In today’s video blog post, we are talking about the baseball hitting secrets to correct a common problem called the Hip Slide.
The Hip Slide often occurs with young hitters. This is when the hitter goes to hit the ball, and throws their hip towards the baseball, or towards the pitcher. What this does is lock up the hitter’s natural motion around his core.
You’ll often see hitters that want to be aggressive throw that hip at the ball or at the pitcher, which puts them so far out in front, that they will never be able to catch and hit the ball deep. Instead, they’ll end up with a contact hit that sprays up the middle, often rolling over to the corner infielder. The result is that they end up getting themselves out more often than the pitcher will get them out!
How do you stop the Hip Slide?
- Put yourself in a good strong base
- Allow yourself to catch the ball with your back hip
- You never want to isolate the front hip when it comes to hitting the baseball.
Naturally, through repetition and athletic movement, you can train your hitter to clear that front side.
How do you isolate that back hip?
- Using nerf balls, softballs or tennis balls, put the player in their stance and throw a ball at their back hip. And what you are trying to do is catch the ball out in front of the hip. The hands and hip work together to catch that ball out front.
- If they are hip sliding, they’ll catch the ball behind them.
Do you experience this common baseball hitting problem with your players? If so, what do you do to correct it? Share your own advice below!
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