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Check out the video below to get a good idea of what you can do to improve your power or the power of your players. And if you’re a current member, wanting to really improve your power numbers, get ready to take some notes!
I work with a major league player who turns really, really hard and can hit balls 440, 450 feet sometimes. But his swing path, to me, he needs a lot of work. So he has to remember, sometimes, that you don’t have to hit the ball 440 feet.
I would rather you lose a little bit of that feet and have a good bat path. Same on the other side. You could have a great bat path, and maybe they are swinging and they don’t have a lot of power, and they’re hitting singles all day.
That’s great. I don’t have a problem with that. But to me, as they get older–I have a college player, a college softball player, for example, that’s small, or a college baseball player. In my opinion, they have a lot more in the tank.
I’ve seen 5’9″, 170 baseball players hit balls out of the park. I’ve seen power generated from those people. It’s possible. So I’ve got a player that has a decent swing, decent movements, but I want more power out of them. And so for me, the biggest focus I’m going to have is on their turn, and on their hip and shoulder separation.
I would tell you I had a major league player a few years ago that hit really well, exit speed was 98, 99, which was awesome. But his hip movements were not really great. And I said, hey, you know what? I think this would really help you get some more power. I want you to–just for the fun of it, let’s play with some big hip rotation, in and out (demonstrates internal hip rotation on load and external movement on stride).
And so like I said, 95, 98 exit speed. 102, 103, 103, 104–just from that movement. So to me, I would work on hip rotation, hard turns, really focusing on their turns.
Use Javier Baez as an example, OK? This guy swings out of his shoes. He’s having an incredible year. He has great swing movements across the board.
But if you knew Javier Baez a few years ago, his swing movements were even bigger than they are now. He has calmed down some of that stuff. He’s learned what does it take for him to calm down the thing.
So the same thing on the other end is how much can you focus on turning hard, hip separation, working on the hip rotation, working on his full torso rotation, really focusing on the things that turn. And for me, full turns, hip rotation–those are the two things that I would focus the most on in regards to power.
And I would say our hitters work on turns every day whether it’s with a bat– holding it here in their swings, or working on the Finish Your Turn drill.
There’s been plenty of times I’ve had college players hit a ball over the warning track, come back to the dugout and say “I know, I know. If I finished my turn, that ball would have been out of here.” They can feel it. Not they just know that I’m going to say it, but they can feel “man, if I had finished my turn, that ball would have gone out of this park.”
Related reading: First College Home Run an Absolute Bomb
So hard turns, fast turns, and focus on turning, the full turn drill, half turn drill, separation drill–those are the ones I would really focus on.
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