Watch Albert Pujols talking about how to teach swing drills off hitting tee, place hitting outside pitches to opposite field vs pull, and keeping the hands inside out for baseball, slow-pitch, and fast-pitch softball players.
Albert Pujols Hitting Mechanics Video Talk
In this Albert Pujols hitting mechanics talk, some questions Pujols and Harold Reynolds answer:
Albert Pujols & Harold Reynolds Interview, MLB Network 30 Clubs in 30 Days. Photo courtesy: MLB.com
Hitting ball off same spot off tee or vary?
Dangers of a purely opposite field approach…
When is using ‘hands inside the ball’ okay?
Hit top part of the cage of the back?
How many swings until you should take a break to reflect?
Inside pitch barrel path: is it different than away?
At the 0:10 second mark, tsk, tsk…notice Harold Reynolds isn’t following the 4-foot social distancing rule!! (for those watching this well after the craziness of the Coronavirus has passed – lol).
At the 0:30 second mark, interesting Pujols talks about building a consistent swing, hitting off the tee in one spot. He references variance training with some hitting coaches moving the ball up and down, in and out. I do agree with him, but it depends on the end result. If you’re just introducing a new hitting mechanic, then keep the tee in one spot. If you’re looking to deeply embed a well worn hitting mechanic, then variance or chaos training is key.
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At the 0:45 second mark, Albert Pujols talks about setting tee up slightly off center of the plate towards outer part. He likes to work gap to gap and not force or push the ball to right field. He mentions if he focuses too much on right field, then he gets under the ball too much.
At the 1:30 minute mark, Pujols dispels the myth of “staying inside the ball”. He says of course you’re inside the ball…you don’t see hitters EVER getting their hands outside the ball. ‘Hands inside the ball’ can be a great cue for those hitters doing the opposite – casting barrel early. It’s not a perfect cue, but may work in some cases. Then to throw gas on the fire, he mentions ‘knob to the ball’. Real v. Feel. There’s a reason you keep hearing this kind of stuff from guys like Pujols, A-Rod, and Bonds. It has to do with top hand dominance and pronation. We call it the “wrist snap”.
At the 2:00 minute mark, Albert Pujols talks about working on the liner, not trying to hit the top part of the cage. He picks a spot in the cage he wants the ball to travel. External cue. He wants the ball to come off the bat as high as the tee is set. Harold brings up that some people are teaching to hit the top of the cage (I used to be one of them!!). But Albert plays the politician and comments that he doesn’t want to say what those coaches are doing is wrong, but that he wouldn’t teach that. And right now, I’d agree with him.
At the 3:00 minute mark, Harold asked Pujols if there’s a rhythm to working on gapping the ball, and Pujols says he tries to hit 3 or 4 in a row, then take a break to reflect on the feeling. He tries not to rush when working out. He tries to take his time. Process what he just did. Great advice!
At 4:00 minute mark, Harold asks Albert about his inside approach. How to hit the inside pitch. Watch how Pujols demos his barrel path to get to it … barrel above hands? This Adam Eaton video reveals the same thing. Interesting huh? We call this knocking the “belly button” catcher’s glove off. He says he’s just reacting to the inside pitch. Typically, he’s looking out over the plate. He doesn’t try to focus on one area of the plate. He looks middle, then adjusts in or out from there. Definitely works for Albert. And Mike Schmidt also talked about it in his book the “Mike Schmidt Study”. Only downside is when pitchers start using EV tunnels Perry Husband talks about. It’s easier to cover middle in/out/up/down (50% of the plate), based on pitcher’s pattern. Obviously, this is more effective the better the pitcher is.
At 5:00 minute mark, in the above Albert Pujols hitting mechanics video, Pujols talks about keeping his shoulders “square” or keep front shoulder pointing at “400-foot” mark in straight center. Not to close shoulders off. Albert never really did ‘show numbers’ much, but he does a lot of other things right.
At 6:00 minute mark, Pujols talks about not getting “taller” to get to the pitch up in the zone, but to stay sink down and use hands to get to it. Again demonstrates keeping barrel above hands. We talk about getting shorter and staying shorter. And middle in, middle up pitches are addressed by knocking off belly button catcher’s glove or telling hitter to keep barrel above hands. Real v. Feel. Now, this isn’t actually what’s going to happen. The result of this hitting cue is a tighter, shorter, more compact barrel path. Much needed closer the ball is to the hitter or the eyes. He talks about using his legs to get to pitches down in the zone.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/albert-pujols-hitting-mechanics-e1584392758126.png390500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-07-01 09:15:372022-07-01 21:34:14Albert Pujols Talking How To Teach Swing Drills Off Tee, Place Hitting Outside Pitches To Opposite Field Vs Pull, And Keep Hands Inside Out For Baseball, Slow-pitch, & Fast-pitch Softball
1) Can we improve launch angle hitting path (angle batted ball takes off the bat) for baseball and softball by swinging “down”? 2) What kind of swing plane drills or cues can we use to optimize batted ball distance? And 3) What is the ideal home run formula?
ANSWER – listen closely to Barry Bonds’ answers to Alex Rodriguez’s questions… (I’ve included my video stamped notes below)
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for Paradoxical Intention and CLICK HERE for how to properly teach ‘launch angle’ swing (not what you think)…
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for the ideal home run formula…
This baseball swing video where Alex Rodriguez interviews Barry Bonds was a two parter to this video post. Here are four of the interview’s finer points:
“X” factor. Why top hand and back shoulder have to communicate with front leg,
Per-fect swinging down because it’s easy to go up,
200+ Stikeouts as long as you hit 40-homers? And,
How bunting can ‘line up’ your hitting.
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At about the 1-min, 40-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the “Ferris wheel” v. “merry-go-round” swings. Bonds says he’s more of a down-angle swinger. “Down” means to flatten out the barrel path. Not talking about swinging straight down.
At about the 3-min mark, Barry Bonds goes into what he calls the “X” factor and the “center-line”. Back shoulder going to communicate with front leg. And front shoulder with back leg.
At about the 4-min, 15-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds if he hits off his back leg. Causes head to fly open, front shoulder, and uppercut. Bonds talks about using top hand as “guide” hand, bottom is power. Top hand (back shoulder) and front leg have to communicate. If they don’t, then head can pull open.
At about 6-min, 30-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the advice Barry give him about not dipping his back shoulder too much. Bonds expects hitters to work chopping ball off ground during tee work. It’s easy to go up. Over exaggerate down on a consistent basis. “Per-fect” the down level swing.
At about 9-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about in today’s game it’s okay to strikeout over 200 times per season, just as long as you hit 40-homers. A-Rod asked Bonds how he developed the discipline and balance at the plate. Game has changed. Don’t blame the players, they adapt to the environment. In Barry’s day, had to hit .300, strikeout less than 100 times per season or you were sent down. Bonds was told growing up to be a great hitter. Home-runs don’t matter. Tony Gwynn was a big influence to Barry. Use line to line, that will open the gaps.
At about 11-min, 30-min mark, Barry and A-Rod talk about bunting against the shift. Bonds adds that bunting can always get you lined up for hitting. Playing “catch” with the baseball. Bunting slows things down. My buddy Aaron Miles tells a story about this.
At about 13-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Bonds that if he was graduating from Arizona in 2020, gets drafted by the Giants in a Sabermetrics heavy environment, would he have listened to his dad? Baseball is a eye hand coordination sports. Computers are limited on what they can predict.
At the 15-minute mark are Alex Rodriguez’s “takeaways”.
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Baseball Swing Trainer: ‘Swinging Down’ In ‘Launch Angle’ Era?
Should parents, coaches, and instructors be teaching the ‘launch angle’ swing to youth baseball and softball players in 2022? You’ll learn simple drill cues to fix bat path issues, bat drag, and what is an optimal launch angle?
Typical baseball swing trainer BEWARE!
I agree with ‘swing down’. Let that sink in for a bit. Some are pissed I just said that. But those who’ve followed me for some time are nodding their head in confirmation because when you know, you know.
Christian Yelich and Barry Bonds swing comparison. Photo courtesy: Jomboy Media YouTube channel
Because guess what? It depends. ‘Swing down’ shouldn’t be used as a baseball swing trainer blanket teach. The above Christian Yelich video says baseball swing trainer Barry Bonds taught him a drill that changed his career…
I have two things for you…
Jomboy Media VIDEO: “Christian Yelich says Barry Bonds taught him a drill that changed his career” (watching it will reveal its relevance to this post), and
Below is Chapter-2 of the new book I’m working on. It’s a longer post, but I think you’ll like it. Goes well with the Yelich-Bonds video above, like grass fed red meat and a fine red wine.
Thank you Grandpa Mike for sharing the baseball swing trainer video. You know who you are. Enjoy!
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.
WHAT AN OLD SCHOOL SWING FEELS LIKE & THE PROS AND CONS?
In Chapter-2, we’ll look at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We’ll be discussing:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics,
Cons to old school feel mechanics, and
So, how do we interweave brainless data and confusing real v. feel hitting cues?
How Can Someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they Say about Hitting is Wrong?
Now, some of you out there have seen the video of Alex Rodriguez demonstrating how he swung down. Maybe you saw the preseason interview of Mike Trout discussing how he gets on top of the ball.
Or how about Albert Pujols on the MLB Network revealed he swings knob down to the ball?
‘Swing down’. ‘Getting on top of the ball’. ‘Knob to the ball’. ‘Keep barrel above hands’ is another one. Nowadays, these are some of THE most despised baseball swing trainer hitting coaching cues on the market. I was one of them. “Was”. About 2-3 years ago. Now I have a different perspective and approach. These cues DO work. But it depends on the case. And if reading or hearing those words made your blood boil…you can change too, believe me. Here’s how…
First, let’s clear up and define “swinging down”. Well yeah, the hands do go down to the ball. And depending on how high or low the ball is, the hands will go down more or less. This is true. But coaches HATE these cues for a different reason. Here’s the thing… if you watch players like A-Rod, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols physically demonstrate what swinging down means to them, you see them using a chopping motion. Yes. The barrel and hands travel down to the ball. But not ‘hands drop’. That’s different, and is a swing flaw we MUST fix. In the high level swing, we see the barrel go down before coming up.
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When swinging down is translated by the baseball swing trainer into a NEGATIVE attack angle. Meaning the barrel is going down towards the impact point. Is not coming up. And this is what hitting greats like Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols are demonstrating in interviews. And where the confusion starts. If you watch their actual swing on film, slow motion swing, what you’re going to see is a POSITIVE attack angle. Meaning, barrel elevating up to incoming ball descending down. Yes, even in Fastpitch Softball (more about this in Chapter-7). Barrel coming up to impact, positive. Barrel going down to impact, negative. We clear?
So if what these great hitters are saying and demonstrating isn’t what they’re actually doing, then what’s REALLY going on?
Well, here’s the thing … it’s the mysterious case of real versus feel. What’s really happening on video doesn’t square with what the high level hitter feels they’re doing. Two completely opposite things. Take Mike Trout. Let’s look at his real (9-year career average batted ball numbers before start of 2020 season):
Ground-ball rate: 36.8% (League average is 43%)
Fly-ball rate: 40.8% (League average is 37%)
Line drive rate: 22.4% (League average is 20%), and
Homerun to fly-ball ratio: 21.4% (League average is 9.5%).
