Joe Maddon agrees. Maddon has given his teams some extra days off. Less, as they say, can be more. But batting practice has a problem of going off the rails, at least as a teachable exercise.
Batters are in there to bat, and there are fences out there to be conquered. A home run always feels more satisfying than a low line drive the other way. Which leads into the more general problem: Batting practice can create or reinforce bad habits. Bad habits like, say, trying to hit everything feet. Bad habits like seeing everything as pullable, or bad habits like thinking everything is worth swinging at.
In regular on-field batting practice, batters might try to show off, or they might otherwise concern themselves too much with the results. Consider a swing on the field versus a swing in the cage. On the field, a batter is more likely to worry about where or how far the ball goes.
This is how some of those bad habits can germinate. The perfect batting-practice pitcher throws everything over the plate around miles per hour. Some coaches do have a talent for consistently repeating their mechanics to make this possible. Batting in practice is nothing at all like batting in a game. The very essences of good hitting are removed. To play in the major leagues, a player needs a strong swing, sure.
A player needs to be able to hit a hittable pitch. But a player also needs to be able to identify a hittable pitch and lay off the unhittable pitches. Hitters need to identify pitch types, and they need to identify pitch locations. For the most part, in batting practice, there exists one single pitch type, and the location is often telegraphed. And even though batting-practice pitches are thrown from closer to the plate than game pitches, batting-practice velocity is still nothing like a Chris Sale fastball.
Hitting in batting practice prepares a batter only for hitting in batting practice. But in terms of work, what are you working on? I hate batting practice. Back in his earlier playing days with Oakland, Jason Giambi frequently would skip the regular on-field practice, especially if he was on a hot streak. More and more players these days seem to be eschewing traditional batting practice for the same general reasons.
It can even actively hurt. A total of lamps on the measurement device were randomly lit one at a time. Once a lamp was pressed, the next one was lit. If a participant failed to press the lamp that was lit after 1. We measured the score the number of successful attempts: max and the time s until lamps were pressed or had gone out. Means and standard deviations of measurement results were calculated. First, baseline measurement results were assessed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.
The results of the batting test are as follows. No other significant improvement in visual function was found with any batting practice or visual training group Table 2. The main objective of the present study was to clarify the effects of batting practice and visual training on batting ability by determining whether results from batting practice or visual training were dependent only upon the pitch type and speed encountered in batting practice and visual training, or other conditions.
Furthermore, the present study also aimed to verify whether visual training had any effect on batting ability or visual function. A possible study method would be to use baseball players as participants; however, in some cases, players may not necessarily be appropriate participants as they already have considerable experience, and their participation in regular baseball practice would inevitably influence their results.
In the present study, the participants were individuals who did not participate in batting practice as part of their regular lifestyle; therefore, priority could be directly placed on clarifying the effects of batting practice or visual training. In addition, individuals in the groups that participated in actual batting practice swung at every pitch, which could also be expected to have an effect.
The visual training groups were therefore required to make the same number of practice swings as the batting practice groups in order to eliminate the effects of swing training. Moreover, batting ability tests in this study were conducted experimentally as measurement of human performance. It was considered to have certain test reliability because a moderate correlation coefficient between fastball tests was obtained.
However, a curve-ball test evaluates different ability compared with fastball tests, which was considered in this discussion. According to the results, all groups demonstrated improved batting ability. Furthermore, a basic trend toward improved batting ability was apparent in the batting test under the same conditions as those in batting practice. Hitting fast pitches requires training with greater frequency or over a longer period of time.
This suggests that, in the design of this study, visual training alone had some effect on actual batting ability. The results suggest that visual training is effective for improving batting in baseball, even for pitch types that differ from those used during training. A number of studies on visual training have been reported; in many of them, the participants were actual baseball players Clark et al.
Our experiment was conducted from a different perspective. The participants were individuals who did not play baseball regularly, and the visual training group was allowed to practice batting in the batting tests before and after the training period of approximately 1 month.
