Thursday, February 16, 2012

Develop Proper Hitting Mechanics in the Batting Cage

By James J Lathon

You can improve your hitting by using the batting cage. The advantages are you can work on your timing, and develop good habits. It is important to know when you are getting good quality hits. A quality hit is not only hitting the ball hard but the type of hits you are getting.

The focus should be on hitting line drives and hitting the ball on the ground. With time, these types of hits will translate into higher hitting average, and there is less chance of these balls being caught as opposed to fly balls. Here are some techniques that have helped many hitters and are practiced by many big leaguers.

The strategy on hitting a baseball to help keep you focus and meeting you goal is scoring your batting cage practice. All that is needed is a person to keep tracking of your hitting performance as you are batting in the batting cage.

To accomplish this follow these simple steps:

1. Use the three-point hitting system. This point system awards 3 points for line drives, 2 points for balls hit on the ground or low to the ground, and 1 point for fly balls.

2. Create the three hitting zones. For the hitting cage as well as the practice field, by use of arbitrary markers for each zone. The Zones are to be separated by about 6 yards. The ground ball hitting should have a horizontal zone from the ground to six (6) yards straight up in the air. The line drive hitting zone should be the zone between 6 and 12 yards in the air. Finally the fly ball zone should be the hitting zone between 12 and 18 yards in the air.

3. Using the Arbitrary markers in the batting cage. In the hitting cages, you can use arbitrary markers such as the top of the pitching machine to mark off each section. Regardless of your arbitrary markers, you want to star scoring each session in the batting cage.

4. Record your results after each session. It's important to get in the habit of recording each of your sessions. As you keep this record try to outdo your previous best scores. This will turn batting practice into a game and you will benefit and get more enjoyment out of your practices
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5. If at the batting cage by yourself, use the memory technique. At times you will be along at the batting cage, in these instances focus on your scoring by seeing how many times you hit 6 in this target zones. Your goal for the next round should be to get at least 7 hits in this area. This type of concentrated thinking will not require you to see how you scored in the other areas, and still get the maximum benefit and encouraging you to hit in these main zones.

Like most everything in life, you get better at things the more times you do them. Hitting a baseball is no different. The best advice for baseball hitting is practice, practice, and I repeat PRACTICE YOUR SWING. This is the strategy that work for the PROS.
James Lathon is the owner of ProHittingCages.com. Visit his website for more baseball tips and to see various batting cages that hitters around the country are using to train with today.
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2 comments:

Jeff said...

These are good tips. I am going to share them with my son. How would I improve his bat speed?

Luv2baMama said...

Glad I found this blog!
So one of the coaches at the batting cage where we take our son developed an app for the iPhone and iPod touch for hitting. It's really easy to use and it's helped us out tremendously when we've taken him to practice with him ourselves. It helps teach the coach and player the simple mechanics of the swing. It's called MyCoachSwing, Check it out!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-coach-baseball-hitting/id496954951?mt=8&ls=1