Significantly below average ground-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average fly-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average line drive rate. Check. And well above average home-run to fly-ball ration. Checkmate! This proves his performance – the real – doesn’t jive with his feel of ‘getting on top of the ball’. I want you to go to YouTube, search “Mike Trout slow motion swing”, and watch…
His barrels goes down, then comes up to the ball. Up. Positive barrel attack angle. Not down. Not on top. Not a negative attack angle.
Before the baseball swing trainer gets upset I’m telling Mike Trout, “You know ‘nothin’!” Here’s the beautiful crazy of this whole thing. Coaches, understand this … the body is always one or two steps behind the brain. Thinking happens fast. There’s zero friction with thoughts. Nothing. It just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. No heavy bones, muscle, organs, and fascia required to move before a thought can fire off!
The secret to unlocking the real v. feel mystery can be revealed through a psychology term called paradoxical intention…
Pros to Old School Feel Mechanics
We have to understand what Mike Trout is REALLY saying. Bring context to the numbers. Remember Chapter-1? Trout will say, “I’ll take 10 swings off the tee or during batting practice to feel like I’m getting on top of the ball”. You see, his natural tendency is to uppercut. An extreme uppercut because he uses a significant shoulder tilt to effectively feast on balls down in the zone. And this works well with pitchers targeting down in the zone, and away.
Although, this is different than the slight uppercut Ted Williams talked about in his book The Science Of Hitting. Williams talked about barrel meeting the plane of the pitch. Trout’s natural tendency runs counter to this. And what he tells himself, remember the body is one or two steps behind the brain, is to do the exact opposite of what his natural tendency is. He tells himself to get on top of the ball. And what’s the result? The barrel ends up somewhere in the middle of extreme uppercut and negative attack angle downswing. That’s what he’s trying to get for his real… to get to the middle.
The true old school baseball swing trainer hitting tragedy…
Some say hitters like Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Pujols, and Trout are – or were – fantastic at doing, but not very good at translating what they did into teaching. Take Barry Bonds. Who was the Florida Marlins hitting coach in 2016. Then they let him go. Former Marlins President David Samson said this,
“Bonds was worst hitting coach of my career.”
So why wasn’t Barry Bonds able to translate the way he hit to his prized pupils like Giancarlo Stanton? Bonds is the career Major League home run leader after all. Some say he can do, but he doesn’t know how he does what he did. I disagree these hitters aren’t good at teaching. Again it’s a translation issue.
Dr. Victor Frankl, Psychologist and survivor of four Nazi death camps, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, calls this “paradoxical intention”. Hitters like Trout and Bonds use extreme physical cues to establish a consistent slight upward swing plane. This strategy is a “trick” played on the body, which is a step or two behind. Paradoxical intention. Take any hitter with an extreme uppercut, tell them to chop down (negative Attack Angle “feel” cue), and their barrel path ends up in a slight uppercut. Just like Ted Williams said – like magic! Feel cues are fantastic for making simple swing adjustments.
If you’re coaching youth hitters, let’s get into that world for a moment…
A lot, and I mean A LOT of youth players ages 7 to 12 years old uppercut. Extreme uppercuts. Casting. Loooong swings. They don’t need to be taught this! This is typical, before they’ve built enough strength in their bodies. In their core. In the dynamic nature of the spinal engine. They tend to cast the barrel out. Meaning, the barrel casts away from the body, leaving the back shoulder too early. This causes a long swing. Thanks to gravitational forces, centripetal and centrifugal forces*. As they swing, they end up underneath the ball. On inside pitches, they end up getting jammed a lot. And swing under a lot of pitches up in the zone. A LOT.
(*Centripetal Force is a center “seeking” force. Like twirling a rock on a string. The rock exerts force back to the two fingers holding the string. Centrifugal Force is a center “fleeing” force. Letting go of the twirling rock on a swing, causes the rock to shoot off in a tangent direction away from the original circle.)
There are other factors causing an extreme uppercut, like hands drop or constant deep barrel dumping. But with youth hitters, the rules of Physics are bigger offenders. Here’s the good news … swing an overloaded bat. Overloaded bats help young hitters build strength to do that. Regardless of mechanics. More on that protocol later in the book.
Those are the pros of an old school feel mechanics. Now, let’s look at the cons…
Cons to Old School Feel Mechanics
These are what the baseball swing trainer “metrics people” will typically bring up. You’re so out of touch. No numbers to support your gut feelings? What does that mean? How can I trust your “gut”? Because you played or coached 20 years in the Big Leagues? That’s not good enough!! What’s measurable is manageable. If you can’t use numbers to support your gut, then I’m not listening. This is a common conversation you’ve probably seen, heard, or participated in.
The old school coaching cues we just discussed in the pros to old school swing section can also be included in that gut conversation. It’s bad if the old school cues are used as a default. In a one size fits all way. For example, Johnny’s coach sees Pujols demonstrate a chopping down swing on MLB Network’s Diamond Demos. That coach goes to Johnny’s 10 year old team practice on Monday evening, and tells every one of his hitters to swing like Pujols does. Chop, chop, chop. And he tells them with the conviction, vigor, and energy of a Sunday Pastor, that they can hit like Pujols. How can you argue with Senor Alberto? From his lips to coach’s ears out of coaches mouth to kids’ ears. If Albert Pujols said it and it worked for him, then we MUST take the message literally! He is Prince Albert for jimminies sake!
Here’s the problem with that. Remember when I mentioned the translation issue? By feeding the ‘swing down’ or ‘chop down’ mantras as a default hitting strategy to every 10 year old on your team, I’m sorry to say it, but you will lose. Let me illustrate with a thought experiment…
Apply the “one-third rule” to your team. In this example, assume a third of your hitters pop the ball up a majority of the time. Another third of hitters hit line drives a majority of the time. And the remaining third are majority ground-ball hitters. So, what if you tell the whole team to swing down or get on top of the ball? A blanket statement to all. Default old school baseball swing trainer hitting cue. What do you think is going to happen?
Based on what was discussed with Dr. Victor Frankl’s paradoxical intention – remember extreme uppercut, tell them to ‘get on top’, and they end up in the middle? Slight uppercut. Inline with incoming pitch. Here’s what will happen to our team if we tell all to chop down … a third of the team that used to pop the ball up a majority of the time, will hit more line drives. Those middle third hitting line drives a majority of the time, are going to hit more ground-balls. And the ground-ball a majority of the time group, are going to hit even more worm burner ground-balls. So how did the thought experiment turn out with a blanket statement old school hitting cue?
The only group on the team that benefits are the beginning fly ball hitters. The ones hitting fly-balls a majority of the time. Those are the only ones you’ll see a significant difference, for the better. Look ground-balls are great. Especially hard ones when the defense can’t play catch. But what happens when they can play catch? When would your team come across a team that can play catch? That’s right! In all-stars. In playoff and championship games. Not good if you just converted line drive hitters into ground-ball hitters. And ground-ballers into hitting more worm burners. Read our infamous Ground-ball Rant post.
Now, let’s cook up a different scenario. A more simple yet elegant solution. Instead of giving a blanket statement, a blanket swing down, chop down to the whole team. But instead, I let the line drive hitters do their thing. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I took the fly ball hitter and told them to swing down, chop down. And I instructed the ground-ballers to hit the ball in the air. Like pop the ball up instruction. How do you think that baseball swing trainer thought experiment would go?
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If I did that…now my pop-fliers AND ground-ballers are both hitting more line drives. Remember Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning paradoxical intention? Overall, my whole team is hitting more line drives. Now my line drivers aren’t lonely. They have more competition to deal with. Competition makes everyone better. Hungrier. Especially when they’re experiencing success. Does that make sense?
The cons of an old school swing are when we apply a blanket statement shared by one of the best hitters on the planet. Don’t do that. Bad coach. You DO NOT pass go, and you DO NOT collect $200.
One swing fits all cues are a bad. And you wouldn’t know this without data to measure and optimize. Gut feelings and hunches are like throwing darts in the dark. It’s like shooting an arrow and calling whatever you hit – after the fact. It’s guessing. If you aren’t collecting numbers using a PocketRadar, Rhapsodo, HitTrax, BlastMotion, or SwingTracker, then you’re flying blind. You aren’t going to know. And those hunches will just be hunches.
Same goes for blindly following what a Hall of Famer or future Hall of Famer says or said about hitting. Become a scientist. Test, test, test. Blindly following a leader without question, will make you nothing more than a sheep. Question, question, question. Even question me and EVERYTHING in this book.
So far in Chapter-2, we talked about:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics, and
Cons to old school feel mechanics…
We talked about how what’s real and what’s feel are two totally different things. The scenery can be very confusing. The waters choppy. How does a coach cut through the clutter and calm the waters? The simple truth to make hitting easier – it’s not easy, but we can make it easier – is called paradoxical intention. Doing the exact opposite of what just happened to get the middle. Extreme swing up? Tell them to swing down – hit a chopper. Extreme swing down? Tell them to swing up – hit a pop-fly. There’s more to it of course, and we’ll get into it more later. Let’s move on to…
How do we Interweave Brainless Data and Confusing Hitting Cues?
This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this. Question: Coincidentally, if I wear a green shirt and it rains, then is it reasonable to think I can make it rain by wearing a green shirt? This is the exact dilemma many instructors find themselves in with what they teach.
Some teach ONLY using data. Some teach ONLY using old school hitting cues. Some claim to base their teachings on millions of hours watching ONLY the best hitters. Some validate Science with their hitting theories (proudly saying their system can’t be found in Science!!). And others validate their hitting philosophy with Science, which is what we do. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Can we use a mix? And if so, how do we know if we’re on the right track?
Are you throwing dynamite in the air and expecting rain?
I want to share a true story from the book Dust Bowl: An Illustrated Historyby Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. The story will illuminate how to filter the hitting information available today. Interestingly…
Right before the Great Depression hit the Oklahoma panhandle, rain was plentiful. This caused Doctors and Lawyers to quit their practices and join the ranks of farmers to buy land and plant crops that were being subsidized by the US government. In other words, the gold-in-them-hills was harvesting and selling wheat and other bumper crops of the era.
Millions of acres of 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass were plowed under to make room for crops. Fast forward to the beginning of the Great Depression, the rain dried up, and so did the crops. Unbeknownst to the “new” farmers who moved to the area, typically rain was sparse in the location, and by coincidence, they had just experienced a rare wet 5-10 year period.
Now there’s NO rain. And you know the 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass they cut down? Well, it used to hold the soil down despite seasonal 60 to 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts. So NO rain coming. NO crops growing. Super high winds are eroding dry barren soil and tossing it up in the air. Grazing cattle have nothing to eat but tumbleweeds brought over by Russians (people often sprinkled salt to eat them as well). The livestock soon get sick and die. The drought is fatal for the majority who stay, others move west. This is where we get John Steinbeck’s book “Dust Bowl”.
Stick with me, because here comes the lesson…
The farmers who stayed behind were so desperate for rain, they hired self proclaimed rain experts to “create” rain, literally out of thin air. The belief at the time was that an explosion in the air could bring clouds, and with clouds, rain would fall from the sky. In plenty. So what did these self proclaimed rain experts do? What any self proclaimed rain expert would do!! They sold the idea that if they lit a stick of dynamite, timed the throw just right, they could get a perfectly timed explosion that would bring rain-a-plenty.
…And as luck would find it, the “racket” seemed to work a couple times. This only fed the foolishness we all see now – hindsight is 20/20. Yes, this wasn’t a proud time in American history. You have to understand, people back then were DESPERATE. Their hope blinded them to the MANY times throwing dynamite in the air didn’t work. People lost limbs, fingers, etc. from timing the throw wrong. Head scratcher I know.
