HOLISTIC HITTING DEFINED

Holistic hitting is taking a mental, spiritual, emtional, and physical approach
to hitting your pitch and driving it.
Physically, I'm on board with
everything that good hitting coaches teach. One of my identifiers of a good
hitting coach is that they are teaching a mechanically sound swing which
includes a balanced energy line toward the pitcher, blocking off a firm
frontside on contact, and NOT teaching squishing the bug with the back foot
which takes away from the energy line in the swing. One of the fine points that
I teach is to start/load slow to overcome inertia to a fast finish line with
proper barrel projectory through the hitting plane. Specifically at the start, I
teach my hitters to make a small C slowly with the middle knuckle on the middle
finger of the lead hand as they begin their path to explode through the
ball.
The slow start enables the hitter to keep their head still and
maintain positive tracking of the pitch. I won't use this forum for specifics,
but I adhere to Dr. Bill Harrison's Vision Training for teaching proper visual
acuity for hitting...a.k.a. fine centering/soft centering.
Mentally, I
teach a form of recycling made famous by Tim Galwey years ago. My hitter's
develop a personalized hitting mantra with my assistance that they'll load
mentally before each pitch. In case of the yips, I endorse the Crowley Method
developed by psychologist Dr. Richard Crowley combined with an acupressure
called TAT.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rDF_qUntDg&feature=related
Most importantly, it's my
belief that the component that will determine a hitter's success as to whether
or not they reach their potential is that they believe they are better than they
think they are and that their purpose is for a betterment of mankind and
baseball. This is also personalized and becomes the last thought in their
hitting mantra that's mentally loaded pre-pitch.
My answer to the few
nay-sayers that think that including a spiritual aspect to hitting is too
meta-physical would be that they are in denial that we are powerful spiritual
beings first and foremost.