Stopping at Contact

[FiveFrameSwing]

Fiveframe I can post just as many looking like Brett, try the drill I posted and then explain how the muscle group in your back work , before you attack it with more pictures. .The reason for the additional resistance is the intrinsic muscles are activated with the head tilted down slightly or the chin is below the horizon. These muscles are located on either side of the spine. To prove this have the hitter reach behind them at about the belt line with their thumbs and raise and lower their head and they will feel the intrinsic muscles firm up when the head is down and loosen up with the head tilted upward or the chin above the horizon. Now have them grip the bat and pretend like they are hitting a ball off a tee and stop and hold their position and take your baby finger and push rearward with their head up and you will feel little to no resistance and then repeat with their head down slightly and you and the hitter will feel the resistance! When hitting during soft toss or off a tee you will hear the difference in the sound the bat makes when their head is down slightly. We put a white rag inside the tee to promote keeping the head down after contact

SBF .... I thought I was agreeing with you.

I almost wrote .... "good post, here are some photos to further support that the eyes are NOT looking at 'contact'".

Instead I figured I'd let the photos speak for themselves and not bias anyone.

Bottom-line .... one makes a 'prediction' of where 'contact' will be. They swing towards that 'prediction'.

The head is tilted down ... but the eyes are not in-line with the point of 'contact'.

 

[Tewks]

Near contact the bat and the lead arm forearm should go from approximately 90 degrees to approaching parallel. This should happen in the last frame or so before contact. This is whip/wrist uncocking. It's related because it relates to batspeed at contact.

Can you provide a detailed description of what is happening with each wrist to contact with "uncocking". I want to fully understand what you are saying.

 

[Hitter]

SBF .... I thought I was agreeing with you.

I almost wrote .... "good post, here are some photos to further support that the eyes are NOT looking at 'contact'".

Instead I figured I'd let the photos speak for themselves and not bias anyone.

Bottom-line .... one makes a 'prediction' of where 'contact' will be. They swing towards that 'prediction'.

The head is tilted down ... but the eyes are not in-line with the point of 'contact'.

I have used the 150 MPH air cannon and feel I understand how to track the ball. The commit to hit is made about 6 to 9 feet at the MLB level and that you can not see the bat collide with the ball. Some see the ball longer than others however the human eye can not see the bat hit the ball. If you will read the article from SI , Hitters Rule by Tom Verrduci, you may gain a different perspective of what can be done to improve tracking mechanics. This is why you see Bonds eyes forward and the bat meets the ball perfectly! What SBF is telling you is you are stronger with the head in a downward plane in relationship to the chin being above the horizon verses more upward as if tracking the ball in flight that was just hit. This is why we glue a white rag inside the tee to promote keeping the head down during CONTACT and has nothing to do with actually seeing the ball during contact. A lot of you explain what you think an elite MLB player does...we will be in Warren Penn. this weekend and I invite you to ask the Big Girl who taught her this as to keeping the head down during contact and then look at her swings and see what she is doing! She will tell you she hit the ball 300 to 340 before I ever met Howard and she hit one in OKC that was 465 feet....ask her what see does to do that as she can talk verses a video clip of what you thought she did! She has 20/9 vision in her right eye and 20/8 vision in her left eye! TSW had 20/10 in both eyes.

All of our kids can hit the ball off the tee blinded folded. I have demonstrated this at many clinics and it is no big deal.

Thanks Howard

 

[Tewks]

If you will read the article from SI , Hitters Rule by Tom Verrduci, you may gain a different perspective of what can be done to improve tracking mechanics.

