Winter Hitting Training

Most of you don't want to hear about us that can practice the way we always do, in our shorts and t-shirts, so I'll spare you.

Even we had huge rainstorms that lasted a week, which drove us indoors and looking for bad weather drills.

Here are 3 things you can do in bad weather.

1. Sliding

2. Some indoor hitting work

3. Goal Setting

Sliding

Do you know the 2 reasons to slide?

Test yourself on this question and I'll answer later on at the end of the sliding lessons.

Here are 3 simple steps I use to teach the simple pop-up/figure 4 slide.

Step 1). Have the players sit cross-legged. This determines the leg that will go underneath on the slide. It's the one they put underneath when they sat down. This way it will feel more comfortable for them. Then have them extend the top leg straight ahead so they can get the look and feel of what their lower body needs to do (a figure 4).

Step 2). Have 2 parents/coaches hold a bat (or a strong stick or pole) at the front of the sliding area high enough up so that the players start out holding the bat. They then swing into the slide and let go which puts them in the perfect sliding position and shows them how their hands stay up and then back out of the way.

Step 3). Don't move into full slides until they master step 2. But from there it's just into the running slide.

The answers to the quiz (the 2 reasons to slide are):

1) To avoid a tag &

2) To stop (sometimes we want to run as hard as we can to a base but don't want to overrun it)

Indoor Winter Hitting Work

1) You can get in front of a full-length mirror and check your stance and how your hips are moving and your hands. Check the angles of your body and see if everything matches what you should look like if you had a perfect swing.

If you're playing softball or like a simpler approach to the baseball swing, print the seven steps to great hitting and check how each step is looking. If you need a more detailed approach to the seven steps, you can get them e-mailed to you for free.

2) You can practice your bunting with a great drill where you catch a whiffle ball or a rolled up sock and drop it, just like you should be doing with your bat -- catching the ball with your bat and dropping it softly.

3) If you have a basement or a garage you can even setup a batting cage like environment with a pitching machine that throws golf ball whiffles.

I can get you the same machine at the same prices, but if you buy it from me you'll get a free gift in addition to what you get there. Contact me if you'd like to get one.

I highly recommend the unit for anyone wanting to be a better hitter.

Goal Setting

And followed that advice up by saying make sure you give yourself enough time to make it and put in enough practice. And adding, that you needed to put a reason why you "have" to make that goal. And finally getting someone to help you reach the goal, whether it's a coach, a parent, or another player.

How are you doing on your goals? Winter is a great time to work on setting goals and planning to achieve them.

For me, I missed my goal by 3 weeks, but we now have 500 members to this newsletter! Thank you so much. Please continue to pass this newsletter to all your softball and baseball friends and encourage them to sign up.

This year I'm setting goals to start a blog on hitting and getting you an RSS feed (I'll even explain these great new technologies that can help you keep up with the latest information and ideas on great hitting.) I should have that up within this next month.

I'm also about 80% of the way to adding a simplified teaching method for rotational hitting for the baseballers and any softballers that are interested.

After all the junk food from the holidays, maybe your goal this year is to eat better and be healthier. I found a computer program that's the FIRST and ONLY Nutritional Program that Creates BALANCED Meal Plans Using YOUR Favorite Foods - Automatically!

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With the simple click of a button, you can chose your goals and then your meal plan requirements are created automatically based on YOUR NEEDS. It's so simple and effective! I joined here.

If any of you over-extended your spending from the holidays and made it a goal to reduce your debt, I found and got this guy's information.

He claims "You can pay off all your debts, including your mortgage, in less than 10 years and the more debts you have the better". It's worth a look, cl1ck here.

Thanks again for all of you who read this newsletter. If you find it of value, could you please pass it on to someone you can think of right now?

Talk to you next time.

Coach Andy