Hit4power resources
The Ultimate Guide to Recruiting, hitting lessons, and player development
Hi, Mike. Big time of the year for a lot of our high high school guys, our juniors and our seniors, is recruiting. We get a lot of questions. Should I be paying for this service? Should I have a social media?
What should I be doing to get recruited? Where should I be looking? As a guy that came from Shepherd University, shout out Bretton Doyle alumni, what is your take or what should what should these guy high school guys be doing to get recruited? Yeah. The big thing for me is is make sure you’re building your brand, as one that is just very solid.
Like you don’t wanna be posting a lot of just kinda like nonsense, pictures just kinda like with your buddies that kind of stuff. It’s okay to do some personal stuff. But you wanna provide some content for when a coach hears your name and he searches you that he’s able to find some video of you or find some stats or anything like that. Right? And same thing goes for the guys that don’t have any social media.
Right? You don’t need to partake in all the personal stuff, but have something that you can toss a couple of videos on, whether if it’s hitting, pitching, fielding, all of it, just to kind of start building your your rep. Let me ask you this too. At at Shepherd, how popular was the, the long emails? Are you going that route?
Are you going more of the quick video 32nd clip? Yeah. I mean, I want I want something like one paragraph, you know, tell me who you are, where you’re from, where you go to high school, and then I wanna feel, a video of you hitting, and field it. Right? If you’re a pitcher, obviously, just pitching, but, like, you know, some positions, would look at a little bit more in-depth.
Like, if it’s a catcher, definitely would watch more because that’s more of a defensive first position. So I definitely kind of attract more to how they receive first and then see if they can hit. Yeah. And last thing, do you think guys should be paying for recruiting? No.
No. Not at all. I was gonna say I think with when we grew up, it was a necessity because social media wasn’t as big and emails were huge. Now it’s get a quick video, that’s how coach wanna see there’s with the transfer portal. They don’t have time to sit there and and look at these long emails that these recruiting service, not that all of them are bad or have bad agendas, but I don’t think there’s a need to spend $2,000 when your dad can have a camera or you can have a camera.
Sure. Yeah. The big thing for me is is talent gets found where talent is. Right? It it doesn’t matter what you can go to any type of juco like whatever.
It doesn’t matter what high school you go to. If you’re talented, somebody’s gonna find you. Right? But it helps to be help yourself present yourself a little bit more. So Alex, I’ve had a couple lessons in the past month where the person I’m giving the lesson to just won’t communicate to me how they’re feeling or, you know, how they feel about a certain drill or just anything that this is concerning them.
How do you kind of approach that in your lessons? Yeah. Well, what I try to do is is try to challenge my guys. Obviously, you get the kid that’s super talkative and then you get the kid get the kid that’s super shy. But I think the positive of being an athlete that expresses how you’re feeling, it it helps not only yourself, but it helps the coach.
Right? We’re here to help you. We’re the mechanics of your swing. If if we don’t know that the swing’s wrong, if we don’t know that your tires are flat, I can’t help you. Right?
So, quick story. I had I had one of my softball girls the other day. We were doing a drill that we’ve done for a while now. And in my head, it looked good. She was hitting the ball well.
The Rapsodo numbers were good. But in her head, she wasn’t feeling what she needed to feel. Right? What we were trying to get to and she advocated and said, hey, I’m not feeling what I think you want me to feel. Is there anything we could change?
So we went from this move to this move in different drill, just adding a little piece and it was like night and day difference. Right? And and if she didn’t tell me that stuff, I would have never known. I’m I’m sitting here thinking she feels good and I mean, she’s going to be a a d two athlete. So I’m I’m thinking in my head that she knows what she’s doing.
So I think a lot of the times it comes down to when kids don’t or athletes don’t, it’s it’s more so with our younger guys. Is they’re afraid to say the wrong thing. Right? Or they don’t know how to advocate for themselves. They don’t know how to express it.
In my mindset, I would rather you express something that to me makes zero sense, but at least you’re expressing it. Because I think that gives them the practice of able to When they get older, they can start to make it make sense, if that makes sense. And I I like what I see a lot is is hitters need to be able to mesh the feelings they have with the reality. Right? So that’s why we take video during a lot of our our lessons.
Right? Because if they’re not able to kind of mesh the 2, right, you’re not really making a ton of progress. Right? And the thing that I always say to my guys is it’s a two way conversation. Right?
Especially in hitting. Like, you have to give me all the information I can get. Right? To help you the most you can. Yeah.
And it’s funny too because I think a lot of the times we know the answers when we’re asking it for them, but it’s more so we want them to to tell us. Right? I know that you’re not feeling good on this drill. I know you’re not feeling what you need to feel, but you gotta tell us. Right?
