Not too long ago my wife asked me, “don’t you get tired of all of the different hitting philosophies you have to battle when you teach kids.” Her background is in soccer and so I asked if it wasn’t the same in that sport. Her answer was not at all. Most of the coaches teach the same thing as far as mechanics, she said.

It got me thinking about how frustrating it is that baseball seems to attract a multitude of hitting and pitching mechanics philosophies. If you’ve been around the game for more than a couple years, I’m sure you’ve experienced this first hand. I saw this last night while at practice at a local training facility. There was a kid who looked to be 12 or thereabouts and his coach was showing him how to swing down on the baseball to create backspin. This is old hat; it’s not true. Just study the evidence.

There shouldn’t be these massive differences in mechanics teaching that there is within the instructional community. We have templates to follow. We have all of the evidence of what movements are necessary to keep in a swing and what movements are required to leave out because they have been proven to be ineffective.

Major League Baseball is our standard. There is no higher authority to good hitting technique than the guys who get paid millions to swing a bat for a living.

Then why the variety of hitting theories and philosophies in the instructional/coaching world?

It’s simple in my mind. We get all of these garbage philosophies being pumped into kids’ heads because there is a lack of willingness to study what really is being practiced in high level baseball.

Take for example Chris O’Leary. He never played high level baseball, but took it upon himself to really study what successful hitters do. Now he’s consulted for MLB because of what he’s learned.

You are no different. There are answers to your frustrations you experience each year. You just have to dig a little, and know the right questions to ask. Start by communicating with Dan and I more. We both enjoy taking questions.

Most of our mechanics knowledge has been complied in our DVDs. And since we’ve studied Big League mechanics for the last 10 years, you can bet that the stuff you see in those DVDs is what advanced hitters and pitchers do. We leave theory out.

Now go and study up this fall, the payoff will be in the spring/summer! You’ll never fall for old tired hitting philosophy again.