This article was originally written by Jeff Gilbert, Contributing Writer for the Dayton Daily News
Dave Hansen always knew good hitting was accomplished from the ground up because that’s what every hitting coach says. Before, during and after his 15-year major-league career, he heard wisdom like “stay on your legs” and “use the ground.”
“But what is that?” Hansen said. “It’s just another term?”
Hansen retired as a player in 2005 and has been coaching hitters from 10-year-olds up, including eight years as a major-league hitting coach. And he heard himself say those same things. But a coach can’t feel what a player feels and no amount of words from a coach can precisely convey what he wants the player to feel in his feet when he swings.
So after his last baseball job and before he was hired in January by the Cincinnati Reds as a minor-league hitting coordinator, Dave Hansen began to research better ways to teach this part of hitting. He found the V1 Sports Pressure Mat.
Now, instead of just telling hitters what they should feel, Hansen points to video analysis and heatmaps on a screen that provide a hitter instant and visual feedback about weight transfer, balance and stabilization throughout the swing among other data. The goal is to turn that live interaction into enough repetition until a hitter develops the muscle memory needed to improve his footwork in the long term.
“The number one thing that helps these guys is actually seeing it,” Hansen said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re pro or youth. You don’t have to have any understanding of it. If you’re swaying, it’ll show you this way. If I’m losing heel connection, it’ll show you that. It’s saving a lot of time trying to explain the same thing 10 different ways.”
Hansen said he has always taught how important the lower half of the body is to the swing. He talked about “staying behind baseballs” and “impacting baseballs.”
“But as soon as I saw what our feet do on the ground, when we’re churning dirt, when we’re planting to stabilize to impact a ball, or even just to hit the brakes, I learned how the body movement works,” he said. “Most of us don’t use our feet properly on the ground. I studied this, more and more, and that’s where we’ve got to start, It’s changed how I explain the whole lower half just because of the visual.”