When it comes to baseball swing trainer, we have to be careful of the causation-correlation relationship. Is studying video and teaching only what the “best” hitters are doing enough? I would argue it is not. How do you know what you’re looking at, if you don’t know what you’re looking for? We see Pujols demonstrating a negative attack angle swing on MLB Network. But then we see him NOT do that in real-time. We bring that same Pujols gold nugget to Johnny’s team, blanket teach it, and the end result looks nothing like what we see Pujols do during competition. This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this.
I’m going to reveal a secret about why coaches are terrible at the causation-correlation relationship. Like shooting a random arrow and calling whatever is hit. Here’s a quote summing it up from Scott Adams, in his book Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America:
“There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. [1] Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. [2] Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. [3] And they don’t know it.”
So how do we escape this seemingly inescapable prison of baseball swing trainer misdiagnosis? After reading thus far, you know it. Be less subjective and more objective. KeyDifferences.com says this about subjective versus objective:
“Subjective means something which does not show the clear picture or it is just a person’s outlook or expression of opinion. A subjective statement relies on assumptions, beliefs, opinions and influenced by emotions and personal feelings. An objective statement is based on facts and observations.”
Use the Scientific Method. Develop a hitting Question…make a predictive Hypothesis…do the Research…collect the Data…form a Conclusion. Swing experimentation. We apply human movement principles validated by REAL Science to hitting a ball. Scientific principles pulled from:
Physics,
Engineering,
Biomechanics, and
Body work.
How do we figure out if this DOES cause that? Or if that DOES cause this? Not by wearing a green shirt! To know what you’re looking at, you have to know what you’re looking for. DO NOT validate Science through your hitting philosophy. DO validate your hitting philosophy through Science. Set a higher standard for your hitters. It’s okay – watch your millions of hours of video…employ those expensive measuring gadgets…and flaunt those old school hitting cues.
But above ALL of that … understand what the rules to human movements are FIRST. Once you know that, all other domino’s fall where they’re supposed to. In conclusion of Chapter-2, we looked at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We discussed:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics,
Cons to old school feel mechanics, and
So, how do we interweave brainless data and confusing real v. feel hitting cues?
In Chapter-3, we’ll answer the question of what leads to hitting more predictable line drives and less strikeouts. Where we’ll dive into:
What does “predictable” mean and why does probability matter? And,
Difference between ‘Launch Angle’ and ‘Attack Angle’…
Onward…
———-
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/swing-down-launch-angle-era-e1590641467153.png236500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-03-28 09:01:582022-03-29 18:14:09Teach ‘Launch Angle’ Youth Baseball & Softball Swing In 2022? How To Fix Bat Path, Drag, Training Drills, & What Is Optimal?
Backspin Bat Tee Co-Founder Interview: If One Of The Best, Mike Trout, Is Giving Up An Average 20-mph Of Ball Exit Speed, How Much Do Mere Mortals Give Up Doing The Same Thing?
Here are the Backspin bat tee co-founder interview with Taylor Gardner topics that we discussed:
What do bat tee adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
True or False: Hitters MUST straighten their front leg to be effective…
What if hitters used a more precision approach like golfers when operating between 90-degrees?
Instead of writing off the arm bar as it doesn’t work, why not ask how can it work?
Is there ever a time when ‘swing down’ or ‘barrel above the hands’ bat tee cues can work?
If one of the best, Mike Trout, is giving up 20-mph of ball exit speed, how much do mere mortals give up doing the same thing?
Where can people find more about you Backspin bat tee guys?
The following is the bat tee transcription of the video above. This is a sneak peak at the expert interviews we’ll be including in Volume-2 of the Swing Smarter book series. Enjoy!
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"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
Oh, there’s the baby. You got that mixed up? I don’t think that’s supposed to go in your mouth.
Taylor Gardner 00:21
Probably should.
Joey Myers 00:24
Look at you.
Taylor Gardner 00:26
Yeah.
Joey Myers 00:27
Causing your parents so much so many sleepless nights.
Taylor Gardner 00:30
Yeah, momma needed a shower time and dad had an interview here.
Joey Myers 00:38
Double interview.
Taylor Gardner 00:40
Yeah. Oh my
Joey Myers 00:45
Look at that, first time I think we’ve done a zoom interview.
Taylor Gardner 00:49
Oh it has been working out, better adjust my camera?
Joey Myers 00:55
No, I think you’re good. What do you need to adjust?
Taylor Gardner 00:57
All I was going to bring it down a little bit. I think I always fall down.
Joey Myers 01:01
Yeah, I think you’re good. Okay. Are you ready? Let me do the official bat tee start. Hello and welcome to Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter. This is your host Joey Myers from HittingPerformanceLab.com and probably for the half a dozenth interview. I have Taylor Gardner here from Backspin Bat Tee. Welcome to the show. Taylor looks like you brought a little friend.
Taylor Gardner 01:26
That’s right. Yes. Yeah. She has been influenced by any good or bad and…
Joey Myers 01:37
there. There we go. You froze for a little bit. Say it again? Say No. So, she’s been influenced by what?
Taylor Gardner 01:46
I said. No, we got we got a fresh template here. She hasn’t had any good or bad instruction to start working with this.
Joey Myers 01:54
Yeah, yeah. Tie the right arm behind your back and… is your brother? Is he lefty? Or is he righty?
Taylor Gardner 02:03
He’s a switch hitter. You can do both.
Joey Myers 02:05
He does both. But what about throwing? Is he a righty?
Taylor Gardner 02:07
He’s righty.
Joey Myers 02:09
Okay, cool. Well, hey, I wanted to get you on the on the other side of the screen here and wanted to talk about making bat tee adjustments. So that we could go into the hitting side we could go into the strategy side we can go into any different things. So, what do adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
What do bat tee adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
Taylor Gardner 02:30
The adjustment is, must be understood and adjustment is something if a hitter is already attempting to be on time, it’s really hard to make adjustments if you’re not in the time window to start with. If you’re going up there to hit and you’re just purely reacting your adjustments are also reacting maybe even twice as long or twice as late as they should be.
Taylor Gardner 02:56
Within the understanding that people were syncing up release point we have the timing window of the pitch coming in. Maybe we’re sitting on fastball and all sudden we a pitcher throws a changeup, and whether you recognize the spin or the speed or the trajectory angle, whether an off-speed pitch, what do you do?
Taylor Gardner 03:15
Well, if your plan was there to help you your approach is there to help you not hurt you, so within your plan or approach if you’re on time for fastball, and oh no it’s an off-speed pitch. What do you do? Well, easy answer is, you don’t stop your swing. I know we get told a lot of wait, let that curveball get a lot deeper. Now we’re talking about changing depths and it’s really hard to change depths of timing on the fly. So as instead of being reactive to making your adjustment proactive and making your adjustment one thing that my baby down actually brought a bat here to show you…
Joey Myers 03:55
Use the baby as a bat…how cute she is.
Taylor Gardner 04:02
One thing that we see a lot with hitters. He was left-handed here. I do apologize. Is they’re sideways, they’re pretty lined up with a pitcher in some fashion bat tee stance, and then we start to ride and stride as they start to witness that. Okay, this ball isn’t a perfect fastball down the middle. What do I do? Well, we see them not only continue to take their head and posture to the ball, but you see a lot of hitters start turn in and sit with the ball.
Taylor Gardner 04:33
As opposed to going uh oh, I’m a little early, let me pull out and then have to release my arms and hands to hopefully start to see hitters actually sit with that ball. Then because, you sit, any movement takes time. And if the plane is correct, you’re on time for the pitchers fastest pitch and then if you’re making an adjustment is to bite. This is where a lot of young hitters especially they don’t do a good job of buying time.
Taylor Gardner 05:00
They end up staying on their backside and opening up too soon and all they have left is like it with their own risk. And yeah, you can hit a ball and do that, and you probably get on base and feel good about yourself. But the faster you know that speed starts to go up and level and the more drastic change of off speed, you get a 90 mile an hour fastball and 80-mph changeup. That’s a little different than facing a 75 mile an hour fastball and 70 mile change-up.
Taylor Gardner 05:27
As a pitcher supposed to extend those timelines, adjustments and variables, the hitters have to as well. The ability to be ready for the fastest pitch and also be able to buy time while staying in a good posture position on the ball is something that we see really good hitters do and you know, quite frankly, amateur hitters don’t do as well. Oh, sure at some level. Yeah, won’t be a good fastball hitter. Every great hitter is known to be a great fastball hitter.
Taylor Gardner 05:55
If you’re looking off speed looking for that, that slow curveball every fast ball is going to beat you. On the timeline you got to be prepared for the pitches, pitchers fastest pitch as the fastest timeline. Therefore, your plan is there to help. Yeah, he’s going to be perfect every time, well of course not, it’s baseball. It’s tough. But at least the plan was in place to help you be on time for fastball and buy time for off speed.
Taylor Gardner 06:23
For example, this last weekend, my nephew, faced his first knuckleballer. 13 years old didn’t know this pitcher had a knuckleball it wasn’t his main pitch, so you know first at bat I don’t know hit a fastball for double, second a bat gets a strike or two on him a ball or two and then all the sudden, whack! He hits a single, steals second base eventually gets to third base and the coach at third goes, “good job Maverick you know you really sat well in your legs on that change up”, he goes “wasn’t a changeup coach, it was knuckleball”. He goes, “Oh, when did you realize it was a knuckleball?” “After I hit it!”
Taylor Gardner 06:59
It reminded me that he took a good plan to the plate, ready for fastball he happened to adjust instinctively to this crazy knuckleball, but it was more about controlling this contact depth. I’m not quitting on my swing. Did he sit more in his legs, sure. Did he have a locked out-front leg? No. But he found a way to keep his spinal engine and posture on the ball. By the time he pulled the trigger. Sure, the ball got a little deeper, he barreled it up, he got a good hit out of it. At the end of the day, it didn’t fool him, this random pitch that he really has never seen, didn’t make him react and freeze.
Taylor Gardner 07:36
It didn’t make him react it to slow down and touch it, his reaction was to stay on the ball and give it a chance. And it sounds easy to do until you start seeing a pitch come flying at your body. For us older coaches that aren’t playing anymore, I think sometimes we forget that. There’s a little fear involved. And so, a good plan leads to good adjustments. And sometimes knowing how to get over that fear or filter out your situation really helps that plan starts to stick together better.
Taylor Gardner 07:57
And therefore, those bat tee adjustments really become valuable. As far as other types of adjustments. And that was one type of sitting in your legs, other types of adjustments. We’ve seen Mike Trout sit in his legs; we’ve also seen him bend over a little more at his waist a little side tilt. That’s another way of buying time. Adjustments to me, in our world is a place to buy time, every movement takes time. But unless you’re ready to line your posture up for the ball on time to begin with, adjustments are just going to slow you down. You’ve got to make sure those adjustments are there to help you not hurt you.
Joey Myers 08:48
Well, you said a couple bat tee things that would blow a couple people’s minds they were listening to this… number one is sitting on your backside and swinging from that position number one, and number two, that you don’t have to straighten out your front leg that you can keep that bent. And I love that and that’s something that I’ve learned from you and your brother and Matty, Matty Nokes that the legs really set direction like the lower half basically sets directional force, it does contribute to some of the power.
