How to Destroy Your Hitting Mechanics – Swing Down on the Ball!
By Nate Barnett
The past few months I’ve been doing quite a bit more reading, watching, and studying on one aspect of hitting mechanics that seems to frequently get taught incorrectly. The part of the swing that has continually been mistaught is how the hands/bat enter and finish through the hitting zone. In the paragraphs to follow, I’ll be using pictures and video clips to prove the approach used by an overwhelming majority of high level hitters.
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Front Foot Closed and The Destruction of Your Hitting Mechanics
By Nate Barnett
It seems like everywhere I turn I keep hearing the hitting mechanics advice urging hitters to keep their front foot closed during the baseball swing. If you want to destroy your bat speed, obliterate your hip rotation, and generally mess up your ability to hit with any type of force, then yes, keep your front foot closed through your swing.
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Hitting Mechanics: Weight Transfer and Hand Path
By Nate Barnett
During the summer months growing up I remember riding my bike down to the ballpark to play baseball all day. A friend of mine used to mimic the stance of many of the best MLB hitters of the time. Griffey Jr. was the most commonly critiqued stance with his famous waggle he did.
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Dream Merchants – Inside Dominican Baseball
By Nate Barnett
I began playing baseball at age 9. By today’s standards that is quite late to begin a sport. By age 11, I decided I wanted to play Major League Baseball. I had no idea what that meant, the type of commitment my goal would demand, or the countless hours refining my skill set I would spend. But, those things didn’t matter to me then, I was fueled by a dream to be the best.
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A Crippling Hitting Mechanics Flaw
By Nate Barnett
Having spent the last decade working with hitters, I’ve begun to learn what are the most common hitting mechanics flaws. When I work to correct hitters mechanics I break the body into the lower half and upper half rather than beginning to correct without a plan, I work from the ground up. The most common and crippling mechanical flaw of the lower half of the body has to be the
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Bat Drag Is Killing Your Swing
By Nate Barnett
The single most encountered issue I run into with the upper body hitting mechanics of most hitters is called bat drag. A simple definition of bat drag is failing to bring the hands through the strike zone in the proper fashion to create optimal bat speed and consistency. This problem cause slow bat speed among other things and must be remedied if a hitter is going to make an impact in any league.
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Hitting Mechanics Analysis – J.D. Drew
By Nate Barnett
Proper hitting mechanics are the life blood of your future success and sanity in this great game of baseball. There will become a time (sooner than you think) that you’ll desperately want to know how to fix your hitting mechanics. Ya sure, your coach might be able to help, but ultimately you care the most about your swing. It’s time to spend some time learning what the guys who get paid to hit are doing to create hitting mechanics.
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How to Solve a Hitting Mechanics Problem
By Nate Barnett
Solving a hitting mechanics issue can be highly frustrating for any competitive athlete. I compare this problem to me trying to find the cause of a engine problem in my car… I usually have no idea where to start. Good news, there is hope for you here. I’m going to simplify your understanding of hitting mechanics in the hope that you can begin to solve your own issues with your swing.
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Hitting Mechanics – Feeling vs. Thinking
By Nate Barnett
For the past ten years I’ve enjoyed teaching athletes hitting mechanics and the mental game of baseball. This season I’ve really paid special attention in bringing the two together during my instruction with teams and individual athletes. I want to share with you a particular challenge that is frequently coming up. First, it’s important to work through a couple definitions. Afterwards, I’ll provide some thoughts in a Q & A format.
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Slump Busting 101: Hitting Mechanics
By Nate Barnett
The word “slump” is taboo in baseball. Nobody likes that word, and players try their hardness to avoid speaking it. Ever. But, slumps are a part of the game of baseball. You can’t slump-proof your swing, and you can never predict when one will occur. A couple years ago, Miguel Olivo summed up what those who have slipped into the depths of a hitting funk go through. He said, “When you’re hitting, you just go play. But when you struggle, that’s when you start wondering. You go to the batting cage all the time. You’re like, ‘My feet … my hands … they’re going to throw me this pitch,’ then you’re caught in the middle.”
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Tips For Hitting Quick Pitching
By Nate Barnett
This is a two part series on how to increase the success rate when facing quick pitching. The first portion of this essay will focus on changes to make, or points to keep in mind when hitting against a guy who throws hard. The second segment of the article will address common things to avoid that coaches sometimes teach hitters to do in order to hit above average fastballs.
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A Quick Fix Hitting Drill for the Lower Half
By Nate Barnett
When I begin a hitting lesson with a new athlete I always identify first the problems in the swing from the waist down. This is because the legs and the hips are the foundation. With a sloppy and ineffective foundation, the upper body will be unproductive as well. The key then is to first be able to identify where there is a problem, and then, how to fix it.
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What It Takes To Hit .400
By Nate Barnett
Ted Williams, the last player to hit .400 in the Big Leagues once said, “I hope somebody hits .400 soon. Then people can start pestering that guy with questions about the last guy to hit .400.“ There have been those since who have come reasonably close to the illusive .400 mark, but nobody has broken the barrier since 1941. While hitting .400 over the course of a season at the MLB is ridiculously tough, hitting .400 in youth athletics can be achieved regularly if certain skills are present.
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3 Things You Must Know About BP
By Nate Barnett
Baseball is a precision sport. What I mean by this is that it takes an extreme amount of skill development in order to produce consistent results offensively. Consider that a professional hitter who succeeds in getting a base hit 30% of the time for the duration of his career is most likely Hall of Fame bound. No other sport (besides maybe soccer) holds this low of a success rate in such high esteem. Shooting 50% from the field is not too uncommon in the NBA. NFL Quarterbacks are expected to complete above 60% of their passes.
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Hitting Mechanics Only Get You Half Way
By Nate Barnett
What is the number one question I get asked when an athlete comes to me to help him hit better? The question has something to do with his seemingly crummy hitting mechanics and him wanting the issue fixed. I will say that hitting mechanics is only half of the issue. For example, if I fix a hitter so he has a flawless swing and then he goes chasing pitches that are out of his strength area, what difference do good mechanics make?
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The Number One Cause of Inconsistent Play in Youth Baseball
By Nate Barnett
This season I am doing some work as a hitting instructor for a few different youth teams. Recently, I was with one of these teams during a tournament. On the first day the play was sloppy and some of the guys had a rough time hitting pitches with any kind of pop. Frustration soon set in for these guys and they began to press up at the plate by swinging at pitches they shouldn’t swing at, and watching pitches go by they should have mashed.
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Take Until You Have A Strike. Garbage
By Nate Barnett
I got a call the other day from a collegiate athlete in Arizona playing in a summer league in the hot desert sun. He had a question about hitting philosophy that I feel the need to share with you. He explained that his philosophy since high school was to take pitches until he got a strike. This way he could work pitchers deep into the count and learn what the pitcher had to offer. While I understood his thinking in this situation, he was finding himself swinging and weakly hitting quite a few off-speed pitches. I told him it was time to rethink his philosophy.
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