Ojos

Growing up playing softball my dad always used to say to me, "Ojos!" What he was trying to tell me was to keep my eye on the ball. Over the many years of playing softball I have realized the importance of watching the ball. It's pretty simple, how can you hit something if you can't see it? Today in practice we worked on vision training. This is something that many coaches do not see as a necessary drill for practices but in all reality it will absolutely improve your hitting.

There are several drills that you could use for vision training and I've seen and used most of them. One of the most basic drills you can do for your players is to buy about a dozen golf size wiffle balls and then take a 3/4 inch pvc pipe that is cut to the length of a bat. You could use just about anything for the bat like a broom stick or some people use what is called a quick stick. Quick stick is a bat developed by I believe Jenny Finch (not positive on who actually developed the idea) that is designed to develop quick hands. Either way the point of the drill is to use a really skinny bat and a really small ball. The idea is that both the bat and the ball are much smaller and you really have to focus on watching the ball hit the bat. It is important that when using this drill for the first time with your players that they slow their swing down so that they can focus on seeing the ball. As the players get used to the drill and become more successful at hitting the ball with a slow swing they can begin to speed up their swing.

Another vision training drill I learned about this year was take two color markers and write the numbers 0-9 on a bucket of balls. Then feed the balls through a pitching machine and have one of the girls stand in the batters box and try to see if they can tell what color the marker is and what number is written on the ball. Obviously the number should be written multiple times on the ball because the ball spins when pitched. I really like this drill because it trains the eyes to read the spin of the ball which will become important when hitting against a pitcher that has a great rise ball, drop ball, curve or screw ball. Any one of those pitches should have a significant break on it when pitched. The longer you can see the ball and read the spin the more likely you are to hit it. The eyes are controlled by muscles and muscles need training in order to function at an optimum level. Training your eyes to watch the ball is an extremely important part of the game that is frequently over looked.