You wouldn't happen to have a link to this... I can't find it with a google search.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I have used the 150 MPH air cannon and feel I understand how to track the ball. The commit to hit is made about 6 to 9 feet at the MLB level and that you can not see the bat collide with the ball. Some see the ball longer than others however the human eye can not see the bat hit the ball. If you will read the article from SI , Hitters Rule by Tom Verrduci, you may gain a different perspective of what can be done to improve tracking mechanics. This is why you see Bonds eyes forward and the bat meets the ball perfectly! What SBF is telling you is you are stronger with the head in a downward plane in relationship to the chin being above the horizon verses more upward as if tracking the ball in flight that was just hit. This is why we glue a white rag inside the tee to promote keeping the head down during CONTACT and has nothing to do with actually seeing the ball during contact. A lot of you explain what you think an elite MLB player does...we will be in Warren Penn. this weekend and I invite you to ask the Big Girl who taught her this as to keeping the head down during contact and then look at her swings and see what she is doing! She will tell you she hit the ball 300 to 340 before I ever met Howard and she hit one in OKC that was 465 feet....ask her what see does to do that as she can talk verses a video clip of what you thought she did! She has 20/9 vision in her right eye and 20/8 vision in her left eye! TSW had 20/10 in both eyes.

All of our kids can hit the ball off the tee blinded folded. I have demonstrated this at many clinics and it is no big deal.

Thanks Howard

Thank you Hitter.

I wasn't able to locate Verduci's article titled "Hitters Rule". If anyone has a link to it, or can attach the PDF version, it would be appreciated.

A book I enjoyed on the topic is "Keep Your Eye On The Ball" by Robert Watts and A. Bahill.

I don't doubt that good hitters keep their head down. Not only do you offer a reason for it, but that's what I see in the best hitters.

You don't see this nonsense .....

You instead see this (focus on the head) .....

I've had girls performing tee swings with their eyes closed also ... and yes, they were able to make solid contact. I used to do this with pitching, and brought it over from my training there.

Regarding placing a white rag on the tee .... I do something similar ... yet different. Let me use "long tee" as an example. I hang a visual aid on the back of the cage wall ... this serves as a reference point for the girls to be looking at ... they are directed to think of an imaginary pitcher. I then place a second tee about 6-8ft in-front of the plate. The girls will initiate their swing while looking at the marker on the back of the cage wall, and their eyes shift to the second tee at 'contact' and through 'extension'.

I want my "long tee" drills to incorporate "eye tracking". I do not want the girls 'looking' at the tee that they are hitting off of ... as that is not where their eyes will be directed during live swings.

 

[Hitter]

Thank you Hitter.

I wasn't able to locate Verduci's article titled "Hitters Rule". If anyone has a link to it, or can attach the PDF version, it would be appreciated.

A book I enjoyed on the topic is "Keep Your Eye On The Ball" by Robert Watts and A. Bahill.

I don't doubt that good hitters keep their head down. Not only do you offer a reason for it, but that's what I see in the best hitters.

You don't see this nonsense .....

You instead see this (focus on the head) .....

I've had girls performing tee swings with their eyes closed also ... and yes, they were able to make solid contact. I used to do this with pitching, and brought it over from my training there.

Regarding placing a white rag on the tee .... I do something similar ... yet different. Let me use "long tee" as an example. I hang a visual aid on the back of the cage wall ... this serves as a reference point for the girls to be looking at ... they are directed to think of an imaginary pitcher. I then place a second tee about 6-8ft in-front of the plate. The girls will initiate their swing while looking at the marker on the back of the cage wall, and their eyes shift to the second tee at 'contact' and through 'extension'.

I want my "long tee" drills to incorporate "eye tracking". I do not want the girls 'looking' at the tee that they are hitting off of ... as that is not where their eyes will be directed during live swings.

Yes we always have them looking towards an object through the net and then look at it at toe touch and turn the head slightly away using the nose as an indicator while keeping the eyes forward giving the head a head start. I got the idea from Keep Your Head on the Ball back in 1999. Putting the rag inside the tee so after you hit the ball they will see the rag came from Dr. Bill Harrison of Slow the Game Down.com

Thanks Howard

 

[Ade's Dad]

I think this may be the link you are looking for.
Armed with better tools and new techniques, today's - 03.25.02 - SI Vault

 

[Hitter]

You wouldn't happen to have a link to this... I can't find it with a google search.

