[In-Depth] Basics Of Baseball Swing, And How to Improve It. [Pictures]

Ok, I am going to show you the basics and how to improve your baseball swing. Even though I am young I have played baseball all my life and have gotten A LOT of lessons from very good players and coaches. So, I'm am going to show you guys a little of what I know.

_______________________

1. Batting Stance

2. Swing

3. Common Problems


4. Practice
_______________________

1. Batting Stance- In order to have a good baseball swing you must have a good stance. Normally there are three foot positions you could use.

Balanced

This is probably the most commonly used foot positioning and is also what I use. It is where you keep your feet on the same line. It is probably the easiest to use unless you feel more comfortable using either of the following foot positioning.

Open

An Open Stance is where you put your front foot behind you back foot in the stance like in the picture shown above.

Closed

A Closed Stance is where you front foot is placed in front of your back foot in the stance like in the picture shown above.


Now, once you find out which is the most comfortable you want to get a good athletic position in your stance, to easily find this out, jump in the air and how you land is a good athletic position. You want good bend in your knees while in your stance also. Here is how mine looks.

You want bend in the knees, shoulder down, weight on the balls of your feet, and elbows relaxed.

Now, how to hold the bat in your stance. First of all your knuckles need to be lined up and you need to hold the bat more in your fingers than your palms unless your hands are not big enough. Like this. (the knuckles are a little off because of the angle the picture was taken)


once that is done, you should lift the bat off your shoulder until even with your ear. Then if you need to bring your hands in a tiny bit more to where the plate would be.

Combining all this information into your stance will make a much better Batting Stance which will make it easier to have a perfect swing.


2. Swing- For the swing part of this guide I will just be showing a brief guide on how the swing should look and I will state some of the things not to do that some people have a tendency to in the Common Problems Section. So, To begin you must be in your batting stance. Once in your batting stance you should be look at the pitcher. Once the pitcher starts to move you want to shift your weight on to your back leg like this.


Once you are sitting back on your back leg, you wait until the pitcher is just about to pitch it then you lift your foot a LITTLE BIT off the ground a put it straight back down softly. Unfortunately, I could not get a picture of this. But once the ball comes and you are ready to swing, bring you bat DOWN to the ball and do not drop your bat. You also need to twist your hips and lets you back heel turn, as it turns you want to bring it so that you have a high back heel. Also, you want to keep a slight bend in the front knee before contact. Like shown.


Once you have contact with the ball it is alright if you shoulders come open, but you want you leg to be straightened at contact. You want you heel to get a little higher than right before contact and your back leg should back like an L or a backwards L depending on if you are left opr right handed.


Then, follow through with your swing. Your elbow should point at the pitcher at the end of your swing you should have a slight bend in your front leg. Again, you back heel needs to be high and you should still have some type of L shape with your leg.



3. Common Problems-For this section I'm just going to show some common problems some people have. If you have any other problems feel free to PM me about it.

#1- Completely Level Swing Plane
Ok, most of the time people will tell you "Swing level!" and you should but not completely you need to be on a level swing plane which really isn't a "level" swing. It is bad when you just drop the bat down first to swing level...if your bat is where it is in the picture. Then you need to work on fixing this by just trying to bring your bat to the ball and not dropping it first.

#2- Swinging Under The Ball
Most people will swing under the ball because they think it takes a Pop-Up to hit a homerun, but this is definately not true, pop-ups actually make you get out more because outfielders and infielders should be able to catch a pop-up easily. So, if your bat looks like this:you should, again, work on not dropping your bat down.

#3- Chopping Down On It
Chopping down on it means that you are swinging down onto the top of the ball, which will make you miss a lot of pitches and hit it right infront of the pitcher. So, if your bat looks like this:
then, you need to work on getting the correct swing plane.

#4- Opening Shoulders To Early & Not looking At Ball
If you open up your shoulders too early then you will lose a lot of power in your swing, and if your head comes off the ball you will not see it ad probably miss the ball, so if your shoulders or head looks like this early in your swing...just keep your eyes focused in on the ball and tell yourself NOT to open up too soon.


#5- Turning Foot In During Swing
What I mean by this is that you should not turn your foot completely opposite and back of where it was originally, in this picture the Green shows where it was and the blue arrow shows that it moved back and sideways. You do not want to do this.


#6- Stepping Out
Stepping out is when during your swing when you lift your front foot you move it out away from the plate, this causes you to not be able to reach the ball while you swing.




4. Practice

For practice, all you need to do is get out and play baseball, hitting off a tee, soft toss, dry swings, batting practice, anything can help as long as your are working on doing it THE RIGHT WAY. Repetitions count into breaking your old bad habits. Also, videotaping yourself bat can help A TON because you can actually see what you are doing wrong. And, if you really want to get better, consider taking lessons.


This guide took me a long time to make so I hope it helped you out and you enjoyed it, there may be a few errors since it's so long. Thanks for reading my guide.

 

This is a very good guide and I appreciate you taking time to make it. It looks like you put alot of time into it and it's a shame no one has posted on it. Thanks for this great guide, I will reffer back to it whenever I need some pointers.

 

Great guide. Helped me considering im horrible at batting.

 

I dont play Baseball but this Guide is very well set out and easy to under stand.

 

This reminds of that one batting mechanism by ken griffey jr. It was blue and was this wierd thing where it made u swing between these metal bars so you would perfect the swinging motion..it was annoying. Very good guide, and great job with the pictures.

 

Nice guide, do you keep your stepping foot off-balance a little? I try to either move my leg a little, or keep my stepping foot like on my toes, just for an easier motion.
Hope you can complete your App.