If visual training were carried out in tandem with regular baseball training, the effects of batting practice during regular practice would allow the effects of visual training to be more apparent.
Also, in the present study, some cases were seen in which participants were unable to successfully grasp the timing of the pitches through visual training alone; this suggests that a greater effect could be obtained from baseball players with adequate levels of experience.
In other words, it is likely that experienced baseball players would have a greater ability to apply the effects of visual training to actual batting. Further studies employing a wider variety of training conditions and participants are therefore needed. In relation to visual training, no effect was found in any of the groups that participated in batting practice.
DVA and hand-eye coordination are considered important visual functions in sports Ishigaki and Miyao, ; Kohmura et al. In the visual training group, the training pattern involved concentrating on and being conscious of tracking watching without actually batting, which may perhaps be why the effects on visual function were greater in this group than in the batting practice group. On the other hand, results of DP decreased.
DP in this study was not normal distribution data for a small number of participants and absolute value of error. DP may not be suitable as an evaluation indicator of training effect, however, it is necessary to study further this variable. From the above, it appears that while overall batting ability tended to improve as a result of batting practice and visual training, the batting practice groups improved only their batting ability, whereas the visual training groups show improvement in visual function.
It seems likely that while practice with slow pitches cannot help players prepare to hit fast pitches, it is effective the other way around. Moreover, the study protocol in this experiment was similar to the motor learning field. Future studies are needed to clarify the mechanism of training effect.
There have been some studies using brain imaging of motor learning processes Deiber et al. It seems thus necessary to conduct experiments simulating dynamic tasks as in this study. These results suggest the possibility that visual training, which requires little physical space and can be carried out during the off-season, may be an effective method for improving batting ability and visual function in coaching settings.
With regard to experienced baseball players, visual training could be combined with regular training or batting practice to achieve a synergistic effect. However, ongoing experimentation and verification with a wider range of pitch types and speeds is needed. The results of the present study suggest that batting practice and visual training greatly improve batting ability against the same pitch types and speeds as those encountered in practice.
In the coaching setting, using these methods as training for specific pitch types or speeds that require improvement could be efficient. For batting against fast pitches in particular, batting practice with fast pitches for a sufficient length of time is needed; training with only slow pitches appears to be inadequate.
However, the amount of training sessions in this study was rather small. Future studies could apply retention tests and include a control group without training and practice. These limitations need to be addressed in future experimental training studies. Moreover, it is possible that batting ability at a given pitch speed improves with batting practice at that speed, even if the pitch type that the batter faces differs from that encountered during practice.
Thus, batting practice focused on the pitch speed could be expected to be effective in reducing practice time. It is also possible that visual training alone can help improve batting ability, and the introduction of this type of training into coaching settings could be proposed as a way to train visual function and enable players to become more conscious of their own vision.
Visual training could also be recommended in coaching settings as an economical option during the off-season or for injured players. Although further research is needed, a combination of regular batting practice and visual training may lead to improved batting ability for experienced baseball players. Therefore, additional research regarding implementation of these methods in coaching settings is needed. Additionally, although this research dealt with batting ability in baseball, our results could be applied to visual training in ball games such as volleyball, table tennis, cricket, tennis and so on.
To improve the ability to hit or catch the target, the athletes will need to take into consideration the speed and trajectory of the flying target.
National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List J Hum Kinet v. J Hum Kinet. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. After playing major league baseball, Jack Perconte has taught baseball and softball since and offered valuable coaching training too. He has helped numerous youth players reach their potential, as well as having helped parents and coaches navigate their way through the challenging world of youth sports.
Jack is one of the leading authorities in the areas of youth baseball training and coaching training advice. Understanding Reaction Time as it Pertains to Batting Practice It is disappointing to realize that I have screwed up many of my hitting students over the years because I did not consider reaction time, when it came to throwing batting practice. Products from Amazon. Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
About Jack Perconte After playing major league baseball, Jack Perconte has taught baseball and softball since and offered valuable coaching training too.
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