WHY USE A PITCHING MACHINE?

♦ HITTING SUCCESS COMES FROM MUSCLE MEMORY

The absolutely most important key to baseball hitting is muscle memory.  The best use of hitting practice is to work, over and over, at hitting the baseball.  The reason that repeated, sustained act of swinging at pitches allows for your body to acquire the muscle memory.  Muscle memory, if acquired through proper batting practice, allows your mind to focus on pitch location, not how to hit the ball.

♦ REPETITION LEADS TO MUSCLE MEMORY

Muscle memory is commonly used for any physical activity.  By repeating the activity you set up the ability to have your physiological reaction to the situation be automatic, rather than a strained or uncontrolled or unprepared reaction.

♦ FREE THROW SHOOTING...

Practicing free throws involves standing at the same spot on the free throw line.  You practice by holding the basketball in your hands in the same way for each shot.  You practice using your wrists in the same motion and with the same force.  Using repetition, shooting the free throw again and again, develops muscle memory for free throw shooting.

♦ BATTING PRACTICE SHOULD BE REPETITIVE

Effective batting practice involves repeating that same body motions which generate the most power while effectively making contact with each swing for you.  Many coaches make the focus on the stance, how the bat is held, and arm extension.  While all these are important, without muscle memory hitting is a constant merry-go-round, going from one of these to the next, trying to figure how to get them all in sync.

♦ PITCHING MACHINES GIVE QUALITY REPETITION

Muscle memory is best achieved by using a pitching machine because a pitching machine can best make a pitch at a particular speed and motion on a repeated basis.  Instead of concentrating on how accurate the pitch, i.e. whether it is a strike, the hitter can focus on the correct muscle motions of the entire body to make the strongest and best connection of the bat with the ball.  With a live pitcher, whether it is a coach or another player, there is not going to be consistency in the type and quality.  It is possible that the hitter gets more practice bailing out of the batter's box avoiding wild pitches than actually hitting the ball.

♦ POSITIVE IMPROVEMENT IS FROM MUSCLE MEMORY

A Little League coach was asked, "Do you use a pitching machine for your team?"  The coach replied, "I used a pitching machine at the beginning of the season.  But their hitting improved when I stopped using the pitching machine."  What the coach did not take into consideration was muscle memory and how it works, especially with younger players.  Several of his players had never played baseball before and were hitting real baseballs for the first time in their lives.  There is nothing else in life that takes the same combination of muscles, particular legs and arms, that hitting does.  So with no previous baseball hitting, the player's body is learning brand new muscle memory patterns.  This is what the coach saw happen when the players, after several games started hitting successfully.

♦ MAKE THE CHOICE

The key to a successful season of baseball hitting is getting the muscle memory down as quickly as possible.  Your choices are to take that chance that your hitters will get enough consistent in quality and speed pitches from a live person, or be assured that they will get the consistent in quality and speed pitches from a pitching machine.