Joey Myers 09:16
And we’ve learned discussions on that over the last couple of years saying you know, probably between 20 and 30%, it probably contributes to the power of the overall power thing. But the idea that you can use your knees bending your knees at front knee to adjust to pitch height like those are bat tee adjustments that we can make that if you’re from a train of thought that says you have to straighten it you have to brace that leg out, right, I mean that’s really not… We’re trying to like you said buy time.
True or False: Hitters MUST straighten their front leg to be effective
Taylor Gardner 09:46
Right. Speaking while the bracing the front leg, the front leg can obviously we can see it YouTube it, Google it. Now of course you can hit with a straight front leg and even sitting in your legs may still turn out to be a brace straightening front leg, you still bend your knee and still walk and brace into that front knee.
Taylor Gardner 10:06
But I think a lot of times as coaches and instructors that usually come to… an issue that I’ve seen come around is their teaching to push the leg straight, as opposed to letting the hip pull the leg straight. Pitchers do a really good job of this, they don’t just land in their front leg and then push straight up. Is their vertical ground force? Of course, there is.
Taylor Gardner 10:29
Now in hitting though, there may be little more of that vertical into horizontal ground force, it sounds funny to say, but you’re not just going to push up away from the ball every time. Sure, could you get away with it, of course, and there’s nothing wrong if you are on time and you get the barrel to it, great job. But like you like to say Joey, if it happens too much to ignore, I’ll just start paying attention.
Joey Myers 10:52
Yeah, and on that note, that was the one big bat tee thing that I pulled from you, we’ve been friends for probably over 6, 7, 8 years now, was that idea of staying sideways and keeping that back foot from completely turning over. Like a lot of coaches will say pivot that back foot, pivot that back foot, and meaning, that back heel will turn towards home plate. And it’ll continue to keep rotating. And so, I think we’ve developed almost a generation or two of hitters that are over rotating the lower half.
Joey Myers 11:23
And you say, using Matt Nokes’s lingo is stay sideways, stay sideways, I think is a great one. And to your point, or to our point that it happens too much to ignore, and you can’t just write it off. Some of our buddies in the past have said well, that hitter can do that because he XYZ that hitter can do that because it’s… no it happens if you take the top 100 hitters, 50 hitters, you’ll see half of them stay sideways and maybe the other half, get to this neutral with it. So that happens a little bit too often to be ignored.
Taylor Gardner 11:57
For anyone that’s listening, if you’ve ever played golf and if you haven’t fine taken a baseball bat take it slow, practice golf swing, go YouTube, Rory McElroy, Tiger Woods, anyone you want. Golfers have figured out how to stay sideways with their back foot. Now, their balls on the ground and it’s generally between them. Like ball being on a bat tee for hitters. They’re more allowed to buy but positions of contact with golf. However, you’re going to see baseball players do it too. But since the contact point in baseball can be further out front. Sure, you’re going to see that that back foot rotates a little more before contact. I get that told a lot. “Well, look at this hitter.”
Taylor Gardner 12:33
Yes, but look what happened the first 80% of his swing before contact, he was still sideways, he was still… now was he turning his shoulders, was he loading his core, the spiral engine. Sure, but the back foot was still sideways to hit, the back foot ends up becoming a bit of a rudder. I won’t even take that too literal. But you wouldn’t start with your back foot facing the catcher, you wouldn’t face with your back foot facing the pitcher. There’s a reason, it’s a natural position for the body.
Taylor Gardner 13:05
The ball is thrown in front of us and quite honestly, ball comes in and it is in front and to the side of us. If you’ve ever swung an axe, it makes sense to shift your weight and leverage up. That’s why we want to have a little more shift, not only for taking your head to the ball and be able to judge depth before moving very good and feeling your depth and putting a nice sense to it.
Taylor Gardner 13:34
But at the same time spinning against my back foot. Step on my dog… [laughs] spinning too soon. Now the ball is essentially to the side and behind us. Not that you can’t hit from here we opened up too soon. My swing’s wanting to go this way, I crossed my face this way, we want to cross our face into contact with the ball. Again, golfers understand this and their balls in front of them. They want to cross the face you don’t want to spin out and then cross their face too late that ends up turning into a slice and anyone who has played golf, probably vouch for that, my goodness I’m spinning off the ball. balls on never fixed.
Joey Myers 14:19
Well, and what I love the golf analogy is because in golf, you have a ridiculously small margin for error, you have we’re talking in hundreds of yards, not hundreds of feet and your little ball that’s got to get hit by this clubface and then the square center center contact with the clubface in the ball the straighter the ball is going to go. You can take that clubface and slightly like a couple of millimeters you can slightly pull it in like you’re going to hook it or slightly away like you’re going to slice it and those little, teeny millimeters by the end of that 200-yard journey is going to be way pull or slice.
Joey Myers 14:55
What I always tell my hitters, I say when we’re teaching this concept of staying sideways and keeping that back foot from over rotating is, we have to play almost like a golfer, where a golfer’s looking at one shot to the pin, I call it one degree of fair territory. And outside of that 359 degrees of foul territory, because in golf, the objective is the least number of strokes to get it in the hole. In baseball, of course, we have 90 degrees to play with, but we want to act like we’re doing like golf, we want to act like there is a smaller margin, and we have to operate within that smaller bat tee margin, right?
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What if hitters used a more precision bat tee approach like golfers when operating between 90-degrees?
Taylor Gardner 15:29
Along those lines, that it’s incredible you say that because the whole outside pitches, let it get deep, inside pitchers you’re magically allowed to pull for some reason, we’re talking about different depths there. Where in golf, obviously, the ball’s not moving, but to their benefit, they’re more precise, they have time to get their stance set up, time to adjust their face angle. So yes, maybe we don’t have that luxury in baseball, but we do have the luxury of knowing our contact depth.
Taylor Gardner 15:58
Do I like hitting the ball more? You know, some hitters like hitting the ball more off their front hip, some even further out front, some like hitting it a little deeper, more or middle of the other ball, whatever it is that you are super comfortable. That’s your decision. That’s what you’re going to battle with the best. And, again, based on your timeline. I have a lot of young hitters, and we constantly have to work on reminding them. Where is your preferred contact?
Taylor Gardner 16:29
And not to make them look like robots, but you’ll see them when uh, I don’t know, maybe like right there or up here. It’s like, Oh, you got to know, if you don’t know, you’re guessing, like your close, good job of being on time. We want to be on time with our contact point. This is a lot more precise. And as you know, aim small miss small, it’s may not always show up in baseball, maybe you had a day where you didn’t hit well. But you know what my plan was good. My adjustments were sound. And maybe I was just a little early or tad late, whatever that may be over under the ball.
Taylor Gardner 17:06
But you can sleep well at night knowing, man I had it at 99% today. And you don’t realize how much you haven’t figured out. You start thinking about more precision, besides movements. And then suddenly you go out three years ago, I was going to battle with a 50%. efficiency. That shocks a lot of hitters and I really do think a lot of good college players get to pro ball and maybe it doesn’t pan out for whatever reason.
Taylor Gardner 17:32
I think a lot of them whether they can say it or not verbiage that happens to a lot of if they get exposed, we get told at every level of baseball, you better swing faster Jerry, you better figure out how to get that faster pitching, you better, have quicker hands, whatever. Of course, we must make those adjustments because we’re being exposed. What if we got ahead of that being exposed?
Taylor Gardner 17:56
I don’t know if you saw the video that I posted on the baseball Illuminati page. I was actually crow hopping of doing run and guns, a nine-year-old ballplayer shuffle stepping out 25 feet in front of them throwing the ball 60-mph our reaction time stupid fast. So never seen anything that fast in their lives. As far as timing wise. And you know what he did? It took him a bit. He filtered it out. He figured out when to go when to shift, how to track the ball.
Taylor Gardner 18:26
And yeah, that ball was getting to him quicker than any pitch he’s ever going to see in baseball. And he started barreling balls up. Our brain’s a supercomputer y’all know that problem is if that supercomputer is putting in the wrong formula, it’s still going to, there’s still going to be a glitch. You still have to help it out.
Joey Myers 18:44
Shoot, I’d even go another step with the wrong formula and just saying that it’s becoming impossible, or you hear that from coaches? Well, that’s impossible, that’s not going to happen, or that’s not reality, or it’s not going to happen. And instead of saying that something’s not possible, why not ask why? or How can it be possible, right? We’ve talked about the front arm shape and trying to get that thing extended out. Whereas everybody in their mother seems to teach this bent front arm, right.
Joey Myers 19:13
The question that I always get when I put that post out there, people will go well, you know, I’ve tried to test it out and beer league softball and works there, but it doesn’t work in the big leagues and whatnot. And if you go way back, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, all those guys locked out. So instead of saying, oh, that doesn’t work, today’s pitchers throw too hard and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why not ask how can we make that work? Yes. How does that work? Right?
Instead of writing off the arm bar as it doesn’t work, why not ask how can it work?
Taylor Gardner 19:42
What if we made 90 miles an hour feel slower? Nothing’s any easier to hit. But what if? What if it wasn’t impossible. And clearly, it’s not, people do it every day. It’s not impossible. I’d like to say maybe the way we’re rationalizing it and maybe even practicing. Maybe we’re not doing our own job as a baseball coach, making, maybe it’s 75 miles. Now, if you’re struggling, maybe that’s what it is, whatever it is get ahead of that curve, not that you’re going to just start jacking home runs. But don’t be late. There’s no excuse for being late. There’s no excuse for not filtering out and understanding your environment.
Taylor Gardner 20:19
Maybe you don’t get to face a live picture every day or practice, that’s fair. I’m sure you have your work cut out for ya. But there’s no reason to get your doors blown off, when you have all of the potential to be as early as you want. Once you’re late, once the ball gets behind your timeline, and it gets behind your back. Pitcher starts in front of us. We as hitters, let ourselves be late. Maybe because we’re trying to do some crazy swing, like, oh, let it get deep and snap it or something, I don’t know.
Taylor Gardner 20:50
But whatever it may be, again, kind of back to the approach and those adjustments. Got to clean that up. And maybe you got to study more time. Maybe you got to study more spinal engine springy fascia and figure out where to get your running position. To your arm bar point… I think a lot of… uh oh, we have a wandering baby…
Joey Myers 21:13
Wait till she starts walking…
Taylor Gardner 21:15
I know I can’t wait! I understand folding your levers and engaging muscles, getting correct shapes. That makes sense. But when you see arm bar, and it starts to walk out, or to do slow motion. Yeah, looks funky in slow motion to arm bar. When you engage the body and it starts out, it starts to feel a little more natural golfers do the same thing. Luckily for us that in golf, you get to start with it extended and just connected to your body from there.
Taylor Gardner 21:55
But this bat is heavy, I completely understand why people want to hold it close to their body, it is rational. And it’s still close to the body. It’s not like we’re arm barring out here. If you’re still arm barring across our core, this bat is behind you, want lag and you want leverage, leverage, and just loose and lever sometimes, your hands are so close to your body. And even so close this way to the middle of your body. By the time you do a swing, yeah, you’re getting the barrel off your foot. And it may be a strong position depending upon position.
Taylor Gardner 22:34
But if I never got the benefit of the lag, and a clearing, and time to speed up the bat, it takes time to speed up the bat. This is not an instantaneous thing. I know this swing only takes like point two seconds; I get it. That’s slow through the world of everything happening, there is plenty of time and so that hand, grips on the bat. For most people they’re bottom hand is the weaker hand. Not doing anything left-handed if I have to. But you want your dominant arm to do his job.
