Baseball and Softball Hitting Fundamentals

Spring is here and many of the little league baseball and fastpitch softball organizations have drafted their teams and finished preparation for their season. Hitting, more than any other aspect of the game, is used to gauge whether the season was a success or failure by the parents and players. Let’s break down the elements of the swing and describe the proper mechanics.

The Stance The batter's stance is the foundation for the swing. The standard batting stance places the batter’s feet just outside the shoulders with your weight evenly distributed between the inside balls of your feet. The feet are square to the pitcher so that a line drawn through your toes extends directly to the pitcher. Flex your knees slightly and bend at the waist with your upper body tall and your front shoulders pointing directly to the pitcher. Hold your hands about shoulder level, aligned with the inside of your rear shoulder, four to six inches away from your body.

Loading The purpose of loading is to shift your weight and hands backwards so that they can travel a greater distance and can apply more torque before making contact with the ball. When a batter loads their power, they pick up the front foot and slightly turn the front knee inward to transfer more weight to the back leg and coil the torso. Shift the hand alignment from in front of their rear shoulder to behind the shoulder. Finally, softly stride the front foot forward directly toward the pitcher with the front foot remaining parallel to the pitching rubber. When the front foot lands, it stiffens to accept and control the forward weight transfer, which occurs in the next step.

Bat speed generation through forward weight transfer and hip rotationThe next activity in the batter's swinging motion is to generate bat speed through the forward weight transfer and hip rotation. There are two popular schools of thought to generate bat speed: linear hitting and rotational hitting. A pure linear swing focuses on generating as much speed from the legs through the weight transfer from the rear side (or back leg) forward by using of a long stride, which lengthens the time that the bat is in the hitting zone. Conversely, a pure rotational swing has the batter take a small stride with the focus on generating more power from the legs and torso with an explosive hip rotation, which provides greater power through the strike zone by leveraging the strongest parts of the human body. You need both linear and rotational movement to generate the maximum bat speed and maximize the time the bat is in the hitting zone. All good hitters use both physical levers to generate bat speed. Just before the pitch is released, the batter is loaded and starting their stride forward. The front foot lands with the leg slightly bent. The batter begins the weight transfer forward toward the point of contact. The front leg straightens and stiffens while the hips rotate as the bat goes through the strike zone to the point of impact.

The Swing To be a successful hitter, the swing must be repeatable and efficient. The bottom hand is palm down and guides the bat through the zone. The top hand is palm up and pushes the bat through the zone. From the loaded position, the hands start forward and down, leveling off through the hitting zone. The arms are slightly bent as the bat extends through the strike zone with the eyes tracking the ball from the pitcher's release through the point of contact. When the hands are about eight inches from the point of contact, the top wrist fires propelling the bat barrel forward.

Follow Through The follow-through is the continuation of the swing after the ball has been struck and provides hitting power and direction to the flight of the ball. After making initial contact with the ball, the batter needs to continue the flight of the bat forward until the arms reach full extension. The top-hand arm straightens incrementally throughout the swing and reaches full extension at the point of impact or slightly beyond forming a triangle with the shoulders. Keep both hands on the bat through the extension until the top-hand wrist and forearm have fully rotated over the top of the bottom-hand arm and wrist. Holding the bat until this point naturally starts the bats vertical movement out of the hitting zone. As the bat starts its vertical flight, the bat should travel through the point where the hitter points the bat directly at the pitcher's head and finishes wrapping around above the front shoulder. Finishing high with the bat above the shoulder provides lift to the ball that enables line drives to soar over the infielder's head.

Hitting the ball around the baseball diamond is often considered the key determinate of success or failure during the baseball season by many parents and youth sport players. With perfect practice of the hitting mechanics, a young baseball or fastpitch softball player can develop an efficient and repeatable swing.

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