The Rule of the Ten Thousand to a Better Swing!

Hitters! Are you willing and are you able to put in the work to improve?  Yes?  Well then.  Do you know what kind of work is required?  I have said, for years.  It takes 10,000 reps to change something in the swing for a hitter. 

The objective is to get your swing to the point it becomes organic....natural.  Without thinking.  The ball takes around 4 tenths* of a second to get to the plate from the pitchers' release point.  Then, it takes a little less than 2 tenths* of a second for you to swing.  This does not include your load.  It is just your approach forward with your bat.  This isn't a lot of time and certainly is too fast for you to actually think about what your body is doing.  It has to become organic!

To become organic, it has to be done without thinking about it, and to accomplish this you must repeat the skill so frequently that it becomes boring.  This is when we are changing our muscle memory.  

Our muscle memory works exactly like our actual memory.  So, if I would give you a phone number and expect you to remember it.  Like my phone number, how would you do it?  You would say it over and over again a bunch of times.  The more you say it over and over again, the better chance you have to remember it.  

Think of the swing that has dozens of phone numbers you have to remember AND you have to put them in order of succession AND you have to repeat them quickly without hesitation and with confidence.  An example would be a phone number for your stance and then for your load and then for your approach (swing) and then for your contact point and then for your follow-through.  Remembering these five phone numbers exactly the same every single time and the exact same time in a time frame of around 4 tenths of a second.  Getting the point?  In reality, there are multiple phone numbers for each of these five but we won't get into that in this blog.

Now, so the rule of 10,000 is where we first spend days repeating the skill over and over and we completely focus on that skill for hundreds or thousands of repetitions.  Until we can do it without thinking.  Depending on the difficulty of the skill we can do this in hours or it may take weeks.  THEN we spend hundreds or thousands of reps to incorporate this new technique to our complete swing.  

So, the thinking is to assume it will take 10,000 reps to actually incorporate your new technique into your full swing in a natural/organic way that is highly repetitive/consistent.  Let us look this number a bit closer.

So, a high school hitter should take at least 300 swings a day for at least 5 days a week.  This can include your practice, games, and lessons as long as you are focused on the changes needed.  This is 1500 swings a week and so, it would take a little over 33 days to get in your 10,000 swings.  So, let's say a month.  Remember, we are talking about changing something in our swing to the point we perform this skill completely different than we did before where your body forgot how it used to do it and now the new skill is a habit.  Yes, you can do it most of the time thinking about it but that isn't good enough.  It has to be so strong of a habit that it is now your natural swing.  Also, we need to incorporate this new technique in our full swing so our timing is healthy.

In looking a little closer, we can get 300 swings in, in about 35 minutes give or take a few minutes.  So, that isn't asking a lot for hitters that want to be the best she can be.  In fact, a few days of 500+ swings is really what a hitter should consider.  

Hitting is hard and doesn't get easier as you get older and the hitters that succeed are usually the ones that take the 10,000 swing approach.

Also, there is an old saying that goes something like, "Hard work doesn't guarantee success but the lack of hard work guarantee's failure!"

COACHES

Have you found yourself thinking or even saying, "We talk about this all the time" or something like this?  This is why the post-game talk doesn't work.  The yelling doesn't work and the teaching from the third base coaches box doesn't work.  Skill changes require repetition to the point it changes our DNA.  Telling is just the first part.

Have a great day!
Holly Knight

Lessons With Holly
National Fastpitch Academy

*These times are general in nature and, of course, the higher level the game the faster the times.  This, I believe, would close to the high school average.  Obviously, some are faster...and some are slower."