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Where Does Power Come From For A Youth Baseball Hitter?

By Guest Author: Chip Lemin

To help your players develop more power in their swings, you must instruct them to have balance throughout the entire swing. Earlier, I discussed the stance of the hitter. This includes even weight distribution right from the trigger of the swing. In order to generate power, the swing must be compact and short. Yes players with long swings will generate power also, but they generally will not make as much consistent contact.

Many youth baseball players will have far too much hand and foot movement to achieve balance throughout the entire swing. These players could get away with these flaws when pitchers are just trying to throw strikes in younger leagues. As pitchers develop velocity and location these flaws will be exposed.Some young players will resist keeping their hands held up high. They resist keeping their shoulders stacked up over their feet. They may not have a wide enough base in their stance. These players like to stride out at the ball. A small controlled stride is acceptable. Many newer coaches are unaware that a long stride will hamper the player's power base.Many of the top youth baseball hitters will no stride at all. They may use some front foot movement as a timing trigger to begin to "load up' their swing.

I became a student of the baseball swing to learn all I could. When your gets professional instruction (which I encourage) pay close attention,and take notes.Many of the instructors are great sources of knowledge who are willing to help you too. After all, it is in their best interest for your players to improve. It is a reflection on his talent as an instructor.It may mean more business for him.It is the player's responsibility to work on their swing. You can give them the tools and information. You can attempt to inspire them to work harder. Don't feel any guilt about a player's swing if they are not putting in extra work to improve.

Players must look at the pitcher with both eyes. Too often the player's shoulder position will be turned so that both eyes are not on the ball. These batters may have hit the ball well at lower even with these flaws,it may take some strikeouts or weakly hit balls to get their attention. Just be a patient instructive leader. Focus on what the batter is doing right first, then move on to correcting mistakes. Most young players don't get proper extension and follow through on their swings.They may be trying too hard to pull all pitches. This is a common mistake. When players wrap the bat around on their follow through, and it ends up below the front shoulder, it is a sign that they are "pulling off "of the ball. The finish should be up high, with the bat and the hands up near or above the front shoulder.

Power is not always generated just by size. It is a function of bat speed.The quicker the bat head can get into the hitting zone the better. The batter's hands must lead into the zone, and the hips and torso will follow. The player must focus on extension through the entire hitting zone. This will help the player to finish the swing with a nice high follow through. Then the hips and torso will come along also. Professional instruction with a qualified instructor is worth every cent. I believe the coaching staff will get just as much help from it as the players. There will be more articles on hitting for youth baseball players coming up soon. Thanks Coach Chip

Chip Lemin has been a promoter of youth baseball since they started using aluminum bats. That's a long time. I have witnessed many good people get into coaching without solid coaching skills and it is not fun for them or the kids.Today's newer coaches are also being shortchanged on sportsmanship, like there is none. Visit my site to sign up for a insightful, informational, free coaching e-course at http://www.baseballecourse.com

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Organizing Youth Baseball Practice

For the coach youth baseball practice actually begins before you get to the field. You need to plan out what you want to work on and what drills you will use to accomplish your objective. It is advisable to utilize parents and volunteers to help you. If possible you want to be the facilitator who walks around insuring everyone is doing what they need to do.

Youth baseball teams typically are assigned a practice field on certain days for a given time period, so depending on your teams needs and areas they need to work on will determine what your practice plan will consist of. Make sure to write it down and stick to the time allotted.

It is advisable to have the players warm up as a group. I ask two players to volunteer to be the captains for the day. They will lead the stretching and warm up. Once that is done we will move into our throwing routine. The warm up, stretching and throwing routine is consistent before every practice and game. The player's become familiar with it and develops a routine they are comfortable with.

After warming up the following would an example of a normal practice.

•Rundown - Half the players will be on 1st base the other half on 2nd, and a runner in the middle, the runners run with their gloves so as to keep the drill moving. The goal is to keep the drill moving and teach one throw and get the runner out.

•Cutoff & Relay - Break your team into groups, if you have 12 players use three groups of four players. Make sure the players are moving their feet to the ball with their glove side to the target. I use the phrase, step-catch-throw to emphasize quick release of the ball. This is a good opportunity to make a competition between the teams and adds fun to practice as well.

•Individual skills – keeping the same groups as cutoff & relay one group will go to shortstop, another group to second base and a final group to center field. The infield works on ground balls, the outfield works on fly balls. You could have one of the infield groups working on charging slower grounders while the other group fields and makes a strong throw to 1st.

• Group skills – This is where you may work on 1st & 3rd defense, bunt defense, turning double plays, pop fly's, pitchers fielding practice. •Hitting – Like the above we will utilize groups. Most youth baseball fields don't have a cage so to perform live hitting a coach(s) will need to throw on the field.

