Hitting:
At this point, you know how to work on your hitting, you have a few options.
- Hitting off a tee
- Dry swings
- Swinging while balancing on a board
Aim for 50 swings per session. How many sessions can you get in this week?
Reminders when practicing your swing:
- Start with looking out towards the pitcher
- Visualize a pitch coming in
- Work on hitting pitches in all parts of the zone – up / down; inside / outside
And here’s something I shared last offseason that gives a good visual of what we’ve been emphasizing in practice –
Let’s take a deeper look at hitting this week. Here is Mookie Betts hitting a home run in 2019. The full slow motion video is here – take a look (its only 49 sec).
I’ll highlight 3 keys.
- His bat stays ‘attached’ to his shoulder for a long time and he drives his back shoulder to the ball. Work on this when doing your tee work. Focus on pushing your back shoulder to the ball, then letting your hands ‘finish’ your swing. You can see this in the picture below.
2. He makes contact in line with his front foot – we’ve been talking about hitting the ball between our front foot and middle of our body – keep positioning the tee to train yourself to hit this way.
3. Mookie’s front foot is driving forward. Just like when we are generating power on the mound by using our legs and driving, we can generate power similarly while batting. This week we did the ‘big stride’ drill during our tee work to help us train for this.
Throwing:
In practice, we’ve been focusing on leg drive and starting to build up our arm strength. Here are some things you can do.
- 15 skier hops (on each leg)
- Get outside and throw a football – temperatures look moderate (for Wisconsin) so see if you can get outside and have some fun.
- 10 3x Drills
Here is how to do the last drill – This video should start for you at the 6:30 mark – the drill is explained from 6:30 – 8:00. You are welcome to watch more of the video but do the drill Brent describes at least 10 times. Note – he makes it look really easy. It is NOT easy to do. It takes strength and coordination – stick with it, this will pay off.
Strength:
Finish your workout this week by continuing these key exercises.
- 25 plyo-push-ups – try to get your hands off the floor on the way up. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-uF4F3mQIs)
- 25 rows – to strengthen your back (using a door frame, here is a resource on how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8NzhNe9Res)
- 25 jump squats – to strengthen your legs
- This is a harder variation than previous weeks – it will help build more power.
- Here is a quick explanation on how to do it. How to Do Jumping Squats | Back Workout – YouTube
- 25 sit-ups – to strengthen your core
Keep up the hard work, spring is getting close!
Pressure Baseball 