Baseball Batting - Rotating Your Hips for the Swing

Coach Cassidy from Virginia baseball club, I am the lead hitting instructor up here. I am going to talk about talk about step three of the hitting process, which is hip rotation.

Lot of people think that the faster we swing with our arms, faster the bat is going to go, but actually, bats speed and power come from our lower body, our core area, from just below the ribs, to about the middle of our thighs. This is where all of our power comes from. The first thing we want to do when we -- after we have loaded and we are going to attack the ball, we are going to attack with our lower half. Our, hip and our core area are going to move, actually its split second before our hands do. Hips before hands. So, I am in my good stance, I load. When that ball is coming in, first thing I want to do is try to take this back hip and fire it at the ball. Right here as you can see my hands havent moved yet, but my back foot is turned. If you are ever watching a hitter and their back foot isnt turning, then Ill firing their hips, because our back foot is a reflection of our hips. If I swing without my hips, my back foot doesnt turn. But if I fire my hips and I have a nice L right here, in a straight line with my front leg. Thats where our power and our quickness comes from. Our hips actually make the bat in our arms go faster. So, very, very important part of our swing is firing that back hip at the ball. Wherever the pitch is try to hit it with your back hip. Or you can think about driving your back knee towards your front knee. But all of these, my weight is not getting past the center of my body. Even though I am firing forward, I am not getting at all on my front foot. Everything stays 50-50 with my weight transfer.