1 Effortless Power Hitting Notes Video 1: Introduction 1. At the Play Big Academy the first rule of winning is "Only do things that help you win." Video 2: The Effortless Power Formula 2. Effortless Power Hitting is hitting with maximum efficiency. It s tapping into the full amount of power you have available at the moment -- and for most players that feels effortless! 3. Your main job in effortless power hitting is letting go ; Effortless power is more about freedom in your current natural and trained moves to the ball and less about adding anything new. Think about it, when you hit great doesn t it seem sort of easy? 4. Here s the formula that keeps it simple: o Performance = Potential - Interference o The two basic forms of interference are: Distraction: You aren t focused 100% on the baseball Tension: Muscles you don t need in your swing, in fact, that fight against your swing are unnecessarily tight. Video 3: The Play Big Performance Pyramid 5. Your body follows your focus. 6. Great players are good at making themselves feel good and also are able to play well even when they don t feel confident (their focus on their simple plan overrides their doubts). 7. When you re focused on negative things your body senses a threat to its safety. It reacts with an ancient, unconscious fight or flight response that causes your muscles to tense (including the muscles that control your eye movements) and thus interfere with your swing. 8. To sum it up so far: Fearful and negative emotions distract you from your focus on the ball and cause physical tension, both of which interfere with your physical mechanics. 9. Your beliefs govern your thoughts and your performance. Information comes into your brain and is run through your belief system.
2 10. If your Inner Umpire (see Play Big book) says you are in danger real or imagined it will generate fight or flight emotions that cause a great deal of interference with your hitting. 11. Great hitters are able to generate confidence BEFORE they get hits. They believe they will be successful regardless of their recent results. 12. What you believe about a situation causes you to feel emotion. Your emotions either help or hurt your ability to focus. Your focus has a HUGE influence on your physical actions. Of course, what you physically do affects your results! Video 4: The Law of Specificity of Training 13. The Law of Specificity of Training says You get what you train for: If you want to hit with effortless power, you must Practice Hitting with Effortless Power! 14. Great hitters relate to hitting like it is difficult so they: Keep it simple Understand they will fail often (and so they avoid punishing themselves for not getting a hit) Hank Aaron told me he just tried to put the fat part of the bat on the ball. Pete Rose told me: See the ball, hit the ball, that s all I have to say. Alex Rodriquez: Hit the ball solid. Stan Musial I always knew where the fat part of the bat was and I wanted to put it on the ball. 15. So if you want effortless power, give up the idea that you should be perfect, that you should succeed every time. 16. Clarify what you re up there to do and make it simple. Video 5: Re-defining Hitting 17. A fundamental principle of Effortless Power Hitting is Feel Good First. 18. Try on this mindset: I love and appreciate where I m at and I m excited to get even better. 19. Ultimately you must find what works for YOU (e.g. joy, anger, pumped up, calm, etc)
3 Video 6: Feel Good First 20. My coaching for you now and always is to pay attention to what makes you feel good and do those things over and over. Focus on what you d like to have happen. 21. The Top 10 Exercise Step 1: List 10 of your most awesome at-bats. These are the 10 at-bats you d love to have every time you go to the plate. Chances are you felt confident walking up to the plate, saw the ball great, felt relaxed but energized. A big part of the benefit you get is searching your memory bank for your top 10, so take all the time you need to come up with them. Step 2: Every day, take at least 5 minutes to re-live these at-bats. See what you saw, hear what you heard and feel how good you felt. 22. Every time you pick up a bat, use the skills you develop in this program and my other programs to feel good first. Video 7 23. The Effort Finder Exercise Step 1: Recall and name a specific at bat where you were totally confident and mashed the ball. You probably experienced effortless power. Step 2: Re-live that AB, go back and see what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel Step 3: Rate the effort on your swing, 0 to10. You now have a new target for your swing! Practice swinging with that amount of effort any time you swing. Don t get too fine I like guys to have a two number target, like, a 2 or 3, a 4 or 5, or a 6 or 7.
