Should we use MLB hitters as examples?

[Ken Krause]

Now lets throw in a couple differences....spine attachment and angle differences, narrower and round shoulders, carrying angle of the girls elbow, wider hips, however flatter and thin in structure, knees more under them causing the Q angle differences, ham string is not as balanced as to the male knee causing ACL issues, front of foot is usually wider however heel of foot is narrower.

Good points. Lots of physical differences. Some are obvious, some are not. I know when I swing a bat some of my girls use I feel very out of control. It's just too danged light for me. But I forget it might be heavy for them.

Ken John and I are friends and we have exchanged many ideas on using martial art as a way to teach. I took two years of before heading into the Navy back in 68 and the balance we were taught was first and foremost the most important aspect of basic understanding of how our body works when doing a complicated move. My wife is an RN in OBGYN so I have a lot of material to read and sources available. I have people at Children's Hospital Cincinnati Sports Med as I use as resources on drills etc so I can find out if the drill will or can hurt my girls. John teaches kick boxing at St. Thomas and we were talking about using our martial arts as to punching and pulling the glove in to add additional force when throwing the ball. John said he ties the kick boxers hands behind them to isolate the lower half of the body for balance techniques. He asked me to try what he has done by having a girl throw with their hands behind their back so they just feel the legs and hips and what their shoulders must do without using the arms or hands. Same thing with hitting when your hands are behind your back. A lot can be learned when you work with other people who have a common interest in teaching and do not have a paradigm of it only works one way.

I took a year of it back in college. Was pretty good, too. I had no trouble sparring with most higher belts. But then I changed colleges and that was that. Still, the principles are there. Balance is really key, especially when you're doing bigger kicks. That's some of that cross-training a lot of boys and girls miss these days because they end up specializing so early.

I keep hearing about the golf swing and let me regress slightly...Tiger Woods is teeing off and a photographer is using his camera to take a series of shots and Tiger turns around and says come on guys can't you see I am teeing off! I will have you removed if you do it again! Wow! I bet AP would make a great golfer as he can stand in front of drunk fans, yelling and screaming, flash bulbs going off and facing a ball that is going 90 MPH and never loose focus and hit it out of the park! That is all I need to know about the golf swing. Give me someone I can relate to to teach a kid who knows nothing about a swing and has to hit a moving ball and then we have something to talk about!

Not to mention Tiger doesn't have to do it with parents, coaches and fans all yelling advice to him! "Keep your head in, Tiger!" "Hands back!" "Watch for the trap on the left!" It's a wonder the average girl can hit at all with all that stuff rattling in her head.

One last story...I worked with a person last night using Skypes an on line real time video service for 1 hour and 25 minutes.I could see her and she could see me. He had made the connector and hand path device and had a cut off bat handle and a rubber cord in it. She hit a few balls and basically pulled everything and had a poor weight shift and poor balance and no hand separation. When we were done she could hit the ball exactly up the middle into our zone and then we worked on her hitting the outside pitch with authority. During the outside lesson I stopped to get in the throwing technique and after about 15 minutes she was throwing much harder and we went back to the outside pitch and dad was all excited as was she.

Nice! Best feeling in the world -- except for maybe winning the Lottery.

 

[straightleg]

Not to mention Tiger doesn't have to do it with parents, coaches and fans all yelling advice to him! "Keep your head in, Tiger!" "Hands back!" "Watch for the trap on the left!" It's a wonder the average girl can hit at all with all that stuff rattling in her head.




That's Funny


Straightleg

 

[Hitter]

Chris I said there would be similarities. I agree you have to start with a technique be it linear or rotational. What I am saying is the pitching is different, the athletes are different and there will be differences in how they do things. There will never be a cookie cutter swing that all athletes will emulate perfectly if we try to do that you may take away some god given talent that you never gave a chance to see. No human from one to the next will ever do exactly the same thing so all we can do is get them as close to what is perceived as the correct way of doing things. What is the right way? Yours? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe for some but not for others. That is my point everyone is different, simple human nature.

I have heard this argument about the cookie cutter approach used in various discussions. Martial arts is 1,100 years old and they have some absolutes that all are required do perform to show an understanding and proficiency of knowledge of THEIR style. Bruce Lee comes along and upset the old masters with his style and the war was on as to the martial arts masters. A lot was rooted in tradition of that is the way it was and should always be. Softball and baseball are about 125 years old and we keep defining what is good, better and best and then pick out a swing and proclaim this is what I was talking about. I saw TSW on on The History Channel a while back and saw him training by sitting in a chair watching a movie screen with an enemy plane taking evasive maneuvers and TSW had two broom sticks with wires in his hands and had to put the enemy in the cross hairs. Then it showed him on the back of a flat bed truck moving down a road shooting clay birds with a shotgun. Eye hand coordination drill of the extreme. TSW had 20/10 vision, Bonds no matter what anyone says had that eye hand and vision skill not to many people have as well as many others. I see balance lacking in every kid I have ever worked with boy or girl. Getting a good two eyed look is like a whole new world when standing in front of a mirror and asking them if they can see them self and does your neck or shoulders feel comfortable? Then we move their back foot about two inches towards the plate and it feels better and they see the ball better. The trick is finding what works for each hitter after they learn some basic techniques. Mechanics for me have always been first and style comes second and it has worked pretty well.

You do not give a kid the keys to the car without some knowledge so why would hitting be any different? Basic drivers education first! In Indiana 12 hours with an instructor and then the parents MUST sign a letter they gave the kid 40 more hours of instruction!

