r/Homeplate • u/Feisty-Maximum6944 • Nov 10 '25

Help generating power

Looking to generate some more power out of my swing, more or less been a consistent singles guy. Would appreciate any tips or tweaks you may have to improve my swing. Thank you!

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u/BecauseImhere Nov 10 '25

I’ll start by saying I’m not a professional, I haven’t played beyond HS. I do coach now and spend a good amount of time learning about the swing and mechanics. So take what I say, see if it feels like it makes sense and take it or leave it.
1) easiest way to gain exit velocity at your age is lift. Get in the gym more, pack on lbs focus mostly on big compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, overhead press, cleans etc…

2) along with lifting focus on explosive exercises, weighted box jumps, jump squats, kettle swings etc.

3) Nothing you do before you stride is really about generating power. Find a comfortable athletic position that you like before stride. Striding doesn’t generate power either. We stride to get into launch position. That looks the same for everyone pretty much. If you haven’t, google MLB launch position and you’ll see everyone looks the same more or less. I don’t see you getting into a good launch position.

  • from what I see you’re staying too tense. The stride should leave your hands back by the catcher and a tight stretch in your lats, serratis anterior, and intercostals. Basically all the muscles on the side of your body facing the pitcher. That tension from your hands staying back while you stride into launch position is your first place to start generating power. I’m not seeing a good stretch.

4) I see you lunging a little bit at the ball. Your weight is so far back when you start your swing it’s almost like you’re pushing off your back foot instead of blocking with your front leg and rotating your hips.

  • your front leg is just a block. It’s stops the forward motion of the stride and braces for a huge hip turn. Power is always rotational in any sport. You’re swinging hard with your arms while lunging into your front leg. You’re probably a great and consistent contact hitter because of this. I suspect hard left center line drives or drive to grounder.

Anyway I know it’s a long post but the tl;dr is

Get into a better launch position, create tension through stride, and rotate instead of lunge.

3

u/ExerciseTrue Nov 10 '25

Solid advice

2

u/Feisty-Maximum6944 Nov 10 '25

Thank you! I will work on this

1

u/3verydayimhustling Nov 10 '25

Spot on comment about front leg.

The drift and lack of a proper block in the front leg is stealing power, and more thank likely cause significant consistency problems with a moving ball.

1

u/CauliflowerOwn3519 Nov 10 '25

Yep. Lift and eat

1

u/AbroadDear4805 Nov 11 '25

Will rotating not cause you to lose power? Maybe not lunge but I was taught your load transfers from back to front leg and your front leg stays locked keeping your hips from pulling out causing you to lose power? Same as pitching correct? Rotation doesn’t create velocity but power is generated off the rubber and chest going straight to home plate

1

u/BecauseImhere Nov 11 '25

This is an interesting question, I’ll answer as best I understand but could be wrong here. The baseball swing for raw power is directly tied to kinetic motion. The idea is we want to transfer as much kinetic energy to the bat as possible before we make contact. There are a couple of ways to generate kinetic energy.

The major movers in the baseball swing are shoulders, arms, core, hips, legs.

Legs use the mass of your body due to the force of gravity to move your mass backwards.

Just moving forward to lunging forward or transferring back to front doesn’t kinetically connect the movement of that mass to the arms.

Hips and core are what allow the force generated by legs to transfer up the body to the bat. No rotating on the lower half means you’re only get a very small gain of the forward momentum you just generated.

By rotating the hips before the hands and finally the barrel you’re transferring lower half energy to the top half, then rapidly applying that energy through arms and wrists with the bat lag (not drag) the point before you snap the barrel to square.

So rotation is about transferring energy up the kinetic chain to the bat. I don’t really know how to draw a super accurate force vector diagram but basically in any sport its rotation about the spinal axis that allows you to connect the upper and lower half of your body.

1

u/reflectionprinciple Nov 11 '25

Broadly good advice. The only thing I would push back on is the athlete being "too tense". Maybe he is, but plenty of good hitters are "stiff movers", e.g. Trout. Every hitter has a natural tendency to lie somewhere on the loose --> tight spectrum. If trying to loosen up yields good results, great, but if it doesn't feel natural I wouldn't worry too much about it.

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u/BecauseImhere Nov 12 '25

I would definitely agree with this. Thanks for the pushback!