Hey how's it going? We're gonna talk about youth baseball hitting mechanics
today and this is very important because as coaches we need to be able to
communicate with our players in a very understandable way how to use these
swing mechanics and implement them into their swing so they can have success.
Now, as coaches, sometimes we do too much and I really want to break down the big
ideas and the fundamentals in this video so your players can have a lot of
success when they're hitting but before we get into the video I want to say
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Alright, so when it comes to youth baseball hitting mechanics the
first thing we want to think about is the stance right now I see a lot of
players they want to start open with their stance a lot of guys want to start
close with their stance and really I don't have a concern with either one of
these typically when you start open guys who start open usually have a hard time
seeing the ball or they when they start close they open up with their front foot
so coaches like to implement this to get them to start moving towards the ball
that's a great idea same thing for being closed some guys
fly open so some coaches think let's start them closed
so when they do open up it's not as much okay you got to play around with that
one and see which one works okay so I don't really have any issues with either
one of them and it can be different for every single player but the number one
thing the main thing when it comes to youth baseball hitting mechanics in the
stance is that you have to be athletic what I see too many times is the players
being really tall or you know and not having any bend in their knee whether
they're open or closed or they're kind of just real narrow with their feet and
standing here like this we don't want that at all so whether they're open or
closed I want them to be athletic be athletic okay have that data but out
that that chest out knees bent okay you want to be athletic
tell them to think about it as if they were playing basketball defense or
something like that or being a linebacker in football they want to be
athletic you could try to even push them when they get set up have them
get set up and give them a little push to see if they're off balance right you
want to make sure that they're on balance they're strong they're athletic
they're ready to swing because that's an important part of the baseball swing
which brings me to my second point which is setting a body angle and this just
means that we want to have them create an angle to swing around their spine so
that means having their chest tilted over a little bit now this goes in to
tip number one because that puts us into an athletic stance right we want to have
our chest over our toes if we're sitting back like this we're not athletic we're
on our heels right we want to be athletic we want to be on the balls of
our feet so when we tilt this chest forward not only are we being more
athletic in our stance but we're also creating an angle around our spine to
swing around right so now my spine is at an angle this way right so when I'm
swinging I can get on playing with that pitch a little bit better if I'm
standing straight up my spine is straight up and down and I go to swing
I'm gonna have a very level swing and I don't want that a lot of lot of times
those guys get really rotational the bat gets away from their body they get
around the ball they roll over and they're hitting weak ground balls if
they're hitting anything at all so be athletic set the body angle chest over
toes and have that angle within your spine to swing around to get better
contact and hit more line drives the last thing I want to mention about body
angle is you'll see a lot of MLB guys starting straight up and down but as
they get into their stride then they're getting that into that angle as youth
players let's just preset that angle right away so we have less room for
error okay again we're not MLB players just yet so we want to work on making
this movement simpler getting the feeling of it so we can have a lot of
success then as you get older when you get into high school college
professional baseball if you want to start more erect and then get into your
body angle that's totally fine but for youth let's start preset with a good
body angle so the third thing you want to think about when we're talking about
youth baseball hitting mechanics is knocking the knees in okay so we talked
about being athletic setting the body angle but now we want to knock the knees
and one thing I see guys do who are even in a good
let extense they're bent at than these but they're stacked their knees are
stacked over their feet and we don't want that because baseball is not only
rotational energy but we also got to have some drive some linear energy some
drive off of that back leg and if our knees are stacked over our feet it's
hard to do that so what we want to do is just have our players knock their knees
in just a little bit we don't want them to force them in too much where they're
like really squeezing in but just get them to their natural stance here good
and athletic create the body angle and then wherever they're at just have knock
the knees in just a tiny bit this way it's easier for them to create that
linear energy and create that ground force from the back through their swing
so they get more energy more power and they're hitting more balls hard the
fourth tip for youth baseball hitting mechanics is that for the stride and the
stride is a tough one because young players sometimes don't have control of
their body we want to start small and then get bigger with our stride over
time and as we get better okay so if we got a guy who's not swinging that great
and he's really struggling we want to keep his stride very minimal okay maybe
it's just a rock and a go okay maybe we're not even picking that foot up and
down these have having way too much trouble timing the ball maybe we start
with a very simplified stride okay maybe just a toe top and get down and go okay
now as the guys get better they have a better understanding of their body
they're having better timing they're having better movement better mechanics
then we can get a little bit more with the stride the next phase of the stride
I would say is to lift it up and gain a little bit of ground going forward okay
that will be the second progression of the stride if the players doing well