Taylor Gardner 23:09
Not that you have to do it all with a dominant arm. But you certainly don’t want your weaker arm to be your dominant arm. Now, how do you get them in position? Well, as you get a swing, if it happens to lock out, you’re getting the benefit of lag and leverage. How is that wrong? If I understand timing, if I understand off your positions and swing plane. And armbar is nothing in the scheme of arguments. I’m linked into the lever. If I do it correctly, then of course, I have more leverage and more bat speed.
Taylor Gardner 23:42
But bat speed takes time. And so, when I see a lot of kids, they start here and the lever pull even more on their hands get across the face really soon, elbows way behind their hand and not even close to be slotted. And next thing you know, you’re chopping down or they slice it, and more important, their swing radius and swing arc may only go so far. Versus if I clear, I can get a further reach. And it’d be right within my wheelhouse of comfortability.
Joey Myers 24:13
If we go back to your contact points, right, knowing what your contact points are. When we work with our hitters on what we call our horizontal approach, or our line-to-line approach. Being able to hit the ball the other way, pull it, and go up the middle things like that. We talked about that there are two main things to be aware of… one is what you’ve already said is your contact point. But number two is when that barrel enters the hitting zone.
Joey Myers 24:38
And it’s going to be different for we call middle in and middle away. It’s going to be different. So middle away and middle down. That snapping early getting the barrel in the zone early makes sense. It’s a great middle down of the strike zone middle away approach. But when it comes to middle in the middle up, it doesn’t make sense, and I use those bad cues that I thought were bad about four years ago. Swing down, barrel above the ball, we do use those but only for middle in, middle up.
Is there ever a time when ‘swing down’ or ‘barrel above the hands’ cues can work?
Taylor Gardner 25:05
But right. Speaking along those lines… Yes, have you ever had a kid trying out a new baseball bat and Oh man, he’s struggling with the weight or it was too long for him. But that’s some of the stuff you’ve been told, just remember that when this bat is laying horizontal, is heavier, as far as where the balance is. There’s a reason we stack the barrel. And there’s a reason we hold this bat up, you can hold it with one finger.
Taylor Gardner 25:34
That’s how life, if you will, work how to control the bat, Matt Nokes talks about this, why, the barrel above the hands, it’s taken me a while, the feel can be down, in fact there is a down move in the swing, hold your posture. It’s called your head. The balls is below you. Yes, we want to swing on plane. Of course. But how you get to that barrel entering the zone. And before it starts that actual upswing? That is paramount.
Taylor Gardner 26:07
That also was still wrong with the down early method. Yeah, you’ve got there. But did you give up timing, to get to position at contact. Did you give up adjustments, because your only move is to get there. If you were able to just keep your hands and be ready for that high and inside pitch, as Perry husband would say we get to focus on EV tunnels.
Taylor Gardner 26:34
If I’m ready for that, then great. And then I can always adjust if I need to. Wait adjustment patterns, that kind of dynamic plan. Not everyone would agree with me on this, but just from a third party perspective, if the high and inside pitch is the ball that we have to get the barrel out there quickest to, it makes sense to me to be on time with that and adjust down and away with that, because you have more time or space, ball is further away from me to do so, obviously, you get in the baseball stuffs like, well, if you’re looking middle middle, and then that gets tougher if you’re looking away if you’re looking wherever.
Taylor Gardner 27:19
I don’t want to get into the approach part of it. But it just makes sense to me that you can practice, play around practicing with looking high and in, get that pitch locked in, and then we’ll work it down to middle middle, get that adjustment pattern locked in. Maybe for some people, it’s not so much that they have to change their approach, maybe they just need to be comfortable getting to all these pitches vertically, you might not have to worry about what my timing is good, I’m swinging at the right pitches, just getting jammed a lot on high.
Taylor Gardner 27:51
Well, maybe it’s just because you’re dumping your barrel too soon. It’s okay, you got to find where that issue is, and not fight it. But again, let your plan help you get there. The barrel above the hands is a great plan. It helps me already be ready for that movement pattern… sure, maybe you get to that pitch well maybe you’re facing speeds you can handle and you’re struggling with low and away. So maybe you do have to think about releasing that barrel sooner. Okay, nothing wrong with that.
Taylor Gardner 28:23
I would give everyone hesitation to just go out and put out a YouTube video saying this is the one and only way, of course it’s not. But we must understand all of it so that when you hear someone say something, to filter through what they’re saying, you’ll see why he’s doing it, that makes sense. When you come out and some of these instructors say just one swing plane for every pitch. And if I just wait longer than I can see it longer. We know that’s not exactly be true. Eyes don’t see the ball much longer just because we’re not swinging.
If one of the best, Mike Trout, is giving up 20-mph of ball exit speed, how much do mere mortals give up doing the same thing?
Joey Myers 28:56
Well and what’s also interesting is what the actual hitting operating system is when you can watch somebody, when you have been around the block and you’ve seen a lot of these different teachings, you can see what their main operating system is. And I know you and I were similar in this and we want to maintain high ball exit speeds.
Joey Myers 29:16
When you get a hitting guy that’s talking about a certain thing like hey, we need to get that at high and inside pitch with the bend in the front arm we need to get there, well we know that Perry Husband said Mike Trout, one of the best in the world will go down is one of the best top five probably, ever top five top 10 and down and away average ball exit speed is 101 miles an hour, not his top out but his average. And that’s where he’s locked out with that elbow at contact.
Joey Myers 29:45
And then at up and in, he’s reduced to a high school baseball player at 80 to 83 miles an hour. So he’s losing almost around 20 miles an hour ball exit speed that’s 80 feet. That’s 80 feet of batted ball distance that he’s giving up by looking away and adjusting in. Well, some people go well, that’s fine. But here’s the deal. And this is what I tell my players I say, Mike Trout is a once in a lifetime player. He’s just one of those people that we will look back on when he’s done with his career. And we will say he’s one of the best. One of the best ever is giving up 20 miles an hour ball exit speed.
Joey Myers 29:50
20 miles an hour.
Joey Myers 30:24
You know what the amateurs are probably giving up. 30-35 miles an hour ball exit speed? He’s one of the best he can get away with it. You’re going to be given up a lot more.
Taylor Gardner 30:34
Yeah. I can’t remember if it was you or someone else had brought to my attention. It was before COVID happened. I think it was the baseball season before. And they asked, who hit their highest exit speed most often? Try and word that correctly. And I was like, Oh, I don’t know. And there’s Jose Altuve. And Aaron Judge. I was like, oh, okay, wow, two different types of hitter’s sizes body length. They said, Oh, you know how often they hit their hardest exit speeds?
Taylor Gardner 31:06
And at first, I’m like, Oh, these big leaguers? Oh, man, I bet 20% of their hits or they’re popping out near their top exit speeds. It was less than 2%. Wow, less than 2% of all of their hits, on miss hits in the realm of hitting is as hard as you can. What does that mean, though? Does that mean maybe they’re slowing their swing down and touching the ball? No, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, obviously get fooled on some pitches. Okay, fine.
Taylor Gardner 31:33
But I think most of their base hits that they reported, I think their miss hits are that powerful. And once you start to realize that homeruns are the best result, okay, but maybe your best result is a hard line shot, single or double, whatever. However hard you get whatever type of hit is your hardest hit, which for most people is a low launch angle, I dunno, maybe 0-5, maybe 10 degrees. And then that makes sense. Balls coming down about 5, 7, 8 degrees.
Taylor Gardner 32:03
And you can imagine that plane, you’re going to give up exit speed when you raise or lower your launch angle. And I see a lot of people don’t understand that. Oh, no. My hardest hits home runs. Not exactly. I want to say the highest ball ever recorded was a ground ball. Double play. It’s okay. It’s okay that if your exit speed fluctuates, based on how well you struck that ball for a single, double, triple based on how high or low you hit it, that’s fine. And you want to start tightening those windows up.
Taylor Gardner 32:33
But Backspin tee, you know Taylor, Joey, you can’t control your launch angles, not saying you can control your launch angles. It’s just like I’m not saying you can even hit why I’m saying though, is you can work on the precision of contact and work on your precision posture and swing plane. And when it lines up, you smoke a ball at the pitcher’s head, you did your job. And when the next at-bat, it probably feels the same and you hit a homerun, guess what you did your job. You hit the ball far. But more importantly, your plan gave you the ability to fall as hard as potentially could that swing.
Taylor Gardner 33:08
And that’s Oh man, how many young kids have you seen? You throw them one change-up… They’re crushing balls… you throw them one change up. And then the next 10 swings are crap. They just can’t find it… it just ruins their world. It’s like, oh, man, you got to filter that out. Trust the plan and get to the next pitch. It’s okay.
Joey Myers 33:29
Yeah, exactly. That’s crazy. Yeah, that’s a good one to end on. And that’s another call for another day. I want to be respectful of your time because you’ve got a little one that’s down there. And she’s been great. By the way.
Taylor Gardner 33:40
She’s sleeping now.
Joey Myers 33:41
She’s asleep. Yeah, she’s asleep. I’m talking too loudly. I’m talking to you loudly. But hey, I want to let you get back to the baby and get back to the family. hopefully get some sleep. Maybe she’ll take take a nap with her. But hey, where can people find you? socials, website, any kind of deals that you got going on right now? Go ahead. And…
Where can people find more about you guys?
Taylor Gardner 34:04
Yes, so find us on Google backspin bat tee to find backspintee.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we have a 20% off code at the moment. If you use the code BATBROS. For those of you that follow the baseball bat pros, I’m very good friends with them. They are great people Bill Taylor and them and they’re amazing people. But you’re also going to find our bat tee in Dick’s Sporting Goods here soon. So be on the lookout.
Taylor Gardner 34:28
Hopefully, Academy is a follow that as well for those that maybe that’s closer to here. And we’re trying hard to get Mark word shields and some other big retail stores. But the Dick’s Sporting Goods we’re shipping that out here in a couple days. Extremely excited to make that next jump to the big retail because we’ve done so well on the individual bat tee sale and it’s time to make that move.
Joey Myers 34:50
Yeah, congratulations, buddy. I’ve been with you for a lot of this bat tee journey. I think we jumped on probably we start building our relationship maybe your second year I think you guys are. So, so I’m just excited for you guys. And I know you guys have been just like all of us been through our ups and downs and stuff and it sounds like you guys are starting to starting to rise again. So yeah,
Taylor Gardner 35:12
Yeah, it all started with Joey Myers experiment video, my bat tee versus the other tee, and we didn’t know each other so you have to watch that video.
Joey Myers 35:20
Again. See how they turned out? Yeah, it was in a very bias thing, I was probably, we had run into each other a couple times. We talked on the phone maybe once or twice and I was like, you know what, let’s try this out. Let’s do a bat tee experiment on it. I think it turned out well for you guys.
Taylor Gardner 35:34
Yeah, I think well back to the precision of contact, just changing that visual. You had a more funnel effect with the Backspin Bat Tee, and with the traditional tee, it was a little more scattered and it just makes you wonder, not promoting my bat tee over another tee… Tee just are you working on your precision and in your vision obviously has a lot to do with that so, pick up a Backspin Bat Tee, give it a shot, if you don’t like don’t like it, then I’ll give you your money back. Yeah, definitely.
Joey Myers 36:01
Right. Then percent off and you get 20% BATBROS. B-A-T-B-R-O-S, and that’s all caps, correct? Cool. All right, brother. Well, thanks. Keep up the good bat tee work. Congrats on everything and congrats on the little girl. My first time seeing her.
Taylor Gardner 36:13
Thank you bud.
Joey Myers 36:14
Alright brother. Take care of yourself.
