Teaching hitters to slap-where would you start?

I have a 12U LL team with a lot of lefties. So I'm thinking great opportunity to develop slapping, only problem is that none of the girls have ever seen slapping.

I'm thinking of basically showing them what Jessica Mendoza shows in her slapping clip YouTube - Jessica Mendoza Softball Training - HIT: Slapping - softball : Softball.comand having them start by doing that off a tee.

But I don't know- any of you have recommendations on how best to initiate and develop this?

Something I'm also considering is having the righties learn to do it as well. I remember Marc D talking about a team they played that was pulling out all the stops and had righties slapping as well as lefties. Where the batters steps go straight toward the pitcher, I don't see why not slap from both sides of the plate

thanks!

While it is self serving since I'm the author, Marc has my DVD series for sale on one of his websites: Winning The Short Game - Softball Slapping - Bunting - Baserunning - Sliding The series includes a DVD on slapping and walks thru proper footwork, hand position on the bat, soft "drag" bunts, slaps into the ground and power slapping. If you want a video that shows slapping start-to-finish that's a start for you. While I do a lot of instruction in the video three different young ladies actually demonstrate all of the drills so that you/your players will see different players that they can relate to. The video includes the proper things I'm explaining, but it also shows the common mistakes that are made and corrective action that can be taken. Or course you and the team can join Marc and I on the Softball Cruise next year and I can demonstrate in person.

Pretty bored at work this morning though so I'll go through a few tips here:
1. If you have natural lefties they have somewhat of an advantage over righties learning as they are already used to seeing the ball from that side of the plate.

2. However, one of the things that I teach for slapping is that the goal is to get into a foot race. So the slappers responsibility is to try and lay the ball down soft or put it on the ground to a particular position and then put the pressure on the defense. Girls that are righties don't have any "power" left handed so they tend to do really well initially learning to have "soft hands" from the left side because they don't know anything else. Girls that are lefties tend to want to "kill" the ball everytime which defeats the purpose. As they do learn to disconnect from that "power" mode all of the time and learn the effectiveness of doing things more softly and more controlled, they then catch up pretty quickly. At some point they are ready to then also learn "power slapping" (trying to get the ball over the infields head and drive it) and at that point they have the advantage as it takes righties quite a while to develop a good left handed swing.

3. One of the keys to me is start with the footwork and upper body mechanics and practice that over and over and over before ever trying to connect with the ball. We all have a tendancy to want to look where they are running. The key to being successful slapping is being able to get to that low outside pitch. In order to get to that pitch they have to be comfortable moving forward towards the pitcher, but not looking at the pitcher, they must continue to track the ball while they are on the move. Also critical is continuing their movement towards the pitcher rather than pulling away and trying to run to first base. That, very natural instinctively flaw, is why most slappers are so vulnerable to the low outside pitch. One of the things I suggest and the girls demonstrate in the video is to have them physically use their bats to draw a line that extends the inside part of the batters box another 3-4 feet towards the pitcher. As they practice their footwork the line serves as a great visual reminder of what their path should be. I recommend that they turn back in towards that line (counter clockwise if you will) as a simple reminder to "stay on that line." If they turn clockwise and continue they are building the muscle memory for pulling away from that line. Hopefully the visuals for that translate well in writing.

4. Next key is hand placement on the bat. One thing that most good batting instructors will tell you is that you shouldn't really choke up very much on the bat, because as you go through the motion the knob will then hit your wrist and force you to roll it over rather than finishing correctly. For slapping that purposeful rolling and staying on top of the ball is a good thing. Secondly consider why coaches so frequently tell girls to choke up with 2 strikes ... the closer their hands are to the contact point the more control that they have. For slapping the key isn't strength its in the position of where the ball goes. If the defense is playing back they have to lay the ball down softly. If the corners are up they have to slap the ball to either of the holes. If they are off by 5-6 feet on position, they are out. But if they have the control to place it right where the defense has a hole, they will be on. I recommend they have their hands up at the end of the tape.

