Strike Zone Retention Training
The Undertrained Skill Revolutionized by V-Flex Sports
In the world of baseball and softball, there’s one skill that has remained largely neglected despite its critical importance: Strike Zone Retention. For decades, personal hitting and pitching instruction have been hyper-focused on the mechanics of movement—the swing and pitch delivery. While these aspects are undeniably important, the exclusive emphasis on them has contributed to a troubling decline in batting statistics and pitch command. Now, as we enter 2025, V-Flex Sports is leading the charge to shift the focus to something equally (if not more) important: Strike Zone Retention Training.
Mechanical Obsession and Its Consequences
For over 50 years, training regimens for baseball and softball players have concentrated heavily on refining the mechanical aspects of both hitting and pitching. Whether it’s the perfect swing mechanics or the ideal throwing motion, this intense focus has led to a disconnect between the athlete’s physical actions and their ability to effectively engage and retain the “strike zone”. As a result, batting averages have stagnated, and pitching command has become more erratic than ever. Young pitchers struggle with walks, while hitters regularly rack up strikeouts.
What’s going wrong? The issue lies not in the athletes’ work ethic or effort, but in the brain’s limited engagement and retention of the spatial elements of the strike zone. Instead of training the brain to recognize and react to the boundaries of the strike zone, athletes have been overly fixated on mechanical movements. This disconnection has led to less-than-optimal performance on the field. And it’s been painful to watch.