How do you teach tracking the ball?

[Hitter]

Many times hitters who struggle may not being seeing the ball well or what some term a good two eyed look.

What do you teach to get this good two eyed look?

Is there anything you do while working off the tee or soft tossing to encourage tracking the ball as to techniques?

How do you encourage tracking the ball to hit it during game time at the plate?

Thanks Howard

 

[Nor10]

For tracking drills I use colored foam golf balls. I soft toss two at a time and will call a color out that they then must hit. Not sure if this is online with what your asking or not.

 

[FJRGerry]

A method I've read about, but haven't used, is simply having the hitter in the batter's box (during pitching practice) without a bat so she learns to read balls & strikes. Taking the pressure off having to hit lets her focus on ball path. Have her call BALL or STRIKE at the point where she would decide to swing, then see if the catcher & pitcher agree!

 

[Hitter]

FJRGerry

We term that shadow hitting and yes it helps.

What I was looking for is more along the lines of do you move your head, just eye movement, roll the shoulders in a little, use an open or closed stance?

What do you do if anything when working off a tee or soft tossing to aid in the tracking mechanics?

Thanks Howard

 

[druer]

Actually I back them up from hitting and have them bunt to work on tracking the ball in. I have them hold the bat very near the end so there is only like 7-8 inches of bat head available to make contact. Then they have to bunt the ball cleanly using only that small amount of bat head. You'd be surprised how well their eyes will actually track the ball all the way into the bat in order to avoid injury. I start them with soft toss wiffle balls, then Club-K's (softies), then reall softballs. (Great variation is Lite Flite pitching machine and make them get the bunts down even with the curves/screws that the machine can throw that takes SERIOUS tracking.)

Then I'll move them to fake bunt (normal hand position), slap ball (not pull back full swing, just slide bottom hand up to top hand while body is still in bunting position).

Then progress to real swing.

Another thing I do is something I learned from someone else called Big-Focus to Little-Focus. Concept is that when pitcher is not on the mound they are to just allow their eyes to relax. When she steps on the mound they should try to zoom in on just her shoulders and down so that rest of field gets blurry and is out of focus. When she presents their eyes go to the pitchers hip and focuses tiightly. Now when the ball comes out of her hand they have a little-focus, so the little ball looks much larger than it does when they see the entire field. Not only does it help with the vision but as the brain is truly trying to focus it helps cut out all of the chatter that they hear around them. It also aids in speed recognition of the pitch as they aren't foold by the fast pitching motion and slow pitch, or slow pitching motion and fast pitch. They only relate to the narrow area of the ball and track it.

 

[Hitter]

Actually I back them up from hitting and have them bunt to work on tracking the ball in. I have them hold the bat very near the end so there is only like 7-8 inches of bat head available to make contact. Then they have to bunt the ball cleanly using only that small amount of bat head. You'd be surprised how well their eyes will actually track the ball all the way into the bat in order to avoid injury. I start them with soft toss wiffle balls, then Club-K's (softies), then reall softballs. (Great variation is Lite Flite pitching machine and make them get the bunts down even with the curves/screws that the machine can throw that takes SERIOUS tracking.)

Then I'll move them to fake bunt (normal hand position), slap ball (not pull back full swing, just slide bottom hand up to top hand while body is still in bunting position).

Then progress to real swing.

Another thing I do is something I learned from someone else called Big-Focus to Little-Focus. Concept is that when pitcher is not on the mound they are to just allow their eyes to relax. When she steps on the mound they should try to zoom in on just her shoulders and down so that rest of field gets blurry and is out of focus. When she presents their eyes go to the pitchers hip and focuses tiightly. Now when the ball comes out of her hand they have a little-focus, so the little ball looks much larger than it does when they see the entire field. Not only does it help with the vision but as the brain is truly trying to focus it helps cut out all of the chatter that they hear around them. It also aids in speed recognition of the pitch as they aren't foold by the fast pitching motion and slow pitch, or slow pitching motion and fast pitch. They only relate to the narrow area of the ball and track it.

I like the bunting however I am mindful they better not get hurt doing it. I made a few different bunt bats. One is I took an exhaust valve out of a car and drilled a through hole in the sweet part of the bat and put a spring in between the 25 cent diameter of the valve and bat and then thread the other end and put a nylon friction nut on it. Then I painted the valve head white. When they bunt and it hits the valve it collapses the spring and makes a loud click sound and you know you were on target! The other one I made from a wood bat and cut the bat and used an old wooden crutch frame and reattached the two pieces and built a cage from 1/8 wire and they catch whiffle balls with it. You can see the ball into the cage.

The tracking you mentioned is more on line of what I was looking for. Now what do you tell her to do with the head or eyes or do you use a combination and if so how do you teach it?

Thanks Howard

 

[SBFAMILY]

druer good point that many don't understand how the eyes work. We teach our kids not to focus on the hip till she is in the K position. Howard has given us many vision dirills, but this is his post and he has pages on this subject , so I will let others post answers. I just wanted to point this out, as I see kids starring at the pitcher the whole time in the box. Try it some time. Try to focus your eyes on one spot and see how long you can hold it without blurring your vision. One reason why they can't see the ball with the best form in the world!

 

[ifubuildit]

I will exclude myself on this one because I know where Howard is heading. One of the things I do is take whiffle balls and put colored dots on them. Then I pitch them to my hitters. They have to call out the color of the dots before the ball gets to them. When your pitching from about 25 feet away they have very little time to do anything but focus on the ball if they want to call the correct color. This forces the "Little" focus that Druer talked about in his post.

