By Joey Myers
The perfect baseball swing is like poetry in motion...watching Joe Mauer, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriquez, or Manny Ramirez hit leaves anyone with an awe that is indescribable. They've taken hundreds of thousands of cuts to create such a beautiful swing with such devastating impact on pitchers.
But, do you really have that kind of time with:
The new season coming up?
A big tournament being a week from now? or maybe you
Have to get ready for a big scouting showcase?
What you need is to SUPER-learn the baseball swing, like, yesterday!
Well, this article will go into what it's going to take to do just that. Doing the following will not make your swing perfect , it never will be, but you'll be able to take the information from the Smart Hitting Tips tab on the navigation bar, do what's prescribed here, and have a helluva showing.
Most of the following tips are hard rooted in research based on state-of-the-art Neuroscience and Exercise Science practice & theory...
This isn't a get hits quick scheme either, and will take A LOT of work, 2,000+ reps a week to be exact, but you'll train your brain and body to harmonize, building to successful baseball swing execution.
Ready?? Hold your horses...First,
You must create a time-line...when do you want to accomplish this? In a week (recommended, at least)? or 2? A month? Decide that first, then move on to the following Steps...
STEP 1: Make Small Circles
Start off slow with one concept, two at most, a day and breakdown each and every movement by going in extremely slow motion. You're brain is like a record...the more you do a movement, the more the needle wears the grooves on the surface of the vinyl... the more reps you do, the deeper and more solid the grooves.
Be careful because it can also work against you, by doing the movement wrong, so start off slow the right way, then speed up.
STEP 2: Balancing Act
Using the Balance & Reach Drill a foot or two off the ground will cause your brain to engage more muscles to stabilize the whole body, and the more you engage the Central Nervous System, the more muscles get recruited, and the faster your body picks up the technique.
Also, doing regular swings on an unstable surface, like on a narrow cushiony weight bench, diving board, exercise bose ball, or with eyes closed, the better off you'll be in record time.
STEP 3: Reps Before Bed
Studies have shown going through the motions before bedtime helps to burn them into your brain better. It has to do with the Four Stages of REM Sleep ...major repairs, both physically and cerebrally, go on in the 3rd and 4th Stages of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. If you don't get to the last two stages, then your body doesn't repair itself, which leads us to the next Step...
STEP 4: Set Alarm for 4.5 Hours
In order to speed up the learning process for developing an effective baseball swing, you have to take advantage of two sets of REM sleep. Do your swing repetitions before bed, set your alarm clock for 4.5 hours, wake up and do more reps, then finish off your sleep or the next REM cycle.
What this does is complete one cycle of REM (all 4 stages), then reset your body (by waking up) for another round, deepening those grooves in the brain. By doing this you're 50% more likely to make "stick" the desired technique.
All this can be possible if you...
STEP 5: Do NOT Eat Carbohydrates Past 6pm
Eating enough Carbs to spike your insulin, anytime past 6pm will keep you from getting to Stage 3 & 4 of REM sleep. Our natural occurring human growth hormones (HGH) get released in those stages of sleep ONLY, to repair the body. To allow that to happen, we have to chill out on the Carbs after hours.
And most importantly for your baseball swing, not only will you not repair and heal, but learning is dampened and your immune system crashes.
Last but not least,
STEP 6: Hyper-Computing for Cadence
Once we get a handle on all of the above baseball swing hyper-learning points, now we can speed up our micro processors. By doing this, we train the Central Nervous system by speeding up our motion to get the proper tempo or cadence.
Key point: do NOT attempt this until you have a solid handle on the proper form and movement first.
Speeding up the process of a particular part of the swing helps to deepen the specific movement groove in the brain, so when you engage the correct tempo, the movement is more natural.
You have to exaggerate a technique (in this case, speeding up the cadence), to get the right motion.
This is also great training for combating fast tempo pitchers, who when you step in the batter's box and look up, the pitch is already on its way.
The bottom line about HYPER-learning the baseball swing?
For these 6 Steps to be effective, you have to take between 1,200 to 2,000 repetitions a week...the RIGHT reps. Remember, wearing grooves in your brain can work for OR against you. Keep in mind, with that amount of swings in a small time-frame, you're going to develop blisters and sore muscles. Try and work through them, but if it comes to the sacrifice of good form, then stop, let them heal, and get back on the horse.
To Hyper-Heal sore muscles, do what the Soviet athletes did in the 80-90's, ice the sore spots for 5 minutes, then plunge into a hot bath or spa for 15 minutes, and repeat the process a couple times. This sequence also helps your body release melatonin, which will aid in putting you to sleep.
For blisters, drain them, but don't cut away the whole dead skin blister layer for a couple days...put antibiotic ointment between the dead and raw skin, and cover with a band-aid & athletic tape. They also have blister spray skin toughener, which you may want to look into...it burns like hell for a moment, but makes it so you can hit again with virtually no pain.
We hope you enjoyed this baseball swing article, remember we're always adding content, so please subscribe to the RSS feed, blog, and/or The Dugout Newsletter to stay up-to-date with the latest baseball hitting information.
My name is Joey Myers, and I played 18 total years of baseball finishing my career after my fourth year of college (2000-2003) as a Fresno State Bulldog (the 2008 College World Series Champions). I'm very grateful for the success I had at Bullard High School, and getting a scholarship to play at a Division I university, Fresno State, where I started 110 out of the 178 games I played, in the outfield. Now I devote most of my life to baseball swing coaching and personal fitness training. My websites are http://www.swing-smarter-baseball-hitting-drills.com/ and http://www.corecreationsonline.com/
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