DD freezing up during games while at the plate

[Katie Bearn]

She need to find the Positives in every at bat! If she strikes out, she needs to find the positive in her at bat, maybe she didnt swing at a pitch in the dirt or something. If she popped out, at least she made contact. The mental game is huge with this sport

 

[lhowser]

She is only 10. Maybe tell her walks are good but nothing feels more awesome than smashing the ball.

Tell her for a week you'll give her .50 for a walk and $2.50 for a clean hit into the green. Then just let it go.

When she hits a few...she'll have more confidence and she'll build on it herself. Have a little fun with it.

Later you can support being more selective and the value of just getting on but at age 10...hit it!

 

[teammom2]

DD went through that when she was younger. She didn't want to get in trouble for swinging at bad pitches so she over compensated by not swinging at all. Some drills helped. She even had to spend some time at soft toss swinging at anything just so she could learn to see the pitch she wanted. Try not talking about it and just working on it and see what happens. Too much chatter never helped my DD and it still doesn't.

 

[BT3100]

Time to break out the good ole' wiffle ball and bat. Spend some time with her letting her get hot on the wiffle balls.
This will get her some confidence back. My DD and I used to spend hours outside hitting the wiffle balls over the roof. At the start of this year she was struggling at the plate. I was confused and came on here for answers. Got some good help but then it clicked.. She wasn't having fun at the plate. A few days of wiffle ball put her back in the zone

 

[okie]

Teach her what the strike zone is...if you are handy" something like this is very helpful:

Chris, im kinda curious about this picture. Is it something to just give a visual strikezone or was it actually used during live pitching practice?

A little backstory: We have a 10U rec team and a month before the season started we took them to the city and let them play in several tournaments. Facing pitchers throwing a high volume of strikes and 45-55 mph the girls hit the ball unbelievably well (team average .542). We get back home, and start playing rec league and they cant hit at all. We have racked our brains, watched videos of them hitting before, and hitting now and it is unbelievable how different their swings are. They went from line drives in teh grass, to grounding out to 1st and 2nd base.

I think the biggest culprit is the pitching (or lack there of in rec league) where your lucky if you get a pitcher that can throw 40% strikes and the average speed is probably 30-35 mph, maybe a couple low 40s. In the travel tournaments, our girls expected a strike and with the ball on them very quickly, muscle memory kicks in and you saw the nice fluid swing. In rec ball though, rather than drooling over a 35 mph meatball and waiting on it, they are expecting a ball and by the time they realize its a strike, they just fan at it.

We have tried alot of hand drills (pitcher full motion, flashes number at release point of pitch) and they do great at it but hasnt seemed to help their hitting. I was just curious about your contraption and its application. Seeing the ball at the release point is one thing (hip), having a better understanding of the balls path and plane during its flight is another. Im wondering if that tool couldnt be set up say 15-ft. (modified of course) from the pitcher to give the girls a better understanding of where a ball should be at half way if its going to hit or miss the strike zone.

Hell, maybe im the one now overthinking it, lol. As i said before, our biggest problem seems to be recognition of a hittable pitch soon enough, any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CJ D]

At the risk of being accused of not thinking real life, and ordering kids what to do (coaching them), instead of just having fun, it really does come down a bunch to approach at the plate.

Think about it a minute. What you just posted tells you all you need to know. In the tournament games they were expecting strikes. They were expecting them. They went to the plate expecting to have to swing every pitch. And thus, they were swinging "their" swings. The ones they do all the time in practice. The mindset was there that "here comes a strike...I'm going to have to swing". Sure...they can get caught up in swinging at a few bad pitches because they are planning on swinging, especially as they are younger and learning pitch identification. But very few times will they let perfect strikes go by, and rarely will they be chopping them into the 1st base fence. I'm betting at this point, though, you are getting a ton of arm swings. The kinda stuff that you sit there and say "why are they swinging like that?". Lots of weak hit balls. Tons of stuff to the right side on righties...left side on lefties. Very few power swings and very few swings that look like they do in batting practice or off the tee. I'd venture further to say that if you just focused on their loads that there is very little of that, regardless of swing outcome. It is because they are going into the at bat thinking "probably going to be a ball, but if it's a strike, I've got to swing". So, instead of getting a good quality swing, they are loading, if at all, once they determine a ball is a strike. By that point, it is too late, and they give you a reaction swing. imagine giving the kids bp with a pitching machine that's throwing nothing but strikes at the aforementioned 45-55 mph. They can do it great, right? Now tell them to stand in there and you're just gonna feed the balls without them knowing when. No arm circle. No cue for them to time off of. It's gonna look like the swings you are seeing now. Bad. All this to just say this. Don't have them try to recognize hittable pitches. Preach to them that every pitch is a hittable pitch. React to balls, not strikes. Recognize non-hittable pitches. They are swinging at everything else. It is, in fact, a totally 180 degree difference in batting philosophy than telling them to hit strikes.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

