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We spent a few hours yesterday sorting out questions about pitch recognition and vision training for ballplayers. One stuck out.
How to pick up the ball more efficiently out of the pitcher’s hand.
Imagine this. You step in the batter’s box. You’re calm and collected. The pitcher releases the ball and you’re able to immediately judge the location, plan, and type of pitch with genuine baseball instinct and vision I.Q.
You take a confident swing because you’re seeing the ball well.
This is a skill that can be taught. Period.
How do we get there?
Step 1: Ease the tension around your eyes. Relaxed muscles are quick muscles. Period.
In order to pick up the ball effectively, hitting with calmness and focus is a must.
If you wanna see the ball better, slow down the heartbeat.
Control your breathing.
How: Breath from the belly and not from the upper diaphragm. (chest)
Step 2: When the pitcher is getting their sign, have a general soft focus on the pitcher that’s relatively similar to the distance of where the release point will be.
How: Have a soft focus on the emblem on the pitcher’s cap.
Step 3: Practice a soft to hard focus. Not too early not too late. The better you get at this, the quicker you’ll pick up the pitch.
How: Transfer the soft-focus of the pitcher’s cap to an imaginary window off of the pitcher’s throwing shoulder. (release point)
We practice in the cage to refine our swing.
We practice in GameSense to refine our pitch recognition & vision.
Seeing the ball better can be a powerful tool in the batter’s box.
With this skill in our tool box, we can focus on our approach and the mental side of hitting while competing with 100% confidence.
Sharpen and refine it with tested training in GameSense.
Wouldn’t it better to follow the pitching hand instead of an "imaginary window"? If you follow the hand, then the different release points each pitcher has makes it easier to pick up the ball. If the guy is a sidearm pitcher your "How: Transfer the soft-focus of the pitcher’s cap to an imaginary window off of the pitcher’s throwing shoulder." will not work for the hitter. And what about the time it takes to focus when trying to find a new object in that imaginary window?