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For Heaven's Sake, Let's Stop Squishing the Bug When We Hit and Start Hitting With Power!

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For Heaven's Sake, Let's Stop Squishing the Bug When We Hit and Start Hitting With Power!

A Few Reasons Why That Old Teach Robs You of Precious Hitting Power

Now I realize when I talk about the old conventional wisdom and myth about squishing the bug while swinging the baseball bat in a negative light, I might upset some people.

I'm not worried about upsetting people; I want to help you become a better hitter.

Period.

Hang in there with me and follow my logic on why this old teach actually hurts the power in your swing and makes it difficult for you to adjust to off-speed pitches.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming the instructors that use that teach. In fact, we've all seen this teach on late night infomercials. And that's exactly what it is, just a teach. Some instructors believe it is a hitting principle–or fundamental, but I'll show you it isn't. These instructors are not bad people; I just have found that using that logic of squishing the bug won't help you get better. And here's why.

Let's Take a Look At Some Basic Hitting Mechanics

Now there are tons of books, DVD's, and manuals on hitting and pitching mechanics out there on the internet, bookstores, and anywhere else you can find these types of things. I'll give you the quick and dirty on hitting mechanics, and how the body works when you hit a baseball well.

1. First off, you need to have an athletic stance. A well-balanced body will help you swing aggressively and transfer your energy to the ball.

2. To transfer that energy, you first need to generate some. How do we do that in hitting? Well, getting your body weight going towards the pitcher. Some major league hitters take a big stride, others little or no stride. But, they all get their momentum going towards the pitcher.

3. To be consistent delivering the bat to the ball, you need to keep that athletic stance in place. The more you change your athletic stance, or posture, while you swing, you leak energy and will deliver the bat to the ball less consistently.

4. There are only a couple of things I can think of that the batter has control of during an at bat. If he or she swings, and when they swing. So, our fourth principle is your timing mechanism. Your timing mechanism is transferring your weight from back side to front side. Your hands and shoulders should not rotate before you transfer your weight to the front side. For faster pitchers, you transfer the weight a little early, for slower pitchers, a little later.

5. My fifth principle is power. Once you've transferred your weight forward, your hips should rotate before your shoulders and hands do. This will generate torque. Torque is the separation of your shoulders and hips. It's like a big rubber band winding up. The big muscles in the core of your body are winding up. Those muscles will help you rotate your shoulders faster and quicker which generates bat speed.

   Funny thing though, when this happens, the better hitters don't have much or any weight on the rear foot. The toe is touching the ground only. In some cases, the foot is all the way off the ground. There's no bug squishing going on.

   When you are aggressive with your torque, it will help you firm up your front leg. A firm front leg helps you control your momentum and also acts like a lever. Something firm to hit against.

To me, squishing the bug says there is weight on the back foot. If you look at the pictures above, there is no weight on the back of the leg until well after contact. The squishing the bug is an affect after contact. A recoil after the energy has been transferred to the front leg.

Staying back and keeping your weight on your back leg is a very defensive approach to hit. I don't believe successful hitters are very defensive. They are very offensive. They attack the pitcher. Heck, the pitcher is attacking the hitter. Who's going to win that battle if one person is attacking and the other is being defensive?

Isn't it the great contact position we are looking for anyway? If you get in that great position, everything else will take care of itself.

To generate more power, you first need to generate more energy. To generate more energy, you have to transfer weight to the front leg.

I think the reason people teach the "stay back" approach and squish the bug, is to stay away from lunging. You know, that ugly swing where the hitter looks like he is throwing the bat at the pitcher and the body is lunging towards the mound.

The cause of the lunge is not the weight going forward. A lunge happens when the hitter's hips and shoulders have already committed to swinging before the ball is in the strike zone. Don't commit the shoulders and hips too early, and you will be fine.

Next time, we are going to talk about using this technique of hitting to help you adjust to off-speed pitches.

So, my suggestion is to not focus on the ending…the squishing the bug. Focus on a great stance, attack the ball with your lower half, make sure your posture is steady and your shoulders and hands don't rotate before foot strike, and learn from your finish. If your finish is well balanced, you've probably kept your posture along the way.

Train like a champion today!