Mastering Hitting Contact Points in Baseball By Building Room for Error

In baseball, hitting is not just about making contact with the ball; it’s about making consistent and powerful contact. One of the keys to achieving this is understanding and mastering hitting contact points. This blog will delve into the nuances of hitting contact points, providing insights and techniques to help you build room for error in your swing and improve your overall hitting performance.

Understanding Hitting Contact Points

The Basics of Contact Points

When it comes to hitting, the contact point is where the bat meets the ball. Depending on the pitch's location, the contact point can vary:

• Outside Pitch: Ideally, you want to make contact with an outside pitch deep in the zone, allowing the ball to travel before swinging.
• Middle Pitch: For pitches down the middle, contact should be made slightly further out in front.
• Inside Pitch: Inside pitches should be hit even further out in front to pull the...

How to Hit a Curveball: Mastering the Art of Recognizing and Hitting Breaking Pitches

The curveball is a pitch that many hitters dread. Pitchers love their curveballs and often use them to keep hitters off balance. There are countless videos, books, and tutorials on how to hit a curveball, but in this blog, we will focus on our approach to recognizing and hitting this tricky pitch. We'll discuss why it's essential to work on hitting curveballs, how to recognize them, and provide actionable tips to improve your performance against breaking pitches.

Why Work on Hitting Curveballs?

Pitchers frequently rely on their curveballs to disrupt hitters' timing. A steady diet of curveballs can make it difficult to stay consistent at the plate. Learning to recognize and hit curveballs effectively can significantly improve your overall hitting performance.

The Opportunity to Capitalize

Curveballs are thrown at lower speeds compared to fastballs, offering an excellent opportunity to make solid...

Hitting with Power in Baseball: Enhancing Performance 

Hitting with power in baseball is not just about the thrill of crushing the ball; it has practical benefits that can significantly impact your team's success. Power-hitting puts tremendous pressure on the defense, creates extra-base hits, and allows for scoring runs in bunches. This blog explores why hitting with power is essential and provides tips on how to achieve it while maintaining control and balance.

The Benefits of Hitting with Power

Pressure on the Defense

A hard-hit ground ball or line drive is challenging for the defense to handle. These types of hits increase the likelihood of defensive errors, leading to more scoring opportunities for your team.

Extra Base Hits

While base hits are valuable, relying solely on singles makes it difficult to score runs efficiently. Extra base hits, such as doubles and home runs, put runners in scoring positions and increase the chances of driving in multiple runs with subsequent...

The Key to Baseball Success: Simple Instruction and Massive Repetition

One of the age-old questions in baseball is whether a player's success hinges more on the competency of their coach or the number of repetitions they perform. While many believe it’s a combination of both, there are unique insights to be gleaned from comparing different training environments. For example, Latino players often receive less formal coaching but benefit from massive repetitions, whereas American players might receive extensive coaching but limited repetitions due to high costs. The real secret lies in how these elements are blended together to create successful players. This blog explores the importance of simple instruction and massive repetition in baseball training.

Simple Instruction: The Foundation of Skill Development

Effective coaching is about providing clear, simple instructions that players can easily understand and implement. Overcomplicating techniques can lead to confusion and...

Dreaming About Being The Best? Here's How You Set Goals To Get There.

Dreaming about being the best is easy–but setting goals to get there? That’s hard. Taking the necessary steps to accomplish those goals is even harder. But it doesn’t have to be.

We’re all guilty of it—especially baseball players—finding ourselves dreaming of the day we drive in the winning run, get the ring, and get awarded the MVP trophy. I bet you have even imagined (or maybe actually practiced) your post-game on-field media interview.  We get this far-off gaze in our eyes and dream of accomplishing these Big Hairy Audacious Goals (or BHAGS) that leadership guru Jim Collins taught, almost as if they are already a reality. 

That far-out gaze you get and that sense of hope for the future aren’t goals. They’re dreams. I know that truth probably stings a little. But if you are confusing dreams with goals, you lie to yourself, and you will no doubt...

Why Motivation Might Be Actually Fooling You

Are you feeling motivated? Ready to take on that goal? Not so fast. That urge or desire to do something might actually be the wrong path toward the goal you set. Motivation can’t be fully trusted. Yet you rely on it. Almost as if it was the sustenance you need for performance survival. Don’t believe me? Google it. 

“How to Motivate Yourself”

"8 Psychology-Based Tricks for Staying Motivated"

"15 Tips on How to Be More Motivated in The Morning"

"30 Tips for How to Get and Stay Motivated"

I could keep going, but for the sake of getting to the point, I won’t. But trust me; there are millions of articles espousing every idea imaginable for how you can stay motivated. The problem is that while motivation sounds nice, we mistakenly believe it will help us achieve our goals. 

It won’t

What’s your favorite sports movie? Take a moment and think about it. Think...

Want To Become A .300 Hitter? Learn Your Swing Feelings

Anyone can swing a bat. But learning how to swing doesn’t make you a .300 hitter. I can still hear those very first instructions from my tee ball coach. Point your shoulder to the mound, feet apart, and put the bat up by your inside ear. Eye on the ball. 

Swing!

Those first few swings were both exhilarating and intimidating. But over time, every young player begins to understand the feeling of swinging the bat. But as you mature, that feeling needs to be replaced with the feeling of hitting. Because swinging the bat and hitting a baseball are not the same thing. 

What would you say if I asked you what your swing felt like? What does a smooth, early building trigger feel like? How about your thoughts on the feeling of a long-full-robust extension after contact? Many of you have never stopped for even a fraction of a second to consider how your swing feels. 

That’s...

How to Move From Belief Into The Kind of Confidence That Breeds Success

In our last post, Belief and Hard Work are Actually Only Part of Athletic Success. Here’s Why.

we discussed the subjectivity of belief. We want to be a great athlete. We can believe that we will win the game, the championship, or go undefeated. But the truth behind belief will only take you so far. 

Your belief may produce the right work ethic, a commitment to the team, and the grit needed to keep moving forward when the obstacles are too much. That’s still not enough. The key is transforming your belief into tangible, measurable, and objective proof through simulated execution.

That objective proof is in the execution and the confidence that comes from consistent and successful execution. In other words, putting the time into practice simulating the circumstances you will have to perform in. Then correct the errors, re-simulate, and prove to yourself, your teammates, and...

Choking Up On The Bat Doesn’t Make You A Better Hitter. Here’s Why.

Spend a few minutes watching a little league baseball game, and you will undoubtedly hear the coaches instructing some of the smaller players to choke up on the bat. There is this intuitive idea that when the bat is just a bit too long for the size of the young player, choking up reduces the length of the bat, thereby reducing the amount of time and effort it takes to rotate the bat over the plate. 

That same conventional wisdom has extended through the more advanced ranks of the baseball world. Coach tells you to "Choke up when you get two strikes." This is about changing your grip by moving your hands up the bat's handle toward the barrel. To be clear, I am not talking about choking up and staying there throughout your at-bat—Barry Bonds was famous for doing this—or when we face ultra-hard throwers or a game on the line. On these occasions, some hitters will choke just...