Continuing with the Stride . . .

Staying on the them of Stride this week. . .Check below for I see in my lessons, related to the stride.

I’m 32 years old and I’ve been teaching hitting for 10 years. I’m trying to figure out at what time during this period that the stride became passé. Somewhere along the line, coaches have made many kids afraid to gain ground in the stride. The result: An OVERWHEALMING number of hitters who never get to a strong hitting position, thus limiting their offensive production. Out of the 3,000 kids I see in a teaching environment each year, approximately 20 kids over-stride, getting the body off balance, and putting them in a weak position to transfer energy through the baseball. In comparison, approximately 2,100 (7 out of 10) under-stride and hit with a dead back side. Many coaches stress, “pick the foot up and put it down.”
This is correct only if weight is still transferred to a balanced athletic position when the stride foot lands. This means, as the stride foot lands, there should be an equal amount of weight on each leg. This is the body’s strongest athletic position.

A good way to teach it is this: Tell your athlete to get into their basketball defensive position or in a base-stealing stance. The feet are noticeably wide because this is the body’s strongest athletic position – the SAME position we want to hit from when the stride foot lands!
There are players in big league baseball that are considered to use a “no stride” approach. Albert Pujols is one that comes to mind.

There are two things I have to say about this:
1) If this approach is used, notice that Pujols is already in a strong, wide, powerful starting position.
2) What you may not realize is that Pujols’ front foot still gains 1 inch of ground!

In order to transfer energy through the baseball, the body needs to get to a strong, 50/50 balanced position as the stride foot lands. The body gets to this position by making a strong, forward, positive move initiating from the ball of the back foot, thus forcing the stride foot forward.