5. You can use a traditional tee in helping them learn how to lay down a moving bunt (drag bunt) and they can just practice over and over. However, that doesn't work so well when trying to help them learn how to slap the ball into the ground as the tee is obviously in the way as they try to drive through the ball. For that learning or pre-game warmups I recommend one of those flexible poles with the bright yellow rubbery/plasitc balls at the end. You can hold and position the ball exactly where you want it and they can get a true feel of slapping "down" on the ball without the complication of the ball moving while they are just learning the footwork and then how to attack the ball while moving. As they advance and are comfortable with separating their hands and their feet, staying on the line, and keeping their eyes connected to the end of the bat instead of looking where they are going then you can move on to soft toss from the side, and then finally from the front.

My biggest advice for coaches and girls learning to slap is to COMMIT to it. The worst thing you can do, or the worst scenario for the players trying to learn is the coach who gives them 2 pitches to try and slap and then says "You aren't good enough to get it this way so go ahead and hit right handed for the third strike." Now the player is in a situation where they are forced to see the ball from the other side of the plate, which is tough to do with 2 strikes on you. They establish that pattern and before taking the first pitch they are already assuming they will fail and coach will pull them back to the right side where they typically strike out. The other major problem is the coaches who think the players should be able to do it correctly in the first 1-2-3 at bats, and if they don't succeed they stop allowing them to slap at all. Now the girl feels like she has let everyone down and gets a negative thought in her head that she isn't good enough to learn new things. So understand as you get started it is a process. Doing it in practice is nothing like doing it in a game. Even doing it with live pitching in practice is nothing like doing it in a game. If you are going to try and build slappers, then commit to their needing the time to get comfortable, to learn how to develop softer hands, how to read the defense to try the right kind of slap for the situation etc. Consider what is really going on. Standing stationary hitting a ball moving at a rapid rate of speed with a round bat is something that many girls struggle with and that is after years of doing it. Adding movement to the mix and also trying to see the ball from the opposite side (at least for righties) and saying "to be successful the ball has to go here, here or here" is really tricky. But man there is a sweet reward once they get the hang of it, and the confidence that they can do it.

Wishing you the best of luck and don't hesitate to follow up with any questions you may have in the thread or through a PM.

Dalton

I would suggest starting from the ground up:

Beginning with the proper foot work,
Then advance to the tee,
Make sure to have the hitters hit the top of the ball,
Work on the hitter getting out of the box,
Once they have the foot work and tee mastered go to front toss behind a screen,
I make a game out of it from here, each player gets a turn, one front toss, they must hit the ball on the ground, get out of the box to first, if they miss or do not have correct form they sit, we continue until the winner or last girl standing,
The next step is pitching machine, and or live pitching.

This is how I’ve done it in the past and the kids seem to pick up on what we’re doing.

Once they advance to pitching don’t give up on tee work of front toss to keep the mechanics sharp!!!!

Really good advice. It takes a lot of practice. DD was a righty went left at 12. Now 15. She takes a T out in the yard and I have cones for targets. You can use plastic milk jugs. Set them up to give the kid where a good slap should hit the ground. They can then practice foot work and hitting the ball into the ground . She has worked with some excellent slappers that we have picked up tips from over the years plus she now has the power slap and the what we call the duck hit down. Take what the defense gives you is what each of the coaches she has worked with and keep adding to your offensive weapons. #1 weapon you have to have speed. Howard has taught her power and a drill , where you soft toss and then call what the hitter must do with the ball. Bunt, Drag, Soft Slap, Power Slap, hit.

PEPPERS said:

I would suggest starting from the ground up:

Beginning with the proper foot work,
Then advance to the tee,
Make sure to have the hitters hit the top of the ball,
Work on the hitter getting out of the box,
Once they have the foot work and tee mastered go to front toss behind a screen,
I make a game out of it from here, each player gets a turn, one front toss, they must hit the ball on the ground, get out of the box to first, if they miss or do not have correct form they sit, we continue until the winner or last girl standing,
The next step is pitching machine, and or live pitching.

