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Baseball Kids

How to teach your kid to hit a baseball

To teach your kid hit a baseball is a long journey. Therefore, when introducing a kid to the art of hitting, it is better to focus on the basics to avoid overwhelming them. That is why we share the five basic aspects to start:

Keep your eyes on the baseball

It is no coincidence that the phrase that any of us heard the most when we learned how to hit a baseball was “keep your eyes on the ball.” Nevertheless, it is basic advice; it is also a vital one.

This is why we need to check that your kid is tracking the ball from the pitcher’s hand to the hitting zone. Indeed, your kid should be watching the ball when the bat makes contact with it.

Additionally, repeating the exercise of following the ball over and over again will develop their skill of recognizing different arm speeds and pitches.

Hit the baseball on time

A pitcher’s success is often based on disrupting the batter’s timing. For the same reason, your kid’s success will increase if their swing arrives on time. Even before developing a polished swing, a batter can succeed with the proper timing.

However, we must check how to train this skill. Many batters with good timing at batting practice fail in a real game. Moreover, it is important to practice facing different pitch types and speeds, as they will find in a real game.

Make your kid go through batting machines with different speeds to deliver the skill of adjusting the timing to them.

Teaching your kid you play baseball with discipline

Hit with discipline

Hitting is one of the more difficult tasks in any sport. That is why great hitters only succeed about 30% of the time. Therefore, we don’t want to make it even harder trying to hit bad pitches.

The plate discipline starts at the batting practice. Don’t force your kid to swing at every pitch during training. Teach him to be aggressive on strikes and patient on pitches that are out of the strike zone.

On NDG Batting Center, you and your kid will be able to see if each pitch faced was in or out of the strike zone, helping develop a clear strike zone awareness.

Hit the ball with direction

Another essential skill related to strike zone awareness is hitting the ball where it is pitched. In other words, this is basically directing your hit based on where the ball was pitched in the zone.

If the ball is in the outer side of the zone, let it travel a little more and drive it the opposite way. If it comes into the inner side of the zone, hit it a little further and pull it. But, If the pitch is in the middle of the plate, drive it to the middle of the field.

Hitting the ball where it is pitched will make it much easier for your kid to connect with consistency. As major leaguers say: just take what the pitcher is giving you.

Hit a baseball requires practice…
and fun

Finally, to teach your kid hit a baseball requires a lot of practice, but at the same time kids are all about fun… and baseball is a game. Competitiveness is a good thing, however it should not take away the fun of playing ball with your dad or your friends.

In NDG Batting Center we are all about combining training with entertainment. You will find several different pitching and fielding machines, coaching services and a huge store with baseball and softball equipment and memorabilia. We will be waiting for you and your kids to come visit us.

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3 Common Mistakes Hitters Make

There are common mistakes that young hitters (and even experienced ones) frequently make that are not difficult to correct. That will make a massive difference in batting more consistently and for more power. Here are the top 3 mistakes and how to fix them.

Still as a statue

The first common mistake in our list is hitters that, when doing their batting stance, become frozen while waiting for the pitch; this brings two main problems. The first one is that an object at rest tends to stay at rest, and the same happens to you as a hitter, making it much harder for you to react to the pitch. The second problem is that you get tense when staying still. Just try it at home and see it by yourself. Do your stand position and try to stay still for 30 seconds; you’ll see how uncomfortable it is.

How to fix it?

Allow yourself to do some movement while waiting for the pitch. You don’t have to do something exaggerated that gets you all over the place. But maintain some activity that allows you to be in motion for the moment the pitcher starts his movements. Even when the pitcher takes long pauses, you can make a little swing to relax a little.

Too small of a stride

Contrary to popular belief, the primary power source of a swing doesn’t come from the arms; it comes from the big muscle: the legs. Consequently, when you make a small stride, you cannot go down and do a good launch position and utilize all the power of your legs. The small stride also leaves you way too up right at the moment of making contact with the ball.

How to fix it?

It doesn’t matter your starting position. You can have one foot close to the other or have a wide stand (like Albert Pujols). The important thing is that you create momentum from your load position to the launch position (the launch position is the one you get to when your front foot lands). A good way to calculate the landing distance between your two feet is that it should be about the length of your bat on the ground. By doing this, you’ll get in a perfect sunk position for exploding when making contact with the ball.

Poor bat angle

Similar to the previous tip, here we will be focusing on the launch position because getting into a good launch position will make the rest of the swing way easier. At this point of the swing, is vital to check where your bat knob is pointing to. If it is pointing towards the pitcher or sideways (first base foul line if you’re a rightie, third base foul line if you’re a leftie), you will not be able to generate enough speed to hit the ball properly.

How to fix it?

If you check most of the big-league hitters’ bat knob at the launch position will be pointing down to the catcher. That bat angle allows them to create enough swing velocity for hitting the ball with power. You must avoid exaggerating this angle to find your bat knob pointing to the backstop because this will make your swing late.

A final thought

As you can see, the loading and launch position is critical for correcting the most common swing mistakes, but only through repeated practice you’ll be able to fix these and other swing mistakes you might have. We’ll be happy to have you at NDG Batting Center and help you improve your baseball skills at our facilities and with our coaches’ advice. See you soon!

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