Dana

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Show the girls how to find out which eye is dominate. Sometimes, a righty batter is seeing the ball with her left eye, when she should be turning her head, all the way toward the pitcher, to see her with her "right eye." It is like sighting down the scope of a rifle. If you close the wrong eye, you will miss the target by several inches.

I see MLB players quite frequently turn their body to face the pitcher, prior to taking their stance, in the batter's box.

 

[Hitter]

Show the girls how to find out which eye is dominate. Sometimes, a righty batter is seeing the ball with her left eye, when she should be turning her head, all the way toward the pitcher, to see her with her "right eye." It is like sighting down the scope of a rifle. If you close the wrong eye, you will miss the target by several inches.

I see MLB players quite frequently turn their body to face the pitcher, prior to taking their stance, in the batter's box.

The dominant eye has nothing to do with tracking the ball however using both eyes and getting a good two eyed look means everything. I took a vision training class at the NFCA a few years ago and met Dr. Bill Harrison of Slow the Game Down.com.

Several high profile D1 coaches where there also and most had no clue what he was even talking about and I was amazed as I have always felt being able to see the ball and track the ball was very important to the hitter.

Dr. Bill as he known explained, “Convergence: Human beings have binocular vision, meaning that although we have two eyes, we perceive only one image. Each eye receives an image from a slightly different angle, and this creates the impression of distance, depth, and three-dimensionality.

In binocular vision, the two eyeballs turn slightly inward to focus on a close object so that both images fall on the corresponding points of both retinas at the same time. This action is called convergence. In order to produce a single image, the six pairs of extra ocular muscles must move together with perfect coordination.

When our hitters pick their stance they are in their stance while standing in front of a mirror as if the pitcher is standing in front of them. We want them to be able to turn their head far enough towards the pitcher to get a two eyed look and to be able to see the entire white area around the eyeball with the lead eye. This means no straining of the eye in the socket. HOWEVER they will feel a uncomfortableness and straining in the shoulders and neck area. In most cases this can be eliminated or greatly reduced by moving the back foot two inches in towards home plate or what is termed a 5 degree offset, as noted in TSW's book The Science of Hitting. I have a few that use a squared stance however most use a 5 degree open stance. The kids who have had the lazy left eye surgery use a closed stance. It is important that the hitter pick their stance and then repeat it at every at bat.

We test our hitters, if you want to call it a test by taking a pencil that has very small writing on the barrel of the pen and have them look straight ahead and I move the pencil towards them to see if their eyes are working together as noted above. Usually one eye moves faster to focus than the other. We encourage them to do the pencil drills about 4 to 6 minutes a day.Their eyes will glaze over and they will look like they are on drugs. They simply hold the pencil or pen in an outstretched hand horizontally to the ground and look at the smallest print on the pen or pencil and slowly move it towards their nose and their eyes will look like they are crossing and this is accommodation and they will feel a strain in the eyes muscles and these are the 6 extra ocular muscles. I think of doing this as weight lifting for your eyes. Hold that position and without moving your head up or down use your eyes and look at some thing ahead of you and you will feel the eyes release and the tension is gone. Crystl said she use to put a piece of tape on a ceiling fan blade and lay under neath the fan while it was on the slowest speed and blink her eyes rapidly. She said she could stop the blade visually and would attempt to stop the blade at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions.

Dr. Bill pointed out in his class, "While a passenger in a car, if you look at a line of trees, guard rails or fence posts, they will flash by you if you are looking straight ahead and be out of focus or a blur. However if you pick one out and give your head a head start, turning your head to the catcher a little bit, your eyes being able to move faster than your head, will focus on the one object and you will see it more clearly!" As he said slow the game down!

Using vision drills can help team the eyes to work together. We use the pencil drill, card drill, figure 8 and bead drill. These can be found if you Google Burton Worrell and there is an explanation for each drill.

Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated had an excellent article titled, Hitters Rule and it was around March 2002. In it various players talked about the pencil drill and eye teaming. I thought the hitters were inspecting their bat for cracks when they were actually warming their eyes up by looking at the small print on the bat label and then looking towards the center fielder, bigger pencil I guess.

Any drills we do, the hitter looks through the net at a stereo system in the middle of my work bench area that has two red lights on it and as they get to toe touch they turn their head, using the nose as an indicator, slightly toward the catchers position to track the ball to the tee and then they hit he ball. I can see if they are not doing it and they can hear by the sound of the bat when they do it well. We have a white rag glued inside the tee to promote keeping their head down after contact.

I use a pseudo science technique by taking a strobe light and mounting it directly over the hitters head, then turn the lights out in the garage. Caution: Make sure no one in the garage is prone to having seizures as the strobe light has been know to trigger them! Let their eyes adjust and them soft toss a few balls and usually they are just above the ball and you and the hitter will see that perfectly in slow motion. Laura Berg was here at the house and we did this with her and I told her before we started she would not hit a ball because of how she tracked it...28 balls later I gave her the secret! During the 28 ball marathon we had fun at her expense! Remember Laura was the one who put a palm print on Presidents Busch's back with rosin during the last Olympics. I took my finger and said turn your nose to here and keep your eyes on the red light in front of you. Now as you stride give your head a head start and track the ball with your eyes...she hit 10 balls in a row! We turned the lights back on and hit some more and in her words I am seeing the ball better now than ever. This was one of the first drills I did when I met Crystl back in 2002.

I wouild like to hear about what others use to promote tracking the ball please.

Thanks Howard