

Holding a bat, the hitter must focus on the coach’s throwing hand and call out the number of fingers thrown. A coach stands about six feet in front of the outside corner of the plate, winds up with no ball and instead “throws” from one to five fingers. At this point, the batter is instructed to open his or her eyes and locate the ball immediately for improved location and reaction time.īeyond soft toss, a number of other vision drills can help a hitter’s performance.

Instruct the batter to keep his or her eyes closed until the ball has been tossed. This way, the hitter is forced to use peripheral vision to locate the ball and also has less time to react. Instead of soft-tossing balls from beside the hitter, toss them from behind. Throw two balls and instruct the batter to hit either the top or bottom, further improving concentration and reaction time. A variation on colored balls is to cover the balls with numbers and give corresponding instructions to each. For example, a white ball could mean swing away, while a green ball means bunt. Hitters can be directed to concentrate on watching the smaller ball and to react differently to the various colors. Use two or three colors of practice golf balls. Try practice golf balls or a broomstick to improve hand-eye coordination. Here are some ways to use this helpful exercise to improve hand-eye coordination and reaction speed. Soft toss-where the coach kneels down beside the hitter and throws balls into the strike zone for the batter to hit-is easy to convert into a vision-related exercise. Here are some visually challenging drills that can be easily added into existing baseball and softball practices. There are lots of easy ways to add vision training to your regular practices. Specialized personal training is available as well. Sports training facilities are starting to stock up with sports vision software, charts and other training equipment. And the training can be relatively inexpensive and requires little time. You can start visual sports training at any age. The good news is, it doesn’t matter how old you are. “It’s all about gaining that edge to be successful.” “You have to be able to pick up the speed of a fastball or the break on a curve to be an elite hitter in the majors,” says Grant Geisser, Cincinnati Reds minor league director. Sports vision is on the verge of becoming one of the most critical skills in a young athlete’s development, and players are being encouraged to do vision-based exercises. But vision is a whole set of skills, and different sports emphasize different skills.” “If they can see the bottom line of an eye chart, they’ll say that their vision is fine. “Many baseball athletes and coaches think of vision as just eyesight,” says Seattle sports vision optometrist Dr.

Sports vision training can help you improve your baseball game.
