Visual Skills Drill

The first and possibly the most important part of hitting success is the visual ability of the batter. The visual component of hitting involves so much more than ‘see the ball, hit the ball.’

A perfect mechanical swing is almost worthless if you don’t have good visual skills.

Visual skills can be coached just like any other skill. Unfortunately, many of us do not utilize drills to improve our player’s visual skills because we simply have not be trained to do so.

In the video clip below Tony Abbatine,Founder, Frozen Ropes and Adjunct College Professor, Sports Psychology, St. Thomas Aquinas College, demonstrates a visual skills drill that he uses with athletes to teach them “Open Focus” and help them uses their eyes.

Yes, you can coach your players to see the ball better. You can coach them to play with their eyes and not with the thoughts in their head and big body movements.

This is one of many drill that he utilizes to train hitters to put their eyes in a better position to see the ball. Through drills like the one below, he shows hitters how to improve their ability to see pitches, pitch rotations, and pitch locations to become the best performer possible in the batter’s box.

He has worked with the New York Mets, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Colorado Rockies, and the Los Angeles Dodgers as a player development department consultant.

This clip was taken from Tony’s instructional DVD: Frozen Ropes: Scope and Rope – Visual Hitting Drills.  In that DVD he shares 1o different visual skills drills that can help you train your hitters to use their eyes more effectively.

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your speakers are turned on and that you have access to the site. Note that some schools block access to YouTube.