Special thank you to sports vision specialist Dr. Larry Lampert who recently stopped by the Swingtraining.net Warehouse to do vision testing on several of our hitters. With all the work these players have done training for bat speed, swing quickness, reaction time, mechanics, and plate discipline, it was only natural that we address the often overlooked aspect of vision training.
Very interesting that despite 20/15 vision in a couple of the hitters, Dr. Lampert was quickly able to find areas for potential improvement – vergence, convergence, peripheral vision, focusing, tracking, and teaming of the eyes are all examples of how the eyes work to provide information to the brain.
Fortunately, these areas can be improved and the muscles controlling the eyes can be strengthened like other muscles in the body. After Dr. Lampert’s evaluation, he set the players up with his internet based vision training program with directions specific to their areas of need.
vision training in the warehouse
Dr. Lampert is local to the Palm Beach area with an office in Boca Raton. He’s worked with top level athletes of several sports, not just baseball. Here are some links where you can find more information:
In this specific case, it’s Wimbledon (tennis) champions, but take a few minutes to watch this video about Russia’s most well known tennis academy – Spartak:
I first heard of Spartak when I read Daniel Coyle’s book, The Talent Code, and this video gives a glimpse inside the facility and training approach.
What’s the difference between the Spartak approach? Here is a key piece:
In Russia, it’s about the coaches – not the schools, Volkov believes.
“A coach in this country is a graduate, with a specific degree. All our coaches are Spartak alumni. And it’s a known fact that European and especially American methods refer to the physical rather than the technical side of things – which is different here in this country,” he said.
At Spartak, it starts with the goals of the kids (which you can hear in the video) and grows with the focus on the quality of deliberate practice and expert instruction.
It’s basically like walking into a real life version of a baseball catalog.
I visited Superstar Team Sports (STS) in West Palm Beach for the first time (can’t believe I hadn’t heard about it before now) last week and was impressed enough to do this little write up. STS is a baseball and softball specialty store that has everything you’d find in a catalog like Baseball Express or Eastbay, but of course you can pick it up and try it out for yourself. They have metal and wood bats, gloves, batting gloves, helmets, uniforms, footwear, training aids….you name it.
Plus, their staff members – Mike, Brian and Shawn – are incredible.
Superstar Team Sports website
STS is located in West Palm beach at 3169 Forest Hill Blvd. (take Forest Hill exit off 95 and head west).
Visit their website and check out their Facebook page which has a nice photo gallery of the shop.
Here are a couple of links that explain how Jose Bautista changed seemingly overnight from a baseball journeyman (5 teams in one year!) to today’s best hitter.
In this video, Bautista talks about how he changed his hitting mechanics, and his explanation is fairly simple. He started his swing earlier so he wasn’t late so often.
For a more complete picture, check out this article about Jose Baustista’s transformation. One of the things I found most interesting was the insight into Baustista’s mindset:
In his free time, Bautista reads books on exceptionality. “I’m trying to understand why mediocre people become good at what they do,” he says, “and why good people become the best.” So he mixes other players’ post-career musings on success with real mental protein.
Different Winter X-games commercials are starting to pop up on ESPN again and it reminded me of the video documentaries that were done last year to showcase snowboarder Shaun White’s practice and training efforts. It was a big deal in the snowboarding world because White was attempting different jumps that had never been done before. So his sponsors spent millions to create the perfect practice environment for him.
Since I don’t have too many photos or video from Cartagena, I decided to combine what I do have with the images from Bogota. Let’s start first with the Las Aguilas de Bogota:
Batting Practice at the Stadium in Bogota, Colombia
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