoulder, and then as I swing, it’s going to go up. And then in my finish, think about the Ted Williams pictures and Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth and all these guys, how did they finish they end up finishing in this position.
Joey Myers 16:45
So what we should see is we should see… left shoulder starts down, pops up, and then it should end down. So down, up, and then down on the finish. You know those Ted Williams pictures where he’s like, position right. It’s this one, it’s his left shoulder as a lefty starts, or he starts here. His left shoulder here starts up, and then it goes down. And then it finishes up. Right. So that’s a proper accelerating decelerating into the spine. So that’s the second thing that’s the down shoulder.
Joey Myers 17:23
And then the last one is the hiding hands from the pitcher. One more time again. We got so if I start my swing, this way, you can see my hands and the minute I get to landing, I’m creating what you see this back elbow peeking out behind me. So that’s they call it a SCAP row, or SCAP load, SCAP pinch wherever you want to call it. So that’s the move there. Where now you can’t see my hands.
Joey Myers 17:49
And now what I’m doing is this front shoulder for those those Kines geeks out there. The front shoulder is a Scap protraction so the scalp is coming in the scapula is coming this way coming across. And then my back SCAP is retracting. They’re doing the opposite of each other protraction retraction, right?
Joey Myers 18:10
So if you watch any gymnastics, or Olympian doing a spin, ice skater, if they do a spin, that’s what you’re going to see. And a lot of people out there will say, Well, I like to scap pinch, but I don’t want this front shoulder coming in. And like you’re not, that’s not how the human body works, dude, you’re not getting 100% optimization out of the rotation.
Jaime Cevallos 18:35
So the showing numbers has been something that people didn’t want to do? I was not aware of that…
Joey Myers 18:41
It was and still, yeah, it’s crazy.
Jaime Cevallos 18:45
Why did they say you didn’t want to show numbers?
Joey Myers 18:47
Good question. The irony by the way, these same people that don’t like it, swear by video, swear by video analysis. They say well we’re going to look and see what the best hitters do and that’s what we’re going to do. And you see them do it. You can again look at Miggy look at Ted Williams look at Trout look at just look at the top 10 power hitters right now and even in the in the day, and you see all of them do it.
Joey Myers 19:13
So I don’t understand why they’re all about video analysis, but they choose to see what they want to see. Right. So what they say is the problem they say with it is that it takes the hitters eyes off the ball, but I just talked about, we create neck pressure. The head is the important part. That’s the piece that’s the anchor. It’s like a boat and I ask my hitters, what does an anchor do on a boat, it either stops the boat or it slows it down, right?
Joey Myers 19:37
So the head is the control piece. Wherever the head goes, the body follows. So the head takes a tracking position and anchors down and then it’s the shoulder that comes in as far as it can while we’re wringing the towel out. And that’s what’s going to get you to the show numbers.
Joey Myers 19:53
Now lefties if you watch lefties because the camera angle at Major League ballparks is slightly off center towards left field right… (To be continued in Part-3…)
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/joey-myers-jaime-cevallos-interview-part-2-youtube-e1594274351414.png281500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2020-07-09 06:09:152020-11-09 06:24:12How To Wind Up The Body To Deliver More Force
How to know “who/what” to follow – by doing swing experiments
Swing eval at home & future case study Jam Sessions
Q/A
You can also CLICK HERE to view the original video and comments from the Jam Session on Facebook.
Show Notes
At about the 30-sec mark, the whole point of these Jam Sessions, equipping coaches to do petri dish evaluations at home collecting data, bringing us this data, and we can help coaches get their hitters better using real data and human movement principles validated by real Science.
At about 5-minute, 30-sec mark, Perry answers what he thinks is the biggest mistake coaches make in boosting ball exit speed, watching videos on YouTube, the lead arm shape (bend or straighten?), locking out beforehand causes a chain reaction that stretches out rubber bands, going from bent to straight right at impact doesn’t optimally stretch out rubber, not most important thing – is a piece of the machine, a bunch of things pieced together.
At about 8-minute mark, addressing why a barred front arm gets a bad rap on causing “longer” swings, correlation DOES NOT equal causation in this case, a consistent front arm shape equals consistency at bat-ball contact, Perry talks about “laser” experiment comparing a bent lead arm versus a barred out front arm(about 11-min mark), interestingly laser was all over with bent arm versus closer to “line” with straight front arm, getting barrel in line and keeping it there, with front arm bend there’s too much free play, at least twice as good arm bar versus bend when it comes to consistency.
At about 13-minute mark, talk about the main benefits to a front arm bar, longer levers multiply force at the end of the lever, a longer swing IS NOT about a bent or straight front arm – it’s about when the barrel leaves the rear shoulder, end loaded heavy bats are fantastic for training barrel path for different pitch depths, look at hitters hitting 95-mph inside – they use shorter more compact swings (the barrel leaves the shoulder later).
At about the 17-minute mark, Perry shares another experiment where he used a ball attached to surgical tubing attached to an anchor, pulling ball back 8-feet, then letting go and measuring speed, then stretching the tubing back further, speed increases and ball hits wall sooner than the shorter pull back, Perry explains shortening front arm can help get on time but hitter gives up hard ball contact (70% their 1-arm max).
