Youth Hitting Drills To Stop Stepping Out

Today we're talking youth hitting drills and how to stop stepping out. Now this is the one big thing that I see, I see a lot of things with youth players, but one of the biggest things that I see with youth players are players that want to step out this way. Some people call that stepping into the bucket, where instead of striding straight, we're going to step out like this. And if we step out like this, well then it really limits our plate coverage, it causes our barrel to typically cut across the zone, we're not able to stay through the zone. It makes it really, really difficult to hit. Let's talk about some ways that we use with our players to help them stride straight and be more consistent. The first thing before I get into the actual drills, I want to talk about what it is that causes that. So the big thing for me is posture. So when I talk about posture, it is what is my spine angle when my front foot is about to come into the ground and I'm in a good hitting position, ready to hit. This would be a vertical spine angle of zero degrees, so that would be right here. If you watch any high level hitter, you're going to see that their spine is going to be over the plate. Now you'll see different degrees depending on what hitter you look at, but if you look at a high level hitter, you are going to see no players at zero degrees when their front foot comes into the ground, or is about to come into the ground. You're going to see every hitter is going to be slightly over the plate, somewhere between 20 and 30 degrees. Somewhere in that range. Again, it varies depending on the pitcher. So I want to show you an example of both of these. So this would be zero degrees, which I see a lot with young players as they stride and they're very, very vertical with their spine, whereas with older players, with players at higher levels, you're going to see that as they start to load, they're going to start to get their chest over the plate, their spine angle is going to be over the plate. They might not start in that position. You'll see hitters start in all different positions, but as they load, you're going to see that their chest starts to get over the plate, their butt starts to get out. If we have a player that is struggling with this, that is striding and is very, very vertical with their spine, then what I'll talk about again, I'll give the simple cues of chest over the plate, butt out. I'll talk about getting our butt back behind our heels. So you can see here, my butt gets out behind our heels as my hips hinge back. I'll talk about if you're wearing a chain, I want to feel like the chain is going to dangle over the plate. You have to be careful with this. Some players will go to the extreme and they'll be like this. There is a such thing as being too much over the plate. Again, we want to be somewhere between 20 and let's say 30 degrees, but we start to get here. This is too much over the plate. If you get too much over the plate, then players start to end up diving into the plate too much. Just like being too vertical typically causes them to step out. So that is the big thing that I see. Players that do not get here and that are here, when they stride, a lot of times they want to go this way. And so if we can get them into good posture, it makes it much easier for them to then move straight ahead. Now, what are some of the ways that we practice this? Well, the first thing that we do is I have this yard marker right here. Now up in the north, I guess you don't have to just be from the north, but we use these a lot to mark where our grass and driveway line is so that plows don't destroy your grass and actually stay on the driveway when it snows. And so you can pick these up. I got this at Home Depot, I think, for like $2. And all we do is when we're hitting, the first thing we do is we put that right behind the hitter's heels. So when they get into the box, let's say they get in like this, I'm going to put the stick right behind the hitter's heels. And that is going to force them to feel like they need to stride straight. If they do not stride straight, they're going to feel that under their foot. Now you can actually swing and you'll be fine. You won't twist an ankle. So that's why I like this as something that gives them some feedback, but also isn't going to be dangerous. If I put something like, I've seen people put 2x4s and other things, big PVC pipes behind the feet. Well on those, sometimes you can twist an ankle. So with this, you can step on it, you can swing, and you can be fine. And this provides some feedback to the player to let them know that they are indeed stepping out. So that's probably the first step, very simple way to do that. Now again, if your player isn't in good posture, they are probably going to step on this. But when you start to tell the player, hey, let's stay away from stepping on that. Stride straight. What I notice is, a lot of times, players will automatically start to get in better posture as they stride out because they know, okay, I don't want to step on that stick. And you can go through some dry drills. You don't have to just hit balls with this. You can put them in their stance and say, okay, let's load and let's stride and let's make sure that we don't step on that stick and let's do that over and over again. If you don't have a stick, what I did back when I was playing, is I had the same issue one year, but instead of striding out, I took a stride in. So if you have that issue, you can actually just put the stick on the other side of your feet and make sure you're not striding in on it. But if you can just find a simple line, whether that's here on this mat, or you can just put a piece of tape down, or if you're outside, you can take a piece of chalk and just draw on a driveway. And you can just stand on that line and just over and over again, just load, stride, and stop and check your feet and make sure that you're striding straight. And that's what I did, a very, very, very simple elementary way, but I did that as a professional player. One off-season, I developed that bad habit during the season, and in the off-season, I just took thousands of strides. I just came into the facility, and I just would stride, check, load, stride, check. And I would do it over and over again to the point where that's the only way my body knew how to stride. So those are some really, really simple ways to do it. Now if those are not working, there are a lot of posture drills that we