Baseball Hitting: How And Why Practice Is Mandatory For Your Success!
Real good hitters are not born that way. They have worked very hard and spent countless hours to reach that status. If you are a baseball coach, a player, or a baseball parent who wants to help your child, I truly hope you realize that there is simply no substitute for hard work and practicing your baseball swing. Are you willing to pay that price?
You’ve got to go out and hit, hit, hit and then hit some more. Some professional players take 500 swings a day in the off season. It’s not by accident or good fortune that some of them bat .330 or hit 35 home runs per season. Maybe that’s why they are professional hitters, because they pay the price and work very hard at it.
Back in the 1970’s, I heard about a golfer who just won a major tournament. Do you know what this golfer was doing after the final round of golf? He was practicing for a couple of hours hitting balls out of the sand trap because he had a poor shot out of the trap late in the tournament. Need I say any more? This player won the tournament and was practicing for several hours AFTER his victory!
Getting back to baseball, the real good hitters are always working on something. If you’ve had problems at the plate for a couple of games, it’s not a big deal at all and “welcome to the club.” Go out to the field or the batting cages the next day and work on hitting a specific pitch that’s causing you hitting problems or a specific location that’s creating problems for you.
It is very important to practice your swing often. The best way to get good habits is through repetition. It’s unfortunate but too many players have a strong tendency to practice what they already do well instead of practicing on the areas that they need work on. Avoid falling into this trap. You will be well rewarded for practicing on areas that you need work on.
Let’s say you are a hitter that “eats fastballs for breakfast” but low and away breaking balls give you problems. If you spend 90% of your baseball hitting practice working on hitting the low and away breaking ball, you will become efficient at hitting that pitch also. So now, you have become a very good hitter of both the fastball and the low and away breaking ball. Do you have any idea as to what a problem that presents for opposing pitchers?
You have now become a feared hitter because you no longer have a glaring weakness for a pitcher to exploit. Oh sure, even the great baseball hitters handle some pitches better than other pitches. But the point here is that they do not have glaring weaknesses. And it’s all because they practice what they do not do well at the plate. It took a fabulous M.L.B. hitter two years to learn how to hit a “slider.” Do you know how he learned how to hit the “slider?” By spending countless hours of batting practice hitting the “slider.”
The big question is…are you willing to pay that price? Baseball parents, players and youth coaches, I post a new free baseball article on hitting, pitching or fielding every week at LarryBaseball.com that you and other baseball people you invite will benefit by reading. I promise you will be raising a few eyebrows.
