I am big on training the mind as well as the body. Last night while giving a hitting lesson I asked 4 simple questions to a hitter. She is a 14 year old soon to be varsity player on a very reputable travel team.
1. “What are you thinking about when you are working on the tee?”
2. “Did you drop?”
3. “Did you roll?”
4. “Did you stay inside the ball?”
5. “Can you answer any of the questions honestly and with certainty?”
There were two students in the lesson and I had an assistant so there was a 1 to 1 ratio. The student I am mentioning has the potential to be an outstanding hitter. However, she has a tendency to drop her hands slightly before approaching the ball and this in turn forces her to cast out. She then has great difficulty hitting the outside pitch and often rolls when making contact with the ball. After working with her for about 10 minutes on with simple soft toss I carefully explained to her, her problem areas, and what she needed to do to help make her swing more successful. I asked her if she understood. I then directed her to move to the station where my assistant was to work out the kinks.
To my surprise when I glanced over to check on her progress I saw her swinging aimlessly and repeating the same mechanical flaws over and over again. This is when I asked her the questions I mentioned above. Her replies:
1. “Hitting the ball.”
2. “I don’t know.”
3. “I don’t know.”
4. “I don’t know.”
5. “No.”
I think there is a common assumption when hitters come to lessons. They are there to practice and get reps. Changing learned physical behaviors is a very difficult task and without an immense amount of focus and the correct mindset it will never be done. Lessons should not be viewed as practice but as something similar to a college lecture. You take the knowledge given to you and then move it into your life. It is very frustrating to see the same hitters come in week after week with the same issues. We make progress within the lesson and then we have to do it again and again each week. I am sure the players practice but I am also certain they are not patient enough to practice correctly. The majority of my hitting development was a result of endless hours on a tee. Yes we saw live pitching, BP, and pitching machines, but our form was established on the tees first. And when our form failed we went back on the tee’s. But, as I am finding out you can’t assume all hitters are practicing correctly. There was never a time I went on a tee to practice without a specific objective in mind. And never did I step on a tee with simple thought of only hitting the ball. There was always a little voice inside my head dictating commands to my body. And you better believe if Coach told me there was something within my swing I needed to fix – I fixated on it until it was no longer an issue. But I also never had an issue with believing there was something I always needed to improve on. The hunger that drives us to always become better is much more powerful than ability we are born with or our current state of success.
Like I said, this hitter has the potential to be great. After our little question and answer session her focus changed and by the end of the night she was killing the outside pitch. The true test will be if she comes in next week without these issues so we can begin addressing new issues.