by Perry Husband, www.hittingisaguess.com

If you have spent time in the trenches doing lessons, classes or coaching hitters for any time at all, you know that no method of swing mechanics works with all hitters all the time. Every hitter has his or her own "Package" of talents, understanding, insight, feelings, fears, strengths, weaknesses, quickness or reactionary ability, vision, depth perception, ability to perform under pressure, arm/body/leg length, upper body strength, hand strength, leg strength, flexibility, body proportions, emotional strength, desire and about a thousand other traits that when combined, make up a wonderfully individual person that wants to learn hitting. We spend so much time thinking about the mechanical side of the game that we largely overlook the most crucial thing in teaching hitting; that teaching requires learning. 

Hitters are first and foremost students and they all have some very key things in common that must be understood if we as instructors are to truly teach them anything about the swing, or anything else for that matter.  Traveling the world talking about hitting with players and instructors of all levels, it is very apparent that there are many, many theories about the physical and mental aspects of hitting out there. 

There are the “Absolutes” of this and the “Must Do’s” of that and the “5 Key Things”, most all of us as instructors are guilty of this categorizing approach.  We all seem to be trying to make all hitters fit into neat little swing types that if they could just understand the guru principles of the month, they would all hit .400, but yet, they don’t all hit .400. 

Not all students learn the same and great instructors understand that they need to know what type of learner the student is before they get started down a teaching path. Learning is the soul mate to teaching; you really never see one without the other. Good teachers may say or show things 10 different ways before the student understands. Knowing how a student learns is fundamental to the process of teaching anything, including hitting so we will cover some issues that are on that path less traveled.

            
1 Teach Hitters To Take Responsibility For Their Swing

The first element in a student’s journey to teaching themselves to hit is to take ownership in the swing.  Did you catch that?  Hitters teach themselves how to hit, pitch, divide, subtract, spell and all other things learned with a little help here and there. 

Of course there is usually someone such as a coach or teacher that spurs on the learning by saying something in a key way or by demonstrating a movement that makes the light go off in a student, but the student is still the one that must learn in order for the communication of teacher/learner to work.  Yul Brenner said, "we come into the world alone and we go out alone and all our greatest accomplishments are done alone".  Now of course this can be picked apart for sure, especially in a team oriented game like baseball, but if you get the essence of the statement, there is a key learning element at the core.  You have to "Own It" if "It" is going to be great, whatever "It" is. 

To get this part right, teachers need to be humble and give all the responsibility and recognition to the student, or more aptly stated, teach the student to take responsibility for their swing. That means that all the homeruns that are hit, the Division I scholarship, the 1st round draft choice and all other good things that this hitter accomplishes belong to the hitter, not the coach. This doesn’t mean there are no accolades for the instructor’s role in the successes, just that the true accomplishment is not about the teacher but more about the learner taking charge of his swing. A well designed swing is an autobiography of sorts, the hitter’s interpretation of all that he is physically capable of blended with his personal style and the rules of physics.

The flip side to this is that all the negatives also belong to the hitter, the strikeouts, 0 for 4 games and any other bad stuff that the hitter experiences as a result of their swing design. The student has to own their hitting failures and so they should be the ones responsible for the design of their swing. The job of great instructors is to eliminate the need for themselves or to empower the student to become their own best instructor.  If the hitter comes to rely on the instructor, there will be a breakdown when times get tough and that is going to happen in hitting.  Great instructors act as video cameras to see what things are actually happening in the swing and then relay to the hitter without adding too much biased opinion of the actual movements. 

All instructors are biased with what we 'know' to be true and only great instructors can set that on a shelf when teaching. There is certainly a time for your individual biases, these are the things that make us special as instructors but these must be kept in check.   

2 Teaching Hitters To Use Their Imagination 
Overcoming Fear & Distraction

If you have worked with hitters at very young ages, you will certainly understand this element.  Pitchers can become 10 feet tall throwing lightning bolts that are unhittable with that wet noodle that the 7 year old hitter is holding in his hands and his mind.  Likewise, record holding hitters of all levels have learned to tap into the other side of the most valuable resource the hitter has, their imagination.  Imagination is either greatly enhancing or greatly inhibiting every hitter’s success.  Imagination is also one of the keys to learning the swing in the first place.

