Keep your eyes on the ball?

[coach james]

null

You answered the question for me... I agree the first third is the most important followed by the second. The final third is somewhat irrelevant. Meaning the timing was determined by the first, and the spin was adjusted to in the second phase, so the third phase is simply adding the first two together...

 

[lostbayou21]

Sounds like Google glasses would confirm or disprove a lot of these opinions regarding how much the human eye sees.

 

[rdbass]

Scope and Rope: A Visual Profile of Major League Hitters. and Rope: A Visual Profile of Major League Hitters.
http://www.frozenropes.com/home/national-news.aspx?d=177&title=Effect of Recognition/Release and Movement of the Eyes in Baseball

 

[CJ D]

Well, for example...the Cabrera thread....
http://www.discussfastpitch.com/sof...iguel-cabreras-ridiculous-plate-coverage.html

I'm not saying he is actually seeing the ball hit the bat. As has been said, it's likely not possible to see the ball hit the bat at MLB speeds. But he is surely trying to....at least his head focuses on the area of bat/ball contact. It would seem the farther the eyes track it, the better shot you have of hitting it.

I agree that the first third is the most important as well. That's where you make your decision...the rest is execution.

I guess again...clearly we shouldn't teach to not watch the ball. We're not dealing in major league speeds. I'm dealing with 12 year olds that if I don't absolutely stress to watch the ball all the way to the bat they end up looking at me on third base at the conclusion of a missed swing. I try to teach very limited head movement. Which ultimately ends up with the "shoulder to shoulder" chin placement. I know the reality of seeing it hit the bat isn't true for most. But how is this wrong to teach it this way??

Please understand that my goal is just to become the best coach I possibly can. I watch hours of videos on drills, different techniques, etc. Go to practices and watch other, successful coaches. Read hours on end here and other places. I'm sincerely trying to figure out why I do not need to instruct my girls to do this...

 

[grounded]

As a parent/coach, I don't believe its the wrong thing to teach, just the reality that it may not actually work. I do believe the 1st third is the most important...but somewhere after that the brain takes over and does its own thing...perhaps it begins to make sure the swing is in harmony...idk. I have plenty of pics of DD hitting the ball and eyes are on contact..ask her what she saw and can't say for sure. Just my observation of a 12yr old though. Plenty of people here have had loads of students...I only work with one

 

[RichK]

Why Albert Pujols can't hit Jennie Finch and science behind reaction time

Read More: An excerpt from David Epstein's new book The Sports Gene - More Sports - The Bonus - SI.com

>>

Since Pujols had no mental database of Finch's body movements, her pitch tendencies or even the spin of a softball, he could not predict what was coming, and he was left reacting at the last moment. And Pujols's simple reaction speed is downright quotidian. When scientists at Washington University in St. Louis tested him, perhaps the greatest hitter of his era was in the 66th percentile for simple reaction time compared with a random sample of college students.

No one is born with the anticipatory skills required of an elite athlete. When Abernethy studied the eye-movement patterns of elite and novice badminton players, he saw that the novices were already looking at the correct area of the opponent's body; they just didn't have the required cognitive database from which to extract information. "If they did," Abernethy says, "it would be a hell of a lot easier to coach them to become an expert. You could just say, 'Look at the arm.' Or for a baseball batter the advice wouldn't be, 'Keep your eye on the ball,' it would be, 'Watch the shoulder.' But if you tell them that, it makes good players worse."

As an individual practices a skill, whether it be hitting, throwing or learning to drive a car, the mental processes involved in executing the skill move from the higher-conscious areas of the brain in the frontal lobe back to more primitive areas that control automated processes, or skills that you can execute "without thinking." In sports, brain automation is hyperspecific to a practiced skill -- so specific that brain-imaging studies of people who train in a particular task show that activity in the frontal lobe is turned down only when they perform that exact task. When runners are put on bicycles or arm bikes (whose pedals are moved with the hands instead of the feet), their frontal lobe activity increases compared with when they are running, even though cycling wouldn't seem to require much conscious thought. To return to Abernethy's point, thinking about an action is the sign of a novice, or a key to transforming an expert back into an amateur.

Chunking and automation travel together on the march toward expertise. It is only by recognizing body cues and patterns unconsciously that Pujols can determine whether or not he should swing at a ball when it has barely left the pitcher's hand.

The result of expertise study, from De Groot to Abernethy, can be summarized in a single phrase that played like a broken record in interviews with psychologists in the field: "It's software, not hardware." That is, the perceptual sports skills that separate experts from dilettantes are learned, or downloaded (like software), through practice. They don't come standard as part of the human machine. That fact helped spawn the best-known theory in modern sports expertise, and one that has no place for genes.

 

[rdbass]

Well, for example...the Cabrera thread....
http://www.discussfastpitch.com/sof...iguel-cabreras-ridiculous-plate-coverage.html

I'm not saying he is actually seeing the ball hit the bat. As has been said, it's likely not possible to see the ball hit the bat at MLB speeds. But he is surely trying to....at least his head focuses on the area of bat/ball contact. It would seem the farther the eyes track it, the better shot you have of hitting it.

I agree that the first third is the most important as well. That's where you make your decision...the rest is execution.

I guess again...clearly we shouldn't teach to not watch the ball. We're not dealing in major league speeds. I'm dealing with 12 year olds that if I don't absolutely stress to watch the ball all the way to the bat they end up looking at me on third base at the conclusion of a missed swing. I try to teach very limited head movement. Which ultimately ends up with the "shoulder to shoulder" chin placement. I know the reality of seeing it hit the bat isn't true for most. But how is this wrong to teach it this way??

Please understand that my goal is just to become the best coach I possibly can. I watch hours of videos on drills, different techniques, etc. Go to practices and watch other, successful coaches. Read hours on end here and other places. I'm sincerely trying to figure out why I do not need to instruct my girls to do this...

Don't know where I read this (but tomorrow will find and post)
A hitter doesn't see the ball (talking baseball not sure if they said about softball) after a certain point in the delivery. The brain sees the ball, sees the path of the ball then does the estimated contact point. Yes, does the calculation of bat ball collision. All done by the brain. Yes guessing. I will find where I read that. At a certaain point your eyes can't follow the ball.

 

[rdbass]

Sport Science: MLB Vision - High School Baseball Video - ESPN

 

[MsDinosaur]

Don't know where I read this (but tomorrow will find and post)
A hitter doesn't see the ball (talking baseball not sure if they said about softball) after a certain point in the delivery. The brain sees the ball, sees the path of the ball then does the estimated contact point. Yes, does the calculation of bat ball collision. All done by the brain. Yes guessing. I will find where I read that. At a certaain point your eyes can't follow the ball.[/QUOTE]

I need to ask DD about hitting, but the other day she mentioned to me that when catching pitches that go upward out of the strike zone, she usually loses eye contact with the ball because her helmet cuts off the line of sight at the last minute. She said she catches those on based on her instinct of where the ball will be. I hadn't been aware that was happening.

 

[Osric]

I remember a story where someone once told Ted Williams he couldn't actually see the bat hit the ball. He proceeded to tar his bat and have a pitcher throw to him. He would call out where on the ball he hit it and was correct on nearly every pitch.

"Watch the ball hit the bat" is a fundamental. I would think you teach that first and then as the player develops you teach them in intricacies of ball spin and ball path. Not sure why someone would willingly stop teaching a fundamental.