3 KEYS TO HITTING WITH MORE POWER

Remember, we hit with our big muscles. Your legs are the biggest and strongest muscles on your body, so your stride length is going to vary depending on your stance. If you see that you're striding like this, that's over-striding, that's not an equilateral triangle. As Ted Williams said, the hips have to lead the way. Hey, it's Coach Justin from Ultimate Baseball Training. Welcome back to another video. If you're watching this video, you're probably looking to improve your power, and what hitter wouldn't like to hit the ball a little bit harder and further? When you improve your power, every other offensive stat seems to improve with it. You're going to get more hits, you're going to have a higher average, you're going to have more RBIs, a higher slugging percentage. Obviously, you're going to have more extra base hits, more home runs, so good things happen when you hit the ball hard, and even if you already hit the ball pretty well, adding a little bit more power, I don't think any hitter is against that, okay? So in this video, I want to share with you three simple but very, very powerful keys that will help you increase your bat speed and increase your power at the plate. These are simple things, maybe you've thought about them before, maybe you haven't. They're not very difficult to add into your swing. It's going to take a little bit of time and a little bit of repetition. You've got to get the muscle memory down, but I'm telling you, once you master these three things, watch out, you're going to see a big time surge in your power. So let's get started. So the first key I want to talk about here is the lower half triangle. So when you're hitting, before you actually make contact with the ball, obviously you've got to load and you've got to stride. What I'm talking about with this lower half triangle is after you load and you stride and your front foot makes contact with the ground. So after you load and stride, as soon as your front foot makes contact with the ground, you should notice that your lower half, your legs and the ground should make an equilateral triangle. What this is going to do is this is going to get you into an athletic launch position where your legs are engaged and ready to help you get the most power out of your swing. Because remember, we hit with our big muscles. Your legs are the biggest and strongest muscles on your body. So getting into this athletic launch position, you're going to feel your legs are engaged and you're going to be ready to fire those legs and get every ounce of power that you possibly can into the baseball. So your stride length is going to vary depending on your stance, all right? But you'll notice if you watch any of your favorite big leaguers, they might have different starting points, different stances, but when their front foot, after they load and stride, when their front foot makes contact with the ground, you're going to pretty much see this equilateral triangle that I'm talking about here. So how does stride length affect this? Well, if you have a narrow stance, Cody Bellinger comes to mind. He has a pretty narrow stance. So for him, he's going to have a longer stride in order to get to that position. Remember, the starting point, it's just that. It's a starting point. So he's more like this and you'll notice that his stride is a little bit further to get him to this equilateral triangle position. If you have more of a traditional stance, maybe shoulder width or a little bit wider than shoulder width, then you're going to take more of a medium length stride in order to get out into this position. And then you see hitters like Albert Pujols, why does he not really have a stride? Because he already starts out in basically this equilateral position here. So all he has to do is pick up his front heel and then put it back down. He's already in this power position. So I just want to encourage you, if you look at your swing right now and you see that your stride is only this far, that's not an equilateral triangle or vice versa. If you see that you're striding like this, that's over striding. That's not an equilateral triangle. So I'm telling you, work on getting into this good lower half triangle position. That's the first step in really maximizing your power. The next key we'll talk about is landing with your front foot slightly open. So I'm actually going to move this tee so you can see my front foot here. But same position we just got to. So we talked about getting to that lower half triangle here, but you'll notice my front foot landed slightly open when I did that. The reason why you want to land with your front foot slightly open is because the rotational part of the swing really starts when your heel drops. There's no rotation really when you're going through your load and going through your stride. There's not really much rotation there. When your front heel drops, that's when your hips start violently rotating and pulling everything else through the zone. It's when your front heel drops. But it's very hard for you to get full hip rotation if you don't land with that front foot slightly open. Landing with your front foot slightly open, this is an athletic launch position. And when that heel drops, you'll notice it's very easy to get that hip rotation, clear that front hip. And you'll notice that it's very easy to get maximum power, maximum bat speed into the baseball. But hitters who struggle with power, a lot of them land with their front foot closed like this. And if I do that, just try this at home. Get into this position where your front foot lands closed like this and