Monthly Archives: November 2019
“Keep Your Eye on the Ball”
“Keep your eye on the ball”. It’s a phrase we’ve all heard 1000 times, but is it right? Research from Joan Vickers says no. According to Vickers, the longer we are able to hold an eye fixation (particularly at the point of ball release), the better our hitting performance will be. We can see in…
Gleyber Torres: How to “Keep it Tight” In Your Leg Kick
Torres is one of my favorite examples to give our athletes when looking at hitters with a gather type of leg kick. His entire center of mass is moving forward as one unit, with the extremities coming along with it. This allows him to better drive his movement from proximal to distal vs distal to…
Breaking Down Swing Direction: First Move
Once the swing has launched it’s tough to alter – this is why your initial swing direction is a vital piece to being able to successfully adjust to a multitude of various pitches. The initial move of the hands set the direction for the resulting swing. As such, a swing that needs to be directed…
Aroldis Chapman: Maximizing the Weight Shift
Chapman demonstrating beautifully a portion many throwers that are on the brink have trouble with: maximizing their weight shift. You’ll note that Chapman starts off with a fairly slow tempo, but BEFORE peak leg lift he flips a switch. We see a posterior pelvic tuck (disengages quads), and he’s able to transfer his lateral energy…
Prehab/Rehab: Is There a Better Way?
Sport happens fast and it happens unpredictably. I’ve mentioned Dr. Schmidtbleicher before here, and today we wanted to test out part of their return to play protocol post-ACL surgery. According to Schmidtbleicher, the final part of their protocol is to have athletes run, jump over a hurdle, and land on either their left or right…
Feels and External Cuing: The Importance of the End Goal
Without contact, a swing executed on a pitch is a failure. For each feel that you have, then, it should end with what you want at contact. Story ends his feel right at contact. And for him, that’s feeling the weight of his barrel start high and then whip out in front of him. When…
The Importance of Tempo: Finding Your Rhythm
Walker Buehler demonstrating the importance of finding your unique tempo for optimizing performance. Early on in high school he utilized a conventional slow and controlled tempo. Once at Vanderbilt, they sped him up, something they are known to do (see: Carson Fulmer), which led to increased performance. It appears he has now found a happy…
The Scissor Move and Reciprocal Movement
Both Jose Altuve and Edgar Martinez have gone on record saying they consciously work on their ability to “scissor”, or in other words, have the back foot kick back behind them as their front leg braces and they get to and through contact with the baseball. Reciprocal movement can be described in exactly this manner:…
Arm Action: What to Look For
There’s a reason we see the same upper body action in the elite of the elite across all upper body throwing motions (baseball, football, and tennis are included in the post above): It’s the most efficient. If we ignore the lower half for a second, we can get a better feel for exactly what process…
Nelson Cruz: The Full At-Bat
-Pitch 1: ball down and in. Cruz doesn’t bite, never looks interested. -Pitch 2: fastball away Cruz breaks his bat on. Initial body language says pissed, that thought has clearly passed by the time he receives his new bat. Redoes his batting gloves on the walk back to the plate, no big deal. -Pitch 3:…