Bob and Five frame...Here is some of the information and things we do. There was a thread I started on tracking that has a lot of it in there also.

Sports Illustrated, March 25, 2002 had a great article on hitting titled, Hitters Rule, by Tom Verducci. He covers what is called the contact hitter (Ichiro), the blended hitter (Giambi) and the power hitter (Thome).

On page 69, “Says Delgado, “At times when I’m going good, I can see the bottom half of the ball on it’s way to the plate. That’s were I want to hit it.” And “Jeter is another hitter with extraordinary vision. He’s often able to see in the blur of the pitcher’s arm moving forward whether what’s coming at him is the bottom of the pitcher’s wrist (indicating a fastball) or the side of the wrist (indicating a breaking ball). “I’ve tried, but I can’t see it, “Yankees catcher Jorge Posada says. “I don’t know how he does it.” Rodriquez trains his eyes to focus quickly. While in the on deck-deck circle, he holds his bat a few inches from his face, the trademark facing him. He focuses on the trademark, and then quickly shifts his focus to the face of the center fielder.”
Page 70, Martinez. “He performs eye exercises twice a day, for 45 minutes in the morning and then for five to 10 minutes about 30 minutes before game time. Martinez keeps a worn card, slightly larger than an index card that has a green circle to the left and a red circle to the right. Inside the perimeter of both circles are the words THESE LETTERS, though the R is missing from the green circle and the first T in LETTERS is missing from the red. When he stares at a spot between the two circles, because of a process optics experts call binocular fusion, a brown circle appears with all the letters of THESE LETTERS.” (Note you must stare at the center between the circles and yes it works!) The difficult letter for me is the (T) in the brown circle. I wear tri-focal glasses. “This exercise strengthens his eye muscles.” And “Attempting to improve his depth perception, Martinez will shift his focus from one of those letters to a spot on a distant wall with the same grid of letters, only larger, and then back again. Martinez also bunts against those high velocity tennis balls. (Other times, after slowing their speed, he tries to read the number on them as they whiz by.) “After tracking a smaller ball going 150 miles per hour,” Martinez says, “a baseball going 90 doesn’t seem so fast.”

The vestibular system, which contributes to our balance and our sense of spatial orientation, is the sensory system that provides the dominant input about movement and equilibrioception. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of the inner ear, situated in the vestibulum in the inner ear (Figure 1). As our movements consist of rotations and translations, the vestibular system comprises two components: the semicircular canal system, which indicate rotational movements; and the otoliths, which indicate linear accelerations. The vestibular system sends signals primarily to the neural structures that control our eye movements, and to the muscles that keep us upright. The projections to the former provide the anatomical basis of the vestibulo-ocular reflex, which is required for clear vision; and the projections to the muscles that control our posture are necessary to keep us upright.
The vestibulo-ocular reflex. A rotation of the head is detected, which triggers an inhibitory signal to the extra ocular muscles on one side and an excitatory signal to the muscles on the other side. The result is a compensatory movement of the eyes.
Main article: Vestibulo-ocular reflex
The vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) is a reflex eye movement that stabilizes images on the retina during head movement by producing an eye movement in the direction opposite to head movement, thus preserving the image on the center of the visual field. For example, when the head moves to the right, the eyes move to the left, and vice versa. Since slight head movements are present all the time, the VOR is very important for stabilizing vision: patients whose VOR is impaired find it difficult to read, because they cannot stabilize the eyes during small head tremors. The VOR reflex does not depend on visual input and works even in total darkness or when the eyes are closed.
This reflex, combined with the push-pull principle described above, forms the physiological basis of the Rapid head impulse test or Halmagyi-Curthoys-test, in which the head is rapidly and forcefully moved to the side, while controlling if the eyes keep looking in the same direction.
They used a professional baseball player named Brian Harper and two others however my interest centered on him since the others hand no experience. He demonstrated traits I would expect a pro to use. The way they measured the people is a hoot and you have to see the picture from the book to really appreciate it. If you have ever seen Elton John with the huge glasses, and then put sensors on the head including what looks like an antennae with him wearing a back pack for a power supply, that is what it looks like.

