“Swing with intent”. One of the most used and most popular phrases used among hitting coaches today. Want to hit the ball harder? Swing with more intent. You want to hit doubles instead of singles? Swing with more intent. While I love the phrase, I think it is often misinterpreted. How? Let me explain.
I was first introduced to the phrase as an eighth grader in middle school. I was stuck in the mid 70’s on the bump and I was struggling to find ways to boost my velo as I tried to adjust to the bigger fields and longer distances. While surfing the web I came across some content from Paul Nyman (many of you have probably heard of him). Reading through his material made throwing harder seem very complex, yet very simple at the same time. Sure it is difficult to synchronize your body correctly to throw a baseball 90+ mph. According to Nyman, though, all you had to do was throw with more intent. Try harder. I took his advice to heart. Several times per week I could be found in my basement or in the backyard throwing as hard as possible, undoubtedly letting out some pretty serious grunts. I was dead set on throwing harder and I was convinced this was the way to do so. However as time wore on, the results I was hoping for were not showing up.
I kept up with this type of “just try harder” program for several years. My crow hop velo went from 81-83. Impressive? Nope. Needless to say I was losing hope. Eventually help would come along. I had the opportunity to work with an awesome throwing guy (shoutout Ben Brewster) and my velo jumped 4 mph in 2 weeks. What did I do in those two weeks? I didn’t all of a sudden just throw with more intent, at least not in the way it is often thought of. Ie I didn’t just try to throw harder. Instead, I became more aware of my body and what it was doing. I made a small mechanical change that allowed me to apply force more efficiently and therefore throw harder without necessarily trying to throw any harder.
Okay, let’s reel this back into the hitting side of things. Just like what happened with me and throwing velocity, I often see guys who are told to simply swing with more intent, do less damage. They tend to muscle up and their sequence falls apart. We need to redefine what swinging with intent means.
Swinging With Intent, A New Definition
So if swinging with intent doesn’t just mean trying to swing harder, what does it mean? It simply means this: every time you pick up a baseball bat you need to have a very purposeful focus and idea of what you are trying to do. Some days that will be working through mechanical feels. Some days it will be trying to hit a variety of pitches and working on adjustability. Some days it may be to swing as hard as possible. It just needs to be understood by younger players that swinging with intent means having an extreme focus in what you are doing, not muscling up because you were told by some coach to just try harder.
What This Looks Like
Recently there was a hitting video from Josh Donaldson on MLB Network that blew up. I want to take a small snippet from that to illustrate what I’m talking about.
https://vine.co/v/5eguhLjlK0h
(credit to John Peabody for making this vine)
So Donaldson doesn’t want his arms to be involved in the swing. He talks about creating “effortless power” later in the same video (you can find the whole thing here if you haven’t seen it yet). This seems to fly in the face of swinging with intent. In reality, it does not. We just have the definition of intent messed up. He has a very extreme focus on what he is working on when swinging. Just because he is not trying to swing as hard as possible does not mean he doesn’t have intent.
So just trying to hit the ball farther will not always lead to hitting the ball harder. Cool. So what should we work/focus on to achieve that? As usual it depends on the individual. Some guys will respond very well to the “just swing harder” cue. Others, like myself, will not. You need to test it out for yourself and find what works for you. Try just swinging harder. Do the results improve? If so, that is something you should try doing more often. If not, you need to focus your intent elsewhere. Pick a specific feel/move, whatever you need to work on each day, and focus on that. Create effortless power by improving your sequence. The path to maximizing your ability is different for everybody. Get what works for you and do that relentlessly.
As usual, if you have individual questions on what direction you need to be going I will be more than happy to help out. Shoot me an email at brady@dacbaseball.com and I’ll help out any way I can.