Taylor Gardner 36:16
Have a good one.
Joey Myers 36:17
Have a good Easter.
Taylor Gardner 36:18
Thank you.
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"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/bat-tee-e1617902685923.png281500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2021-04-08 17:31:572021-04-08 18:14:29Bat Tee Co-Founder: How To Make Adjustments [VIDEO]
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here with Joey Myers. And Joey, just to tell you a little bit about Joey Myers. He played four years of D-1 ball at Fresno State, the member of the American Baseball Coaches Association, International Youth and Conditioning Association, and the Society for American Baseball Research.
Jaime Cevallos 00:31
He’s a certified Youth Fitness Specialist, a Corrective Exercise Specialist and a vinyasa yoga instructor and certified in Functional Muscle Screen. Joey was frustrated with his own hitting in college and wanted to figure out a better way and now he’s the author of the Amazon bestseller the “Catapult Loading System How To Teach 100-pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-feet“.
Jaime Cevallos 00:55
Joey and I have known each other for a few years now. Joey and I were both fans of Tim Ferriss work. And I was in the Four-Hour Body and Joey heard of me there. And that’s one of Tim Ferriss books and reached out to me and we started chatting. This was maybe five or so years ago. And so, we’ve had a relationship talking about business and baseball and what our strategies are as far as what we teach and all, and just get an understanding of his ideas of the movement. And so, Joey, thank you for coming on.
Joey Myers 01:52
Yeah, thanks, Jamie. Thanks for having me. And I got just in case we need any examples or need a demonstration, I got my bat here.
Jaime Cevallos 02:00
Nice Yep, I got mine too. You know, we’re all set. Um, so, the first thing is what are your thoughts as far as the way the swing is taught out there? How is your understanding of the swing different? And I guess another way I could phrase this is, how is it different from how you understood it in college? And then maybe also how is it different from what you see being taught out there?
How is your understanding of the swing different?
Joey Myers 02:39
Yeah, good question. So being taught in college it was the whole down through, swing down, swing through type thing that we often see and hear the Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez is saying that they swing down or Mike trout says he gets on top of the ball. And those were after I got enlightened a little bit. Those are very frustrating cues to hear because “swing down!” That’s what I was taught and I didn’t make it to the big leagues like these guys, I was taught the same dang things and it didn’t work.
Joey Myers 03:07
So fast forward to 2013, I we had our first kid a boy, Noah, who is now seven, so seven years ago, and in the sleepless nights the getting up six times a night, the wife was feeding Noah, and the wife made me feel guilty to go back to sleep, which I go to back to sleep really quickly. So she, she felt like, “Hey, you need to be up to if I’m up!”
Joey Myers 03:35
So in those nights, I picked up a book I think I was trying to fix something in my own body because of the swinging and things I was in fitness at the time. And so, I picked up Thomas Myers, his book Anatomy Trains. And Thomas Myers, we aren’t related directly, but I’m sure somewhere in the family tree were somewhere directly related. And I read through that book. It took me shoot, I had to read over pages for three or four times…
Joey Myers 04:12
Curious, you know that was something that you and I have in common. We have this passionate curiosity for the swing. And that just started a big, long deep rabbit hole that I went through. So, Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains, then it went to there was a book called Dynamic Body and it was a collaboration of different authors that were in that springy fascia Rolfing type of genre in the fitness industry.
Joey Myers 04:36
And in that book that steered me over to Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s, The Spinal Engine. So, what I was finding before I started going down that rabbit hole was a lot of the probably in the journey that you’ve been in recently in researching other people and what they teach. It was a lot of things being taught, retaught things that I was trying to reteach myself and it wasn’t working.
Joey Myers 05:01
And so I figured oh well, it’s probably user error. And then finally getting through a lot of that information I started, the lightbulb went on, I was like, you know what, maybe there’s something to the human movement principles or rules to human movement. And when you look at it through the lens, you look at hitting through the lens of human movement science, say, physics, or biomechanics, or engineering or anything like that. It changes the game.
Joey Myers 05:30
So I always tell the, my coaches that follow me, I say, hey, you need a better standard for your hitters. It can’t just be the same, what I call garbage over and over, that doesn’t work doesn’t really have much experimentation behind it. So that got me into what my thing is now is applying human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting a ball. So that’s where I’ve fast forwarded to where I’m at now.
Jaime Cevallos 06:02
And when you say that applying human movement principles, where do you get the principles and where do you get the science information from?
Where do you get the principles and where do you get the science information from?
Joey Myers 06:13
Good question. Jamie, turn your camera a little bit. You got a little bit of a glare from the sun. Oh, better. There you go. There you go. That’s better. Good just for the readers out there when they’re listening to you talk.
Joey Myers 06:29
So the principles, the big, big ones that really opened my eyes were from Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s The Spinal Engine. So Dr. Serge is a physicist and electrical engineer. He took one of the biggest I think, case studies for me that sold me on the whole thing was he had a, I don’t know if he’s a patient client, but whatever, but he was a quadriplegic. He was born that way. So yeah, I think he had nubs for arms. He walked on the bottom of his pelvis. I think they call it the ischium.
Joey Myers 07:00
And he had hooked this gentleman up to… put pads on his spine along his spine to measure muscle output to measure the connective tissue output. And if you watch this guy walk and if you just go on YouTube and you put “Serge Gracovetsky Spinal Engine”, it’ll come up (video above). It’s an old video. It’s like in the 80s, I think mid-80s, late 80s. And if you watch this, it’s about the four-minute mark. So, he’s got video footage of this gentleman walking and if you cover up his lower half like his pelvis basically and just watch him move. You would swear the guy wasn’t a quadriplegic. You’d swear yet legs.
Joey Myers 07:43
So he was born without legs and arms, and he was moving like normal people move, but without legs and arms. And so that was to me. I was trying to look for the foundational the foundation of the foundation and locomotion is what Dr. Serge talks about. So, without locomotion, we aren’t human. And he talks about three different and these are the principles, he talks about three different spinal movements, movements that the spine can do…
Joey Myers 08:11
There’s flexing, so just imagine yourself arching your back, right, but your lower back is already in a has a slight curve to it anyway, so it’s already started off, if you just stand there and don’t do anything, it’s already started off in an extended extension, sorry, extended position, they call it lordosis. The second one, why they put extension and flexion together. So, flexion would be like you doing a crunch where you’re crunching up and you’re bending your back that way. So those two he puts together, those are number one.
Joey Myers 08:44
Number two is side bend. So it’s just going side to side. And then the third one, the last one is called axial rotation, which just means that your shoulders can move independent or not independent but your shoulders move one way and your pelvis moves. That’s why our right arm and left leg comes forward at the same time. We don’t walk with the right arm and the left leg coming forward the same time. So that is basic locomotion and all three, or four, all three of those movements happen when we walk.
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And from the minute we start walking… The reason in the beginning, it’s so hard for the baby to get into the toddler stage is because that lower back doesn’t have the curve in it yet. It’s actually straighter if not more flexed, because they’re in that that crunch position. And then it’s them trying to create that musculature to create that curve in the lower back. And so, once they get that they get more steady.
Jaime Cevallos 09:43
That’s I’m sorry to interrupt. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I didn’t know that that that the curve at the bottom of your spine, takes a little while to develop. That must be an ontology recapitulates phylogeny type of thing where we were crawling, in the beginning, and then we needed that curve for upright walking.
Joey Myers 10:05
Yep, yep. Yeah, because think about it in in the wild where you have a good example of side bending are sharks. So, sharks when they swim, it’s this this movement, right? And if you look at whales our fellow kin, mammals, right? They’re extension flexion so their tails this way dolphins same thing, right? Dr Serge talks about a lot of this. And then if you watch dogs it’s similar it’s like you see this move that goes like this it’s up and down side to side, butt goes one way head the other.
Joey Myers 10:40
And what’s interesting is there are three sections of the spine. You have the C the cervical, you have the T the thoracic, which is the middle the biggest part 12 full vertebra in the middle, and then you have… so there’s seven in the top part and the cervical, two of them we can’t see because it inserts into the skull. Then you have the 12 of the thoracic, which is the biggest part of the spine. And then you have the lumbar which is five, five vertebrae.
Joey Myers 11:05
And what was interesting to me is if you look at the curve so the neck so imagine the neck is curving this way, the thoracic part curves the opposite can’t see it here we go through this way. So the, the thoracic curves the opposite way. And then the L the lumbar lower back curves the same way as the cervical so it’s like C, C and then you have backwards C in the middle. Interesting how everything was designed.
Jaime Cevallos 11:36
Wow. So keep going about how it’s different from your understanding is different from how you understood in college or how people understand it right now.
How your understanding is different than how people are teaching now?
Joey Myers 11:54
Yeah, that’s a good one. So connecting the dots of today and I know you’ve been doing your research and stuff. There are swing people out there and I won’t mention any names. Most of you out there listening to this will probably know who I’m talking about. But they talk about that the barrel moves the body. The body doesn’t move the barrel. Which if you have a human movement foundation, you hear that and it’s automatically ignorant automatically.
Joey Myers 12:27
So the people that are saying that have no clue how the human body moves, and if they claim that they’ve read and understand Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s Spinal Engine, that’s a lie. It’s a con job because and you can go and look up David Weck, who, WeckMethod.com. He was the inventor of the bosu ball, most of you out there have been to a gym you see that ball that’s got the big bubble on the bottom and the surface on the top and it’s makes exercises really hard to do.
Joey Myers 12:58
So he was the inventor of that and then over the last probably four or five years, he’s really gotten into the spinal engine stuff. And the guy’s a sharp guy, you go on Instagram. He’s really, really active on Instagram. Very, very sharp guy. And he’s all about spinal engine. And you have so many others like what’s his name Dr. Joe LaCaze, he’s RotexMotion. There’s a another one. I can’t think of his name right off the bat. But he he’s got a system. It’s all based on body, there’s a lot of spirals in the body.
Joey Myers 13:31
For those parents out there, those coaches out there that want to get involved in this, but have no clue how to start. If you just understand those three types of spinal movement, from there you can pretty much figure out how everything else is supposed to move. So when you have somebody that says that barrel moves the body, that doesn’t make sense, because human movement we’re fighting gravitational forces, but movement starts from the middle out is what we call it, not from the ground up. It’s from the middle out from the spine out basically.
Joey Myers 13:31
If you read Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains, he talks about the spiral line that comes across the chest, and it comes back down around the butt and then you see one that comes under as a stirrup under the foot. And so when you understand any…you don’t have to be, like again, I was self-taught. I just was curious passionate curiosity about everything. You don’t need to know the language per se, but if you can understand the concept of just locomotion.
Jaime Cevallos 14:40
Wow. I came to that realization a couple years ago myself. And the whole, the swing starts from the ground up suddenly wasn’t correct to me. It’s more that it starts in the center of your body and shoots in two directions, almost like they’re working against each other.
“And the whole, the swing starts from the ground up suddenly wasn’t correct to me.”
Joey Myers 15:07
Yep. That’s a great observation man. And I know you’re smart Dude, you like to think outside the box philosophically. And that’s exactly what’s happening. So if we take this idea of springy fascia. So fascia is, if you foam roll, that’s what you’re trying to do. If you foam roll your IT band and it hurts like the dickens. If you haven’t done it in a while. It feels like somebody’s stabbing a knife in the side of your leg, right?
