Hitting and Hitters Discussion great hitter not hitting!!

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My dd has been consistantly hitting the heck out of the ball when it comes to batting cages, off the t, soft toss, etc. She has been taught the RVP way and has been told she has the correct mechanics. She has alot of power and has been a home run hitter. But when she is against live pitching she struggles. Wondering if she is not seeing the ball well enough to adjust to different pitches. Trying to turn her face more so she can see ball coming with both eyes forward. Help!

 

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It could be a myriad of things but let's assume her mechanical approach is solid. What exactly is she looking at when the pitcher is in her windup? She should focus in the area where the pitcher will release the ball. Tell her to imagine a 1 foot by 1 foot window where the pitcher releases the ball. The window should start just below the pitchers hip down towards the knee. Focusing on a smaller area will increase her chances of seeing the ball better and she will immediately see the ball at release rather then locating the ball in its path, giving her more time to react. Also, she has to have the mental approach that she will make good contact. Any doubt in her mind greatly reduces her chances of being successful. Remember, these ideas assume that her mechanical approach is solid (not stepping out, too much head movement, etc.).

Len

 

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This may not be want you want to hear but, "be patient young Skywalker." There are two things you want to look for is she going deep in the count. If yes, she is seeing the ball just fine. the next is when she gets her first hit it will all come together. Some times when you want something so bad it will never come until you just let it happen.

I have seen a lot of girls go through this. And I have seen every father go through it as well.

Be and think positive.

 

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Vision is basic and usually over looked...have her look into a mirror as if their is a pitcher in the mirror and bend at the waist and soften the knees. Can you see the entire white around the left eye (right handed hitter) ?

If you can not see it the head is not turned far enough towards the pitcher....have her turn her head farther left and she should feel a strain in the neck and shoulder area. Now have her move her right foot about two inches towards home plate and the neck and shoulder problem should go away and she should be relaxed. This is termed a 5 degree offset and is from TSW Science of Hitting. Let her pick her stance as some see it better open verses closed however seeing the white around the entire eye is very important for a good two eyed look.

Next have her load and step while in front of the mirror...stand behind her and look to see where her hands are. Did she separate at toe touch? Are her hands behind her head and you can see the hands at all? If the hands are behind the head she will be making a bad first move and most likely her shoulder has rolled in and her right eye is moving away from the pitcher.

Then stand behind her far enough away she can not hit you with the bat...you go through your pitching motion slowly and she sees you in the mirror. We like then to load on the upswing and be at toe touch between the K position and prior to release. Each hitters athleticism is different however it is a check point. Go through it in slow motion and then full speed so she can take cuts. Check her bat angle and see if she has about a 45 degree angle or is it getting flat as she starts connection.

Then go to a cage and do the Barry Bonds drill and see how far she gets before you see it is most likely in the separation of the hands and that she is stopping her momentum and her timing is off. She must be thinking reversing her hand direction and not stopping and starting or she looses the rhythm and momentum and can not dance with the pitcher.

 

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Not always a popular opinion here on this board but..lol...RVP to me is alot like a golf swing. In the cages it is very easy to get your timing on a machine, soft toss and off a tee no timing is required lol...assuming all mechanics are correct and I know I am not Howard but a few things, First is she loading while the pitcher is in motion? Maybe for her starting preloaded will help. Second how is she spending her time in the hole and on deck. Just getting loose or is she really trying to get the rythme of the pitcher down? My DD is a slap hitter that is a RVP hitter when swinging away, I changed some things from what her hitting coach had her do. I have had conversations with Howard on this subject and her hitting coach, but I had her pre load, actually to prevent any changes to her swing away mechanics I had her load right when she was set to a pre loaded position. I changed a few other things not RVP related, how she spent her time in the hole and on deck. It helped her tremendously.

 

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Gotta agree with Uber on this. I've been watching college games where the girls aren't READY to hit. No load or anything, just standing there like it's a "take" all the way. It's impossible to hit unless you're ready and prepared. These kids obviously learned backwards. They wait to see if the pitch is hittable, then try to "prepare - load - swing". Won't happen against good pitching!

Good hitters are AGGRESSIVE. But that doesn't mean they are stupid. You have to PREPARE to hit EVERY pitch like it's YOUR pitch. Good offensive players cheat their team by not doing so! Watch MLB baseball players - they load up and prepare to hit every single pitch - same for the top level college teams. They go into "Attack Mode" every pitch.

There's a mind set that should be taught (along with great swing mechanics) to all young kids. "Have the intention to HIT EVERY SINGLE PITCH". Then, train yourself to have the vision and discipline to HOLD on the bad pitches.

