Hitting coaches world-wide will agree that TIMING is the key to hitting! Ask them to define “timing” and the methods they use to teach it and they are stumped. There are a ton of drills to teach swing mechanics, bat speed, etc., but not a lot of ideas on how to teach TIMING once our students have a quick mechanically sound swing. Let’s discuss this very important aspect of successful hitting.
The objective in baseball hitting is to make two inanimate objects collide head-on in mid-air, the barrel and the ball. When a player mis-hits the ball-or worse yet-swings and misses there is only one reason. He doesn’t know where one of those objects is at some point in time. Which of those objects is it–the barrel or the ball?
We can see the ball all the way in so it has to be the barrel. We don’t know where the bat barrel is, otherwise we would make it collide with the ball. When we don’t hit it head-on, the timing is off. We are either too fast or too slow. That’s it.
Having identified TIMING as one key to success, let’s add in two more keys—bat speed and adjustability. Our students must work diligently on their bodies and their swings so that they can catch up to high-speed fastballs–that’s a given. While they are working on that they must also get a grasp of how long it takes to load– step and execute their game swing which can be defined as “as quick as we can swing without cheating or moving our head”. We do not encourage our students to think about when to get their front foot down. They have enough to think about.
Instead, in every drill when we start to load and stride we say “Kaaa”. When we swing we say “boom!” From station to station, you will hear our students learning the speed of their entire swing movement. We want that to be a constant. The way to adjust is to lengthen or shorten the Ka syllable. If a pitch is super slow you might hear “Kaaaaaaa-boom”. An exercise is to set the machine on 95 and have the hitter load, step, and swing as soon as the ball comes out of the machine. Complete the swing before it reaches the catcher. Now on the next pitch tell them to be ready when the ball comes out and take your normal swing and hit it.
If the pitches go from 95 to 85 or 75 you are talking about staying shoulder closed, bat loaded a millisecond longer, which is done in the front leg cushion, which is a subject for another day.
Lastly, If it’s game day, you can use Ka-boom to time a pitcher or you can use “Ball-Pop” which some of my famous big leaguers prefer. They say “Ball” when they see it at release and “Pop” when it hits their bat. The crack of the bat should drown out the word “Pop.” This keeps the hitter thinking “see the ball, hit the ball” and vanishes any other thoughts from their head.
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