With the beginning of baseball season upon us, we will take a look at our Advanced Group Hitting program and what it can provide during the season for hitters serious about improving their skills to scale to the next level.
Logistically, the amount and quality of swings players are able to get during a high school practice are typically not enough to see significant improvement in targeted areas for most hitters. In most cases, there are too many players and not enough time and space to handle a specialized program like we are able to accomplish at Rogue. Hitters in our program are in groups at a maximum of 4 hitters at a time, allowing coaches to have eyes on every movement to ensure a high quality. With an hour and a half per session, there is ample time to combine quality movement with a solid variability of drills and environments to push the limits of their skills.
At all times, but especially during the season, Rogue hitters are put through a hitting program that is based on constraining certain parts of their body to retrain their motor cortex to elicit the movement or metric we are aiming for, also known as CLA (Constraints Led Approach). More simply, hitters are put in positions that improve their hitting abilities on their own without an overload of verbal cueing. This becomes increasingly important during the season as too many voices to a hitter can become too many noises in their heads, creating issues at the plate in the competitive environment. Fostering confidence in their preparation process is of the utmost importance for ongoing success during the season.
Hitters are also exposed to game speed reps on a daily basis, either by the machine or live at-bats against their peers. One of the main focuses of the Rogue hitting program is making sure players’ abilities blend to the game environment. It is easy to hit tee, flips, and slow BP on video and claim you are ready for the game. It is hard to get on the machine pumping 85 and use those prepared skills to drive a baseball under the difficult time constraint of the game. With this, the ability to look at video from players’ live game at bats in season, recount first hand experiences from game at bats, and use those to drive programming in our group setting is extremely valuable. Game video can easily be captured by a parent on their phone or tablet, shared with the player and then shared with our instructors to implement into programming and training. Personal notes and outcomes of performance are also shared in each players’ individual notebook between trainers and themselves to keep a good record of what is working and what is not.
Noticeable Improvements
Since the inception of our Advanced group hitting, hitters have seen important improvements across all metrics we track and that show to play in the game. Here are some of the group stats:
2.9% increase in max exit velocity, with a largest single increase of 6.1%
5.3% increase in average exit velocity, with a largest single increase of 11%
6.4% increase in max distance, with a largest single increase of 29%
14.5% increase in average distance, with a largest single increase of 132% (whoa)
2.9% increase in average bat speed, with a largest single increase of 11%
Data points here are provided by our assessment process which consists of 100 swings registered on Blast Motion, providing somewhere around 40-75 Rapsodo and Blast paired data points points per assessment. Pitches are off the machine at a velocity between the range of 70-95 and hitters are assessed before they begin group training sessions and once a month while they are apart of the program. Player progress is measured from beginning of training to the most current assessment, not personal minimum to maximum.
Overall, Rogue hitters are seeing the improvements we have targeted since the beginning of their own training processes. Our program is designed to compliment hitting programs at high school practice to best improve each hitter individually.
Jordan Serena
Hitting Coordinator
Rogue Baseball Performance