Joey Myers 15:37
So fascia is a cotton candy or spider webby like material that your bones and muscles float in. It also gives muscles their shape. It’s almost like if you think about it, the grocery store if you buy a bag of potatoes, the potatoes are the muscles. The bag itself that the potatoes are wrapped in is the fascia. It’s connected. There’s a sheet, or one line anatomy train that attaches the top of your eyebrow goes all, it’s called the backline. Goes over the head and go straight down the back butt, hamstrings, back of the calves and attaches to the bottom of your or the back of the ball of your foot. It goes through your arch in there.
Joey Myers 16:15
So that’s one whole sheet and there’s nine different ones, I think is what Thomas Myers talks about, that are all intermingled interweaved. You have this idea of compression tension forces. This fascia is comprised of compression tension. Compression force is just a, say a piece of granite on or a brick on a brick, right brick on a brick, they exert forces against each other. That’s a compression force.
Joey Myers 16:42
A tension force would be like a boom crane, you know a wrecking ball. You have the structure of the boom crane, you have the cable that, and it comes over and it holds the wrecking ball down here. So that cable that’s connected to the wrecking ball that’s a tension force, so you have force from the structure that’s pulling up and you have the Wrecking Ball and gravity that’s pulling down and you have this tensional force between the two.
Joey Myers 17:07
So with fascia you have both compression tension. What’s interesting is this is all Thomas Myers stuff is he says that granite has a very high, granite the rock, like if you had a countertop, granite countertops, that granite has a very, very high tolerance for compression. You can put a ton of weight on top of granite and it’s not going to break it’s not going to; it’s not going to snap break whatever.
Joey Myers 17:32
But it has a very low tensional force. So if you hooked up, you drilled holes in two sides of the granite so you had a countertop, a long countertop, drilled big holes in both sides of the granite hooked in like a big fat strong carabiner, you got the chain hooked up to a horse on both sides and you have the horses walk away or run away from each other. That granite’s going to pull apart because its tensional force isn’t very strong. But fascia in the human body is both strong compression and tension.
Joey Myers 18:03
So whether you’re in a good posture, good position or you have some bad juju, your body’s just not in that, right, you’re going to have those compression tension forces but they might be off a little bit and it’s going to create, it’s going to wear out like mileage on your…say your car, you got a front end that’s misaligned, you get the tires out like this. Well, you know, they’re guaranteed 80,000 miles if your tires were aligned, but since they’re misaligned, you might get about half the mileage on those tires…same thing with fascia, it’s going to over time if it’s off, then you’re going to wear out joints, you’re going to wear out shoulders, you’re going to wear out necks, you’re going to wear out lower backs, whatever.
Joey Myers 18:43
So it’s amazing when you dig into the fascia side and spinal engine, they’re both pretty related because without the fascia, it’s like they both are dependent on each other. The fascia is a connective tissue, the spine is what they’re saying bones are actually connective tissue as well their fascia, but fascia wound really, really, really dense. Bone does bend, but there’s a threshold till finally it breaks but it does bend.
Jaime Cevallos 19:14
Okay. What would you say? Is your understanding of the swing back then? We keep going off on?
What would you say? Is your understanding of the swing back then?
Joey Myers 19:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how this relates to the swing is loading and unloading. This is the Catapult Loading System. This was the book you mentioned, that was the 2017 Amazon bestseller. This took power to a whole other level. And I ran the experiments when I was going through this, I was seeing what others were doing like Trout, and at the time Andrew McCutchen was doing well, and Bautista, Donaldson and all these guys.
Joey Myers 19:52
So I took that information, looked at the players to see how this was being translated how they were translated… (to be continued into Part-2)…
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/jaime-cevallos-joey-myers-interview1-e1593582844942.png281500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2020-07-01 06:05:292020-07-14 04:36:12How To Turn Garbage Teaching Into Predictable Power
Tee Drills: Adam Eaton Speaks High Inside Pitch Approach Truth
Adam Eaton photo courtesy: MLB.com
In this tee drills with Adam Eaton video, some main points Adam Eaton covers:
Ball flight tells you everything,
Demonstrates how REAL high level barrel path is on high inside pitches,
How most get the cue ‘stay inside the ball’ wrong, and how to use it properly, and
Tee drills tip for putting the high tee on steroids!
Make sure you watch the brief 5-minute 30-Clubs in 30-Days Adam Eaton interview before diving into my notes below. I time stamped the above video for quick and easy reference…
At the 0:45 mark, Adam Eaton talks about how tee drills are the most important part of the day. According to the tee drills naysayers out there, man oh man, how many Big Leaguers are doing it “wrong”. Haha!
At the 1:30 mark, while working tee drills, DeRo asks if Adam Eaton is worried about his hands, bat path, what? And Adam responds by saying, ball flight tells you everything. If ball flight is clean, he knows his body is in the right position.
At the 2:30 mark, Adam talks about letting ball get to belt buckle on pitches away. He clarifies you aren’t actually going to hit it there in the game. Feel cue, pure and simple. Interesting he mentions getting on plane quickly here in reference to outside pitch. This is when deep barrel dump is okay. Adam mentions his powerful impact position checkpoints: palm up palm down, hardly any bend in the front arm (he actually works on this!!), and nice bend in back arm (90-degrees).
At the 2:55 mark, Adam Eaton talks about high inside tee drills. Uncomfortable drill because it feels like you’re crowding yourself. But it teaches body control and to control the shoulders. “Blackout moment” defined as an experience when body takes over without thinking because you’ve practiced it so many times. And just before the 4-minute mark watch him demonstrate how he gets to that high inside pitch — he keeps the barrel up, above his hands, until last possible second. Much different barrel path he’d take to a pitch away. I talk to my hitters about the difference between hitting a catcher’s glove perpendicular to the hitter’s “belly button” (inner third part of plate), versus knocking off the real catcher’s glove (outer third part of plate).
On these tee drills, Adam Eaton talks a lot about ‘keeping hands inside the ball’. The cue is great for hitters that do the opposite – hook the ball a lot. And ‘get barrel around the ball’ works brilliantly for hitters with racing back elbow or who tend to push the ball opposite a lot. Over the years I’ve learned that every hitting feel cue has their place. We used to laugh, cajole, and mock Major Leaguers when we’d hear them say things like ‘get on top’, ‘swing down on the ball’, or like in Adam Eaton’s case ‘stay inside the ball’. These cues do work, but mostly to the hitters who do the opposite of what these cues suggest. It’s called Paradoxical Intention.
Also note on Adam Eaton’s slow motion game swings how virtually straight his front arm is at stride landing. He’s not a big guy, 5-foot, 8-inches, and only 176-pounds. He can lever up that front arm because of a shorter wingspan for sure. I’ve seen him do this on outside pitches as well as inside. Although, here’s the catch on the inner half of the plate, you have to take the barrel path approach he demonstrated on the high tee drill. In addition to training my hitters to use a longer front arm on the high pitch, I also make them do it with an end loaded heavy bat. Makes the drill even more uncomfortable – as Adam Eaton put it – BUT if they can accomplish it at that pitch location, everywhere else is gravy.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/tee-drills-adam-eaton-e1583987180213.png477500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2020-03-12 05:15:322020-11-04 05:07:13Tee Drills With Adam Eaton Video
How Your Central Hitting “Operating System” May Be Causing You To Lose Out On Scoring More Runs
Photo courtesy: MopUpDuty.com
Recently, I had a conversation with a coach on Facebook who thought the following quote from Josh Donaldson was “horrible advice”:
“If you’re 10-years-old and your coach tells you to get on top of the ball…tell him NO.”
I’m not getting into the positive or negative of Donaldson’s statement, but the coach’s responses that followed his “horrible advice” comment got me thinking. Come to find out, the loud and clear message was this coach despises when hitters strikeout. Often referring to this offensive outcome as “disgusting”. What was interesting was this one principle was central to how and what he teaches his hitters.
So I wanted to do a hitting “operating system” thought experiment. In reading what follows, please keep in mind what the main objective to offense is, according to FanGraphs.com
“In baseball [or softball], we care about run scoring (and prevention) and so when looking at offensive statistics, we want to find statistics that tell you something about how much a player contributes to the run scoring process…again, we care about a player’s contribution to run scoring and if you treat everything equally you’re not getting a very accurate measure of those contributions.”
In this thought experiment, we’ll discuss…as a hitting instructor, what would happen if:
The Time To Impact Metric was Central to the “Operating System”?
Minimizing a Hitter’s Strikeouts were Central to the “Operating System”?
Maximizing Batting Average were Central to the “Operating System”? And,
Maximizing OPS were Central to the “Operating System”?
Now, that being said…as a hitting instructor, what would happen if…
The Time To Impact Metric was Central to the “Operating System”?
If you’re new to this term, here’s the definition of Time To Impact according to Zepp:
“TIME TO IMPACT is the amount of time (in seconds) from the start of the downswing until impact of the bat with the ball. The closer to ZERO your swing is, the quicker your bat is to the ball. The faster the time to impact, the longer the hitter can wait to start the swing. Time to Impact also measures how short a player’s swing is. Time to Impact measures their coordination of both their hand and the bat barrel to maximize swing efficiency to the ball.”
CLICK HERE for amateur, High School, and Pro ranges for both baseball and softball. What would be the top 2-3 priority hitting concepts guided by this principle?
Point-A to B barrel path (shortest distance between two points). Default hitting strategy would be “Knob to the ball”. “Swing down”. “Barrel above the hands”.
Most likely using more linear elements in the swing for both upper and lower half (i.e. ‘showing numbers’ will be a no-no). Maybe similar to a Charlie Lau style of hitting.
Minimalist view of the swing…wide feet, no stride, minimal hand and head movement, etc. May not believe a hitter can train timing, so the view is that it’s all about bettering the hitter’s reaction time.
Look, there’s a healthy range for Time To Impact, not taking too long, and not being so quick the barrel is not in the impact zone long enough. You can see that range in the previous Zepp link. Remember, we want to formulate hitting principles that encourage how to maximize a player’s contribution to the run scoring process.
Moving on,
As a hitting instructor, what would happen if…
Minimizing a Hitter’s Strikeouts were Central to the “Operating System”?
What if you despised hitters striking out so much, you often referred to this outcome as “disgusting”, like our coaching friend above. What would be the top 2-3 priority concepts guided by this principle?
Protecting hitters from swing and misses at all cost. Very defensive just make contact swings, especially with 2-strikes. May subscribe to barrel on plane of pitch early and stay on plane longer. Less margin for error.
Believes in hitting ball hard and on a line. However, low liners and ground-balls are preferred, especially with 2-strikes. Don’t care as much about extra base hits, doubles maybe, but not homers. They aren’t worth the risk. Swings taught at the advent of astro turf fit this type of hitting perfectly. Hard and on the ground.
Mechanics may look like: wide no-stride feet, bug squishing, minimal head movement from start of swing to finish, choking up (especially with two strikes). Very defensive type of swing. On board with boosting Ball Exit Speeds, but will not agree with optimizing Launch Angles. Besides hitter strikeouts, this coach absolutely hates getting the ball in the air (too much of an out risk for them), unless it’s a low level line drive. High batting average and low strikeouts are very important to this coach.
Listen, if this is you, I’d highly advise checking out this VERY popular post titled, “The UGLY Truth About Hitting Ground Balls”. I’m not going into every argument here, but the math and geometry don’t lie in demonstrating ground-balls are gross. The main reasons are:
Ask any pitcher, and most (if not all) will tell you they’re taught to keep the ball down in the zone, to get the ground-ball. So, if the default strategy – or safety net to the line-drive – is to hit ground-balls, then you’re teaching hitters to do what pitchers want them to do.
