Throughout our lives, we are told that being on time actually means being early. There's an old quote "if you're 5 minutes early you are 10 minutes late. "On time" in our vernacular means "prior to" and not at the exact moment. When it comes to hitting, players need to start thinking "on time" is actually a precise point in time and not being early. This also applies to the front foot in the load and gather of the swing.
What Coach Really Means by"Get Your Foot Down Early"
A phrase we are hearing frequently right now at the youth and high school levels of baseball is "get your front foot down early". The intention here is great. Obviously, you can't swing a bat effectively with your front foot in the air. You also can't hit a ball that's already in the catcher's glove. So being late with our timing is a serious issue and clearly worse than being early. However, being too early with our stride can introduce another set of issues.
Why Getting Down Too Early Doesn’t Work
Remember, our goal as a hitter is to hit the ball as hard as possible, as frequently as possible. In order to do this, we need to be in as good a rhythm as we can, which will help maximize our potential output and help our swing be adjustable. It is very hard to stay in rhythm if we stride, wait, and then swing. This can lead to the following issues:
- Getting stuck on the back side, meaning there is no weight transfer (see "Stay Back?")
- Reaction time will be slower because there is no movement (see "Newton's First Law of Baseball")
- Decrease in power because our momentum is not continuous
- Less adjustability to hitting breaking balls
Conceptualize
What I think helps hitters conceptualize this idea of not being too early is when they start to think about the "stride and load" as part of the actual swing. Don't think of stride/load and the swing as two separate things. Your "swing" really starts with what is traditionally called the "stride and load". Ideally you wouldn't want your swing sequence interrupted by a pause. Think about a car changing gears. In between the gear change the clutch is activated to allow the change. If there isn't a mechanism in between the changing of gears, they grind. Think about the baseball swing this way too.
When your foot is down too early, you can get static and grind the gears of your car making it more difficult to hit a ball hard.
Major League Examples: Altuve & Olson
Let's take a look at a few Major League hitters and when their front foot gets completely down relative to where the baseball is:
Jose Altuve
2021 ALCS - Home Run - 84mph slider - 0-0 count
Let's take a look at Jose Altuve's front foot on this breaking ball he hits for a home run.
Frame 1
This is the last frame with his front foot completely in the air. The ball is somewhat hard to see but it's at his front kneecap.
Frame 2
This is the first frame where he makes contact with the ground. Notice it's just his toe touching the ground. This means he hips nor his hips have even started yet and you can see where the ball is.
Frame 3
This is the first frame that Altuve has his whole foot on the ground and what I would consider "down". The front foot needs to be all the way in the ground in order for you to start effectively moving your other body parts as part of the swing. You can see his hips started to move by comparing how visible the front and back belt loops are in frames 2 and 3. At this point you can see that the baseball is pretty much on top of him. It's almost at home plate and has just gotten that foot down. This is also on a first pitch breaking ball that's he probably timed up for a fastball on. Meaning his foot is down earlier than it would be.
Matt Olson
2021 - Home Run - 99mph fastball - 3-1 count
Summary
So what is ideal timing? Ideally our front heal gets down just before our hips start, followed by our hands. By "just before" I mean a matter of milliseconds. This allows for the most connected swing between the stride and load portion of our swing and the actual swinging of the bat. However, it is UNREALISTIC that your timing will be perfect all the time. In fact, it probably won't be perfect most of the time. As a hitter, there are a lot of variables you don't control. The two that can greatly affect your timing are speed of the pitch, and location of the pitch. We will go over what to do when your front foot is down early to a breaking ball in another post.
Timing is an essential part of hitting so we will do other posts on it in the future. For now, understand what your coach wants from you when he says "get your front foot down early." He means don't be too late and not to plant to early and become static.
Remember: Perfect timing is rare and one of the hardest parts of hitting. Good hitters think about it and adjust.