use. I'm going to give you a couple of them. We have a ton of them. If you want to click on the description box below, we have a swing course, which talks about posture a lot and has a ton of drills. I'm not going to give you them all right now, but let me give you a couple of them. Again, that's one of them. Let me give you a few more. So the next ones involve a medicine ball. And before we get to the medicine ball, we actually just use a net. So you can use a net. You can use an L-screen, something that you can put your head on. So let's change the camera angle here. I'm going to bring you over here onto this net. Okay, so now that we have this net right here, all I'm going to do is I'm going to actually turn my head around sideways or backward. You can actually take your hat off. We're going to put our hands across our chest, and we're going to get a few inches away from the net. And all we're going to do is we're going to put our head on the net. Again, you can do it with an L-screen. You can do it with a wall. We do it sometimes with our bag that is over in that corner. Or you can do it with a net. So we're going to cross our hands over our chest. We're going to have our butt out, chest over. I'm going to get the player into good posture. And all I'm going to have them do is I'm going to have them stride, and then I'm going to have them turn and rotate. And so by having my butt out, my chest over, and having my hat just skimming the net, by keeping it there on the stride, you're remaining in good posture. If the player doesn't remain in good posture, what they're going to do is their head is going to come up off of the net. So you keep the head on the net, and it almost automatically makes you stride straight. So that's the first step, just butt out, butt behind heels, chest over, head on the wall or on the net. I'm going to load and stride, and then from there I can turn and keep my head there. So that not only makes me stride in good posture, but it also makes me stay there as I make my turn. So that's the first thing that you can do. The second thing, let me keep my hat like this. The second thing is, then we'll take a medicine ball. So here I have just a four-pound medicine ball. You can use, for our young players, we usually use two and four-pound medicine balls. For our older players, you can get a little bit heavier than that. But really, four pounds is probably the heaviest you have to go on this drill. So what we'll do is we'll get into that position, and then all we're going to do is we're going to load here, and we're going to turn, and we're just going to have the ball basically brush the net. But we're going to keep our head on the net. Again, if the player comes out of posture, they're going to take their head off of the net. So if you keep your head on the net, you're going to load, stride, and you're just going to do this. You're going to keep your head there the whole time. So now I'm working on remaining in good posture during my stride, but then also during my turn. I don't want to be here. Now the third thing after you do that is now you can actually throw the medicine ball. So I would do the same exact thing, except I'm going to throw it. Now I'm going to throw it a little bit higher than normal because I have my camera set up there and I don't want to destroy it. But I'm going to be here. I'm going to load and stride, and then I would throw. So I'll put it all together. I'm going to load and stride, and I'm going to throw the med ball, and I'm going to try to keep my head on that net again. I got a little bit nervous here that I was going to break my camera, but luckily I did not. So those are some really easy ways to work on being in good posture. Such an important part when it comes to stepping out, stepping in the bucket. The last thing I'll say is sometimes players will start to do this because they're afraid of the ball, especially if they're at younger ages. So for those players, you have to make them feel comfortable. And so don't throw them in there with a pitcher throwing super hard. If you have a player that's kind of diving out or stepping out, don't just throw them in there and have someone throwing really hard to them and say, come on, Johnny, just stride straight. Yeah, Johnny's going to say, no chance. I'm not striding straight. I'm afraid of this ball. So work on it off the tee. Work on it off of this drill right here on the net. Work on flips, front toss. Maybe you have to get a softer ball. So instead of a baseball, if it's a real young player, use some type of foam ball or tennis ball. Get them comfortable striding straight and not being afraid that the ball is going to hit them. And then you slowly progress and build up into live, whether it's batting practice with a real ball or an actual pitcher. The other thing, and we'll cover this in another video, is how to get hit by a pitch properly. One thing I see is a lot of young players don't know how to get hit by a pitch. And once you learn how to get hit by a pitch, because you are going to get hit by a pitch. It's part of baseball. If you don't want to ever get hit by a pitch, you're not going to be a very good baseball player. So you have to learn how to get hit by a pitch, and we'll talk about that in another video. But that's another way to just make players more comfortable that if a ball is coming at them, that they can protect themselves and they're not going to open up. What I see a lot is players will open up this way, and now they really expose themselves to injury. Hopefully that helps out. Again, if you want to learn more about this, want to get even more drills than that, click the description box below. You can check out our course down there. That's all we have. Thanks so much for watching. We'll talk to you later. If you've got hitters that you're looking to improve before the start of next season, this is essential for you. Matt Antonelli here, former major league player, first-round pick, and college coach. With this course, we're going to show you exactly, step-by-step, how to generate power, develop bat speed, and enhance swing mechanics. Regardless of your hitter's age, this course is going to deliver advanced hitting techniques that will allow any hitter to get better and make an impact at the plate this spring. We have a full catalog of training content that you can access from anywhere, at any time. This course is perfect for players, parents, coaches, instructors, and more. 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