BVSA Teaches: Hard Drive Stride
On this episode of BVSA Teaches, Frank Ramppen talks about the hard drive stride. Okay, one of the big problems that we see with a lot of kids is they stride too far open. So, their front foot comes down and as it’s going forward it rotates open. Meanwhile, their knee rotates open, their hips rotate open, and if it’s really bad their shoulders rotate open. They’ll lose all their torque, all their power potentional there and they’ve lost the ability, unless their really athletic, to get to the outside of the plate. So, one of the drills we like to use that helps, it’s kind of weird but we found this heavy electrical box in our facility from years ago that we use that we just put a little bit on a 45-degree, so again i’ll do it from this angle. A lot of kids will come down here, and they’re kind of cooked. If they come down open but their hips are here and they’re back here, they’re still in a good position to hit but that’s a really difficult teach.
Staying Closed
We like to teach it a little more consistent where that foot’s kind of at a 45-degree angle, that knee is facing this way, not that way and their hips are still facing the plate. This box is very helpful. You can do it with live, do it with tee, you can do the whole thing. But we place this heavy box down in front and have the student load, transfer and stride into it so it forces them to stay at that 45-degree angle and not open up too much. And this box is pretty heavy and doesn’t slide too much, so you need something heavy. Another thing that they can do on their own is just stride into a wall. At their house, in their garage, in their basement, just practice striding into a wall. Obviously when you’re doing it into a wall you can’t take the swing because you’re going to hit the wall. But just repetitive moves to get your student to understand they need to be here and not here giving away all their torque. Found that to be very helpful and hope it works for your.
BVSA Teaches: Hard Drive Stride
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