 

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Sammy
Attack mode every pitch.
Standing up there and not doing this every time is what most hitters do.

Should try to train yourself to load and go to toe touch every pitch, even if the pitch was thrown over you head.
Attack every time.

I think you have to practice this on the tee, batting practice, in a mirror in your room, to get it burned in, so it becomes a natural move.




Straightleg

 

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My dd has been hitting the ball off her right foot, ankle,shin,you name it. She is ahead of the pitch, pulling to left side of the field. I asked a local travel coach who's dd also plays on the same team. He, along with other coaches in the past keep saying" she is dropping her hands". I believe she is dropping her shoulders, but you have to go after the low pitches (above knee) right? I told her to widen her stance, or take a step towards pitcher(to get lower). If she gets low pitches, she has had some huge hits (HR's,etc). Not so much a problem in travel when pitchers do not know you, different story with rival HS players, who are also team mates in travel. They always pitch her high. I guess my question is, any advice on how to get a pitcher to throw you low? lol!!. Any advice apprciated.

 

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Tony Gwynn said the hardest thing about hitting is timing. Timing is everything. Put her on the Barry Bonds drill and see how well she can adjust to the differences. T-work builds the mechanics, a moving ball builds timing. (Remember, what are pitchers constantly trying to do? Mess up a hitters timing)

 

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My dd has been consistantly hitting the heck out of the ball when it comes to batting cages, off the t, soft toss, etc. She has been taught the RVP way and has been told she has the correct mechanics. She has alot of power and has been a home run hitter. But when she is against live pitching she struggles. Wondering if she is not seeing the ball well enough to adjust to different pitches. Trying to turn her face more so she can see ball coming with both eyes forward. Help!

Quit thinking about it so much and let her play the game. Over analyzing everything during the season only makes the mental approach that much more difficult. You know she CAN swing the bat, so why worry about it? Instead of going to the batting cages, let her go to the mall with her friends and have a good time. You might be surprised what stepping away from the pressure can do for her.

 

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PurpleJack...I do believe you are on to something. Sometimes the best thing to do is just take a step away and do not over analyze her every move. If she is not swinging at bad pitches out of the zone, or taking good pitches for called skrikes, or letting up on her swing because she feels the need to be perfect; but instead is working the pitcher for high pitch counts, hitting hard shots right at the defense or hitting hard foul shots. Then it just a matter of time before she explodes into the same old hitter that you are use to. You see, quality AB's are sometimes just as important as one's stats, especially as far as the mental approach to hitting goes. Keep her positive, and when you do talk about hitting, key on reinforcing the positive things she is doing in the batters box

 

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My dd has been consistantly hitting the heck out of the ball when it comes to batting cages, off the t, soft toss, etc. She has been taught the RVP way and has been told she has the correct mechanics. She has alot of power and has been a home run hitter. But when she is against live pitching she struggles. Wondering if she is not seeing the ball well enough to adjust to different pitches. Trying to turn her face more so she can see ball coming with both eyes forward. Help!

"But when she is against live pitching she struggles. Wondering if she is not seeing the ball well enough to adjust to different pitches. Trying to turn her face more so she can see ball coming with both eyes forward. Help!"

Since the statement is that she does well everywhere but on the field to me would indicate vision, timing or rhythm....so would taking time off or having a positive attitude play as big a role since he has stated it is live pitching that she is struggling with? Video of her against live pitching would show some indication of where she is prior to the release of the ball as to being at toe touch too early or too late.

Blink when your daughter struggled with the Bonds drill at Westerville what was the main issue? She stopped at separation and could not get her hands moving again in time to catch up to the pitch. As we explained to her she can not stop however simply change direction or flow to the ball and she got it...remember she only moved ahead about 8 feet before she started having issues so it is relevant as to timing, rythymn and mechanics of the swing in most cases if they perform off a tee or in a cage IF they only stand in one spot.

 

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My dd has been hitting the ball off her right foot, ankle,shin,you name it. She is ahead of the pitch, pulling to left side of the field. I asked a local travel coach who's dd also plays on the same team. He, along with other coaches in the past keep saying" she is dropping her hands". I believe she is dropping her shoulders, but you have to go after the low pitches (above knee) right? I told her to widen her stance, or take a step towards pitcher(to get lower). If she gets low pitches, she has had some huge hits (HR's,etc). Not so much a problem in travel when pitchers do not know you, different story with rival HS players, who are also team mates in travel. They always pitch her high. I guess my question is, any advice on how to get a pitcher to throw you low? lol!!. Any advice apprciated.

