Howard's Hitting Matrix - It Works!

A little background for the story. I know this is going to be long, but please bear with me as I think this needs to be put out there.

DD is 10 YO and is just starting her 2nd year of FP. Didn't really learn much from U8 manager pitch - "coach" was selected on ability to bring equipment to field for practices and games. She was taught the old school way of hitting - hands to the ball, swing down, make the other team field it, squish the bug, yada yada yada. Worked well with novices, since my daughter is big and strong, but once she moved up to FP, she got frustrated with hitting dribblers back to the pitcher/3B. Made a travel team last fall - great, someone who knows what they are doing can teach her how to hit better. BIG MISTAKE - they reinforced what was taught above, and even made it worse - point the barrel of the bat to the pitcher on ready (Really?), and other useless info. So she went from being able to hit a ball, although weakly, to not even getting a foul tip. So I went searching for hitting instruction, which is how I found this site during the winter. I then heard about a clinic held by Howard and Crystal, so we signed up. I'd have to say this is the best $80 I've ever spent on softball.

They first taught us the throwing motion. DD absorbed it like a sponge - it made sense to her. They then went on to teach the Hitting Matrix - slow to load, elbow/knob, stack back elbow, hands inside ball, bat parallel, cocked wrists, etc. She learned it so well that she was able to teach her mother on the way to the doctors that evening as she broke her pinky that morning at TB practice but was still able to complete the clinic. She FELT the difference in grip between "holding" the bat and gripping for power; she SAW the increased Big Zone when measured, she FELT the ball pop off the bat when doing the drills at the clinic - with a broken finger.

She's been in a cast since (4 weeks), and last week was her FIRST TIME hitting with the cast off. First pitch, at 50 mph from the Jugs, up the middle with greater power than ever. TB coach asked if they put a plate in her finger. "No" she says "just Crystal and Howard teaching me how to hit". She proceeded to hit the entire bucket with more force and balance than ever. Words cannot describe how she felt, especially after missing weeks of practice.

So I decided to have DD2, who's just starting U8 at 7 YO on this method, but decided to ask the HC if I could teach it to the whole team. He says ok, so I teach the 7/8 YO how to do Howard's matrix - the grip, slow to load, etc. Then I have them hit off the tee. First girl up hits a weak grounder so I check her grip and change it to where it's suppose to be. Next swing, ball makes it to the outfield grass on one hop. The smile on her face was enormous! Her dad gets off the bleachers and asks what I taught her, so I tell him. She proceeds, along with the rest of the team, to smack balls off the tee like they're much older. There's much more I'd like to include in this story, but I think you get the idea.

I have read ALL of the hitting posts, and as far as I'm concerned, Howard's method is by far the best, especially for beginners and/or those making the transition to competitive FP. I read the Big Zone and Helicopter threads, reading other disparrage Howard and his methods. I'd like to point out that what Howard is teaching is a method for GIRLS to learn how to hit a SOFTBALL, not emulate a MAN who is a PRO making loads of money to hit a ball and can practice EVERY DAY. His method allows a girl to FEEL and SEE what she is taught. If your method is different, great and good luck to you. But please DO NOT make your method sound better by finding "fault" in what Howard teaches. He IS NOT, in my opinion, teaching a girl to hit like a MLB player, or even swing like him. He is teaching them the best way that he's discovered for girls.

I know that there will be those that will start in on this yet again. I have learned, and TRIED, enough to know what to filter.

I myself am a member of the Church of Carrier.

Thanks for your time,

Wookie

I have heard this kind of story many a time.


Here's another.
On occasion I work with a hitter. I have been around Howard for around 3 years and know allot of what, and how he teaches.


Got 2 emails Sunday night. One from a parent who's daughter I worked with friday night. He told me in her game saturday, she went 2-3. One deep flyout scored a run, a double and one went yard dead center.

Second was from a girl I taught Howards setup and mechanics. Have not seen her in a month but her dad kept her to the swing.
She had her first 2 games and went yard in both of them and thanked me for showing her the swing.


Howard has helped so many and I continue to learn from him.