4 Video 8: A Lesson Lesson The Effortless Power Drills 1. The effortless power drills are to be done with player-centered coaching. In coachcentered (normal) coaching the coach tells the player what he noticed. In Playercentered coaching, the player tells the coach what he noticed. 2. In these drills, the coach s role is to ask questions of the hitter. The point is to increase the hitter s awareness and focus. He needs to learn to make his own adjustments. 3. Here are Do s and Don ts on how to facilitate the drills: Do just ask the player questions, don t give commands. Do the drill as directed, don t give technical instructions or comment on their mechanics. Do ask the player what he noticed. Don t tell him what he should do or feel. Let him learn from his own experience what feels best and produces the best results. Explain the drill and ask questions about his experience, that s it. The drills are done using soft toss in the videos, you can use them with any hitting set up. These drills draw heavily on the work of Tim Gallwey and his Inner Game of Tennis and other books, and Inner Game expert Sean Brawley.
5 Video 9: The Effort Drill Excess tension is one of the main forms of interference. This drill helps build your awareness of unnecessary tension in your swing. 1. Warm up 2. Baseline: After a swing, ask: What was your effort on that swing, 0 to 10? 3. Experiment: Ask Show me a or Try it now at [insert one of the below for each swing] a. 5 or 6 b. 8 or 9 c. 2 or 3 d. 9 or 10 e. 4 or 5 f. 1 or 2 g. 6 or 7 4. Preference: Ask the hitter what level he likes best. 5. Discuss what you both noticed There is no one right answer on this one or any other drill. You need to experiment yourself. Don t rush the hitter: give him a moment to prepare himself after you say which effort level he is asked to swing at before you pitch the ball. Note: swinging with less effort doesn t mean you swing slower, you just use less muscle. I will say it s more common for players to be in the two to four range in effort, but I ve had guys be at the 8, 9 or 10 level. Do this drill each day for a week including experimenting with all levels of effort and you ll have a really good idea where your swing needs to be to hit your best. And you ll also have an increased ability to recognize when you ve got excess tension in your swing. Then, whenever you re about to hit, in practice or in a game, take some dry swings until you can feel yourself at your targeted level of effort. This is a great way to help yourself feel good first.
6 Video 10 The Hands Drill This drill helps you be consistently where you want to be with your hand tension. Baseline: After a swing, ask: What was your hand tension on that swing, 0 to 10? Experiment: Ask Show me a or Try it now at [insert one of the below for each swing] a. 5 or 6 b. 8 or 9 c. 2 or 3 d. 9 or 10 e. 4 or 5 f. 1 or 2 g. 6 or 7 Preference: Ask the hitter what level he likes best. Discuss what you both noticed. Coach: Instead of saying relax your hands, you now can ask, 0 to 10 how tense were your hands? What would you like them to be? Video 11 The Body Tension Drill 1. Baseline: After a swing, ask: What was your tension level in your body on that swing, 0 to 10? 2. Experiment: Ask Show me a or Try it now at [insert one of the below for each swing] h. 5 or 6 i. 8 or 9 j. 2 or 3 k. 9 or 10 l. 4 or 5 m. 1 or 2 n. 6 or 7 3. Preference: Ask the hitter what level he likes best. 4. Discuss what you both noticed.
7 The Drill Make a drill of any quality you d like to develop (e.g. The Fluid Drill: 0 to 10 how fluid did that swing feel? ) Follow the BE-P model Baseline Experiment Preference Video 12 The Stan Musial Drill Step 1: Divide bat into 3 zones: 1 is too close to the handle 2 is on the sweet/fat part 3 is too close to the end Step 2: After each swing the batter declares which zone the ball hit: 1, 2 or 3. Be like Stan: I m going to go up there, feel the fat part of my bat while in my set up and stance, and focus on putting the fat part of the bat on the ball with effortless power. Video 13 2-Seam/4-Seam Drill Step 1: Show the hitter a 4-seam pitch Step 2: Show the hitter a 2-seam pitch Step 3: Hitter identifies after pitch: 2-seam or 4-seam? Advanced: Only hit the 4-seamers! Video 14 Pitch- Hit Drill Step 1: As the ball is released batter says Pitch Step 2: As he makes contact batter says Hit Step 3: After 4-5, begin asking if he was early, on time, or late with Hit As soon as you start to lose interest in the drill, turn your focus up another notch for at least 5 more pitches and see what you notice. One way to re-define hitting in a way that makes it easier for you (as discussed in an earlier video) is that you re up there playing Pitch-Hit.
