Fastpitch Hitters Lab

Timing and Load:

The biggest issue we see with younger girls is either no load, or they rush their load to try and be on time with the pitch. Slow them down, teach them a controlled load process. Never rushed. They can start as early as they need to, but if they start too late then they've already lost. Don't skimp on the load process to get to working on the swing! It all starts there

Load:

Parents and coaches just how important is the load process in the swing?
Very!
Hitting is about energy creation and that energy is created and stored in the load process! Too often we gloss over that to get to working on the swing. But if we haven't created stored energy we're seriously short changing our power potential. Take the time to build a powerful load process!

STUBBORN PLAYERS:

How do you reach a stubborn player who just refuses to make adjustments in their swing? I'll be doing a live video on this soon!

You don't get hits on gameday. You get them in the 100 swing you took off the tee the day before. Grind

Coaches, rotational or directional swing? And can you have both??

Timing:

What's the best swing in the world with bad timing? A strikeout, grounder, pop fly. Timing is king in softball. Without good timing the rest doesn't count for much. It's also one of the toughest things to conquer. In a perfect world we'd just send our girls to the batting cage and have them hit until their timing was down. Unfortunately those pesky pitchers throw varying speeds, and then there's those off speed pitches.

Timing is about reps though. They have to get a feel for their timing. And it changes girl to girl. How short or long is her load? How fast is her bat? How fast is the pitcher throwing? What's the pitchers windup like? Quick or slow? All of these things can alter our timing slightly.

If a players timing is really off, if she struggles with slower pitching (some girls love faster pitchers), if she finds herself lunging towards the ball. There could be a mechanical breakdown. Watch her front foot and hands when she strides forward. Is she firing the hands before her front foot makes contact with the ground? This is a common issue. It will create early swings, lunging at the ball, off balance swings and off speed pitches will be devastating. We must swing from a stable and strong platform. When they fire their hands too early they're swinging off one foot while falling forward! Sounds hard.

A drill for timing:
Setup for soft toss. Explain the timing of your tosses. I hold one ball in my left hand, bring the ball in my right back and click the balls together then immediately come forward in my toss. You should always have a timing mechanism in your soft toss so girls know when to load and stride.
Now, they know the timing. Start throwing their timing off. Throw it earlier then expected, sometimes later and then right on time. Don't let them know when it's coming, try and fool them. IT'S OKAY TO MAKE IT HARD. I make it a game and try to beat them, they're trying to beat me. Make it fun.
Here's the key for them to work on. Load and stride early, get the front foot down. But don't fire the hands until they see the ball leave your hand. This will help with getting the front foot down early, while keeping the hands locked and loaded, it also helps a lot with changeups where sometimes you'll get your front foot down way too early, but if your hands remain back you're still in a great launch position to wait on it.

Final thought. Timing is reps, mess with their timing, change it up. Try and fool them. Not every drill has to be 100% success. Struggle is growth. Always check they are swinging from a strong platform. The harder practice is, the easier games will feel. (Don't destroy their confidence, there's a line between hard and success, find the line).

Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong.

MINDSET:

"Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical".
- Yogi Berra

Entire books have been written on the subject of mindset in athletics. I highly suggest reading a couple! Having a positive mindset and clearing out the mental clutter should never be underestimated. There are far too many talented athletes that never learned how to have a great mental approach to the game. I'll talk about some of the approaches here.

Having a positive approach is a daily practice. It's a lifestyle. You wont be able to be negative and nervous all week and then step into the batters box and suddenly become positive and calm. The first thing we need to do is take control over our thoughts. For most people, and especially younger people, our thoughts are pretty much a runaway train of worry, confusion, frustration, doubt. And we aren't even fully aware of it. Make the decision that you control what thoughts run through your head! This is daunting at first, usually our thoughts are on auto-pilot and they never stop! Just like working our physical motions though we can create muscle memory in out thought process until it's second nature to think more positively! Take a little bit of time each day, it could be just 5 minutes to start and build up, to actively think positively. And when you catch your mind on a runaway train of negativity throughout the day take a moment to change the track.