I have found that putting a screen on home plate and the hitters close to the back stop not only prevents lots of foul balls from leaving the field, but I can have two coaches throwing to two hitters simultaneously. This allows the other two players in the group to be working on the side with soft toss and/or tee drills.

I have one group shagging in the outfield, and one group fielding ground balls hit by helpers in the infield.

Another option you could do is have one group throwing a bullpen during this time.

This method of taking BP makes hitting practice efficient and productive, and the kids aren't bored.

I finish practice with a base running drill. It may be step-by-step instruction or it may be a drill they like and have done before.

This type practice will typically last two hours. It encompasses a lot of instruction and repetitions. I look at practice as my time and games as the players time to show the world what they have learned.

The biggest thing for the coach is too organized. Save your practice plan as you may want to use it or a similar version later in the season.

by Thomas

Tom has been coaching youth baseball for the past 20 years. LeftHandedBaseballGloves.com is a site designed to offer quality baseball gloves. Tom's blog is dedicated to offer coaching idea's for the volunteer baseball coach.

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Are We Raising Cry Baby Athletes?

Are We Raising Cry Baby Athletes?

By Guest Author Jim Bain

Unfortunately, with my age and schedule I don't have the time to watch little league baseball like I wish. So when the neighbors invited my wife and I to go to their twelve year old grandson's baseball game, we both jumped at the chance.

I almost wish I hadn't went. It'd be totally unfair to judge the state of our young athletes by what I saw at one ball game, but I was shocked at what I witnessed from the players of both teams.

By twelve years old players should be coming to terms with the basics of fielding, hitting and running, but that is not what I saw. Although the opposing team seemed to be the better coached team, most of their quality efforts were the skills of the individual players.

You're probably thinking "lighten up buddy, these teams may have been thrown together from the remnants of non-drafted players." I wish that were true, but this was a playoff game between undefeated and once defeated teams.

I was not impressed with the quality of coaching from either dugout, as there was little coaching to be impressed about. In order to give the coaches the benefit of the doubt, I can see the reasoning, although I strongly disagree, with being a hardnosed coach during practices, then sit back at the game and see how well the kids have learned. Idiotic reasoning.

If you're thinking "I thought this was an article on the players, not lousy coaches," you were not wrong. Just wanted to set the scenario for you.

We all know the regulation strike zone called out in the rule book, but we also know each umpire has his own strike zone. This particular home plate umpire had a low strike zone, which I agree with, but that doesn't matter. What matters is the zone was called consistently and equally for both teams. You can not ask for anything any better from a plate umpire.

I guess it was the bottom of the second inning when what I began seeing astonished me. Despite a strike zone being firmly established, most players would stand and watch two called strike pitches go by without attempting a swing, which is not necessarily unusual.

What was unusual, and in my opinion totally unacceptable, was the players would either argue the call, or clearly demonstrate their disagreement with the call with their body language. These are 12 year old kids arguing with, or trying to show up an adult umpire over called strikes and nobody did anything about it.

I was stunned, but the worse was yet to come. If the batter swung and missed the third strike, he'd stand at the plate showing his disgust. Then he'd walk slowly to the dugout with an assortment of different actions from different players.

Some would jog back to the dugout and sit down, some would throw their batting helmets to the ground, some mumbled under their breath, and by this point I was convinced they were curse words. If this had been an isolated incident it'd be no big deal, but this type of situation played out at least a dozen times during the game.

My wife recognized I wanted to leave, but vetoed the idea as not polite. Then... then the ultimate shock. I had to do a double take because I'd never seen anything like this before, but I saw several batters, these are twelve year old players, returning from striking out with tears running down their cheeks.

I noticed a player sniffling returning to the dugout after being thrown out attempting to steal second base, which bled into another issue. I stood there, I could no longer sit, and watched one runner after another either be thrown out on the base paths, or end up at second on a ball hit off the fence and misplayed by the outfielder.

I turned to my wife and asked her if it was me or did the runners appear to be running in slow motion. Seeing some rabbits round the bases from both sides I decided it wasn't me, these kids literally didn't know how to run.

My wife knew I was confounded by my silence in the truck and answered my unasked question. We are raising a generation which success is not only expected, but owed them. Their game playing, by whatever medium, has replaced or hindered the development of basic skills, such as running.

I truly believe I'm over-reacting and this is not the general state of little league baseball. Disrespect and the throwing of tantrums by players can not be the norm. Coaches acting like they're... I don't know what, but not coaches, is not the norm.

I felt like Rip-Van-Winkle awaking to an entirely different world. I do hope this was only a dream.

Jim Bain, former Minor league baseball player and member of "Baseball Coaches of America" shares his advice on baseball coaching baseball drills on his exciting info packed website: http://www.learn-youth-baseball-coaching.com

Be sure to check out his 2 books on Amazon, "The Pitch" and "Season of Pain". Great reading about baseball.