UPDATE: She hit another in her third game




Straightleg

How often is the matrix performed and how many times roughly is it repped per session?

The same could be stated for many hitting systems.

I took a HS girls Varsity team and put them on a steady diet of using Yeager’s hitting drills … 6 days/week … used Yeager’s drills prior to every game and every BP session.

The team more than doubled the number of runs scored the first year using Yeager’s drills. The next year they increased “runs scored” by another 50%. The team went from not making the playoffs to finishing second in their conference and making playoffs … even made it to the state championship game.

Bottom-line ... a decent hitting program should see improved results.

straightleg said:

Wookie posted what Howard teach's worked. Went to a Howard/crystal clinic

I posted about what Howard taught me worked for other girls. In TOPIC for what the thread was about.



Have not see anywhere on this site.

FFS doing a clinic with ? anyone.

Boy what FFS / Yeager does really helped our team or my kid posts.

The only thing I see is a arm chair computer coach, Howard wana be, trying to discredit what he does.




Straightleg

Click to expand...

SL ... I posted on Yeager's work at BBF for over a 2yr span. You are welcome to verify that if you'd like. I have no interest in copying that here.

I like a lot of what Howard has to post. What I didn't like was the vertical stacked forearm that was accompanied with exaggerated rear elbow displacement. My reasoning for not liking it was straight forward ... while you demonstrated the concept well in slow-motion, it has yet to be replicated in game-like speed. Again this weekend I reviewed the swings from multiple D1 games, including the WA/AZ game (currently rated as #1 & #2) ... and I didn't observe a single swing like that. Stated simply, game situation video analysis does not support that particular teaching. If teaching it works for you and your hitters, then I'm happy for you.

Again, I do like a lot of what Howard has to post. As with anyone advocating particular mechanics, I use video of the better hitters as confirmation, and if I can't find verification then I don't teach the particular mechanic being advocated. That's just the approach I use.

Wookie

That you for the kind remarks and I am glad it is working for you.

Crystl and I spend a lot of time trying to find what works best and works for all the kids not just the gifted ones and for the parents and coaches.

I worked with Jen Sellers of Washington last year for a couple of hours in Vancouver and used the matrix drill with her to get her to see it , feel it and fix it and it worked pretty well.

As instructors you have to find a way to connect to the student and not your peers as each has their own way of doing it.

In the end it is what works best for you and your daughter.

Bill Hillhouse, Howard Kabota, Deb Hartwig, Marc and myself did a clinic together last year. It was interesting working everyone and trading ideas and concepts of what works with girls to convey the concepts of what others claim works well or does not work well and still see the results.

In 9 years you would think we would have found one coach who could show us how to do something as simple as getting balanced and you saw it yourself....no one there did it either!

Most everyone at least from this side of the computer has a belief of what the MLB pattern is and how to teach hitting and throwing. The firm grasp of reality comes when you say OK how do you actually teach it to someone who does not understand how to get balanced and throws poorly and you see the instructor struggle with doing it hands on and even worse they can not put into words what it is they actually do.

At the clinic last year they gave me a kid to work with for 3 hours and we taught her how to throw and hit in three hours. The improvement was seen by the mother and daughter and her coaches from The Hawks Team were there we used same techniques used at the clinic you were at with your daughter.

No smoke , no mirrors however I wish we would have had some mirrors as it helps in teaching in my opinion.

Bill and I have discussed mechanics and for the most part agree it is how you communicate and teach that makes the difference in hitting and throwing.

If you get a chance to get a copy of Softball the Magazine, there is a picture on the cover of a hitter just a little past the elbow and hand stacked over each other going parallel to contact and look at the hook in the top finger. Looks like he understands the matrix drill! LOL!

Thanks again for sharing your success with myself and others!