When thinking about hitting we should think on a track of the positive things that we want to happen. "I'm going to hit the ball hard, I'll see the ball off the bat, I'm going to master perfect extension through the ball". Think about the things you do want, not the things you don't want. When working on hitting either in team practice, training at home, or 1-1 lessons, pick something specific you're working on and think of the perfect motion, or perfect result. Try and clearly see that result in your imagination. If you're thinking to yourself "Don't strikeout, don't swing and miss, don't pop out", your mind is going to completely ignore the DON'T and just hear "strikeout, swing and miss, pop out". Think the things you WANT to happen.

When the time comes to actually step into the batters box we want our mind as clear and calm as possible. Too much clutter will slow down your brain's ability to interpret input (ball speed, location) and send that info to your body. While we're training we want to think about our mechanics, techniques and the specific motions we're working on. In the game we DO NOT want to be thinking about those things. We perfect them in practice, in the game we see the ball and hit ball. Coaches, any mechanical issues you see in game please leave it for next practice! Putting it in a young ladies mind in game isn't helping!

So how do we calm and clear the mind? There's dozens, hundreds of ways to do this! Whole books are dedicated to the subject! The key is finding what works for you! First we do need to have some control over our mind, and that goes back to daily practice of controlling our thoughts.

Here are some techniques I've found helpful. Try different ones and find what helps you feel calm and clear minded.

Understand your job as a hitter. Your job isn't to get a hit. It's to hit the ball hard (unless Coach has given you a specific task). That's it, hit the ball hard. See it, time it and hit it hard. After that live with the results. If you rip a 90 MPH line drive at the 3rd basemen learn to be okay with that. You had a good AB! Simplifying your task in the batters box can be very relaxing.

Breath! Control your breath. Taking control of your breathing does several things. It increases oxygen to your blood, slows your heart rate and slows down the body's nervous response. It also focuses your mind, by focusing on your breath you aren't focusing on any negativity, or overthinking your technique. When you're on deck, or in the hole try taking several slow breathes in, hold a few seconds and release slowly. In between pitches take that big slow breath in and release slowly.

Visualization. Practice visualizing the result you want! Picture that beautiful line drive splitting the outfielders! This prepares the body for that exact outcome! We start to anticipate it! It also has the effect of taking control of your thoughts which is calming. Visualize what you want on deck and then step in there and see the ball and hit it!

If you're on deck and feeling particularly nervous try studying the pitcher. Everything about her. How fast is her windup? How tight is her arm circle? Where's her foot land? This can help get our mind out of the rut it's stuck in. Having something external to focus can block out the negative or nervous thoughts.

All of these techniques have something in common. They actively fill your mind with something, thoughts or a focus. This helps to block out the unhelpful thoughts.

Being positive, rolling with the punches, visualizing what you want, calming your mind. These are lifelong practices that will pay dividends far beyond the softball field! It's your mind, take control of it!

How do you best learn a new skill?

Lots of great questions on mental approach. Love that families are asking! So often it gets overlooked. There's probably 10s of thousands of young ladies out there right now with beautiful swings. What separates them from the elite college level players? Mental approach. Plain and simple, if you can't control your adrenaline, your negativity in the box in big moments that beautiful swing wont count for much. I'll be diving into my thoughts on mental approach next!

HIP TURN:

I've asked the simple question if you could improve one aspect of your young ladies swing what would it be? As I go through the list of responses and start jotting down notes on how to improve in these areas I find myself writing one thing over and over again. Hips!

Proper hip turn is a crucial foundational movement in our swing. Our swing starts with the hips and the hands follow. If the hip turn isn't correct everything else will suffer for it. Things proper hip turn improve:
Power
Contact
Bat path
Not rolling over wrists
Proper extension

The first thing we should address is the ability to separate the hips from the upper half of our body. When we move into our load our hips should turn, or coil, towards the catcher slightly. Belly button to catcher. But our upper half, shoulders, sternum and head don't turn with the hips. We hold this hip coil through the stride so that when our front foot lands our hips are still turned in towards the catcher. Once that front foot lands we release our hips, release the tension we've created through our stomach, and then the hands follow.