Try putting the tee on a bucket - balls chest high, very top of strike zone. If she is dropping her hands, she will hit the tee alot.

At Impact - Elbow above hands, hands above ball. Hit balls this way until she can hit line drives.
Look at my dd in the avitar. elbow/hands /ball



Good Luck
Straightleg

 

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Where does she start her hands. Many kids feel the style thing to do is have the hands held high. We teach top of the hands top of the shoulder. What we need is some kind of picture of her swing. Hitter and Straightleg could look at it and give you sound advice.

 

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Excuse my ignorance but what is the Barry Bonds drill? Is it taking a step towards the machine after every swing and then going back. also what should you be watching while doing it

 

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Excuse my ignorance but what is the Barry Bonds drill? Is it taking a step towards the machine after every swing and then going back. also what should you be watching while doing it

Search my posts and it is written out in detail however you are correct we move forward one step after each pitch until the ball is above the hands and then reverse direction until you can not go any further back in the cage.

 

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I work with my travel team as head coach and hitting instructor. I have worked with these girls on thier hitting consistantly for 4 or 5 years. All of these girls are very good athletes, so mechanics can usually be corrected easily, and are usually solid anyway. I have dealt with all of the issues mentioned here, dropping the hands, opening too soon etc. Recently I made an interesting discovery with one of my better hitters, she was dropping her hands every time and swinging under everything. I insist that they tell me what they think they are doing wrong, she could feel she was dropping her hands, but could not seem to correct it. I stood beside her while she was swinging, (outside the net) and focussed on her eyes. She was looking at the ball coming out of the machine, but had little or no tracking of the ball. In other words she was still looking out where the ball was. As Howard has said the eyes are like a computer, they tell the rest of the body what to do. I am inclined to think she is not tracking the ball from the hip to her hitting zone. I told this girl to pretend there was something written on the ball and I wanted her to read it. This forced her to follow the ball into her zone. Instantly her hands went from her set position directly to where they needed to be to hit the ball hard. I think vision and more importantly "tracking" is the problem. A good athlete who works and works on mechanics usually struggles when they stop tracking the ball. So what they do is swing in the "area" of the ball instead of seeing it all the way into the zone. "See the ball hit the bat". From this discovery I am inclined to believe many of the mechanical issues we try to correct, are many times due to not tracking with the eyes, so the rest of the body goes on auto-pilot and guesses at the balls' actual location.

 

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Howard has a black traingle marked on each ball you hit. Jjen is correct. You just don't swing at the ball, but you need to focus on the sweet spot of the ball. Vision drills work and are easy to do. Plus many kids do not keep the eyes down at contact and pull the head out to see how far they hit it!

 

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Jjen you are on the correct track in my opinion....last night I was picking Crystl up from doing her lessons at All About Sports and one of the girls had her hands too high and was making a bad first move by just dropping the hands verses going to separation and you could see the tension in her shoulders. After the lesson her dad and I talked with her and we made some suggestions and you could see her smile as she was getting it just taking dry cuts. We suggested some drills to do at home in front of a mirror and I would expect this condition to be corrected soon with her work ethic.

As to vision...we give the head a head start and turn the head slightly after we see the ball at the pitchers window of release and then use our eyes to track the ball to the contact zone. If the speed of the ball is over 35 MPH you can not see the ball and the bat collide. I have read you can not see it off the fovea of the eye (back of the eye) however some have said you can see it out of your peripheral vision. We teach our hitters to keep their head down at contact as we are stronger with our head down....to re enforce this we glued a white rag inside of the tee and ask the hitter after they swing to see the rag after they hit the ball. We also have them look through the net and at toe touch to see the ball on the tee. We also do this with soft toss and they see our hand move out of their peripheral vision and start their load and at toe touch they use a little head movement and then more eye movement to track the ball. As our hand goes down they begin their load and as we release the ball they decide when to step.

 

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Very good, I figured I would spark the age old debate about whether you actually see the ball hit the bat...I realize that may not be technically correct/possible, but the idea of watching or tracking the ball all the way into the zone is why I use that phrase, it really was amazing to see how quickly corrections were made. I even went against one of my own rules and suggested to a girl on our highschool team who was pulling her head, (during the game) to "try to read what is written on the ball"...her next at bat her head stayed still and she drove the ball and smiled afterward while standing on second base. So it makes me wonder if they are turning their head, dropping their hands, opening too soon, or maybe just not seeing the ball and these things are the auto-pilot responses to not tracking...