The Final Frontier of Hitting – Visual Mechanics

Baseball…The Final Frontier of Hitting – Visual Mechanics
by Ray Lauenstein

See the ball. Hit the Ball. Good Eye! Watch the ball hit the bat! The first part of any baseball or softball swing starts with the eyes and the ability to see the ball. Recently, Visual Mechanics has become a growing area of research and instruction at both your local indoor training center and even in the Major Leagues.

I recently went to a lecture given by Frozen Ropes baseball founder Tony Abbatine and Harvard Medical School physician Dr Daniel Laby. Abbatine and Laby have teamed up on quite a bit of research and their findings have led them to be hired by the Dodgers and NY Mets for their visual mechanics expertise.

So just what are Visual Mechanics? Before we talk about that, let’s outline the basics premise of Visual Mechanics.

1) The better hitters have visual tracking habits that are different from other hitters.
2) Vision can be improved by addressing Visual Mechanics.
3) Visual Mechanics represent a skills set that can be practiced and improved like any other skill set.
4) Most players and coaches are unaware of this and the fact that there are many simple ways to improve these skills within your current practice routines.

According to Abbatine, it is inefficient to try and track a ball right out of pitchers hand. For a lot of reasons it does not work. But you can track it from a pitcher’s release point in the following way (Abbatine and Laby describe this a lot better than I do) :

1) Establish a general focus of vision with relaxed eyes, someplace to the left of the pitcher (maybe a general gaze into left center).

2) When your field of vision sees the very first sign that a pitcher is starting his windup, adjust your eyes so that you bring your focus from left to right and stop at the release point area. Move your eyes in a smooth tracking fashion; avoid jumping from spot to spot.

3) This is the point where you focus your vision. Like any other muscle, ocular muscles will fatigue if worked for too long, so a laser like focus on the pitcher before he has even gone to a wind up will not be useful.

4) The head is still during all of this; movement of the head will decrease your ability to track the ball.

5) The eyes are in “stereo” meaning they are level to the ground and both are facing the pitcher. Head tilt will decrease your visual ability.

Why are visual mechanics important?
The answer is fairly obvious when you think about the sport. First thing is that better vision gives you a longer look at the ball. In effect more time to determine pitch and location and react to swing or not. This leads to the second and maybe more important issue – recognition. Picking up the cues that tell you if a ball will break is a big advantage in hitting. Not only do you have more time to do it, but you have more success recognizing pitches

According to Dr. Laby, the critical factors in Visual Mechanics are:

– Visual Acuity – measures sharpness of vision
– Stereo Acuity – measures depth perception
– Contrast Sensitivity – measures the ability to pick a target out of a background.

Laby has tested over 1,500 professional baseball players using a machine called the EYEcheck Sports Vision Tester. In Dr Laby’s opinion, the results of these kinds of vision tests will be part of all player’s dossiers in the future. As more and more data are collected, stronger correlations and conclusions will be drawn about the future potential of players based partially on this data.

Things you might not have thought of when if comes to vision and practice…
1) Hitting off the Tee – if your players are hitting on the tee and their eyes are always focused on the ball, they might be causing more problems than they fix. Make sure your players hit off the Tee each time by looking out as if there was a pitcher on the mound and then bringing their gaze to the ball.
2) Soft toss – try to make sure your toss is front toss and that the hitter is aligned to an imaginary mound and uses the same vision rhythm and pattern that he normally would against a live pitcher. When the soft tosser initiates movement, the batters eyes should then focus to the toss area.
3) A person cannot see the ball being hit off the bat – Ted Williams said he could, but the science shows you can’t see the ball hit the bat. In fact if you look at still photos from high speed cameras, the line of vision on first impact puts the eyes at about 20 feet in front of home plate! Abbatine showed a series of home run swings from top MLB players and not a single one had the line of vision on the bat. In essence, at a certain point you can close your eyes and it will not impact the result. The key to this bit of information is it reminds us just how important that first 40 feet of distance is. This is truly where we track the ball. If Visual Mechanics enables us to pick up the ball quicker, is it worth our practice time? I think you can answer that.

Laby and Abbatine both say that you should never practice something that is not a part of what you would do in a game. In this case they ask, “When does a hitter ever bat with is vision focused a few feet in front of him? Never, so why practice that way.” Simple logic that seems to makes sense.