Howard

FFS Post #4 - I agree - any system, whether hitting, fielding, throwing, etc. - will work if practiced often enough. The point I was making was that Howard's method is a different teaching method in that the girls feel what is going on, rather than being told or shown. Makes a big differnce to an 7/8-10/11 YO. Also, you stated that the HS Varsity team saw runs increase. Not to deny that stat, but was that increase SOLELY due to better hitting? Did they learn to run the bases more effectively? Play more as a team? Heck, did they even have better players from year to year? Again, not to put a wet blanket on those stats, but increasing runs does not necessarily mean it was from better hitting; there's not a direct correlation in my opinion, and I am a Six Sigma Greenbelt so I know how to set up a DoE and what the data means.

FFS Post #5 - I don't think I ever heard Howard at the clinic state that the forearm must, or even should, be stacked at contact. It's a drill to keep the bat in the hitting zone for as long as possible, thus increasing the chances of hitting a pitch. It just so happens that in doing that the forearm is stacked for quite a while. The speed of the pitch and the reaction time of the hitter will determine where the forearm-elbow relation will be on contact, but the drill is to keep the elbow slotted and the barrel in the zone. I had the girls do something different in doint the BIG ZONE drill - use their old swing, unstack the forearm, swing with the Power V, whatever - to show them how the barrel being in the zone changes with different technique. Using the old method of "hands to the ball" showed many of the girls, and their parents, that the barrel is only in the path of the pitch BEHIND the plate and WAY IN FRONT of the plate, in which one parent said "so that's why they foul the ball off to the right into the fence - I told her to swing sooner". If they are lucky to hit the ball with the "hands to the ball" method it's because their hitting it on the neck and the result is a weak dribble.

Mth03 - whenever we bat, as a team, we go over the matrix in a semicircle with me in the center as the "pitcher" - bat to outside corner of plate then to shoulder with proper grip, feet shoulder width or slightly wider, bend at waist then knees to get balanced, pitcher ball to glove means bat off the shoulder, pitcher at 12 o'clock is "KA" position (the load) which is small step with front foot and hands move back (this is also where they FEEL the coil of their swing get loaded), pitch comes in elbow/knob to ball inside pitch and bat parallel, bat through hitting zone, then contact is the "BOOM" to finish the KA-BOOM of the ball being launched to the outfield. They then do this when the bat before each and every pitch. If they don't do it, they don't get a pitch thrown until they do. One girl last night who just learned the method 15 minutes prior almost took my head off - TWICE! And yes, she's one of the slow pitch convert.

Like I said, the method is mainly to show a girl how to hit by having her FEEL the differnce. Having a parent do the same thing made their eyes open, literally, to the differnce. I had rec ball practice again last night - half of my team are converts from slow pitch, so they're not use to the speed of the pitches. Within one week, all but one girl is hitting with power and smiles on their faces (The one girl who isn't hitting is so afraid of the ball she flinches on an outside pitch automatically). For rec ball at this age, I'll take smiles over anything else, even a doubling of runs scored.

Wook

Wook

I learned also that you must document your process as to what you are actually doing verses what you think you see.

Dr. W.Edwards Deming said, "Your process must be measurable and observable and then how can we test to see if our process changes actually made an improvement?"

A controlled DOE using MLB players may yield a higher average other than .266 if you could take the ego out of the players thinking that what got them this far may be based more on their athleticism verses hitting mechanics.

A hitter making 16 to 20 million dollars and an instructor making 125, 000 dollars usually will not change anyone's mind set to change in my opinion.

TSW was supposed to have said to an aspiring young player while having a conversation about hitting, look out there and tell me what you see?

Green grass! TSW pointed out the grass is green just like money and every time you get a ball to hit the grass you can make more money and if you hit it over the fence you can even make more money! So when someone tries to get you to change your swing mechanics talk to some body they have worked with and see if they are doing better or worse before you change anything.

Wookie sounds like do they have a process capability study and have they completed a gauge R&R study or are they just tampering with the process?

We laid out a process and it sounds as if it is working!

Then start looking at the data and see when you introduced the change and what effect it had on the process!

Thank God your kids are not being paid and just want to have fun and get better while doing it!

Thanks Howard

Is there a place that I can see what the "Matrix" is?

jazz10NE said:

Is there a place that I can see what the "Matrix" is?

Click to expand...

+1
Where can I read more about this system? google wasn't much help.