A reasonably timely thread for us. 12yo DD is doing exactly the same thing. Last season, 0 hits. Not one in 20+ games. I think she put the ball in play twice. Just wouldn't swing. This season is more of the same. We've been wiffle-balling in the basement a lot, and 2 games ago she took 2 mean cuts for foul balls before a dropped 3rd got her on base. By far her best at bat in the past 2 seasons. In her game last night, she vapor locked on 2 pretty strikes for a K. She knows she's doing it, and the frustration really gets to her.

I keep telling her it will happen for her, but we agreed to stop that since it's actually frustrating her more. The new deal is pay for play: $1 for a ball in play, $2 for safe at 1B, and escalating amounts for extra bases. Hope it works.

 

[Greenmonsters]

A reasonably timely thread for us. 12yo DD is doing exactly the same thing. Last season, 0 hits. Not one in 20+ games. I think she put the ball in play twice. Just wouldn't swing. This season is more of the same. We've been wiffle-balling in the basement a lot, and 2 games ago she took 2 mean cuts for foul balls before a dropped 3rd got her on base. By far her best at bat in the past 2 seasons. In her game last night, she vapor locked on 2 pretty strikes for a K. She knows she's doing it, and the frustration really gets to her.

I keep telling her it will happen for her, but we agreed to stop that since it's actually frustrating her more. The new deal is pay for play: $1 for a ball in play, $2 for safe at 1B, and escalating amounts for extra bases. Hope it works.

IMO, you are jumping the gun by putting the reward not on the desired action, but the result of the desired action. If your objective is to have her SWING, start by rewarding her for every SWING! An escalating reward system can be added for the RESULT of the swing or at bat. But, and its a huge but, it MUST start with the mental approach that once she's in the box she will be swinging at EVERY pitch unless she sees it is a pitch she "can't hit". With time/experience/confidence, "can't hit" changes to "a ball", which ultimately evolves to "a pitch I can't hit well given the count/game situation".

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

IMO, you are jumping the gun by putting the reward not on the desired action, but the result of the desired action. If your objective is to have her to ,start by rewarding her for every SWING! An escalating reward system can be added for the RESULT of the swing or at bat. But, and its a huge but, it MUST start with the mental approach that once she's in the box she will be swinging at EVERY pitch unless she sees it is a pitch she "can't hit". With time/experience/confidence, "can't hit" changes "a ball", which ultimately evolves to "a pitch I can't hit well given the count/game situation".

Easily changed/modified. Good idea.

 

[Strike2]

Hitting is always a work in progress. Once reasonably good mechanics are learned, it's all in the head. I've got parents and even an AC who try to bully their kid into a hit, with predictable results. Teaching the right balance between a confident "get after it" mentality and not being stupid is a real challenge, and it takes time. My kid is tearing it up right now, but as I know from personal experience, that can go away in a heartbeat. If a pitcher insists on walking her, she accepts. OTOH, my pitchers love kids who just swing at any old thing they decide to throw. If the pitcher serves one up to DD right now, it's likely going to a patch of grass near the fence, but if her bat goes cold, she'll still likely find a way. I've got other kids who I can't get to swing at a pitch to save all our lives, but they somehow manage to get on base, and incredibly have an OBP as good as my kid's currently gaudy number. We all know who survives in the long run, but getting on base is better than striking out all the time.