I I more so like you said, it’s it’s a two way conversation, not the me just bouncing ideas off myself. Does that make sense? Obviously, you being an instructor or us being an instructor to hit for power here, we we use Rapsodo technology for all of our guys whether they’re young or old, but that doesn’t mean we’re looking for the same numbers. Correct? What are you what are you looking for for, let’s say, a 13 year old ball player when he looks at that screen and he sees the TV and he sees a bunch of numbers.
What are the big ones that you’re really looking for? The most important ones. Well, starting first is is definitely like I wanna go position them power. Right? So I wanna get the flights going like solid first.
Right? I wanna get line drives, you know, power fly balls, all that first. Right? Just how to make how to square up the baseball first. Right?
I think that’s the most important thing. And then once we are are able to start doing that consistently, then we can start looking into more, you know, leg drive and really starting to get that exit velocity up. Right? Looking at ways to kind of and find details to create more whip, all that kind of stuff. But I’m really starting I’m not like if it’s like my first lesson with a person, I’m not really looking at the wrap soda too much, maybe just to get a base, but I’m really kinda dedicating myself to really getting those flights down first.
Right? And then we’re gonna kind of add the juice after that. Yeah. 100%. I think it’s cool for maybe towards the end of the lesson once you put together all the t work and the front toss and you put together the mechanical piece of it.
I think the last 10 minutes is it’s great to have a it adds a competition piece especially for the younger guys of they don’t really know what the the spin is supposed to look like. They don’t know what the they’re they wanna they wanna see the cool stuff. The distance and the velo. Right? Which is which is great stuff.
But like you talked about is I think if you can go consistent backspends, who cares if it’s 40 miles an hour or 45 at my my younger ages. If if you can do that consistently, but it’s not gonna get to 13, 14, that actually be low then is gonna be your priority. That’s what guys look for. But nobody wants a 95 x v low that’s pulled foul every single time hard topspin, you know. Yeah.
And and if you’ll see with like lessons I have with, like, reoccurring, like, high school kids that I’ve had a lot in. Right? We’ll do, like, specific velo rounds. Right? Where we get kind of gas up the machine and we’re seeing what are we capable of.
Right? Kind of almost like a max and when you’re in the weight room. Right? Just to see how much we can do. Right?
And I like kinda tying that into maybe this is kind of our 2 zero three o swing. Like, what is our best swing that we can control? Right? And that’s kinda more what I’m getting after.
Top 3 Hitting Habits that drive coaches crazy
What’s going on guys? I know we do a lot of hitting advice for our players, but for today, we’re gonna have a little fun with them. We’re gonna actually do some stuff for our coaches. So today we’re gonna go over our top 3 biggest pet peeves that hitters do that drives coaches nudge. For all my coaches, if you have anything to add to this list, feel free to reach out to us and we would love to cover.
For my first one here, and I know this drives a lot of coaches nuts, when you have the opportunity to go score guys on base, you got a guy on 3rd less than less than 1 out or less than 2 outs. Right? And a guy watches the ball right down the middle after we just talked about going to attack the ball, and he watched it right down the middle, and he looks at you like, yep, that was a strike. Like, yeah, we all know it was a strike. My second one, and this might be number 1 on the list is, guys that get up to the plate, they watch 3, whether it’s on the corner, down the middle, or somewhere close to the plate, they watch all 3, don’t swing, and then they get mad at the umpire because he called 3 strikes on him.
Right? There’s nobody to get mad at except for yourself. You watch 3 down the middle, or 3 strikes in general. At the end of the day, like, you’re not the umpire if he calls 3 strikes, 3 strikes, and then you go back to the dugout. So you can’t get mad at the umpire for him calling strikes.
Number 3, this just comes down to it’s pretty self explanatory, but guys showing up with not the proper attire to hit with. Right? When we go to BP, and guys show up with the Crocs, and flip flops, or no shoes in general, I’m not letting you hit. Right? Practice how you play, you don’t show with no shoes on.
Just show up prepared, please. It just helps us so much better. It’s a way better look. And then since we’re on the topic, I’m just going to give you a 4th one and a bonus one. As a coach, when you throw a BP to 15 kids, right, it’s lot of throws.
So at the end of the day, don’t be that guy that gets into the box during BP, or gets into the cage during BP, and just gets super picky. Right. No coach likes a guy that watches every 3rd pitch, and is like, yeah. I want a little bit better one. Go swing the bat.
Right? We’re here to swing it, and not take. Right? We’re not we’re not here to walk.
5 Tips for parents to help their kids improve
Yo, Alex. I got a lot of dads asking, hey, I wanna give my son some some advice as a hitter, but we we can’t afford hitting lessons. What do you tell that dad? Yeah. I think I got 5 good things for you.
Right? I think number 1 is you gotta stay positive. Right? You gotta understand that at baseball, at especially at a young age, is gonna be a failure sport. Right?
He’s gonna do things well. He’s gonna make some mistakes. But understanding your support and your positivity is gonna feed more into him than any mechanical fixes he can do. So that’s number 1. Number 2, this is gonna be your simplest form here.
