How to Improve Your Baseball Vision When Hitting the Ball

How to Improve Your Baseball Vision When Hitting the Ball

Baseball requires our vision to be clear, wide, deep, strong, fast, and smart at the same time. Of course, strength, speed, agility, and good coordination of the body are important for success on the sports field, but it is the eyes that control the movements of the body, in which it is necessary to show all these qualities.

An interesting fact: Baseball legend Ted Williams claimed that by bouncing the ball, he could see the seams on the material of which it was made.

Given his reputation as a player, we have no reason to doubt his words.

Thus, in my article, I want to describe the most famous exercise for training vision. To train good vision, experiment with the following seven steps:

  • 1. Take a stable position, and spread legs a little wider than the width of the shoulders. Stand a few feet from the opposite wall. Close your left eye with the palm of your left hand. Extend your right hand so that your fist with your thumb up is approximately sixteen to twenty inches (40-50 cm) from your face.

  • 2. Without taking your eyes off the thumb, rotate with your whole right hand, describing circles with a diameter of one foot (30 cm). Slowly make a few turns clockwise and then counterclockwise. Turning your hand, try to focus on the thumbnail. Be aware of moments when your attention or gaze is diverted from the thumb, so you have to restore it with an effort of will. If in some place of an imaginary circle you lose concentration all the time – say, where the imaginary hour hand indicates three or five o’clock – then practice moving your hand through this section several times until you can go through it without weakening concentration.

  • 3. As your concentration and ability not to lose sight of an object (which is essentially the same thing) will improve, turn on peripheral vision – while continuing to look at your thumb – and realize the angles where the walls, floor, and ceiling meet.

  • 4. After practicing for two minutes with the right eye, proceed to train with the other eye. Close your right eye with the palm of your right hand and make circular movements with your left hand, following the thumb, but now with the left eye. Track the areas where you lose concentration on the thumb and are forced to restore it by force. As your ability to concentrate on your finger improves, open your peripheral vision, and become aware of the surrounding space, ceiling, floor, and walls without taking your eyes off the thumbnail. Note which eye is more difficult for you to use, and in further training, give it a little more time than the eye with which you are doing better.

  • 5. After practicing for about two minutes with your left eye, open both eyes. Rotate with your leading hand. Start by focusing on the thumbnail, but gradually – without losing concentration on it – turn your attention to the walls and become aware of the wall behind the rotating hand and the space between you and the thumb and between the thumb and the wall — exercise like this for about two minutes. Try to open peripheral vision until you can follow the thumb without making it seem like the wall in the background is moving. The more space you can see, the more stable the wall will be.

  • 6. As your ability to maintain concentration on the thumb and at the same time keep the walls and space in view improves, change the position as follows: place your feet not parallel to each other, as now, but the right in front of the left, as if you are walking along a stretched tightrope. To maintain balance in this position, you will need to truly open up peripheral vision and be aware of the space around you. If it is difficult for you to maintain balance by placing your feet in one line, then approach this position gradually. That is, push one foot forward, but leave between it and the side of the other foot approximately one or two feet wide. If you look at your thumb too closely and do not include lateral and deep vision, you will lose balance. In this position (feet in one line), you will have to describe circles with your hand very slowly, at least at the beginning of training.

Professional baseball trainers have a particular approach when it comes to seeing the ball clearly. You can get acquainted with one of them watching the video presented below.

To sum everything stated above up, it is safe to say that good eyesight is one of the key factors that every baseball player should consider. That is why you should train and exercise your vision all the time. However, you should also remember that your eyesight is not the only thing that matters when it comes to successful play. You should also pay attention to the proper choice of a baseball bat you are going to play with. We can point you in the right direction with the best youth baseball bats 2019 article.

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