I've read self toss is a drill. Anyone here have any thoughts or opinions?

dazed63

quote:

Originally posted by dazed63:
I've read self toss is a drill. Anyone here have any thoughts or opinions?

dazed63

John Cohen uses it at the University of Kentucky. Kind of hard to argue with his results.

I teach it all the time!

Do you teach the front hand toss or the back hand toss or both?

Bottom hand self-toss is linear while top hand is rotational right?

Just kidding.

To the best of my knowledge, I coined this phrase on the Internet in 2001 and consider it my own intellectual property. So email me for express written permission to do it and teach others to do the same.

Just kidding again.

Seriously, which hand you toss with is style (personal preference), in my opinion. I have seen great hitters do it both ways.

Most importantly, this builds strength/power for hitters exactly like long-toss does for pitchers and position players.

My advice (during off-season strength building) is to self-toss one day and long-toss the next, and so on. I recommend using a wood bat (-1) for self-toss, but do not advocate using weighted balls (long-toss).

Self-toss is fun and also teaches:

1. Plate discipline (check swings are good too)
2. How to make bodily adjustments to hit inside, outside, high and low strikes hard (to me this is far better than just “hand/eye coordination”)
3. Maximum rotational balance with minimal effect on vision
4. Provides real world visual feedback (frozen ropes).
5. It’s not just striking high strikes to see how high and far you can hit it (though that’s important too).

Best of all, you don’t need a coach or playing partner to play. Just inspiration, a bucket of old balls (dimpled cage balls are fine), a bat and an open area. And maybe a few sets of batting gloves.

I’d like to hear from deemax, beemax and swingbuilder to see if they ever did this or saw other players, with high level swings, doing it.

THop

Here are two high level swingers doing self toss.

I like Arod’s “thigh high” point of contact but with Guerrero’s intensity. I teach post puberty kids to hit rising line drives not, moon-shot home runs like Guerrero seemed to be attempting.

From a strength-building point of view (hamstrings, glutes, hips and back), if a high school freshman hit 2-3 buckets of balls, with Guerrero’s effort, every other day, during his 4-month off-season, do you think he would dramatically increase his power potential for his sophomore season? I do and also believe if he self-tosses like that every off-season he will see substantial increases each and every year through college. Seen it with my own two eyes, twice.

THop