You can make a swing and “for the first time, you will be able to respond to pitching.”
“I want to be a professional baseball player!” Teppei, who played for Chunichi, Rakuten, and Orix, taught parents who have such children “how to become a professional baseball player.” Based on his experience as an academy coach, he will talk about “how to raise a professional baseball player in the Teppei style” in six parts. The theme of the 3rd session is “What is the method that does not make it difficult to swing?” Mr. Teppei, who won the top hitter in 2009, explained the importance of swinging.
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This time, I will mainly talk about the practice methods that I actually practiced from elementary school to high school and the skills necessary for professionals. When I was in elementary school, I belonged to a youth baseball team. In addition to the general practice, my daily routine at home was shadow pitching and swinging. It wasn’t the time when there was a lot of information and videos about hitting, so I was just swinging the bat. Each person has his or her own ideas about techniques and practice methods, and I think there are parts that change with the times. Even after I became a professional and started teaching baseball to children at the academy, the idea that the basics of hitting are pretending has not changed.
The practice is good old, and it is the same recognition that you cannot advance to Chinese characters unless you can write hiragana when learning a national language. If you can’t swing the bat strongly or control the bat as you want, you can’t hit the ideal ball even if you hit a tee or a free hit. Battering is a very difficult task. Only when you can make a swing will you be able to respond to pitching. If you can’t operate the bat with a swing, you will have more work to do when hitting a moving ball, and it will be difficult to get results.
The trouble is that the swing is very plain and difficult to continue. The scenery doesn’t change and no one supports me. It takes a certain amount of time, so you need to devise something that you won’t get tired of. In my case, when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school, Ichiro dominated the world with the pendulum method. I longed for Ichiro and turned to a left fielder. At first I couldn’t hit at all, but I continued to pretend to be a player who can mass-produce hits like Ichiro.
When it was time for sports news to start, I waited in front of the TV and watched Ichiro’s blow. I burned the way of hitting into my eyes and shook the bat while imagining it. I imitate the movements that I think are cool and immerse myself in my world, so I don’t have to worry about swinging. It’s not absolute to imitate someone, but I think it’s a very effective way to get a hint. In this era, it is recommended to shoot a video of the swing. There is definitely a gap between my image and the actual movement. You can see your movement, as if the bat is coming out from the bottom more than you think, and the intention of imitating someone is completely different.
The first step in swinging is how to stand and hold the bat, but for children who play baseball to some extent, “Let’s swing the bat as much as possible”. This is the output. Instead of comparing with other people, try to swing powerfully within yourself. When I actually stand in the at-bat, I feel like I don’t want to miss the ball, and I end up with a swing that I can rely on for the bat. It is important for the body to remember the movement of shaking the bat strongly. Reproducibility to repeat the ideal swing is important, and swinging according to the course and height is also effective, but first of all, please make the place where you can swing the strongest. You cannot hit a good ball in a match just by passing through various courses and heights with a swing that lacks strength. It doesn’t matter in the middle, so I think it’s better to swing strongly, and then practice shaking a little closer or farther than your body step by step.
