Hitting phase One

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The first phase of hitting a baseball is the ready stance/position. In your ready stance you first hold the bat between the first and second crease of your fingers to have better control of your swing.Your hands should be about 6 inches directly behind your back ear. So if the batter is righty you will place your hands with the bat 6 inches behind the right ear, and for lefties it would be behind the left ear. Your legs should be about shoulder length apart in an athletic and parallel position, which is balanced and bent at the knees to keep you well stabilized.

                                        CUES:HANDS UP, KNEES BENT, EYES ON THE PITCHER

Hitting Phase Two

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 In the second phase of hitting you will go from the ready position and get into a load position. The are different variations of a load, the way I like to teach it is as follows. You will bring your front foot forward only about 2 to 3  inches and bring your hands back very slightly about 3 to 5 inches simultaneously with the front foot. This is known as the load position because you are getting your body ready to create a torque movement in the hips and rotate through the ball.

                                      CUES:LOAD, HANDS BACK, SMALL STEP NOT BIG                      

Hitting Phase Three

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In this phase you will be rotating the hips and keeping the hands back. To do this you go from your load position, and begin to rotate your right hip 90 degrees. This rotation occurs in the transverse plane on the longitudinal axis. However when you rotate your hips your hands do not follow. Many people ask why, the reason is because if you bring your hands with your hips you lose all your power that you need to stay back and then come forward with maximum force. Also another reason why you keep your hands back is because if a curveball or offspeed pitch is thrown and your hands are back you will have time to react and still have your weight and power behind the swing because you kept your hands back. During the internal rotation of your hips your back leg should make an L-shape, your back foot should be in a plantar flexed position and you should end up with a firm front side (front leg).

                        CUES: TRIGGER, L-SHAPE BACK LEG, KNOB TO THE BALL                        

Hitting Phase Four

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This is the final phase of hitting. In this phase you will complete the swing, however there are a few things necessary to complete it the right way. From you trigger position which was the rotation of the hips, your hands are back, now you will bring your arms and hands forward to full extension at contact and swing through the ball. When your hands start coming towards the ball they should move in a rectilinear motion, not in an angular or circular motion to the ball. In your swing you should have a palm up (supination of the wrist), palm down position (pronation of the wrist) which is top hand palm facing up and bottom hand palm facing down.  And always use two hands on the bat on the finish and keep the head down always keeping your head and eyes on the ball to make sure you watch yourself make contact with the ball. The more proximal your hands are the shorter the swing and the better the contact. If hands move distally then the swing can have bad results.

                          CUES:PALM UP PALM DOWN, CHIN DOWN, HANDS OUT                              

EXPERT DRILL VIDEO!!!

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Drills to help skill: Hitting off tee, soft toss, step by step swing drill

Crow hop - Ready phase

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To start off the outfielder must be in a ready position to field the ball. For the purpose of the video we will do a groundball into a crow hop (crow hop can also be done after catching a fly ball). In this position you want have knees flexed and elbows flexed with hands on your thighs. it is important not to have your hands on your knees or to be standing straight up.                                                                          

                                 CUES: HANDS IN, KNEES BENT, EYES ON THE BATTER

Crow hop - Approach phase

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When approaching the groundball with runners on base in the outfield you must do so differently than in the infield. So once the ball has been hit the fielder will read the ball to see whether it is hit to the left or right or straight at him, and also to determine how hard the ball has been hit to know if he must charge the ball. This all has to be done within a second or two. Once the fielder has determined all of the above he will go towards the ball, field it on the outside of his lead foot (lead foot should be the same foot that your glove hand is). So for a righty his lead foot would be his left. Your throwing should be coming towards the glove as your going into your next step which is the the crow hop.
                           CUES: WATCH BALL, GLOVE DOWN, BENT FROM THE LEGS

Crow hop - Action Phase

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Here we are going to go from approach and field into our crow hop. Once you have fielded the ball outside the lead foot, you will bring the glove up and in the same motion begin the crow hop by lifting the right leg up and hopping up from the left foot. (note: you should not Horizontally abduct your left hip on the throw). When your right foot hits the ground from the hop you should begin to break your hands or separate them, to begin your throw.    

                                                 CUES: RIGHT TO LEFT, BREAK THE HANDS