Because of reason #1, there are 5 fielders on the infield (yes, the pitcher is considered a fielder) with less space to cover. There are only 3 outfielders with A LOT of space to cover. And lastly,
Most double plays are turned on the infield (probably THE WORST hitting outcome in the sport), and if you’re pinning hopes and dreams on an infielder making an error or ball taking a weird bounce, then you’re focusing on things you can’t control. High level coaches and players don’t think that way. WHY? Because it’s silly.
Again, we want to formulate hitting principles that encourage how to maximize a player’s contribution to the run scoring process.A defensive swing doesn’t do this.
Next, as a hitting instructor, what would happen if…
Maximizing Batting Average were Central to the “Operating System”?
In Golf, precision is key. The least strokes possible. Being able to control the club head has a lot of value because one small deviation at impact is exponentially compounded hundreds of yards from the tee box. The last hitter to hit .400 was Ted Williams in 1941. Tony Gwynn came close in the strike shortened year of 1994, hitting .394, and hitting around .370 in three separate full seasons. And Gwynn had a mere fraction of the power Williams did.
Before I get to what a hitting coach would focus on here, I wanted to address the elephant in the room. In the day and age of Sabermetrics, Batting Average isn’t a useful statistic in deciding a player’s value. In a FanGraphs post titled, “Stats to Avoid: Batting Average”, they put forth two reasons to avoid looking at BA as a useful metric:
“Batting average ignores a segment of offensive actions just because they aren’t “hits,” and 100 years ago, someone decided a hit and a walk were fundamentally different.” And,
“The second major flaw is that batting average treats every hit equally even though certain hits are more valuable than others. Batting average treats a single and a double like the same thing, even though a hitter who only hit doubles would help his team score a lot more runs than a hitter who only hit singles.”
That being said, maybe a better stat would be Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). Not the best, but better than BA. FanGraphs.com defines BABIP as:
“Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) measures how often a ball in play goes for a hit. A ball is “in play” when the plate appearance ends in something other than a strikeout, walk, hit batter, catcher’s interference, sacrifice bunt, or home run.”
Okay, so what would be the top 2-3 priority concepts guided by this principle?
Getting on the plane of the pitch early with the barrel, and maximizing that time.
Place a high emphasis on barrel control, both horizontally (across the field) and vertically (optimizing Launch Angles). The best hitters in the world can put the ball where they want, when they want, during batting practice.
I LOVE this approach, and I feel coaches have done a poor job of training their hitters in it in the past (including me). Teaching hitters to hit the ball where they want, when they want. Why can’t we have hitters in High School batting .600 to .800? Or Little Leaguers hitting .880? I know it can be done because I did it when I was 12yo, in addition to hitting 30+ homers. Using Batting Average (BA), or better yet Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP), is a great start to encourage how to maximize a player’s contribution to the run scoring process.
The challenge I have with it though, neither of the BA or BABIP metrics take walks and/or homers into account. Remember “contribute to run scoring process”. Which leads me to, as a hitting instructor, what would happen if…
Maximizing OPS were Central to the “Operating System”?
Have you read the book MoneyBall by Michael Lewis, or watched the movie with Brad Pitt? If you haven’t…THEN WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!!!! lol, kidding. OPS stands for On-Base Percentage PLUS Slugging Percentage. There are better metrics, but this is a good one to start with if this is new to you. FanGraphs.com defines it as:
“On-base Plus Slugging (OPS) is exactly what it sounds like: the sum of a player’s on-base percentage and their slugging percentage. Many sabermetricians don’t like OPS because it treats OBP as equal in value with SLG, while OBP is roughly twice as important as SLG in terms of its effect on run scoring (x1.8 to be exact). However, OPS has value as a metric because it is accepted and used more widely than other, more accurate statistics while also being a relatively accurate representations of offense.”
It’s one of the best metrics to formulate hitting principles that encourage how to maximize a player’s contribution to the run scoring process. On-Base Percentage (OBP) measures how often a player gets on base. And Slugging Percentage (Slug%) measures how many extra base hits a hitter hits. ISO, or Isolated Slugging (aka “raw power”, takes singles out of the equation), is better than Slug%, but I don’t want to complicate matters. Remember, the object of this game is to get runners on, and knock’em in.
Okay, so what would be the top 2-3 priority concepts guided by this principle?
High frequency of hitting the ball hard. Increase Ball Exit Speed, or how fast the ball comes off the bat. However high Ball Exit Speeds with low Launch Angles are no good. A few years ago Giancarlo Stanton hit a ball 123.8-mph…on the ground, one-hopper to the second baseman…double play. Ouch.
Optimize launch angle range between 15 to 25 degrees. This is the ideal line drive range, and optimizes batted ball distance. Some hate talking about Launch Angles, but every batted ball has a launch angle, even bunts.
Mechanics that optimize both of these are key. How do we optimize Ball Exit Speeds? (Hint: that’s what Power Hitter 2.0: Engineering The Alpha does). What mechanics optimize Launch Angles and hitting more line drives? (Hint: that’s what The Pitch-Plane Dominator does). And importantly, my hitters don’t sacrifice swing quality for power. We get both! My hitters lower their strikeouts, mis-hits, fly-balls, and gross ground-balls with these online video courses.
I think there’s success on whatever part of the spectrum coaches find themselves on. However, what if you lived on a planet that used forks and knives to eat soup? What would happen if an alien came down and surprised them with a spoon? Teaching hitting is the same. There may be thousands of ways to teach hitters, but one way is most effective. What is that way? Applying human movement principles validated by REAL science, NOT “because-I-said-so ‘bro-science'”, to hitting a ball. Have a higher standard for your hitters.
We as coaches have to reverse engineer the our swing strategy based on what the game values, which are runs! The more runs your team can score (and prevent), the more WINS you get. Don’t lose sight of that coaches.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/simpsons-sabermetrics.jpg306535Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2018-03-23 17:18:552018-09-17 04:35:13How To Maximize A Hitter’s Contribution To Run Scoring Process
I have a treat for you (and it involves the swing of hot hitting rookie sensation Cody Bellinger)…
…an analysis of an analysis if you will! lol
I’ve been licking my chops over the past week, to share the above video that multiple reader-friends asked my opinion on.
This was a perfect opportunity to discuss the “real” versus “feel” debate that confuses many new coaches.
Look how well Cody Bellinger uses Knee Action to consistently “get under” the ball. Photo courtesy: MLB.com
And here are interesting Jim Thome talking points from the above video (watch this first, don’t jump ahead to the video below):
“Hit through the middle…not hook the ball”. Not letting top hand get out in front at impact…wanting to keep “bat flat” or flush at and through impact (about 1-min & 3:00 mark)
Want wrists to come through impact towards the pitcher, Harold Reynolds using terminology “stay inside the baseball”, Thome saying “stay through the baseball”…Thome makes comment that this game will tell you what to work on next (about 2:00 min mark)
About Cody Bellinger’s swing: “Hands are absolutely electric”, back leg is straight (during stance), knob points down to back foot, back foot has a little bit of turn in it…allows hips to get through? Everything stays straight (he mentions “level” later in the video) to the baseball with shoulders and pelvis, hands are above the baseball (about 3:30 mark)
“King of the Mountain” Drill…down to the baseball means level to the baseball, barrel flat and level with the baseball, hit middle to a little bit below. Hit middle of the ball, not bottom or top. Hands above the baseball. (about 4:50 mark)
Load slower and control my breathing…”diving steep”, not falling forward committing too much weight forward. Good drill for controlling forward momentum (about 6:50 mark)
Straight back leg, turning the back toe slightly forward toward the pitcher. Creates torque in the back hip. (about 8:15 mark)
I was just going to do a post and ask for your thoughts on this Cody Bellinger swing analysis, but some of the talking points fired me up, so I couldn’t help myself with the following analysis of the Jim Thome analysis… 😉
Yes, I know, the video is a bit long, but there are MANY gold nuggets in there I think Jim Thome touched on, EVERY coach can learn and share with their hitters.
Here’s a list of my talking points (in this order)…
Addressing Jim Thome Comments of Cody Bellinger’s Swing
“Hands electric”,
Back Leg Straight,
Knob points down at stride landing,
Back foot turned slightly in towards pitcher (Supple Leopardbook by Dr. Kelly Starrett), and
Shoulders/Pelvis should be straight or level.
And,
Jim Thome General Swing Comments
Hit through middle – “flat” or flush with impact,
Game tells you what to work on next (Golf Flowbook by Dr. Gio Valiante)
Load slower, control breathing (CLICK HERE for this Jose Bautista video that discusses “load slow and early”,
“Diving deep” cue,
Swing down, and
Barrel above the hands.
Please share any comments, questions, or criticisms below… 😀
'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!!
also talked about it in his book the “Mike Schmidt Study”. Only downside is when pitchers start using EV tunnels Perry Husband talks about. It’s easier to cover middle in/out/up/down (50% of the plate), based on pitcher’s pattern. Obviously, this is more effective the better the pitcher is.
also talked about it in his book the “Mike Schmidt Study”. Only downside is when pitchers start using 
. Williams talked about barrel meeting the plane of the pitch. Trout’s natural tendency runs counter to this. And what he tells himself, remember the body is one or two steps behind the brain, is to do the exact opposite of what his natural tendency is. He tells himself to get on top of the ball. And what’s the result? The barrel ends up somewhere in the middle of extreme uppercut and negative attack angle downswing. That’s what he’s trying to get for his real… to get to the middle.
, calls this 
paradoxical intention? Overall, my whole team is hitting more line drives. Now my line drivers aren’t lonely. They have more competition to deal with. Competition makes everyone better. Hungrier. Especially when they’re experiencing success. Does that make sense?
, 
, HitTrax, 
, or 
, then you’re flying blind. You aren’t going to know. And those hunches will just be hunches.
by K
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“.
and Joey heard of me there. And that’s one of Tim Ferriss books and reached out to me and we started chatting. This was maybe five or so years ago. And so, we’ve had a relationship talking about business and baseball and what our strategies are as far as what we teach and all, and just get an understanding of his ideas of the movement. And so, Joey, thank you for coming on.
. And Thomas Myers, we aren’t related directly, but I’m sure somewhere in the family tree were somewhere directly related. And I read through that book. It took me shoot, I had to read over pages for three or four times…
and it was a collaboration of different authors that were in that springy fascia 
. So, what I was finding before I started going down that rabbit hole was a lot of the probably in the journey that you’ve been in recently in researching other people and what they teach. It was a lot of things being taught, retaught things that I was trying to reteach myself and it wasn’t working.
, he talks about the spiral line that comes across the chest, and it comes back down around the butt and then you see one that comes under as a stirrup under the foot. And so when you understand any…you don’t have to be, like again, I was self-taught. I just was curious passionate curiosity about everything. You don’t need to know the language per se, but if you can understand the concept of just locomotion.
. This was the book you mentioned, that was the 2017 Amazon bestseller. This took power to a whole other level. And I ran the experiments when I was going through this, I was seeing what others were doing like Trout, and at the time Andrew McCutchen was doing well, and Bautista, Donaldson and all these guys.
by Michael Lewis, or watched the movie with Brad Pitt? If you haven’t…THEN WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!!!! lol, kidding. OPS stands for On-Base Percentage PLUS Slugging Percentage. There are better metrics, but this is a good one to start with if this is new to you. FanGraphs.com defines it as:
book by Dr. Kelly Starrett), and
book by Dr. Gio Valiante)