At about 20-minute, 30-sec mark, talking about when you’re teaching hitters, what is your hitting “operating system”? Is your goal for hitters to increase hard ball contact? Is it to reduce strikeouts? Based on your hitting operating system, you’ll choose specific hitting mechanics that organize that support the specific operating system, barrel path will change based on pitch depth, swing to match timing – reactionary hitting, the other side of the coin is to max out 100% on-time, 100% swing effective.
At about 25-minute, 30-sec mark, how do we know who to follow or what to follow, Perry goes over swing evaluation you can do at home (CLICK HERE for a PDF spelling this out), build a target – Home Depot tarp, 2-foot diameter circle, cut hole in middle of circle (1-foot) creating donut, bottom of target is inline with bottom of ball on tee, target is 10-feet in front of hitter, hit top of target roughly 20-degree, middle roughly 10-degrees, measure ball exit speeds, give points: 1-point for hitting it through the middle, hits outside ring 0.5-point, miss target = 0. Out of ten swings good is 4/10 (or .400). If not at .400, then something is missing. Average ball exit speed should be around 90% of your 1-rep. max. Plot where the misses are, and number which hits they were. (Ask Perry for blank diagram on this). Measuring ball exit speed with Zepp, SwingTracker, BlastMotion, PocketRadar, Bushnell Radar gun,
At about 33-minute mark, Perry talks about use of imagination or visualization, physical changes are tough under competitive pressures of a game, practicing your game swing, changing intent changes the swing, i.e. hitter hitting pop ups, changing intent to hit a low screaming line drive helps brain organize body to change the swing without thinking internal cues.
At about 39-minute mark, imagine a bendy tube attaching the pitcher’s release to contact, we want the hitter to hit the ball back through tube the pitch came from, external cues versus internal cues, getting a ballpark of what the hitter is doing by setting hitter up on a tee that is positioned as a middle middle location, if hitter is pulling all the time or going other way too much or popping ball up too much or hitting a lot of ground-balls, along with ball exit speed measurements.
At about 42-minute mark, Perry asks me about the springy fascia, the idea of a “rubber suit” creating stretch in the suit as you twist up, springy ‘X’ pattern – ‘X’ on chest and back, compression and tension forces, Granite has a high compression rate but has a terrible tension rate, Boom crane tension forces can be found in the cable holding the wrecking ball, body uses both compression and tension forces, hitter’s front shoulder comes in and down (shortening chest leg of the ‘X’), other leg of the ‘X’ on the chest lengthens, on the backside – the corresponding legs of the ‘X’ does the opposite, Scapula Row? Biggest mistake coaches make is forcing hitters to keep front shoulder straight instead of protracting the front Scapula, Arm barring front arm helps with ‘showing numbers’ AND ‘hiding hands’.
At about 60-minute mark, hitter lets go of bat hits 370-foot homer, while holding on hits ball 480-feet, pitch velocity and location were same, timing was a little different, Physicist Dr. Alan Nathan says once bat is in motion hitter doesn’t have to hold onto bat at impact – force is already there, locking out at impact helps transfer energy better, look at all the data on batted balls that go the farthest – they look the same, arm is locked out, test hitting a fully inflated basketball exit speed should be around 80% of 1-rep max – if not then losing swing effectiveness, Newtonian Physics v. non-Newtonian Physics, Physics is limited to Physics (external forces), Bio-Mechanics is limited to Biomechanics, etc.
About about 57-minute mark, Perry answers question: “Best drill for being out in front all the time, always makes contact way out in front, weak hits and no power?” Every pitch location has one ideal contact point, make swing in slow motion to find what’s optimal, body is reaching too much, one drill: the “Riiiiiight-Now!” Drill (“Right” is at release, where impact is the “now”).
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/2019/02/perry-joey-jam-session2-e1551215625485.png279500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2019-02-28 06:33:062019-04-08 04:24:06What’s The BIGGEST Mistake Coaches Make In Boosting Ball Exit Speeds?
Best Swing in Baseball: Here is a Method Helping Mookie Betts – And Many Others – Consistently Crush The Ball
In this best swing in baseball video, we’ll discuss:
Data and reasoning because personal opinions are seldom useful,
Mookie Betts (via my Twitter feed) ‘showing numbers’ at landing on inside pitch…Hitting Guru #57 “should NEVER ‘show numbers’ on inside pitch” objection based on personal opinion with ZERO data to back claim :-/
Can eat soup with spoon, fork, knife…but only one way is more effective. Teaching hitting is the same. Apply human movement principles that are validated by REAL science, NOT “because-I-said-so ‘bro-science'”, and
The information is out there, so hitters will find it for themselves, either you will be able to take credit for teaching it or you won’t. Results don’t lie.
Still don’t believe the best ‘show numbers’? CLICK HERE for a post I did recently titled, “Why I Teach Hitters To ‘Show Numbers’ (And Maybe You Should Too)”.
Don’t be like opinion-based Hitting Guru #57…have solid data and reasoning to back up your “opinions”.
'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!!
, by Thomas Myers, and
, by Thomas Myers, and
, by Dr. Serge Gracovetsky.
principles, and
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, Aaron Miles, and numerous past and present professional hitters agree with CLS,
