Mastering Offensive Hitting: Allowing the Ball to Travel for Better Contact

In baseball, being on offense means more than just taking a swing at the ball. It involves strategic adjustments and understanding how to make the most of every pitch. One critical aspect of effective hitting is allowing the ball to travel. This approach helps you make more accurate and powerful contact with the ball, regardless of where it’s pitched.

Why Allowing the Ball to Travel Matters

Control and Adjustments: When you let the ball travel, you give yourself the opportunity to make adjustments in your swing based on the pitch location. Trying to hit the ball too early or forcing a collision before the ball reaches the ideal contact point can lead to poor swings and weak contact.

Maximize Contact Points: By allowing the ball to get to the optimal contact point, you ensure that you’re meeting the ball with the barrel of the bat. This leads to more solid hits and better overall performance.

How...

Adapting to Increased Pitching Velocity: Mastering Your Swing with Efficient Adjustments

As pitchers continue to improve and their velocity surpasses our ability to maintain effective bat speed, hitters need to make crucial adjustments. To stay competitive, it's essential to refine your trigger, setup, and overall swing to be congruent with the ball's flight. This article from Lupos Baseball will guide you through the necessary changes to adapt your hitting technique, ensuring you remain effective against high-velocity pitchers.

Understanding the Challenge

When facing a pitcher whose velocity exceeds your current bat speed capabilities, simply trying harder won’t suffice. Instead, you must adjust your mechanics to stay in sync with the ball’s trajectory. By becoming congruent with the flight of the ball, you can time your swing more effectively and maintain control.

Making the Adjustment: Congruence vs. Incongruence

Congruent Hitting:

1. Timing and Setup: Align your...

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...

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...