How We Coach Mechanics

Here are the “mechanics” we are teaching and how we are teaching them in short, I of course don’t know your background at all or your view so this is purely how we address things in our facility:

1. We focus on the kinetic chain, or sequencing the body in a specific order so that players can create maximum power and consistency. While the sequence doesn’t change from hitter to hitter, how they move does. For example a more mobile hitter should have bigger movements, while a less mobile hitter will create tension and remove “slack” in their swing with smaller movements, so in theory we could have 100 hitters and 100 different “styles” while still staying in sequence.

2. We feel our job as coaches is to give the player the least amount of information they need in order to achieve the desired result. We’ve all been over-coached, and we are all guilty of over-coaching, meaning that we are giving too much information to the player because it makes sense to us. Most of these cues are actually irrelevant as they almost never apply to the sequence of the swing, but rather how we feel the swing “should look”. For example, we almost never ever refer to the hands, where they start or where they finish, but rather ensure that the body is in sequence so that the “hands” do what they are supposed to which is essentially hold the bat and allow the wrist to work subconsciously. So if we address things like stance/footwork, it needs to make sense for that particular player. A great example is that a lot of players Johnny’s age aren’t actually strong enough yet to create some of the movements required to stay completely in sequence especially when it comes to disassociating the upper and lower half. This means that it would be unfair of us or anybody to constantly harp on one thing they can’t even do yet.

3. We mainly utilize external cues to allow the athlete to solve the movement problem efficiently over internal cues where they are forced to become distracted usually by irrelevant movements. This is the “hit the baseball as hard as you can” “hit the baseball as far as you can” approach. It is not because we want large swing and miss hitters but players will learn overtime how to self-organize to accomplish the natural kinetic sequence that they are currently capable of achieving. This means that we also need to address mobility and strength issues as well so that overtime as those improve so will the natural sequence of the swing. When players continue to struggle with creating the “feel” for what they want to do we use what is referred to as “constraint led training.” This is essentially building environments for the body to learn movements while also using external cues. For example, a no stride 45 degree constraint drill, while flipping a 12oz ballistic hitting ball using the cue “hit this as far as you can” can engage the core, help feel tension between the upper half and lower half, while maintaining an optimal swing plane/attack angle and accuracy of impact with the “ball”

4. We also use different implements, or weighted bat training, we have sets of weighted bats that the players will use from time to time in order to “shock the system” for lack of a better term and rework/re-organize to accomplish the external goal. For example, swinging a heavier bat you have to be much more efficient in order to create the same result as you would with your game bat, so with the game bat, the body stays more efficient. With a lighter bat a lot of guys get “top heavy” or peak with the shoulders first vs. their hips because of how light the bat is and therefore don’t get the desired result and have to re-organize to stay in sequence. This differential training model can be extremely efficient and simple because it doesn’t require a ton of cueing and the player only needs to think about the movement solution. (i.e. use this “different” bat to hit the ball far)

5. By not overloading the central nervous system with cues that might not even apply to that specific hitter, we can start to reverse engineer the swing pattern, where the conventional way of coaching is to see a “flaw” and try to cue it out of the hitter taking their focus completely off of hitting in general or by limiting their overall reaction time subconsciously by changing their focus. Amateur hitters already activate more of the anxiety portions of their brain over motor skill recruitment so by throwing anecdotal cues or conventional baseball “wisdom” we constantly clog the system with constant over-coaching. So we have kids that will come to us at 14 and have the slowest bat speed ever despite us saying “no matter what swing as hard as you can here” because they are still trying to do things that they have been told to do overtime to make their swing “look” a certain way. Our first step is to unclog the system and get them out of that fear mentality like we are going to over criticize or judge them on every swing or result. Therefore, when we get young players like Johnny we get to create a massive head start for them. Work to get them in sequence, work to build intent, work to build consistency and all they know is that they are “hitting” they don’t have to think about anything except competing and what they are trying to do to the baseball, so now the focus has been streamlined on the baseball, while we have been essentially creating the environment and process that allows them to do that.

6. What about when something goes wrong? Stats will never be linear so to speak, we preach slumps don’t exist, a kid could play 4-5 games in a 3 to 4 week span mixed in with cancellations and rain outs, and be having a rough go with some bad luck, a few walks, and poor AB’s and to the naked eye it look like he hasn’t gotten a hit in a LONG time, when in reality nothing terrible is happening and he’s like 0-9 with a bunch of walks and hard hit outs. Also, I’m a grown man and I tripped over my own feet in Menards the other day, I don’t expect a 9-10yo player to be perfect walking and chewing gum much less trying to hit a moving baseball. With that being said, I think building context around failure is also the coaches job. (i.e. 30 strikes approach, if you want to go 3/10, you will potentially see 30 strikes, but it only take 3 successful swings to get 3 hits. Also most players obsess over stats way too much, sometimes stats they don’t even understand, so sometimes explaining that part of the game can help as well). If it’s something that has drastically changed, a few things could have happened at that age, physical growth causing a temporary loss in overall coordination, or they could be feeling very anxious about what their teammates, parents, coaches think that causes them to lock up and not execute any type of motor skill they are capable of. However, as you know usually the attempt to fix this is to cue the athlete into submission making not only you frustrated as dad or coach, but the player frustrated because “he’s just not listening” or “he’s just not doing it.”

7. Yes this is the short-version of how we coach hitters/pitchers, I’m not sure if I just explained our process or gave any helpful insights. The very short answer is we want the lower half to start the swing, the torso to begin to rotate, and the bat to go last. This means that things like “staying inside the ball” “knob to the ball” “stay back” etc. can sometimes be problematic depending on the hitter (I only picked common ones we hear a lot). The body could care less what the cue actually is, you could say “oogly-moogly” and explain it in a way that makes sense. However, we’ve found those specific cues along with others have taken players out of sequence as they start to think about them too literally, and then in context of some of the above paragraphs players are thinking and not competing.

8. On the flip side, there are indefinite options when looking at “feel vs. real.” That is like a player always thinking he gets on top of the ball, but consistently hitting the bottom of the ball, or thinking he swings up/down but doing the opposite. Having illogical “feels” can sometimes translate into amazing “reals” so that’s the coaches job as well to constantly build context and figure out what specific cues to use. With the little guys we try to match the two as literally as we possible can, because why not? It’s going to make every coaches job they ever have easier. Then it’s things we can measure with Blast Motion, 4D Motion, HitTrax, etc. to show them objectively what they are doing.

9. To wrap up, I don’t think you’ll fight mechanic memory, if I was coaching a 10u/11u team right now my biggest focus would be confidence, timing, and intent. Obviously as a coach you’ll use your best judgement when correcting flaws and how you do that will be unique to you. We don’t have any desire to take away anybody’s voice in coaching. Our definition of being coach-able that we tell all of our hitters at some point is gathering information and doing what works best for you. Steve, as dad that’s probably a huge role you can play, deciphering certain things without being as concerned with the “what” but just helping him take ownership over his approach. Being open minded without being a robot and being “too coachable” allows players to take things that work from any source, but scrap things that don’t make any sense, at 9/10 he’ll probably need some help with that. My favorite line after a game is “I love watching you put on a uniform and being part of a team”