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One thing that’s really important to understand is what is developmentally appropriate for young athletes in their swing. It’s definitely a good idea to get the center of the body and the legs working the way they should for athletes below the age of seventh grade. It’s also fine to do upper-body drills to reinforce proper swing mechanics. However, many young athletes are not yet strong enough to make these moves functionally in their swing. So, when it comes to evaluating swings, make sure your expectations are set properly—otherwise, young athletes will feel like their swing is broken all the time. That’s not good for any athlete.
Sometimes, when it comes to thinking about your swing, less is more. When it’s time to compete, you can’t be out there thinking about how you’re trying to move all the time—you just have to compete.
When it’s time to practice your swing, you can think about it all day if you’d like. But when it comes time to play, you just need to play.
Being coachable is good. Being so coachable that you change your swing every two days is bad. Believe in what you do—if you don’t, you’ll fall for whatever someone else tells you to do.
Baseball, like all sports, teaches valuable life lessons to players. It teaches them how to struggle with adversity, communicate with teammates, and deal with failure. Here’s what David Jacobson has to say about the kinds of lessons people learn from playing sports.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look quite a bit like a nail. Many times, the reason an athlete has a bad game has nothing to do with their swing. But oftentimes, the only solution a coach has is to change the athlete’s swing—though that’s often not the right solution.
There are tons of reasons you could have a bad game that are unrelated to your swing. A coach should try to exhaust as many of those options as possible before resorting to swing changes. Unfortunately, many simple things—like adjusting your swing’s aiming point or doing basic visual training exercises—are under-taught and largely unknown by most baseball coaches. As a result, changing the swing is often the only tool in the coach’s toolbox.
That’s okay—this isn’t the coach’s full-time job. But as a player, you need to understand that changing your swing every week is never going to be helpful.
A lot of people swear by taking the first pitch. Here’s why that’s probably not your best strategy.
The swing up/swing down debate is not nuanced enough. We really need to be thinking about where the athlete is now and where they’re trying to get to.
Also, for older athletes—how well do they rotate?
If they rotate at an elite level, they may need to think “swing down” in order to achieve an attack angle that is functional. Elite-level rotation usually causes the athlete to swing up quite a bit, so that often needs to be managed.
If you rotate well and sequence, well, you don’t need some magic, upper body move to hit away as well.
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Have your movement and strength training plan actually support what you do on the field.
Mastery it’s very difficult, but once you have command of your craft you reach a new level.
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