Baseball Batting - Upper Body Mechanics

Coach Cassidy here at the Virginia base ball club, I am going to talk about the fourth step - Our Upper Body Mechanics.

Step three was lower body because we are going in order. We are going to get into a stance. We are going to load; we are going to fire our hips. Right after we fire our hips, we are going to work with our upper body mechanics, and the main thing with upper body mechanics is that we want to be short to the ball and long through it, and a great way, great thing to think about, if you want to be short to the ball, is keeping your hands close to your body, till you make contact. Once you make contact, you are going to be as long through the ball as you can. So, if I can go from this angle -- from where I start in my load, my hands should never get any further away from my body. Good way to think about this is try to hide the barrel from the pitcher as long as you can. When I am doing this, I am pulling the knob of the bat, straight at the pitcher till there. Its almost a whipping action. As you can see, at contact, my back arm is bent and my front arm is almost all the way straight. For out here, we are rowing our wrist, we are snapping our wrist, we extended too early, I got nothing now. From this position right here, I can still fire my hips through the ball, generate more power, extend through the ball and finish high. When you finish -- talk a little bit about balance. If you can see this curve I have, its going back over the plate. If youre ever falling away from the plate, you got on your heels, which we talked about in step one, which we never want to be on our heels. That means we are falling away from the ball. Very important with upper body mechanics, your head and your shoulder do the same thing. Your head and your front shoulder. If your front shoulder moves, your head is going to move. If your head moves, your front shoulder is going to move. So, if you think about keeping your head down on the ball, the whole time, or think about pointing your shoulder at the ball, the whole time. Contact is always made in relation to my front foot. I want to hit the ball just out in front of my front foot, with my head on the ball. At extension, I am going to keep my head down; my chin will actually go from my front shoulder, to my back shoulder. Extend through the ball, and then you can look up and see how far you hit it.