after that we can go into a modified leg lift which is just lifting it up a
little bit and get going forward and then the last thing will be your regular
leg lift stride where you're here you're lifting that leg up and drive it forward
now that is the most advanced of these strides and I wouldn't implement that
with any players who aren't fully comfortable with their mechanics their
movements and already having a ton of success so start basic and then as the
player develops you can progress them to the next ride to the next ride to the
next ride as long as they're having sess in the one previous before that tip
number five for youth baseball hitting mechanics is to get on plane with the
pitch now this one's very debated topic right your a lot of coaches say swing
down to the ball you hear a lot of coaches say turn the barrel get on on
underneath that ball hit the ball up in the air get some good launch angle the
main thing is you want to get on playing with the ball okay if you want to hit
line drives you want to hit that ball back where it's coming from right the
pitcher is going to be throwing the ball on a slightly downward angle we want to
swing on that slightly upward angle now if we set our body angle we create that
axis with our spine to swing around we don't really have to swing on that
slight upward angle right I said slight upward angle but if we create this axis
we're actually doing that ourselves because now we're swinging down it feels
like we're swinging down we're actually swinging around our axis on plane boom
we hit that ball now it feels like I'm coming upward but because I set that
body angle I've got this angle here where my bat is coming up because my
spine is this way does that make sense so if we set our body angle we're gonna
be able to get on clean with the pitch a lot better and we're gonna hit more line
drives so being able to communicate this with the player is the hard part okay
makes sense to us coaches but to communicate that with the player is a
tough one so really stick with the body angle and tell them to get on playing
with the pitch when they can see a visual of that pitch coming in and
having their bat go on that same plane and hitting line drives they're gonna be
a lot more successful so try to communicate this as best you can
I usually just start with talking about body angle we're setting your spine so
that you can be an athletic position once they get that typically the swing
takes care of itself so start there and then you can elaborate depending on how
well the player is understanding what you're saying the sixth tip for baseball
youth hitting mechanics is to keep your body angle throughout the whole swing so
that you don't pull off what I'll see a lot is players will start good and
athletic and they go to swing in the first movement is coming off that body
angle and they come straight up their spine comes straight up shoulder pulls
out sometimes their head pulls out and then they're long and around the ball so
we want to start with a good body angle but we also
finish with a good body angle a good finish should look like this
boom contact and then finish I should still have a little bit of a tilt over
the plate I should have kept that spine angle I should be almost leaning over
the plate this way sometimes you'll see young players when they swing if they
create a lot of rotational energy this back foot will actually come this way
that's okay I tell my guys the only way I want to see you fall off balance if
anywhere is this way I don't want you to be going forward
I don't definitely don't want you to be going this way or going this way so if
they come off a little bit this way that usually just tells me that they're
keeping a good body angle and they've got good rotational energy because what
happens is this back kind of pulls them out and then that back foot kind of
pulls them over the plate which is okay so just remember when we're setting that
body angle we're trying to keep that body angle through the whole swing tip
number seven for youth baseball hitting mechanics is to not be a robot right now
we talked about a lot we talked about a lot of mechanics different movements in
the swing and this can be overwhelming to these youth athletes when we put it
on them so start slow when you're explaining it to them and then give them
something new over time over the course of the season to work on okay
development is a slow process if we give them too much sometimes they're gonna be
like robots they're gonna be thinking too much and they're gonna be real stiff
and then it's like okay aesthetic here we go and throw the hand oh and it just
looks horrible right we can't overwhelm them if they got too much information in
their head their swing is gonna shut down so work on one thing at a time even
though you see something like you tell them to work on something and you see
something else let's try to stay away from giving them that piece to work on
until we've fixed the main thing so maybe just start with this dance right
just start with the stance gettin athletic knees knocked in boom those
three things work on it until he gets it then we can work on some of the other
things if he's pulling off of that body angle fly and open whatever it is
because the last thing we want is our guys to be like robots up there we don't
want them being real short real tight and having bad swings of course a swing
is supposed to be very fluid have good momentum have good movement in our
bodies and that's what we're trying to incorporate with these young players
again the hardest part for us coaches is communicating this we
understand this you see it I'm explaining it to you and I'm sure you've
already heard this and you already understand it the issue comes when we
try to implement it and we know so much now that we're trying to give these
players all of that information and then we just overwhelm them so start slow use
these fundamentals these youth baseball hitting mechanics and give them a piece
at a time build them up slowly develop them slowly they've got a long time
they're young so they've got a long time to develop and just get them motivated
to really want more information from you so they could work on it and keep
getting better over time that's what it comes down to for youth baseball hitting
mechanics I hope you guys like this video I'm gonna be giving away one of
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