Pregame Hitting Part 1: Increasing Rotational Speed
One of my favorite presentations at the 2019 ABCA Convention was the lecture done by Jeff Albert and Jason Ochart. I tend to really enjoy presentations that dive deep into a subject and theirs in particular focused on Developing Hitters to Succeed in Today’s Game(On a side note: Bryan Conger’s was also intriguing and I hope to write about his lecture another time). What sparked my interest the most on Albert and Ochart’s presentation was that I came to ask myself one specific question: “What am I doing to get my hitters ready for games IN-SEASON?”
Going into Fall (2018) and starting with a brand new team, I was contemplating on what I should be doing to get my hitters game ready as well as doing more than your basic BP before games. After hearing Albert and Ochart’s presentation, I thought to myself that their talk couldn’t have come at a better time. Albert talked about getting players warmed up and ready to hit before a game, like you would do in the weight room before attempting a big lift, and Ochart followed up with a statement, “We will do unload bats before a game to get our guys rotating quickly.” At that point, I had an “Ah Ha!” moment and my mind was off and racing. I had to try extremely hard to focus in on the rest of the presentation and fight the urge to not let my mind wander on what I could do for this upcoming season (in terms of prepping our hitters).
So let’s break this down and talk through it and maybe we can come up with some good ways to prepare hitters. My focus will be mainly during home game preparations, mostly because I am still trying to figure out the most efficient way to prepare the hitters during away games.
We need a good warm up just to get the body ready, so what exactly does that look like? I am not afraid to say I am not the most knowledgeable in this arena, although I try and keep myself up to date with guys like Eric Cressey of Cressey Performance, Zach Dechant of TCU and Nick White of Coastal Carolina University as well as other great strength coaches*. I strive to make a warm up that might be similar to one of their programs before lifting, and I would post my own warm up, but I think it would be better to support them and buy their book(s) they have published or resources they have available. Go ahead and invest in your learning!
Ok, so we go through a quality warm up. Now what? If you are a program that has access to an indoor cage and a wall, I would come up with a 15–30 minute routine that hitters will do before they jump into the BP cage before the game.
(Remember to think concepts here rather than structured drills.) I never want to put coaches in a box. If you were to copy everything I do, there would be less innovation on improving any of this in a timely manner. A concept allows for any coach to take this idea and run with it as well as moving the game forward to help hitters catch up to pitchers. This is what our warm up will look like for this upcoming season:
Warm up: In addition to what I stated above on warm ups, I will mention that we do carry a kettlebell everywhere in our program. Since the kettlebell is readily available, I am going to have our guys do a couple turkish get ups right after the warm up to start getting their entire bodies ready to rotate. The turkish get up is one of my all time favorite exercises to put in our weight lifting programs because I feel it works on numerous components of movement patterns.
Medicine ball: I think it’s important to find a way to get a medicine ball thrown. The ball can be used as a shot put or underhand scoops. It can be used as slams. It can be used as anything really and it might even be individualized according to how each hitter moves. To be honest, I am not sure if I have assessed movement efficiently enough to individualize this part. But I know I need to get hitters moving quickly with medicine balls.
Plyo hitting balls: The first thing that I will have my hitters do with plyo hitting balls is single arm throws with the lead arm and then ultimately move into tee work. I will have the guys hit the plyo balls with Overload and Regular bats, while mixing in different types of rounds. (Remember we are still warming up for the game, so we don’t need a ton of hacks and this is really easy to individualize by the time spring comes around). Some guys like swinging the barrel-loaded as opposed to a handle-loaded bat. One of my guys has to swing a heavy long bat to get ready. My advice is to let them take ownership of preparing their swing. I have even flirted with the idea to have them take slap shots with hockey sticks or get a golf driver and have them just take a couple drives into a net (I might even try and incorporate this next Fall as our everyday hitting warm up).
Underload bat: Last but not least — get them rotating quick! At this time, I will have the guys use the underload bat so they can feel themselves moving quick. I haven’t decided if we are going to mix in plyos or not, but I do know that I want the guys preparing to rotate quickly and efficiently.
I hope this was helpful or enjoyable, and if not, you got a little peek into what we are doing here! The next step in our pregame hitting will focus on gearing for velocity and feeling for the game, click HERE.
*If you want a great weight lifting program for FREE Austin Womack has a great resource available, click HERE if you are interested.