Movement Errors Caused at the Perceptual Level

"At the initial learning stage, a student commonly makes movement errors by misunderstanding the proper structure of the skill. In other words, while learning, a student is sometimes unable to fully understand the teacher's instructions. With an improper image of the skill, the student's motor cortex will send inaccurate signals to the related muscle groups, reducing movement errors. A student's misunderstanding of the skill can result from any of several potential causes.
Teachers commonly use verbal instruction to teach students about limb positions, proper stance, what to watch and listen for, and how to perform a particular skill. The goal at this stage is to provide the student with the right image of the skill as a guide for practice. Intellectual ability plays an important role in understanding the skill; therefore, some students may understand instructions quicker than others because of individual differences of intellectual abilities. Similarly, the student's motivation and attention span can affect learning. If the student has a limited memory capacity, a lengthy instruction can cause confusion, especially when the student is learning a complex skill. All of these factors can impair the student's ability, to conceptualize the correct image of the skill."

After reading this what do you think they were trying to describe or teach to do?

Thanks Howard

 

[SBFAMILY]

Kind of sound like my golf instructor at one of my lessons. I'm still into the grip it and rip it baseball swing, so I figure I will never be a good golfer. Why I guess I don't like to talk about golf and a comparison to baseball/softballs swings . It has caused me a bunch of $$ in lessons.

 

[Tewks]

Howard - As I am sure you know, there are certainly many learning styles, so you have to adjust your instruction to get it to "click" in different ways for different learners.


For the argument that girls have no interest in watching MLB players because they can't relate, do they feel the same way about male instructors? If Howard does a demo, how is that different? (Is it the bat? I've recently seen video of instructors swinging brooms and PVC piping to illustrate points.)

I am really struggling with any argument that MLB swings can't be of value to the softball community. I showed Bustos to my high school baseball guys the other day and they loved it. To me, the video is more about the feel than what is seen. If you can't feel what the player is doing, seeing it doesn't matter. (And feeling requires getting up and swinging the bat - especially if it is something new and different!!!)

 

[Ken Krause]

Not to speak for Howard, but Tewks I think his last paragraph was making the same point as you. It's the ability to provide the right image for the movement. In my mind that should be gender-neutral. If I need a MLB hitter image to show what I want someone to do, I'd use it. If I can find a high-level softball player doing it, I'd use it. My focus is on whether the instruction gets through, not on the tools I'm using for it.

Did I get it right, Howard?

 

[Cannonball]

I think what is telling, at least for me, is the people who work with young ladies and the ones who don't. For example, my dd's select coach is VERY GOOD at communicating with young ladies. People assume it would be the same. I also agree with the post where it was said that these young ladies try so very hard. I've found that to be true almost to the point that if you give them the impression that you are disappointed in them, they do take it to heart. For my dd, we've (wife and I) have never laid a hand on her. I can make her cry simply by saying that I'm disappointed. In coaching/instructing her, I can do the same simply by showing my disappointment.

Per the comments on taking MLB clips and breaking them down, sure and great idea. Perhaps my experience isn't the same as the norm. However, so many of the young ladies I work with are so in to Olympic Players that they simpy care more when viewing what these ladies do. I'm certain that many of you have attended the Olympic Tour games and seen how enthralled our daughters are around these elite players. That is my point and not that you can't use MLB Players.

Finally, I knew that Howard was going to be at a university in Southern Missouri. We were not able to attend but several friends not only from this site but from my area all wanted to try to get there to see him. I live over 5 hours away from there. That should give some of you the respect that Howard has generated in the softball world. Howard, I hope that you find a way to someday make it to the St. Louis area.

 

[RichK]

I like to tell our parents that the swings are similar to set expectations, ie, we are NOT hitting ground balls and squishing bug/turning wrists over/slapping backs. Most think there is such a thing as a "softball swing" -- and that's it. I think that's step 1. Step 2 is whether MLB swing is the right model, seems like it is and it isn't. I like to see the similarities between good FP and MLB swings and then also the differences, ie, Pujols or Bonds, and just admire their strength and the ways they've optimized what they are doing to be the best at it.

 

[Ken Krause]

Per the comments on taking MLB clips and breaking them down, sure and great idea. Perhaps my experience isn't the same as the norm. However, so many of the young ladies I work with are so in to Olympic Players that they simpy care more when viewing what these ladies do. I'm certain that many of you have attended the Olympic Tour games and seen how enthralled our daughters are around these elite players. That is my point and not that you can't use MLB Players.

That's a vastly difference experience from mine. Most of the girls I work with have no idea who the elite fastpitch players are, for the most part. They've heard of Jennie Finch, and Cat Osterman, because they've been on TV and in magazines a lot, but they don't know a single hitter. They don't watch the WCWS. So other than one being a girl and one being a boy, most don't know Crystal Bustos from Albert Pujols. Sad, but true.

Some do watch MLB occasionally with their fathers so they know Cubs players (which isn't exactly the model you want to follow).

 

[Tewks]

That's a vastly difference experience from mine. Most of the girls I work with have no idea who the elite fastpitch players are, for the most part. They've heard of Jennie Finch, and Cat Osterman, because they've been on TV and in magazines a lot, but they don't know a single hitter. They don't watch the WCWS. So other than one being a girl and one being a boy, most don't know Crystal Bustos from Albert Pujols. Sad, but true.

Some do watch MLB occasionally with their fathers so they know Cubs players (which isn't exactly the model you want to follow).

Who are the elite SB hitters? I'd love to head to youtube and start snagging clips.