then drop your heel. And this is as far as I can turn here. And that's a very awkward position. I have nothing else to turn with unless I allow this front foot to slide like this. And obviously we don't want any sliding like that. So you're going to see varying degrees of this front foot open. You know, some hitters, Jose Batista, his is, you know, significantly open. Josh Donaldson's another one. Theirs is, you know, really, really open. You don't want to stride with your toes pointing towards the pitcher and be completely open like this. But just be sure, the big thing is make sure you're not closed. I think about 45 degrees will get you into that good position where when your heel drops, as Ted Williams said, the hips have to lead the way. It's not hands, hands, hands. You get to this position, your hips have to go first. That's what creates that separation. And again, I want to reemphasize, your legs are the strongest part of your body. You don't get power from your wrists and your hands. It's great to have wrist strength and hand strength, but it's your legs and your hips have to lead the way. Or landing with that front foot slightly open is going to allow you to maximize your hip rotation. All right, so we talked about that lower half triangle. We talked about landing with our front foot slightly open. Those are two things that happen obviously before making contact. And all of this happens so fast, but I think it's important to break it down and go slow so you can really see the finer details of the swing. But those are what happens before the swing. Now I want to talk about something, this last key here that happens at the point of contact and right after the point of contact. And that is stop and release. So that's the last key, stop and release, okay? So I'm a firm believer that your hips violently rotate. A lot of hitting is rotational. I mean, sure there's a little bit of a linear component to it, but it's not just hands straight down to the ball like this. There is a violent rotation, but at some point the rotation has to stop. And at some point, you know, you get to the point of contact, some point you have to let it go and let your bat head explode and whip through the zone, okay? Otherwise, if you just rotate and rotate and rotate, you'll just spin and spin and spin and spin and spin in a circle, okay? So eventually in order to get maximum bat speed, we want our bat to be traveling the fastest at the point of contact so we can really hit the ball flush and, you know, hit it max distance, right? In order to do that, we have to at some point release. So I wanna, to really hammer this point home, I want you to think about having a bucket full of water and you're gonna throw that water towards the pitcher, not towards the third baseman, not towards the first baseman, towards the pitcher. Now, if I had a bucket of water, I'm not talking about like this, I'm talking about doing it with some power. So you would see that that would kind of resemble a baseball swing. You know, I'd go back like this, I'd load, and then I'd explode. But what would happen is I'd eventually, I would stop my rotation when I, you know, hit against that firm front side and I would stop and I would release, I would let go. That's the only way that that water is gonna go straight. Otherwise, if I just rotate and keep rotating like this, the water is obviously not gonna go that way, all right? Even if a little bit gets out of the bucket, it's not gonna be with any force, right? The only way you can do that with force is by stopping and releasing. You can also think about, and try this at home, get a medicine ball and do rotational medicine ball throws. Again, throw it right at the pitcher. And you'll notice that, yes, there's a huge rotational component, but at some point, you've gotta let the bat head whip through the zone. You've gotta let your hands whip through the zone with that medicine ball in order to throw it straight. So I think this is something, it's a minor detail, but it's something that you really need to emphasize because it's something that I struggled with for a long time. And that was just trying to rotate more than I should and not really having an emphasis on, yes, at the point of contact, you wanna be connected like this, but eventually things have to stop and you've gotta let the bat head whip through the zone. So stop and release. I'm telling you, when you do that, you're gonna notice that your power increases. I hope you enjoyed the tips that I shared with you in this video. As always, if you liked this video, please leave it a thumbs up. I'd really appreciate that. And subscribe to the channel. That way you never miss any of our upcoming videos we're coming out with every single week. So subscribe and be sure that your notifications are on. Just hit that little bell. And last thing, hitters, I put together a free resource. You're really gonna like it. It's really gonna help you out. It's called the Contact Point Checklist and you can download it for free. Just click on the link down below, either in the comment section or in the description. I'll put the link in both places. But what I've done in this free resource is I've freeze-framed the swing at the point of contact and I've highlighted a few key elements that every successful hitter has in their swing. So I want you to compare your swing and see what areas you're doing a really great job in and where are some areas that you can maybe improve, okay? So it's really gonna help you out. And like I said, 100% free. So go download that right now. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you next time.