Of interest were the others in ability to track the ball like the pro. They give the direction of tracking the ball in degrees from the fovea of the eye. To gain an understanding of this he suggested using a 12-inch ruler and holding it in front of you at arm’s length. Look at the left end of the ruler and the right end is about 34 degrees off the fovea. While looking at the left end you won’t be able to read the numbers on the right side. Because the two other people were using just their eyes or just their head, they did not track it as well as the pro. Brian tracked the ball using head and eye movements, keeping his eye on the ball longer than the other persons did. He did not track the ball to the point of bat and ball collision.

I made a tool like the ruler to explain how the hitter may or may not be tracking the ball correctly. I used a wooden bat handle and put a piece of drill rod in it. I took a ball and put numbers 1 through 6 on it and drilled a hole in it and threaded the other end of the drill rod and put a nut on it so the ball would not slide off. The handle has an area where the drill rod meets and it is painted red. They hold the bat handle in their hand away from them at arm length looking at the red area. I ask if they can read the number on the ball to their left. Then I ask them to keep their nose/head pointed at the red. Now they look towards the ball with only their eyes and then I reverse it keeping their eyes on the red and their nose/head pointing at the ball.
They can feel the strain it causes looking out of the corner of the eye socket versus moving their head so they are not straining their eyes. Now I ask them to look at the ball with their eyes and head. As I move the ball towards the handle they track it by using smooth-pursuit eye head movements. When they are hitting under/over the ball in soft toss their head is usually pulling out and after explaining the ball on the stick they try and keep the head and eyes working together better. Yes, some of it is hitting technique/style but lets not get into.

I will have to make this two post....

Thanks Howard

 

[Hitter]

Bob and fiveframe post number two continued.....

Note: He did not see the bat and the ball collide!

KYEOTB page 175; To define the terms used above: “Yaw is rotation about the vertical axis, as occurs when shaking your head when answering no to a question. Pitch is rotation about a horizontal axis, as occurs when shaking your head when answering yes to a question. When a ship alternately dips its bow and stern, it is said to be pitching. Roll is rotation about a different horizontal axis, as occurs when cocking your head. When a ship rocks side to side, it is said to be rolling.”

To point out to my students if they are turning their heads far enough to the left as a right handed hitter I have them stand in front of a mirror and tell them the pitcher is in the mirror. They look directly at themselves in the mirror while I am standing behind them. I ask them if they can see the whites on both sides of their eyes. Is their head/neck in comfortable position? Next I have them load up and see if the head rolls away from the pitcher’s window of release or are they rolling the shoulder in so far that it pulls the head off from the pitcher. What I usually see is they are looking about where the second baseman is playing their position! In my opinion unless you can see the white on both sides of the eyes your head is not turned far enough to the left.

So the hitter has a better understanding of what I see their head doing, I’ve taken a helmet liner out of a construction helmet. We attached a pointer (used when giving presentations) that extends out about 3’ from the center of the forehead above the eyebrows and has a 1” diameter foam rubber ball attached to it. They are surprised to see how far their head is positioned to their right and the strain that it puts on their eyes to look back towards the pitcher. Both eyes are not equally seeing the ball. The left eye is basically being used and not that well in my opinion.

This is why in my opinion measuring off from the plate is so important. By using the 5-degree offset it allows them to see the ball better and still cover the entire plate. Two inches may not seem like much however it allows your head to rotate further left comfortably.


Thanks Howard

 

[SBFAMILY]

FiveFrameSwing, Ok that is sometimes a problem with posting clips from MLB players. I couldn't tell if you were agreeing or not. Howard did a better job of explaining what we teach.