3 questions solve the mystery
of becoming a successful hitter!

- Tommy Ganz, New England Baseball Academy and creator of the Hitting for Dads Boot Camp DVD

I have a unique teaching method that has been proven to be effective over an 8 year period with hundreds of young hitters of different abilities. The philosophy revolves around "the ball being your teacher." If a player can answer three questions after every swing, "what did it do?" (it being the ball), "what does that mean?" and "how do you fix it?", they will better be able to make 'adjustments' to their swing to perform better on the next swing.

• Good hitters will be able to make adjustments between at-bats. 
• Great hitters can make adjustment during the at-bat (from pitch-to-pitch). 

1Contact  
Every time a hitter swings and misses, it’s usually because he didn’t swing 'down' to the ball. Or maybe he did swing down, but not at the right angle. A golfer swings down, but we wouldn’t take that angle to the ball!

So when a hitter isn’t making contact (or quality contact), he needs to be reminding himself of the correct downward angle to the ball.  My golden rule of hitting is: "whenever you swing and miss, pop it up or foul it back, you’re not swinging down to the ball" (or at least not at the right angle).

2 Swing Path  
If you are a right handed hitter and you keep pulling the ball to the left side of the field, what does that mean?  You’re swinging too early, right? Mostly, no! 

A hitter is taught to stay through the ball 'as long as possible', trying to hit the ball up the middle. Well if the hitter is doing a good job keeping his hands and bat through the hitting area, odds are, he’s not going to pull the ball – even if he is early! The ball won’t be hit with as much power, but he will still hit the ball up the middle. In fact, off-speed pitches expose most of our flaws in the swing. If you're hitting the ball to the left, that’s where your taking your hands!  So fix your swing-path!  If your hitting the ball up the middle, but weak – then you’re early and need to let the ball get a little 'deeper'.

3 Ground Balls  
If you have a good 'downward' angle to the ball, what kind of 'spin' are you going to put on the ball?  'Back-spin' of course. What does the ball do when it has back-spin? Goes up! 

So what causes a ball to go down? 'Top-spin.'  So what causes top-spin?  Rolling your hands prematurely.  A hitter should train to keep his hands flat or 'palm-up/palm-down' through the hitting area. By the time a hitter starts rolling his hands, the ball should be long-gone with lots of back-spin. So, hitting a lot of ground balls? Keep your hands flat through the zone.


The ball will always tell you what you did right or wrong in the swing.  A player merely needs the right information, then needs to develop the ability to process it very quickly.  There is only one thing you can control as a hitter…what you do with your body when you swing at a ball. Period. My promise to my students is that when they can consistently get their body to do what they want when the swing at a ball, good things will happen.  Not all the time – but enough of the time to achieve success.

So, want to train your hitters to become their own coach?

1. Toss them a ball. Ask them what happened. Ask them what that means. Ask them what they’re going to do to fix it.
2. Toss them another one. Do it over and over and over again.

It’s magical!


Let’s pick ONE problem that young hitters usually have to overcome. Their LOWER HALF not working properly.  Hitters need to understand that ALL of their POWER is generated from their lower half. If you take most young hitters between the ages of 7 and 12 years of age and ask them to take a swing, you will notice that...

• Their BACK FOOT will NOT be pointing at the pitcher at the end of the swing.
• Their hips do not rotate into the pitch, and
• They do not have a WEIGHT TRANSFER. 

So Let’s learn to teach them how the body should work while swinging at a ball. Teach them that the body is broken up into 3 parts for hitting purposes...

1. From the waist down (the LOWER BODY)
2. the waist to the neck (the UPPER BODY)
3. and the HEAD. 

The imperative thing they need to learn is that the first thing that starts to go at the ball is the lower half.  If they violently rotate their lower half to the ball while throwing their weight against their front side, this will pull their hands to the ball. This is what creates BAT SPEED.  Lastly, the head will follow as it stays on the ball wherever it goes.

1. Lower body,
2. Upper body and
3. Head. 

If the player has that violent lower half rotation toward the ball, the back foot should come up and be pointing at the pitcher at the end of the swing. When a player starts to understand how important the lower half rotation is combined with the weight transfer, he will start to understand and 'feel' more power being generated.

A great little drill is to stand behind him while he is in a 'loaded position', and hold on to his bat and ask him to start the swing. As you see (and feel) his lower half start pulling on the bat, let it go. Do this over and over. He will start to feel the sensation of the lower half 'pulling' his hands to the ball.

Editor's Note: Comments added below BEFORE the end of voting were removed so as not to bias other voters. Now that voting is tabulated and authors revealed, we welcome additional insights and opinions.