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Seven Steps To Hitting a Baseball Correctly

By Jim Bain

They say there are 35 individual items involved in hitting a baseball. I'm not a 100% sure that's correct, but I do know that's far too many things to teach a hitter in one season.

Let's reduce those numbers to a more manageable task of learning, what I believe to be the Top Seven basic skills a hitter must learn before advancing to inside out swings and etc.

(1.) A hitter must learn a balanced batting stance. Balance is the cornerstone to every starting position in every sport known to man, as it's the foundation on which the body uses initiate movement. Having the weight evenly distributed over the hips and feet properly positioned is the key to balance.

(2.) Keeping the body loose. The ability to be explosive, actually means having the ability to instantly react. In order to remain explosive the muscles can not become tensed and the best method to prevent that is movement. Keeping the body slightly swaying, hands moving or rotating the bat before the pitcher becomes set, is imperative.

Do you think a hockey goal tender or a tennis pro, standing still and erect can suddenly react and stop a puck traveling 100 mph or return a 98 mph serve? Nearly impossible.

Same situation with hitting. The key element here is to know when to become completely still, body and head, but that's another article.

(3.) Batters must learn not to let their front hip and shoulder open too soon, referred to as "Flying Open," which makes hitting a pitch on the outside portion of the plate nearly impossible because you can't reach the ball with the bat.

A simple trick to help correct this problem is instead of pointing the toes of your lead foot straight or square to the plate, cock them slightly, an inch and absolutely no farther back than 2", towards the catcher.

Because you must move your front foot back to the proper positioning, this will force you to keep your front hip and shoulder closed longer, preventing opening up too soon.

(4.) This next skill can be difficult to comprehend because it appears to be one movement, but in reality is two. A hitter must have his bat loaded when his front foot hits the ground. Let's break it down.

(a.) As the pitch begins travel towards home plate, the batter will begin his foot Starting Mechanism, either by lifting the front foot and moving forward, simply lifting the foot and setting it back down, or some other slight variation.

(b.) When the front foot sets back down the bat should move out of the launch position, into a full swing.

(c.) Then the bat is swung or not swung at the ball.

This is a two step process, but because it occurs so quickly and fluidly, it appears to be one continuous movement. You've heard the saying "hitting off the front foot"? This means the timing is off between the foot plant and launching the bat to ball contact, which produces feeble ground balls because of lack of power.

(5.) This may sound quite elementary, but is actually a huge hitting problem. A hitter must stride (move) Directly towards the pitcher, as an inch or two to either side can greatly have a negative affect on the swing.

One must remember, subconsciously it's not natural for a person to move directly forward towards a traveling object which could hurt him.

One trick to verify you're stepping correctly is to:

Measure 1 inch off the end of the pitching rubber and drive a nail or stick in the ground.

Do the same at home plate, securing the stake or nail passed the back corner.

Tie a string taunt to each end, but not taunt enough to raise it off the ground.

After swinging at a pitch, stop immediately and see where you're front foot has landed. Contact with the string indicates a forward movement. Landing on either side of the string indicates an issue which may require addressing.

(6.) You've heard the saying "Keep your head on the ball," but do you realize this is intended to be performed exactly as stated. Your head is initially turned sideways watching the pitcher, picking up the ball and watching it to the bat. If you don't swing and your head is still sideways looking out toward the pitcher instead of turned looking at the catcher, we have a problem.

Whether hitting or fielding a ball your eyes should Never lose contact with ball!!

(7. )You've heard "Use the whole ball park," or "Hit the ball where it's pitched," which is simple logic, not a magical formula.

If you bat right handed and attempt to pull a pitch on the outside portion of the plate to left field, you've greatly reduced your chances of hitting safely and nearly completely eliminated hitting the ball with power. Why?

Without delving into mathematical equations which explains the physics of the issue, I'll simply say "The forced degree of angle" makes the difference.

*** A 98 mph fastball located on the outside portion of the plate, hit to the right side of the field, requires the line of travel, angle direction change, of the ball to change very little, thus losing very little of its velocity. Then add the ball's velocity with the speed and velocity of the bat striking it... The velocity and power in which the ball travels increases dramatically.

*** Using the same example, except attempting to pull the ball to the left side of the field. The 98 mph fastball must literally come to a screeching halt in order to drastically reverse the angle of travel, which means the speed and velocity of the bat is the main force powering the ball.

That situation would be bad enough, but in reality the baseball is using it's 98 mph velocity to actually resist the bat's attempt to change it's direction that radically.

Jim Bain, former Minor league baseball player and member of "Baseball Coaches of America" shares his advice on baseball coaching baseball drills on his exciting info packed website: http://www.learn-youth-baseball-coaching.com

Be sure to check out his 2 books on Amazon, "The Pitch" and "Season of Pain". Great reading about baseball.

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