Dig In Baseball

Player Blog: ASK COACH

ASK COACH is designed to foster lively, interactive discussion of the techniques and issues of youth, high school and college baseball. It isn’t a substitute for good training, and concepts and ideas discussed in this forum should be examined more critically with your coach or trainer.

Find Your Hips, Find Your Power

Still looking for your first homerun? Do you feel your swing doesn’t generate optimum power? Here’s the answer: focus on your hip rotation. Young hitters usually struggle to achieve consistent and powerful hip rotation. When you exclude your lower body from a swing, you lose power.

After your stride foot lands, feel the inside part of your back knee push slightly forward. Then, allow your back hip/knee/foot to rotate through completely as the bat hits the baseball. The heel of your back foot should finish pointing up.

Aggressively rotating your hips helps you as a hitter to tap your core strength. The more active you are at rotating your hips through contact, the more power you’ll create. Do you finish your swing with your back heel flat to the ground? If you do, it’s coming at the cost of valuable power and bat speed. This can be the difference between a ball caught in center field, and a ball launched over the outfielder’s head for extra bases.

The good news about correcting this flaw is that it comes down to understanding how your hips work inside the swing, and then, taking time to work on correcting it. If you’re a young hitter, making this small adjustment can especially bring about instant results. Hitters ages 7 to 10 struggle to achieve this complete rotation. They rely heavily on their upper body and lose tons of power.

Practice and isolate your hip rotation every time you pick up a bat. These extra reps bring about good muscle memory—if you focus during practice sessions more on correct mechanics than results. You don’t want to be in the batter’s box thinking about exploding your hips through the baseball. It should happen naturally and aggressively because of all the good swings you’ve taken to prepare yourself. Practice until it becomes second nature. Put in extra time. It will pay off. Preparation breeds confidence. Dig in! Can you recall a time you were aware of your hip rotation and hit the ball hard? How did the result differ from when you swung using only your arms? ~ By Coach Will Frazier. Coach Frazier has given more than 8,000 hours of hitting, pitching and catching instruction. Contact him at wfrazier@diginbaseball.com.