This is how I’ve done it in the past and the kids seem to pick up on what we’re doing.

Once they advance to pitching don’t give up on tee work of front toss to keep the mechanics sharp!!!!

Click to expand...

All of our slappers are taught how to hit first and slap second as we want multi dimensional players.

SBFamily's daughter is one we converted from right handed to left and we taught her how to hit first.

We teach how to rotate the hips as needed by using the belly button as the direction we want to place the ball and it works for hitting and slapping as well.

Whately probably hits down on the ball at a greater angle than anyone I ever worked with.

I made modifications to the Instructo Swing to allow a tee to be put on the top bar just for slapping so we could build in the bat angle as we progress. If you drop the hands your bat will hit the bar. Whately swings down so much, we even had to add holes to the tee so we could keep the ball on it and it helped to get the slappers on a better angle faster while providing feed back instantly!

Eric even added a height adjustment bar to get it closer to the ground so it would be versatile enough for anyone to use. It along with the angle adjustment makes it a perfect all around hitting device especially for slappers. The angle adjustment made the entire product work better and my working with soft ball players added another dimension to the product no one thought about.

After the tee work phase we use the Barry Bonds drill with a right handers glove to perfect the foot work while catching the ball from a pitching machine.

Then I do a soft toss from the side and a little towards the catcher and they turn the eyes and hit the ball into our net which has targets on it to give them an idea where the ball would be as if it were on a field.

We do not teach a drop step and just cross over and go. We want them to hit and slap from the same positions off the plate in an effort not to give up what we are about to do.

The next thing we stress a lot of importance on is the batters box dimensions. From the back corner of home plate is 48 inches forward and 36 inches backwards toward the catcher and a line 6 inches off the plate. I keep a bottle of baby powder handy to mark off the plate when we can not have a properly laid out batters box so they can step to their mark without being out of the box. It is also explained that many times they will be playing on fields that DO NOT have a batters box laid out or that it is incorrectly laid out! We use their bat as a measuring tool and use the graphics on the bat so they can show the umpire what 48 and 36 inches actually is verses some umpires we have seen actually taking a bat and just estimating the front of the box.

Most of our right handed hitters can situationally hit also as they can slap, power slap and hit down on the ball as right handed hitters.

Druer we look forward to working with you on the cruise and trading ideas.

Thanks Howard

All you need is Larry Ray's DVD. He is with UofAz. and is the granddaddy of the slap.

Mendoza is good, too. I have seen her here (Uof AZ.) at coaches clinics.

Amy in AZ. said:

All you need is Larry Ray's DVD. He is with UofAz. and is the granddaddy of the slap.

Click to expand...

I second this. Although Larry has changed his technique. He used to teach hitting the ball down hard to produce a high bounce. Now he's teaching a pepper swing. He also teaches the proper footwork and where your left foot should be when you hit the ball. I can't stand it when I see slappers take two steps (right foot back, left forward) and they've moved absolutely nowhere. That's wasted movement.

Wow! A LOT of great info here- Thanks!

this is going to take me awhile to digest...

Few teach the drop step now. Almost all good slappers use the cross over step. Whatley, Berg, and most of Team USA. Thanks to Howard the DD got to talk to a few of them about slapping.

Like Druer said in point #3, footwork and the body... It was a few lessons before my dd was using a bat. Her instructor had her get the footwork down, then getting the hands in position. Did alot of drills catching balls off an iron mike with a glove. "hitting the ball" with the knob of the bat was another drill that really helped her get to the ball. I see alot of girls at tournaments that have no idea what they're doing; horrible technique. If they do happen to make contact with the ball, they're tiny little popups to the infield. Make sure she is going through the box smooth and steady, not a crazy uncontrolled sprint with her head bouncing all over.