8 Video 15 Tapping: A Fast, Easy Way to Reduce Interference Tapping combines two elements to reduce emotional interference: 1. Focusing on the negative emotion, feeling, or pain 2. Tapping Tap while focusing your energy on a specific emotion or event and the tapping helps clear out the negative emotions caused by that event still stuck in your body. Tapping Points (see video for specifics) 1. Eye brow 2. Side of eye 3. Below eye 4. Below nose 5. Below lower lip 6. Below collar bone 7. Under Arm 8. Top of head Video 16 Erase Bad AB with Tapping Tapping is a powerful tool, not a magic wand. You may need to go through it half a dozen times to get significant relief from your negative emotion. But the few minutes it takes is invaluable for reducing the emotional interference a bad at-bat or a bad game can cause. Slumps start with one at bat that you carry with you into the next. Then you have another bad AB and you carry those two bad at-bats with you into the next one. Don t let bad at-bats snowball into a slump come back here and clear out the bad ones.
9 Video 17 Stealth Tapping: How to Tap During Games and Practice 5. Rub the Spots 6. Hold and Breathe: Press on a spot (under the collar bone is great for fear and stress) and take a long, slow, deep breath. 7. Imagine: Don t do anything with your hands simply imagine you are tapping through the spots What we imagine seems real to our minds. Use Stealth Tapping 1. On the bench especially after you make an out 2. On the field 3. In the Hole, on Deck 4. Even at the plate Remember, hitting is hard. You can t control what the pitcher does and you can t even control where the ball goes when you hit it. You can only control yourself, and my coaching is to do whatever you can to reduce the tension and distractions that make hitting harder for you. Video 18 3 More Great Ways to Reduce Interference The next three short videos give you more ways to reduce the interference that keeps you from effortless power. Like any other physical exercise, the more you do these exercises the better as their benefits accrue over time. The 4 Thumps: The Calming Smoothie: The Separator:
10 Effortless Power Hitting Scoreboard Drills 1. The Top 10 Exercise: Re-live your 10 best AB s 2. Effort Finder: Re-experience your best Abs Effort level? Use the BE-P model and 0 to 10 rating scale for #3 - #6: a. Find the Baseline b. Experiment with different levels c. Choose your Preference 3. The Effort Drill: How much effort is in your best swing? 4. The Hands Drill: Tension level? 5. The Body Tension Drill: Tension level? 6. The Drill (insert quality would you like to develop) 7. The Stan Musial Drill: Divide bad head into 3 What I Noticed on these Drills: 8. The 2 Seam/4 Seam Drill: 2-seamer or 4? 9. Pitch-Hit Drill: pitch on release, hit on contact Tapping Focus on the feeling you don t want, then tap and breathe until it s gone! 1. Eye Brow 2. Side of Eye 3. Below Eye 4. Below Nose 5. Below Lip 6. Below Collar Bone 7. Under Arm 8. Top of Head 3 Great Interference Reducers 1. The 4 Thumps 2. The Calming Smoothie 3. The Separator For more baseball success coaching, visit www.playbigbaseball.com 2012 Dr. Tom Hanson and The Play Big Academy
11 K.I.S.S. Me! Keep Inside a Simple System 1. Here s what I do that makes me a consistently dangerous hitter (list all elements of your hitting system, e.g. nutrition, sleep, drills, approach, etc.) 2. What s Your Simple Plan? What are you Committed to Doing at the Plate? I m going up there to. Examples: a.. put the fat part of the bat on the ball with effortless power. b. square it up. c. drive it right back up the middle. d. see it and hit it. e. play pitch-hit f. feel the fat part of my bat and put it on the ball. g. see the seams and swing with a 2-3 effort. h. keep my hands at a 3-4 tension level. i. pretend I m Albert Pujols. 3. My Challenge to You: Strive for Outcome Independence where you evaluate your game based on how well you committed to and executed your simple plan. How Outcome Independent are you? 4. Rate Yourself 0 to 10: Commitment to Plan: Execution of Plan: 5. Discussion question: Can you have a great game at the plate without getting any hits?