Stride Problems: Keeping Balace

[DClutch]

I have been having trouble with my stride at the plate and stepping with my front foot. I have been stepping towards the left handers batters box (I'm righty) opposed to stepping towards the pitcher, how I should be stepping.

Also, I have had trouble keeping my back foot straight. Sometimes it gives away toward the 3rd base side of the field (behind me).

No matter how hard I've tried, and cant do these things consistently. No matter what I do, I just end up doing it. I'm looking for some tips or advice to correcting my foot placement. Thanks.

[Ifubuildit]

I have been having trouble with my stride at the plate and stepping with my front foot. I have been stepping towards the left handers batters box (I'm righty) opposed to stepping towards the pitcher, how I should be stepping.

Also, I have had trouble keeping my back foot straight. Sometimes it gives away toward the 3rd base side of the field (behind me).

No matter how hard I've tried, and cant do these things consistently. No matter what I do, I just end up doing it. I'm looking for some tips or advice to correcting my foot placement. Thanks.

Find your balance point in your stance. I call this the 3 ball drill. You place one ball in front of your front foot. Place the second ball 5 inches behind that in the middle of your stance. Place the 3rd ball behind the second again 5 inches behind the second.

The object is to step on the other side of the ball in the middle as close to it as possible. Use a soft toe touch. Do not go to heal plant. And load the hip.

Then stride back over the ball to the original position. Again, as close to the other side of the ball as possible. Soft toe touch. Flex the knee then go to heel plant. By doing this you will always control the stride and you will always be in a balanced position when you stride back to the original point. This will ensure that when you take your cut you will at least start out balanced.

As you progress then change the middle ball out to a smaller ball. I use a softball, then a baseball, then a tennis ball and then a small plastic golf ball. Again the object is to control the stride and land balanced during this whole exercise.

When you get comfortable with the movement then take the middle ball out and bring both the outside balls closer together. Continue with the drill until you feel you have control of your stride.

As for the back foot you could add a fourth ball and place it behind the back foot right beside it. If the ball moves you get to reward yourself with 5 pushups. Do it again you get 10 Its amazing how fast you will fix that problem.

Another solution would be take a small 2x4 and place your back foot heel on it so when you start to move it out your toe will have enough pressure and weight on it to make it much harder to move. Remember this is just a drill. I would not want you to squish the bug with the back foot while doing an actual game swing.

Hope this helps you. Keep me posted.

Dana.

[bhss89]

I have been having trouble with my stride at the plate and stepping with my front foot. I have been stepping towards the left handers batters box (I'm righty) opposed to stepping towards the pitcher, how I should be stepping.

Also, I have had trouble keeping my back foot straight. Sometimes it gives away toward the 3rd base side of the field (behind me).

No matter how hard I've tried, and cant do these things consistently. No matter what I do, I just end up doing it. I'm looking for some tips or advice to correcting my foot placement. Thanks.

Many others on here who know more than I (or pretend they do), but it seems to me that you might want to try a few different things to correct your balance issue, starting with making certain you're balanced to begin with. And maybe you could simply "pick up, put down" to simplify and eliminate movement that might be unnecessary. No reason you have to take a large stride, or even stride at all for that matter. Provided you're "good to go" with your hands and top half, I think this is something you can certainly work out by spring. Work at it each day and you can change it for the better.

[scorekeeper]

DClutch,

With all the gurus and products out there, how can you possibly be having a problem?(sarcasm) I don’t know how old you are, but surely all the great coaches you’ve had should have been able to take care of this issue. What happened? (more sarcasm)

Here’s what sounds like the perfect fix that was posted on another BB this very morning.
http://www.statsintl.com/ Would you pay $80 plus postage to fix your problem? (complete sarcasm)

Now for some serious questions.

What age and level do you play? Compared to the rest of your team/league, how successful of a hitter are you at this time, and is that better or worse than in the past? How did you come to the conclusion that those things were bad for you personally?

[DClutch]

I play JV. Last year I didnt hit very well, it was a wreck, just an off year. In Summer ball, I hit alright. Lately I have been taking a lot of BP and with some work I've started to drive the ball on a line consistently. Some guys recomended I do this. I'm literally dancing in the batters box. lol.

They few times I have done it right, I've hit the ball pretty well. A couple guys hammer me do this, but sometimes I dont feel comfortable with it all. I want to give it a try though, no doubt.

