What Your Coach Really Means
A guide to help you translate your coach’s confusing, conflicting, and sometimes downright wrong terminology
"Get Your Foot Down Early"
Sentence – “Get your foot down early and be on time to the pitch.”
How you may interpret – You need to plant your front foot well before the ball gets there so that you are not late with your swing. It’s better to have it down and waiting than still in the air when the ball is approaching home plate.
What your coach is trying to say – Your coach wants your front foot to be down before you make your swing pass at the ball. This is good. However, if this is taken to the extreme it is likely to be detrimental.
This is a topic we'll explore in more depth when it comes to "timing". Hitting is an athletic move. You want to be in rhythm with your swing to make consistently good contact.
If you stride or step as part of your “load” then it takes you out of your rhythm to get your foot down too early. Getting out of rhythm and being “static” will make you late, because every millisecond you aren’t moving, your reaction time gets worse. Ideally, you want your foot to land right before your hands start. This can obviously be thrown off a little bit if an off-speed pitch (change-up, curveball, etc.) is thrown, but if you are perfectly on time to a fastball, this is what you want.
See below how close deep the ball gets on Altuve before his foot actually gets down.
His toe is on the ground here but, your foot is "down" when the heal gets all the way down, like the shot below.
You can see that heal gets down JUST before he makes his pass. His hands are still back in his hitting slot.
It is better to have that heal down too early rather than too late, but if we take that to the extreme we are going to be out of rhythm and have a hard time hitting balls hard consistently.
Rhythm, timing, and adjustability are all topics we can spend A TON of time on so look out for more posts regarding all of these.
