Self-Awareness: The Key to a Hitter’s Approach (Part 1)
Self-Awareness is crucial for building an approach at the plate
Self-awareness as a hitter is crucial when it comes to building an approach that leads to upper level success. Hitters who don’t understand how their swing works will struggle to build an approach that works for them. In the first of two blogs on knowing thyself, we will tackle some areas in which hitting coaches and players can identify how they might move as individuals. In part two, we will dive into how moving different impacts building an approach.
Self awareness is the key to building a great approach at the plate.
Your swing determines your approach
Everyone moves differently—the following bullet points are just a few areas to begin to providing clues on how a hitter moves to hitters and hitting coaches. Here is the main question: How do you move and how does that impact how your swing works? Yes, many hitters get to the same “places“ when you look at still shots, but how the get there is drastically different when you really dive into human movement side.
CLOSING THE GAP: Hitters create force in a similar fashion biomechanically, but some can “close the gap” quicker than others. Picture two doors, each on separate hinges. Both doors have springs attached to them. One hinge is light. In order to slam the door with the light hinge hard, one would have to pull the door back a few feet to generate force. The second door has a heavy spring on it, in which one would have to draw back the door only a few inches to slam it. A loose moving hitter would act more like the light spring loaded door (Mookie Betts), while the second, a tight hitter would act more like a heavy loaded spring door (Mike Trout). “Hip shoulder separation” is the distance that the door needs to disassociate from the door frame in order to create force. Contrary to many coaches’ theories, some hitters do not need to create as much separation to create force as others. Hip shoulder separation, or as K-Motion calls it, X-Factor, is needed, but how much disassociation creates optimal movement is up to how the hitter moves.
BAT PATHS AREN’T CREATED EQUAL: Some bat paths are more circular and some are more oval. Some hitters turn the barrel deeper in the zone and can catch balls deep while others need to make contact further out in front. Hitters with a circular path generally have similar contact points in terms of depth no matter where the pitch location is. More oval paths tend to hit the outer half pitch deeper and the inside pitch further out in front. Throw on a bat sensor of your choice and take a look at vertical bat angles at contact, bat path shape, distance in the zone, time to contact, connection, and a variety of other metrics. There are baselines that seem to “work” but no secret sauce. For instance, having a low time to contact helps—obviously—but for a hitter that’s in the zone for 40”, it’s less important than the guy who’s in for 28.” The key is understanding what works and how it works for each hitter. On the contrary to what many hitting coaches think, circular paths can produce power to the pull side on breaking balls on the outer half, and produce climbing line drives to the oppo gap on fastballs on the inside half. They’re not “inside outing it” or “lunging”. Cuing hitters to see it deep could be great or the worst thing you could do to them depending on the shape of their path.
THE NEGATIVE MOVE: All good hitters have a negative move and each has a reason for why they stride and load they way they do. Some may not realize why a particular load and stride style works for them, while others do not. That is the subject of another blog at some point, but it is important to note that the negative move impacts when a hitter starts, and when they identify the pitch in comparison to where their body is in space. For example, some hitters have giant knee lifts and start super early, recognizing the pitch with their foot in the air while others’ negative move is so subtle, you barely see it in real time. Some hitters toe tap, others stride early Some guys “walk” their hands back, some bat tip, and some counter rotate more, loading into their scap.