[scorekeeper]

I play JV. Last year I didnt hit very well, it was a wreck, just an off year. In Summer ball, I hit alright. Lately I have been taking a lot of BP and with some work I've started to drive the ball on a line consistently. Some guys recomended I do this. I'm literally dancing in the batters box. lol.

They few times I have done it right, I've hit the ball pretty well. A couple guys hammer me do this, but sometimes I dont feel comfortable with it all. I want to give it a try though, no doubt.

Let me tell you something that I hope gives you some encouragement, but be careful not to allow it to let you quit trying to improve.

I don’t know what grade you’re in or the quality of the program there, but being on the JV team means you had to survive one heck of a lot of cuts! Try to imagine how many players you’ve played with over the years didn’t get that far! While many people frown on JV ball as being inferior, I see it as just a stepping stone to the varsity.

My personal preference would be that a hitter didn’t have “happy feet” in the box. That shouldn’t mean you can’t have success, but that it might be a bit more difficult. Unfortunately, this is really a bad time of the year to try to make changes. You said you’ve been taking a lot of BP lately, but what does that mean?

Are you going to the cages or getting live BP? Are you trying to work on things by yourself, or do you have someone qualified to not only see what you’re dong wrong, but help you try to fix problems?

I’m certainly not a hitting guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I suspect most who are considered hitting “experts”, would advise you to be very careful if trying to fix things by yourself. It is possible that you end up practicing things that aren’t beneficial, and that’s seldom a good thing.

I wish you the best of luck!

[Chris O'Leary]

I have been having trouble with my stride at the plate and stepping with my front foot. I have been stepping towards the left handers batters box (I'm righty) opposed to stepping towards the pitcher, how I should be stepping.

Also, I have had trouble keeping my back foot straight. Sometimes it gives away toward the 3rd base side of the field (behind me).

No matter how hard I've tried, and cant do these things consistently. No matter what I do, I just end up doing it. I'm looking for some tips or advice to correcting my foot placement. Thanks.

How are you hitting?

The striding closed thing might be a problem, but I'm not sure that what your back foot is doing is a problem.

[DClutch]

I've been hitting at a batting cage since I started try to correct this.

The first time I tried to do focus on these things, I hit pretty good. For the majority of the the time, or atleast in stretches I stepped straight out and hit a lot of liners back at the machine.

Last night I went back, it was horrible. I couldnt hit a thing! I was stepping all over the place. The worst part was that whenever I was in my stance, my legs just felt like they were tied in knots and it was just uncomfortable. Even today I just picked up a bat and started to take a few swings, my legs just feel 'tingly' I guess, like I want to jump out of my skin.

Im gonna take maybe a week off to clear my mind and relax. The thing is I thought I was hitting pretty well before this. Some of the things I was doing and having success with, are things that Ive seen some other big leaguers do. I guess it wasnt the basic simple swing people want to see, but I thought it was working for me. But what the guys are telling me to do, sometimes I think its just not for me. They want me to do things like widen my stance and things like that. I want to give it a try though. I want to 'correct' these, but at the same time I think that maybe this just isnt my thing.

[Rajun Cajun]

I noticed you said you were stepping towards the leftie's batter box. Is this due to trying to get to the outside pitch? If so, try hitting the ball with a 45 degree hip flex instead of a full hip turn - full pivot.

If not, disregard.

I have painted a stripe on the batters box where my son works out in the back yard. You can do this on a rubber mat that you can buy at Walmart. This stripe shows him where he should be lined up at with respect to feet allignment. Next I have 3 green foot prints. Two are for his stance, and one is for his stride.

1. I have him practice his stride a few times during warm ups by TAKING pitches from stride. This teaches tracking a pitch fully and takes the pressure off of learning to stride.

2. I have him practice his stride a few times by having him TAKING from the drive position. Same thing here. But, now we allow the hips to turn after the stride.

if I notice any flaws in his stride with the take-pitch drills above we will just point that out before we move on and do it over again. If all looks well, we move into soft toss with a contact only drill (load-stride-pivot-swing to contact) and freeze. If those are looking good and stride is where it should be and our hands are controlling the bat head we move on to full game swings.

I emphasize the stance and stride allot. To me, they are like links in a chain. you won't have a good stride if you don't have a good stance. You won't have a good stance if you don't have good balance and your weight in the proper position. I prefer a bit of a pre-load in the stance as the pitcher starts his move. I don't like a neautral load, and I definitely don't like one leaning towrds the pitcher.

You can also try laying a 1 by 6 piece of wood on the ground and striding on that to reinforce where the feet should be.