Baseball Swing Mechanics
The other day I was working with an 11-year old player with his hitting mechanics. I was watching him take a few swings and observed that he was struggling with keeping his head under control; it was tilting drastically to the right (he’s right-handed) during his swing. No doubt if you have a young hitter or work with young hitters you’ve seen this problem as well.
While it’s impossible with the correct hitting mechanics to keep the eyes perfectly level during a swing, all good hitters keep their head still when they swing. If the head is under control, the eyes will be stable thus giving a hitter a better chance at tracking each pitch. Moving head and eyes distort depth perception. Watch this swing and notice how his head stays under control.
There are a few factors behind a stable and balanced swing that keeps the head under control. For the sake of time, I’ll just share the most common way to fix this head tilting issue.
* Have the hitter stand in his normal stance.
* Next, have the hitter kneel down with his back knee on the ground and his front foot pointed slightly inward. (Basically, just a simple kneeling position.)
* Throw the hitter some front toss
* Have the hitter choke up on the bat and swing at a 50% capacity.
What you’re looking for the hitter to feel is if his spine is flexing backwards. It’s easy to feel in this kneeling position. Once this happens during the swing, his head will surely follow right behind. Once you’ve got him to feel the spine bending then he’ll be able to slowly self correct. After a while have him stand up and take some swings at 50% and see if he now can detect his spine flexing backwards during the swing. Do this drill for a couple weeks to reinforce the correct movement and you’ll correct the problem.
There are some more common problems with hitting I point out that can be found in our Hitting Mechanics 101 DVD. It is part of the 4 Disk DVD series we have on sale. Keep in mind, our sale ends this weekend and it will move back to the regular price.
