What is real vs. feel? And how important is body awareness in hitting? (Part 1)

Swing down or Swing slightly uphill? ...

Move forward or Sit back? ...

Use hands or Forget hands? ...

Foot down early or get going early?...

If there is one thing we know about hitting, it is that we have to be on time for a pitch with enough bat-speed and strategic trajectory to land fair without being fielded cleanly. Honestly, that might be the only point that you can win an argument with in terms of hitting philosophy. I am most interested in the functional application of human performance as it applies to hitting and throwing. I have attached a few videos below that provide example of just how varied opinions on hitting are from elite major league all-stars. Even with as much technology and data that is available today, I believe science has only tipped the iceberg in terms of how we can better coach and develop athletes in general. Take a sport like sprinting for example. Sprinting experts seem to agree that a primarily single plane action (although rotational in nature to create locomotion) like sprinting has only truly tapped into a tiny sliver of what is available to develop their athletes. Baseball and softball hitting and throwing is a more complex set of movements (arguably) than sprinting, and baseball athletes also HAVE TO SPRINT!!! Talk about complexity and the definite handful of work it takes to have the skill to be a great baseball player. 

Before I go off on a tangent, lets think about how an athlete's brain needs to work to be successful at their craft and then lets ponder what a great coach's brain needs to do to be most successful. I coach athletes 35-40 hours per week with hitting, throwing, and strength and conditioning, but everyone is involved in strength and conditioning in some form if they take instruction from me. Its a requirement. I find myself jumping back and forth between both sets of shoes so lets look at a different perspective.  

An athletes brain is focused on managing oneself. Sleeping, training, nutrition, practice, and mental approach are honed based on the individuals personality, needs, body type, etc. Good athletes have an ability to manage these pieces well and find what works for themselves to yield repeatable success.

Coaches manage multiple personalities and levels of athletes. Often times they are managing team finances, working with administration and front offices, dealing with parent criticism, recruiting, coping with time away from families for extended periods of time, and also have to develop and learn new information.

Great players repeat successes and great coaches lead groups of players in a coordinated effort to repeat success. My point in real vs feel is to take into account all of this background information about players and coaches and create the realization that swing mechanics, motor patterns, anatomy and human movement research is probably on the backburner for the people I described above. Although, I do know many coaches (I was one of them) at college levels as well as others who develop themselves as instructors and distributors of valid information. I would say those guys might live in the 10-15% of coaches who really dive deep into learning. Lets face it, if you recruit well then player development probably is a lower priority as your main goal is not to mess up guys up who already have high kinesthetic feel!

Watch all the videos below. Then keep reading. Turn the volume up for the first video.

If you watch Chipper Jones explain his swing and then watch his swing in a real game setting, you might realize that there is some obvious disconnect. Backspin is possible with a downswing, but common sense physics tells us that it won't be square contact on a line. Chipper is employing a "cue" to guide his body into what he thinks he feels is correct in the cage. Keep in mind he has probably been coached that at some point as well. 

Donaldson was taught probably a similar mechanical approach early in his career, but clearly took a different route to on-field success than Chipper Jones. We can argue that Donaldson feels things that don't actually happen in his swing (though from a science perspective, he is arguably a lot closer to what is real than Chipper).

Real is what we can see happen from a number of angles on video (preferably 3d biomechanics analysis) or something we can measure. Feel is what we think we know or the description of the proprioception we currently have to complete a task. In simpler terms, a learned association with a desired outcome. 

Lets think about the number of muscle groups our body has (roughly 640) and remember what controls these muscle groups, tissues, bone, and fascia. Our brain and nervous system control our body much like set of buttons linked with programmed codes on a computer. So if we believe that the movements themselves are what is important to yield hitting success, we are horribly mistaken. Our nervous system is vital in coordinating parts. Coordination is the key and can only be carried out in a small window of time (like in hitting a ball with less than .4 seconds) when information relay is lightning fast and super organized.

Research, namely from Frans Bosch in his book Strength and Coordination: An Integrative Approach, tells us that external cueing ( focus on external factors and variables) are much more effective for performance than are internal cues. What I believe is common for these hitters is that they focus on "the system" or the body as whole. For example: Josh Donaldson's plate approach is very focused on his rhythm and he uses a tempo cue "gather, go" when the pitch is being thrown. Chipper, on the other hand, is a very skilled veteran who really understood what types of pitches he was going to see and had an absurd amount of confidence in his abilities. From pitch to pitch and at-bat to at-bat, Chipper would talk about his simple approach to hit line drives and guessing pitches based off information from other at-bats. At the big league level, the pitching is just too nasty to not be making quality guesses as to what pitches are coming. You have to guess and cheat to pitches in certain counts.

This is what I call mentality. The right self-talk, a comfortable posture where the body is conscious of its rhythm, an intent to be fast, and an ability to recognize pitches is where most elite major league hitters can claim success. They already have world-class athleticism and the ability to swing well, but pretty swings only work when you are on time to hittable pitches.

More to come in Part 2 of this article....