Fundamentals of Hitting
Fundamentals of Hitting Coach Teaching Guide Southwest Portland Little League: Provided by Bradley Jaramillo, 2012 The fundamentals of hitting are essential for kids’ development at the little league level. Learning bad habits at this age can result in real challenges for them and their coaches when they get older. This guide is a simple to follow, step by step document on how to put kids in the proper hitting stance as well as take them through the swing. Please keep in mind that we want to allow for some flexibility for kids—we don’t need robots. So as long as they are following the general principles below, we should be okay. I will ask any kid who plays baseball how much he likes hitting the baseball. Every kid says it’s one of their favorite parts of the game. Let’s help them increase the chances this will happen by teaching the proper mechanics of setup and swing. Principle 1 THE SETUP Step 1: The Lower Half a. Make sure players have their feet about shoulder width apart. If you have a kid who transfers all his weight to his front foot on the swing‐‐which is a very common mistake at this age‐‐have him spread his feet even farther apart. This will make it very difficult to transfer his weight. b. In addition, you want to see a slight bend in their knees. c. Encourage kids to have about 60% of their weight on their back leg. This to helps ensure they keep their weight back through impact.
Step 2: The Hands Have the player put the bat down, as seen in this picture, and talk to him about getting the barrel of the bat into the area between his palm and fingers. This helps ensure the bat is in the fast twitch portion of his hands.
Step 3: Raising the Bat Once players have the bat in the proper position in their hands, have them close their grip and raise their bat so it is resting on their shoulders. What you are looking for here is a proper position on the shoulder and a good angle on the bat as seen in this picture.
Notice the proper finger position. People often say make sure your knuckles are in alignment; however if they are slight off, as in this picture, that is ok. We just don’t want to see the back knuckles in alignment, which would mean they have bat in palms. Please note the angle of the bat and the resting position.
Step 4: Moving the Bat into Position What we are looking for in the “bat position” is the following. 1. Make sure you see a nice angle where the bat is heading back towards the head. I often say look for a 50‐60 degree angle. This is important because it helps ensure that the wrists are cocked and can fire faster with more power. 2. We want to see the hands about shoulder height. 3. We want to see a nice bend in the front arm. 4. The position of the back arm should be angled so that at minimum a whiffle ball could be placed between forearm and bicep. The front arm should be a bit straighter. We want to see a bend in the front arm. One good way to get kids to do this is to start kids with the bat resting on their shoulders and then to simply move their hands back off the shoulders at the same angle as when they were resting. Note: This is when a player’s form will often start to break down. Don’t hesitate to stay on these steps over and over again, day after day for first couple weeks. The biggest issue is that kids will move back to a straight 90 degree upright bat, or raise hands too high, too low, or too flat.
Principle 2 The LOAD and STEP At this point we are ready for kids to begin the second half of the swing process, which we will call load and transfer. I want to break this section up into two major sections focused on the LOWER half of the body. The first section is the LOAD, and the second half is the STEP that puts the kids in the right position to begin the swing.
Step 1: The Load With the idea that we have 60% of our weight on the back leg, we now want to transfer a bit more to our back leg as the pitcher is getting close to releasing the ball. As you can see by this picture, the player has a bit more weight back. This helps ensure the greatest amount of energy transfer as he begins his swing.
Step 2: The Step It may be hard to see in this picture, but the player’s foot has moved about 1 to 2 inches and now the front foot is up on the toe box. The reason is the hitter has initiated the step and at this point the ball is moving towards the hitter.
Note: This is another really big breaking point for the kids we are teaching. Often, we will see the swing break down in the lower half of the body as the player takes a massive stride and/or steps “out”. What I would suggest is again camp on these two steps, focusing on the lower half of the body. A good habit forming practice that you can do without the bat even is just have them be in that 40/60 stance and then slide their weight back and lift their toe. Or allow them to take that 1‐2inch step.
Make sure they don’t transfer any weight in this exercise. Do this over and over again. For some kids it might take them 500 times before they become comfortable with this idea of a baby step. Principle 3 Initiate and Transfer With our body coiled and ready to strike we want to initiate the swing and transfer the energy. Again, we are working on the lower half of the body. The two steps in this principle will include the swing itself, but we will break that down in the final principle. Step 1: Initiate Although this is a minor step, if done right, it really helps increase the quality of the swing. We see a similar step taught by golf pros to initiate a golf swing. What we are looking for here is to have the back leg bend in. This should happen before the hands start to move. This is important is because we don’t want to have our hips slide through impact; we want our hips to stay back. This trigger point helps keep our hips in the right place. As you can see from the picture, there is some rotation starting, but the hips have not moved too much. Secondly, we see that front foot pressing down now into the earth. It has moved off the ball of the foot and is flat. The reason for this is core energy is starting to transfer. Look for this anchor. Note: We still see a bending of the knees.
Step 2: The Transfer Let the fun begin. Here comes that ball into the strike zone. In fact, it’s probably about 10 feet away and all our energy is moving at this point. We see in the lower body a familiar term called “Squish the bug”. This is essential. I would say over 50% of AAA kids swing without twisting their lower foot, thus losing a lot of power. If they do not rotate that foot, they generate NO TORQUE, and thus produce very little power.
Have the kids practice this step over and over where they take principle 2 and 3 and finish with the rotating back foot. I have seen kids struggle with this all season. Part of the challenge is that when they play in a game, they tend to revert back to their old habits. Dedicate time in each practice to the transfer where this rotation happens. Even without a bat, a player can work on this motion by twisting his hips.
Principle 4 The Hands, Plane, Head and Finish Now that we have focused so much on posture and the position of the lower body, we can’t forget the most important part of the swing, and that is putting the bat on the ball. We can have a marvelous mechanical setup and transfer, but if we don’t watch the ball it really doesn’t matter. Step 1: The Hands We are going to use the same picture to show what the hands should be doing at the point of initiation. What we are looking for here is the knob of the bat leading through the impact zone and the bat at about a 45‐55% degree angle. Notice also the left arm (for a left handed player) tucked into the mid‐ torso. Also, we want to teach a sense of pulling with the top hand, the idea being that the knob of the bat leads the charge. What this helps ensure is the bat being “coiled” for maximum power at impact.
Step 2: The Plane When we look at the image below, we see that the hands are still in front of the barrel of the bat at impact. The “plane” of the bat is such that the barrel is pointing down with the hands still up. We also start to see the formation of a V in the arms. Instructors often like to talk about the right elbow (for a lefty) and how it is pulling away and up from contact. This help drop the bat into the right plane for contact.
Step 3: The Head I like to point out at this stage that if the player has all the correct mechanics but is not STARING at the ball, he will miss. So often, we see the biggest mistakes in a swing occur with the head. I like to have kids focus on the idea of watching the ball come off the bat. Below are some thoughts on how to help ensure that this happens.
You can teach here the idea of the player pressing his chin into his front shoulder. What we really want to see during the swing is that the player’s head does not move and end up on their back shoulder. A good thought is the term CHIN to CHIN.
During the swing we want to see very little movement in the head. Notice the angle of the head.
Step 4: The Finish At this point we are hoping the player has made contact with the ball. Most hitters, though, do not finish properly and because of this they don’t produce the maximum amount of power. People say “accelerate” at contact and this is a good thought here. We want to see the bat literally hit the batters back. Many hitters don’t finish their swing and the bat slowly stops at the shoulder instead of the back.
