Running the bases....hitting the inside corner of the bag with your left or right foot?

Running the bases....hitting the inside corner of the bag with your left or right foot?

Anonymous asked: I have read from some coaches that fundamentally you should use the left foot, but seems awkward and maybe impossible to teach?

Rick answered: Thank you for your question.

While hitting the inside corner of the bag is an absolute, right foot or left foot both have their followings.

Along with the inside corner of the bag, it is essential players hit the bag in stride, not having to shuffle their stride to hit the base.

We ran some tests on our own high school players, timing them around the bases hitting each base with their left foot, then again with their right.

All gained some degree of speed using their right foot, as compared to their left, consistently .5 to 1.2 seconds over a complete 4 base cycle.

Certainly not scientific; but it has worked for our kids. Even at that, they don't always use their right foot; but they always hit the bags in stride, which is the main thing.

The gain was minimal, but the longer you play, the better the competition, and every "little" thing gained is to your advantage, no matter what part of the game it is.

Yours in baseball,

Rick

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Running the bases....hitting the inside corner of the bag with your left or right foot?

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Jan 21, 2012
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hitting the inside corner of the bag with your left foot
by: Anonymous

I was really happy to read your explanation about hitting the inside of the bag with your left or right foot and your experiment. Just prior to reading your version, I read about centrifugal force, etc., and how it was important to use the left foot on another site.

I'm one to always question everything for better understanding and the theory about using the left foot always seemed inconsistent with using your right foot as a plant foot when cutting to the left in football or basketball. It seemed to me that you should be using your right foot off the inside of the bag for an additional push-off toward your next target/base.

While I appreciate that your players ran the bases faster using their right foot, it now seems to me that the most important thing to teach is to simply try to hit the inside corner of the bag in stride whether it's the left or right foot. There are enough other things to worry about when running the bases.

Thanks!

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