by Dave Kirilloff, pro hitting coach, first in a series on the language of hitting

Like many of us, I’m sure you have experienced watching your players enjoy a great round of batting practice.  Players executing bunts, hit and runs, opposite field line drives with superb technique. 

That happened at 4 o’clock.  Now it’s 6 o’clock, the game begins and your hitters only give you weak ground balls, pop ups, and strikeouts.  You’re left scratching your head asking yourself – Where are those sweet swings from batting practice?

From time to time, we have all been witness to this scene. Some coaches experience this longer than others.  We all want to be that Coach who can pull his player out of a slump. We want to be the Coach who can tell his hitter to make his stance wider, shorten up, get your foot down, get the barrel straight to the ball, stay back, and just flick it out there.  We hope with our instruction and coaching the player can change instantly.   I believe he can change instantly, but not with the mechanical approach we usually take; and definitely not from the psychological approach of feeling relaxed and comfortable. 


To better understand the effective changes the hitter needs to make during his at bat, we would serve our players better by learning the philosophy of the Pitching Coach.  When a Pitching Coach is instructing his pitcher, he will talk about mechanics and sequentially unlocking the body.  But with more emphasis, the Pitching Coach guides and conditions the pitcher to effectively ‘fool the batter’, throw the batter’s timing off, disguise his pitches and keep the batter off sync!

If the ball is the hitter’s real opponent, the pitcher’s main objective is to fool him with it and disguise the ball. We as Hitting Coaches should counter the Pitching Coach philosophy and teach our hitter’s what the essence of hitting is…

• Getting in sync with the pitcher.
• Getting locked on the pitcher's timing
• Get in concert with the pitcher.    

As Hitting Coaches, we would be more effective, if we gave more attention to improving our hitter’s timing and spatial awareness.  The motto of our hitting system is …

Too often, coaches (I was one of them) tend to over-explain hitting mechanics. We do this – sometimes- to make 'hitting' sound more valuable.  We have all heard it said that hitting a baseball is the most difficult task to do in all sports.  We have been conditioned by the sporting community in believing this fallacy. 

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: Hitting a baseball is one of the easiest and FUN tasks to do in all of sports! A testimony of this is found inside a local baseball center. During your next visit, notice how many players are hitting baseballs vs. how many players are missing baseballs.  My point is this... Hitting a baseball is NOT hard to do... But getting a hit in a REAL baseball game is! 

Typically hitting paradigms and teaching systems over teach, over emphasize, and over explain the mechanics of hitting.  Most players become trapped inside their analytic thinking or their left brain hemisphere.  This becomes very confusing when the hitter is thinking about where are his feet, his knees, when are his hips turning, keep the front shoulder in … And – oh, by the way… "Just see it and hit it"  

Isn’t this ironic and just too confusing?  But, this has been the norm and models most coaches have followed. 


From our studies, the system we implement identifies with the strength of the baseball player – He is an athlete and athletes are sensitive to the timing of athletic actions and about the space objects and their bodies are occupying.   

As an athlete, the baseball player can, will, and MUST be in touch with the Right Brain Hemisphere and learn how to manage Time and Space. The athlete is able, in the moment of the pitch, when he thought a fast ball was coming – instantly be conditioned to adjust to a change up. Athletes – who have better management of TIME, know how to do this consistently. 

Another example, when a basketball shooter begins to shoot and the moment of the shot realizes he needs to shoot a fade away shot because his defender suddenly appears, the shooter will instantly calculate that now as he fades away from the basket, he will need to apply more force onto his shot in order to compensate for the lost distance with his body and with the location of the basket. The shooter or athlete has better management of SPACE.

Similarly, hitters who learn how to manage their TIMING in relationship to the pitcher gain an advantage and are usually the hitters who bat at the top of the batting order.  So, ONE of the best qualities a coach can have in order to help the players perform better is the ability of not only DETECTING the hitting breakdown, but more importantly, having the capacity and knowledge to CORRECT the hitting breakdown. Learning how to transport the right information back to our players to get him back on track.



This new system teaches players and coaches how to manage time and manage space thru practical drills and explanations. This system is NOT a 'mental approach' to the game as we’ve often heard friends from the psychology field discuss, telling us to be relaxed and positive, but rather a very physical approach and easy approach to hitting. 

But remember, in order to control one’s body – we don’t condition muscle memory… we condition brain memory.  For example, a stroke patient does not relearn how to move his muscles, he relearns how to condition his brain how to move the muscles.  Similar, our system of hitting, conditions the hitter to become brain sensitive of controlling his actions in the perspective of the pitcher and with the space of the ball.

WebBall has asked Dave Kirilloff to continue with this thought process in future articles for the site. Stay tuned.