Young players are often afraid of getting hit or worse, disappointing their fathers. Imagination is hard at work destroying these players’ confidence. Imagination is also what allows the player with no successes to muster up enough confidence to have the first success that will lead to more confidence. A young seven year old I work with was recently hit by pitch and now hates to hit because of fear. We use his masterful Jedi skills to learn to dodge foam balls and hitting discs to teach him how quick he really is. Next we give him all the protective gear we can get away with under his uniform and arm him with the feeling he is the toughest Jedi of all. If this doesn’t work, we will find another creative solution that does work. Eventually, imagination will win, one way or the other. It is the key tool that students use to build their self image as a player.         

There are many distractions and pressures involved in a single at bat and it is very easy for even the most veteran hitters to get caught focusing on these instead of the tasks that will get the results they want in games.  Imagination is the key to this type of mental control. Outline the mental tasks you want hitters to complete at the plate and chart them. The best way to get better at a task is to measure and chart it.   

Hitters must learn to control what they can control and that list is short. Hitters control their thoughts, emotions, body movements, the pitch they swing at and the timing of the swing. That’s it. Everything else is a distraction and will cause less than desired results. Thoughts control emotions so by controlling thoughts during the swing, hitters can control both things. Of course when they are a black belt in hitting, the thoughts are eliminated but during this learning process, the thought during the swing is key to learning the desired movement, whatever that movement is.  

Hitters gain control of these things through the use of imagination. By focusing on a spot on the L-screen instead of the pitched ball for example, a hitter can divorce his attention away from the 'hitting' and focus more on the task at hand, 'swinging'. This is a crazy drill that has hitters looking at a fixed spot and just with peripheral vision try to swing at the moving ball. This is very effective for many different things but it is a great example of how to use the imagination to help take charge of the mental side of the swing, task training.  
     
3 Teaching Hitters To Trust

The next important teaching element is trust, both of the information and in the person giving it.  The information that makes up your theory should be able to be proven in one way or another or you probably don’t trust it yourself and therefore could not expect your students to trust it.  Until video and radar readings that measure speeds of the bat and ball off the bat came along, it was difficult if not impossible to know if the information was true.   When a hitter sees themselves on video, it adds an additional piece to the puzzle; it blends the feeling of the swing with the visual of what the swing looks like.  This blending allows the student to further trust that what you are seeing is what is actually happening, if what you are seeing is the same as what is he is seeing.    

Knowledge Leads To Trust

Showing students they can trust your knowledge base is the recommended approach to obtaining and keeping your student’s trust.  This does not mean you have to know everything.  It only means that you only tell them you “Know” something when you are certain and can prove it.  Otherwise, you look it up together or you test it together.  This means that great instructors are lifelong learners and not afraid to say they don’t know something, they do the research and they have the firm ground of proof to stand on.   

Measurement Leads To Trust

In my teachings for instance, the idea of contact consistency is determined by how long the bat is in line with the ball.  You can test this over and over again and the results are the same.  Hitters with flatter swing planes produce solid contact more often.  If you can show this to hitters by measuring and recording the proof to show them samples of when they are doing what you ask with successful results, you have a believer. 

Proof Leads To Trust

One more note on video use. Video along with some form of speed measurement, is the great buffer between student and teacher. Video is part of the truth (not opinion) of what happened in that swing. When a student and/or a coach sees the film of a swing along with the data, they can each draw their own conclusions as to what actually happened. This is of course assuming the student is mature enough to understand what they are looking for. The coach sees one thing, the student sees another and together, they figure out which is closer to the truth. The proof leads to the truth and the less you speculate and the more you prove your claims, the more trust you develop. The quickest way to dissolve that trust is for the teacher (or the student) to set out to prove themselves right rather than searching out the truth.      

    

• Feed players information in formats they can best understand. 
• Teach players to take responsibility for their swing design and output.
• Teach players to use their most powerful tool, their imagination. 
• Prove it to them and yourself.   
• Measure their output to show them proof that what you teach is working. 
• Teach only what you can prove even if that’s only a small amount of things. 

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