The Advanced Youth Baseball Training Tips and Techniques Blog provides youth baseball coaches with free youth baseball drills, tips for coaching youth baseball, youth baseball training techniques and articles on coaching young baseball players.
Advanced Youth Baseball Training Tips and Techiques
The Advances Youth Baseball Training Blog features daily posts with free articles on coaching youth baseball, advanced youth baseball drills, and advanced tips covering all aspects of youth baseball training. Our posts provide you with free baseball youth baseball hitting drills, youth baseball pitching drills, defensive drills for youth baseball and much more. Make sure to save or bookmark this site so that you can visit it regularly for baseball coaching articles.
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Article Title: Sports Psychology and Baseball Hitting Tips - How and Why to Relax at the Plate By Jay Granat
The baseball season is about to begin and I already getting calls from parents, players and coaches who are concerned about hitting slumps.
Anyone who has played baseball for any length of time has experienced the frustration of an extended hitting slump. And there are many causes of these performance valleys.
Some of the causes are physical. A breakdown in mechanics, poor balance, poor technique, a moving head, a tight grip on the bat or an injury can contribute to poor performance by baseball players.
Some of the causes of hitting slumps are mental. A batter who has been hit by a pitch can be scared in the batter's box. A player who has been hitting poorly can lose his confidence. A batter who is worried about impressing his coach, his parents or a scout can become quite anxious. A player who is conflict with teammates may find it hard to hit to his potential. Similarly, a player with stress related to his or her life off the field can have difficulty concentrating when he or she steps up to the plate.
Also, it is important to understand that there are many relationships between the mind and the body where hitting a baseball is concerned. For instance, a nervous player is apt to grip the baseball bat too tightly. Likewise, a tense player is apt have difficulty turning on a pitch.
Interestingly, some people believe that our vision gets worse when we are tense and that it improves when we are relaxed.
There are many ways to relax one's mind and one's body before you get up to bat.
Players can learn relaxation techniques, meditation, visualization or self-hypnosis. Some players benefit from listening to music in the dugout or before a game. Others do some aerobics before they take the field as they find that this helps them to relax when they get up to bat.
Tension will work against you at the plate, so it is important that baseball players learn how to get very comfortable when they face the opposing pitcher.
Article Title: Great Baseball Hitting Drills For Keeping The Head Closed By Joe Brockhoff It is very easy to get into the habit of pulling off the ball. This is especially true for power hitters. Have you ever seen a power hitter hit a home run and thereafter, he can't couch the ball? What happened? The home run took him out of himself. So as he pivots, he is also pivoting his head.
First of all, hitters should never take a 100% stroke. Doing this invites pulling off the ball. For efficiency, the stroke should be no more than 95%, saving 5% for command. As coaches, we sometimes go too far in the other direction by telling them to "just meet the ball." And now they start to aim the bat, which is not good either.
Hitting is a controlled explosion. Continue to be aggressive, with a 95% stroke. So what do we advise? The hitter is pulling off because he's rotating his complete body when he hits. He must focus on his head rotating in the opposite direction to the hips. As the hips rotate to the pitcher, the head should rotate to the ball.
Here are three baseball hitting drills for this:
DRILL #1
Place a pile-on or glove across from the hitter just outside the batter's box in front of home plate (45% angle). After the hitter makes contact, he looks into the pile-on area. This keeps the head inside.
DRILL #2 (with pitching machine or live pitcher)
Hitter assumes his stance, with no bat. To simulate holding a bat, his top hand grabs the thumb of his bottom hand. Coach stands in back of the hitter and holds his head on both sides . The hitter takes batless strokes at the pitched ball, while coach restricts the head to keep it on the ball as it enters the hit zone.
DRILL #3 (Full Take)
The hitter will coil, stride, and read the pitch to the catcher. This keeps the head independent and disciplines it to stay with the ball. Note: This head discipline should carry over to his regular hitting, in the "full take", a pitch that is an obvious ball.
Coaching Points. The hitter should not go to the point where his head is pushing against the back shoulder. This locks up the back shoulder and restricts his extension. The head swivels. It should never tilt while reading the pitch. This causes the body to tilt also and the eyes to look on a vertical plane. Eyes must stay basically horizontal for best vision and body control.
Former Tulane Hall of Fame Baseball Coach, Joe Brockhoff, fully explains his baseball hitting drills with the Super 8 Hitting System, completely demonstrated with videos and hitting drills to help you hit with more power and raise your batting average.These techniques are fully explained in our baseball hitting instruction web site for the "Super 8 Hitting System", including batting aids and a series of baseball hitting videos, which demonstrates many baseball hitting drills. http://www.LearnBaseballHitting.com/lcp.