After nineteen years as the head baseball coach at Tulane University, I retired from coaching baseball and I purchased a commercial batting cage in Gulfport, Mississippi. These cages attracted baseball teams of all ages. We had the automatic pitching machines and coaches would put their teams in the cages and coach them. As I observed the coaches, cliches would be the order of the day… “Get the back elbow up, swing level, swing down, roll your wrists, get extension”. And while I understand that this is the common language that many coaches have used, I also know that these cliches have been parroted down from one coaching generation to the next.

In all of my research in hitting, as well as attending major league baseball camps, I have witnessed these same cliches. I found myself early in my coaching career embracing many of them. I felt that this was the correct way to teach hitting. After all, it was common language in hitting.

I heard a former major league manager say on television, “You must swing level if you’re going to be a good hitter.” I also heard a prominent home run hitter state “You have to roll your wrists.” However, while these all sounded good, I discovered that it did not work work very well and it wasn’t communicated in the correct way. So I began to learn for myself what the good pro hitters actually did. There was no video at the time, so I decided to do film research and personally filmed many hitters, including Major Leaguers. There was one major league player that seemed to be getting it right and that was the great player and teacher of baseball, Ted Williams.

At that time, I had to order a special motion picture projector that would allow us to use slow motion and freeze frame. Filming in 16mm was costly. But, I had an advantage. My wife and I owned a business and we were filming and processing high school and college football games at the time, and I actually had my own picture film labratory.

One thing I noticed was very obvious. While every football coach would film every game, and study those films, that was not the case for baseball.

At this time, after winning two Louisiana state high school baseball championships, I began my coaching career at Tulane University, and this allowed me to continue my film research. We studied major league hitters, high school, college and little league hitters to the tune of over 30,000 ft. of film study. We would project images on the wall and by using frame-by-frame, we would analyze each part of the hitting stroke. The question we wanted answered was this:

Are all hitters as different as they appear, or are there absolutes? So in our study, we threw out anything that a hitter did that was not necessary and included only the things that every player did to be effective. What we discovered was that there are eight basic actions that every good hitter uses in his hitting stroke. So while good hitters had differences, we could actually identify these eight positions we called absolutes. This is the basis for the Super 8 Hitting System.

From that point until now, we have continued to research what the best hitters really do. In video tape, where it is not as costly, we have completed over 8,000+ video analyses. When you include the film study and video tape, I personally do not believe that there is anyone who has analyzed more hitters.

The value of video analysis has been acknowledged in every sport. For years, football, golf, basketball, and track and field have used video in order to eliminate guesswork. As a result, players have reaped the benefits of having a better knowledge of what they need to do in order to improve their skills. Through video analysis, a baseball hitter can accomplish the following objectives:

1. The hitter is given the opportunity to review his mechanics over and over again in practice and game play.

2. The hitter can make a comparison analysis with successful hitters, and learn to make positive adjustments.

3. The hitter is able to keep track of his progression by consistently viewing video of his baseball swing mechanics.

The serious hitter must be a student of the game and should be willing to do the necessary research through video, if he truly wishes to maximize his bat speed. This should be taken seriously by all baseball coaches, players and parents.

Our program is not based on some “highly intellectual” so called scientific theory, but on logic reasoning and common sense, practically eliminating everything that we started to talk about at the beginning, which we call “parroted cliches” that are handed down from time to time that do more harm than good.

In our 3rd DVD from our 8 DVD set, we cover video analysis… which could be the most important video in our series. In our video analysis DVD, we learn to identify the difference between the Amatuer Stroke and the Pro Stroke. The Amatuer Stroke is completely different than the Pro Model Stroke. The DVD also teaches the player, or coach, to accurately do a video analysis.

Click here to learn more about video analysis and our Super 8 Hitting System

The Young Hitter Growing Up

We ask “At what age do most hitters begin to hit?” The most common answer is “5 years”. The next question is “Who is pitching?” and the answer is “Mom, or Dad, or uncle”… you get the idea. Well, were they trying to get the hitter out, or did they want him or her to hit the ball? Hit the ball!!  And they were very exicted when they did. But that’s the problem… in their development years, which are from the age of 5 to approx. 8 or 9, hitters are pitched to so they CAN hit, and no one wants to pitch to get them out. The habits that are formed at this time can cause the hitter to develop a long swing, or looping swing. Ultimately, the hitter learns to hit incorrectly.

It is at this point that problems occur. The youth hitter, without proper instruction, usually will grow up to be a rotational hitter, swinging his hands in a circle with the bat to hit the ball. His stroke is long and usually will not hit good pitching.

The main objective in hitting is to teach good technique early, so that when they get to good pitching, the technique will be able to support them. That brings us to the next statement:

Good Hitting Is Hitting Good Pitching!

If a young person were learning how to dance or do gymnastics, proper technique learned at the beginning would sustain them as they develop because there would be no one out there trying to mess them up, as pitchers do against hitters. This holds true for other non combative sports, like golf.

Coaches trying to eliminate the long stroke, including some professional hitting instructors, have gone to the linear stroke. After all, a “straight line,” we know, is the shortest distance between two points. However, while it has become popular in some areas, it is a poor substitute for rotational hitting.

The off-season is an important time to get ready for baseball season that is quickly approaching. Many times, amatuer hitters don’t get ready for the season until the season starts. The key to becoming a better hitter is to get ready BEFORE the season. Well, NOW is the time to get ready for it…  now is the time to get ready for this year.

Take action NOW and get the Super 8 Hitting System.

If you still don’t know if the system is right for you, you can read our Super 8 Hitting System reviews.