So for you, I just want your son to be in a good athletic hinge position. The best way we like to tell our youth hitters, I want you to pretend like this white line here is the Grand Canyon. If he was going to look over the grand Canyon, you would take his chest a little bit over his toes. His hips would go back and he would be in a nice, strong athletic position. Right?
If he goes back into his heels, he’s going to fall. And if he goes into his toes, he’s gonna go right into the Grand Canyon. So that’s number 2, be athletic and be in a good solid hinge position. Number 3 is going to be from that athletic position, working on a proper positive load. Right?
So when we talk about a positive load, a lot of guys think it’s just take my hip back to go forward. A lot of things we see, or a lot of times we see with young guys, is the hip goes back and then immediately right back forward. I want you to basically feel like there’s a PVC pipe going from your shoulder through your hip. We’re gonna use these 2 baseballs as a visual. And when they load, I want them to feel like their shoulder and their hip works in between these 2 baseballs.
That doesn’t mean they got to get crazy and get off balance or hold this position. But when they get into their load, they got to feel like both things, both shoulder and hip, pass through that finish line, and work back forward. Now taking all of that energy in that load and transferring it into our front side here. So best way I like to explain for my young hitters, right? Pretend like on a game show, there’s a red buzzer right under your front foot.
The second that your front foot hits, that is what is going to release all of your energy from this back hip. I see a lot of guys that wants to go forward, they hit that buzzer and nothing ever transfers or rotates. Right? So whether it’s physically putting something down there for them to step on, make sure it doesn’t slide, make sure they don’t roll their ankles or anything. But make sure when they hit that front side, they should feel like everything turns on and it starts to rotate.
Right? We’re trying to be as quick and as explosive as we can from that back hip these seconds, our front foot touches the ground. Then number 5, if you do all of those 4 correct, the first 4 correct, we load, we’re athletic, we’re in a good hinge position, and we stop our front side, everything else should work from there. So what it should look like if we do this correctly, it’s gonna be athletic into a load. The second my front foot hits, it’s going to rotate in my extension, and my direction should allow me to get as far out there in a good positive space that we can.
So again, number 1, be positive. That’s be positive. Number 2, make sure we’re athletic and hinged. Number 3, make sure our load gets back with our head and our hip in a straight line. Number 4 is explode into your front side.
Number 5 is going to be let the intent of your swing create your power, create the barrel, create everything that you work for. Keep it simple. Keep it easy, but hopefully those 5 hit 5 tips help.
Dodgeball Front toss
Hitters, are you afraid of the ball and afraid that you’re gonna get hit? Here’s a drill that we like to call dodge ball soft toss or front toss. For us, you can use a baseball, you can use a softball, a wiffle ball, whatever you are comfortable with to start. And here’s how this one’s gonna work. Your front tosser is going to throw regular 3, 4, 5 in a row and unexpectedly he’s going to throw a ball at you.
When that ball comes at you instead of us jumping out of the way, all we are trying to learn is turn our back, drop the barrel, and get hit in the immediate part of the body. I promise you it’s going to hurt a whole lot less if you turn this way than if you jump and expose your chest. So give this a try and stop being afraid.
Struggling with forward movement in your swing? Heres the fix.
Are you a guy that gets stuck on your backside and you find it’s really, really hard for you to get a good clean forward movement? First off, we gotta understand that moving forward or going forward in your swing is not necessarily a bad thing if we do it correctly. Right? A lot of young guys that we see when they wanna go forward, wanna take the hip with them. Right?
The one thing that we gotta think about here, and it might be a little cute for for most of my hitters, is I want you to think of taking the bottom of your shoe and trying to point it towards the pitcher as you go out. What this gonna help us do is gonna give us a backside tilt. Obviously, I don’t need you to go crazy with it, but I want you to start to feel like even if I go forward, my head is still over my backside. No matter how far I reach or how far I stride, I am still ready to fire from that back hip. So big thing with this one is putting a PVC pipe in front of you.
That way, you can actually see yourself get into a forward movement. A lot of guys, you’ll be surprised, won’t actually even make it over this PVC, or will get really close, and will step on top of it. Your goal is to I would rather you overstride. If you’re a guy that’s a short strider, I would rather overstride than understride. At least give yourself a chance for power and give yourself a chance for rotation.
Conflicting Opinions about your swing?
So what do you do if you have multiple coaches telling you different things about your swing? Well well, one thing you don’t do is say, hey coach, I I have a hitting coach who my my parents send me to go see, and he he tells me something opposite of what you’re saying. You you you don’t do that. We always wanna be respectful. So we respect our coaches, and we even try what they say because they’re gonna bring something out that might actually be helpful.
But at the end of the day, this is the one area that I’ll also say you can be selfish. We don’t wanna be selfish baseball players, but this is your swing. And so you you you you gotta make adjustments, but at the end of the day, you gotta put into your swing what feels right and what’s gonna get you results.
