Poking at the Ball
By Phil Plante
http://www.swingthebat.net
Hitting a fast moving baseball is difficult – if it were easy, we’d all be in the major leagues. Younger kids, especially, are just learning to judge the trajectory and timing of the pitch and often have trouble making contact. It’s a lot easier to make contact if you take a slow half swing at the pitch – essentially just trying to put the bat in front of the ball - than if you take a full hard swing at it. I see a lot of kids do this - what I call “poking at the ball”. The player may have a good swing; but he isn’t confident in his ability to make contact using it, so he resorts to poking at the ball with a weak, half swing.
Poking at the ball often does improve the player’s ability to make contact but, as we all know, the ball doesn’t go very far. Unfortunately, in youth baseball, just putting the ball in play will get you on base much of the time. Hence kids get an unfortunate positive feedback when they poke at the ball, hit a weak grounder, and end up on base anyway. Kids just want to get on base, and if poking at the ball gets them on base consistently, they’re good with it! Parents and coaches, however, know that there’s no future in poking at the ball, and want the kids to take good swings and drive the ball for legitimate hits.
So how do you convince a child to stop poking at the ball and take a good swing instead? Here’s my prescription, no magic.
Step 1. Make sure the player has a mechanically good swing - his "A" swing
Step 2. Make sure the player knows the difference between his A swing, and how he pokes at the ball when at bat, and why the A swing is better. The goal of every at bat should be to get a good pitch to hit, and put your A swing on it.
Step 3. Reinforce the A swing with BP, lots of BP. You’ve got to accomplish two things: 1) get that A swing into the hitter’s muscle memory; and 2) convince the hitter that he can actually hit the ball using his A swing. The BP is not helpful unless the hitter uses his A swing
Step 4. Unfortunately, the hitter may swing and miss more often when he starts using the “A swing” – a negative feedback that may cause the hitter to revert to poking at the ball. Be ready for it, and keep reminding the player to use his A swing
Step 5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 until it sinks in