Separating our hips from our shoulders is more difficult then it sounds. Think patting your stomach and rubbing your head. Especially in younger girls it can be a frustrating movement. But it's a crucial one!! Here is a simple exercise to get them on the right path to proper hip turn.

1. Stand in an open doorway facing the door jamb. Athletic posture!
2. Grasp the door jamb with both hands and turn your head towards the "pitcher".
3. Now slowly turn, or coil, the hips away from the pitcher without allowing the shoulders to turn.
4. When you reach the point of tension (you'll feel it across your stomach) hold for a 5 count
5. Snap the hips towards the pitcher allowing the back foot to turn
6. Repeat! Not till you get it right, but till you can't get it wrong!

With foundational movements repetition and muscle memory are key! We don't want the girls thinking about these things in the batters box. It should be instinctual. Hitting the ball is hard enough!

CREATIVITY:

In a perfect world all of our girls would be 100% motivated all of the time to train their hardest, and play with everything they have. It isn't a perfect world though! And sometimes coaches and parents need to find creative and unique ways to motivate our players. Keep it fun and interesting, give them something to strive for.

An example of creative motivation: I have a 3D printer and for each tournament I print a different 4-5" tall figure. They are silly things. Dogs wearing hats, astronaut monkeys. At the end of each tournament I give the best hitter for that weekend the figure. They don't know ahead of time what it is, and they get excited as a team just to see what silly thing coach printed that weekend. The first tournament I tried this I honestly thought it a little lame, and almost didn't even try. The response surprised me, and the girls compete for what I thought of as a throwaway idea.

Don't be afraid to get creative, try new things. If something doesn't work, no big deal. Scrap it and move on. The best idea you implement might be something you thought would have mixed results! We ask the girls to try new and hard things, we should too!

ASTRONAUT MONKEY!

POSITIVE COACHING:

As parents and coaches we all have various approaches to our daughters\players training. I would be shocked to discover we didn't all have the same goal. To get our young ladies to play at the highest level they are capable of. People who feel confident in themselves perform better! This is a universal truth. Whether it's in game or training. The better you feel the better you'll perform. Put yourself in their shoes and consider new tasks or skills you're attempting to master. What mindset would help you?

Honest, from the heart compliments will pay more dividends then the greatest instruction you are capable of! Find creative ways to compliment the girls, and make them honest compliments! The youngest girls can sense a phony compliment and it wont have the same impact.

If your young lady is 9 years old and struggling to make contact with the ball, the next time she grounds out to second praise the contact. "Way to put the ball in play! That's a huge step in the right direction we're gonna dial up the power and before you know it you'll be ripping line drives past the second basemen"!

If your young lady is 17 and hitting bombs but also striking out a lot. "I love the way you're just crushing the ball, WOW! Now we're going to work on dialing up the consistency and once we get that the softball world wont know what hit them"!

Instruction to young, unsure girls (and boys)! can sound a lot like criticism. Doesn't matter if you mean it that way. Before jumping into instruction point out what you love about their swing, approach... heck how they wear their hair!! Make them feel amazing first and watch the results skyrocket!

Can you be competitive? Have a fire in your belly to not lose? AND be the first one to pick up a teammate that has a costly error in a championship game? If so, win your lose, you're a rock star!

Welcome to the Fastpitch Hitters lab! My name is Adam Hoffman and I love hitting! There's nothing like the feeling of making solid contact with a powerful swing. And the best part is afterwards you get to run the bases! The second best thing about Softball! How do we get our kids to hit the ball hard more consistently? Well, follow this page and that's exactly what we'll be talking about! And don't forget to swing hard in case you hit the ball!