We – the hitting community – have come a long way in terms of performance tracking technology. At this point we can measure pretty much every part of the swing process. Still, the most widely accessible mode of feedback for young hitter is video analysis. Anyone with a phone has the ability to record and analyze their swing. So what is the best way to go about this? What are some common mistakes to avoid? Let me walk you through a few things to consider when breaking down your video.
Movement vs positions
Modern technology allows us to be quite in-depth when it comes to breaking down video of a swing. We can slow video down, stop it, speed it up, reverse it and so much more. The positive here is this ability has ultimately led to many significant breakthroughs in how we understand the swing. “Feel vs real” – which is one of the more important concepts in swing philosophy – might not be so widely accepted if we didn’t have slow-motion video to reveal that many of the great hitters’ swing paths didn’t/don’t match up with the way they themselves described the swing.
That being said, this ability also has the potential to lead us astray. Swings don’t happen in slow motion, they don’t stop and start and back up so you can see something real quick.
Not only are swings fast, they are in essence a gathering of energy and a transfer of force. This is obviously an important bit of context that can easily end up getting lost when a hitter overly fixates on “positions” – stopped or oscillating footage.
The body organizes more efficiently to accomplish an external task (in this case applying force to a baseball) than it does to replicate a series of positions. In this way overly fixating on the positions, using conscious energy to attempt to replicate or even adjust them as you actually swing the bat can cost you reaction time as well as attention. Both of which are premium resources when it comes to accurately striking a baseball.
This does not mean you should never pause or rewind your video for further analysis. As stated before this is a valuable tool. The point is your fundamental understanding of what the swing is and how it works will have a tremendous impact on how you process video. For better or worse. So before you break your swing down into a thousand pieces it’s advisable to make sure you’re comfortable with your understanding of what it is you’re looking for.
Perspective
Hitters – especially younger hitters – tend to watch video for the purpose of identifying aspects of their swing to improve. Of course this makes sense and is generally encourageable. Where it can become problematic is when these hitters start viewing every video through the lens of “what’s wrong with this swing”. This is where over-analyzing can start since there are so many more ways for a swing to go wrong than for it to go right. Also, with this perspective video of swings that produce barrels seem to serve the hitter less than videos of swings that don’t. It becomes easy to miss the positive feedback that is available.
My advice is whether the outcome in a video is desirable or not you – the hitter – should try looking for what it is you are doing well in that particular swing. Simply by shifting your perspective to the positive you can change the entire complexion of the process. Your brain is incredibly proficient at finding whatever it is you are looking for. If you are constantly looking for shortcomings you will constantly find them, reminding yourself over and over of everything you are not. The same is true for positive reinforcement. If you train yourself to find things that you love about your swing when you watch video you will become good at finding them, reminding yourself over and over how great you are. This is simply a more fun way to refine your skills and as corny as it sounds we tend to learn faster, more effectively when we are enjoying the process.
You may ask ‘well if I just stop paying attention to the things I’m not doing well, how will I fix my deficiencies’? The answer here is essentially the same : a small yet critical shift in perspective. Instead of characterizing your deficiencies as the presence of an “incorrect” move you can think of them as the absence of the “correct” move. This way correcting your swing issues becomes the process of subtraction by addition. Again this shifts the complexion of the process to the positive. Cues are now to add more of the good moves as opposed to stopping or limiting the bad ones.
Experiencing self vs remembering self vs viewing self
You hit a home run. For the sake of illustrating this concept in this scenario we are going to highlight three distinctly different versions of your self. Self 1 is hitting the home run, Self 2 recounts the experience with your teammates in the dugout, Self 3 watches and re-watches the highlight video after the game. Nobody ever really gets to talk to Self 1, I think that is super important to consider given his proximity to the act. Self 2 and 3 could also be dealing with drastically different information. As time passes certain aspects of your memory of the home run swing will shift and change. On top of that your memory of the act will always be different than watching video. There’s a lot more information, words available to Self 3, given the time and space (perspective). Self 2 is slightly less articulate when it comes to full body positioning. However can provide much better insights into more visceral aspects of the act. The literal feel and the emotion of it, the strategy within the at-bat. Self 1 is only required to express themselves through action. Feel is the only language available. The key here is to make sure the right version of the self is processing the right type of information at the right times. Self 1 doesn’t need Self 3’s analysis of the spine angle on the last swing when you’re in the middle of an at-bat. Self 3 doesn’t need Self 2’s emotion or judgement when reviewing video of the last game. Manage the Selfs’ schedule and workload appropriately to maximize the benefit of video and other performance tracking technology, avoiding the dreaded paralysis by analysis.
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