Believe it or not, Mike Trout was struggling earlier this season. It feels crazy to say that after the incredible display he just put on at Yankee Stadium, where he hit five home runs in four games to help power the Angels to a series victory over the Yankees.
Rewind the tape back two weeks, and the three-time American League MVP wasn’t where he wanted to be at the plate. From March 30 to April 8, Trout found himself mired in a brutal, 2-for-33 slump. After homering in each of the Angels’ first two games of the season, Trout labored through a power outage, collecting just one extra-base hit during that span. While he was still hitting the ball in the air, he wasn’t hitting the ball as hard and was striking out more. His timing was off.
How a swing change helped Mike Trout find his power stroke
So what did Trout do? He went back to the basics. Many hitters—Trout included—deploy some sort of front leg movement or kick before the swing, shifting the weight onto the back foot while giving the body forward momentum as a sort of coil-up into the swing. Few hitters deploy a back leg kick and a front leg kick before the swing. That’s exactly what Trout began doing, hearkening back to a hallmark of hitting instruction.
Pay extra attention next time you see Mike Trout at the plate 👀 pic.twitter.com/qUayXVb6LL
— MLB (@MLB) April 17, 2026
There’s a common batting cage drill in which the hitter takes an exaggerated step with the back foot before a crow hop into the swing towards a ball on a tee. The back leg maneuver is easy enough to perform when the baseball is stationary, much more difficult to carry out in practice when the baseball is hurtling towards you at 99 mph. The idea is that the back-leg movement is another way to create momentum into the baseball while incorporating more of the lower-half into the swing.
While the move was more commonplace in baseball’s earlier days and as recently as the 1960s, some modern players have still experimented with it over the years. Eight-time All-Star Nolan Arenado utilized a step back move during the 2017 season with the Rockies en route to the best slugging season of his career. It’s a move Trout, who had issues with timing amid an injury-riddled, down season at the plate in 2025, deployed towards the end of last season to great success. Feeling off from a timing standpoint, Trout went back to the well.
“I was doing it in BP and never took it in a game until like the last month last season,” Trout told MLB.com. And I had success with it. I did it the whole offseason, and when I came into spring, I felt like I was in a spot where I didn't really need to do it.
“But after the first week, I kind of felt stuck again back there and I started doing it again in Cincinnati. So it’s just like a little modification to get me going earlier.”
Trout began to see immediate success. Armed with his new leg kick, Trout collected three hits—two for extra bases—four RBI and four walks as the Angels took two of three from the Reds.
Then, he kicked in the door at Yankee Stadium with a performance for the ages, belting five home runs in four days, the most ever by a player in a road series against the Yankees. Trout obviously passed the eye test with that historic performance, but a look under the hood also shows the subtle change is paying off. Here’s a look at Trout in several key hitting metrics before and after the change.
Here is Trout pre-step back.
| Barrel Rate | Hard-Hit Rate | Strikeout Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 17.6% | 47.1% | 34.3% |
And here is Trout after deploying the back leg kick.
| Barrel Rate | Hard-Hit Rate | Strikeout Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 34.6% | 53.8% | 10.3% |
Overall, Trout has more barreled baseballs than anyone in the majors, and has shaved nearly 12 percentage points off his strikeout rate while adding nearly seven percentage points to his walk rate in 2026. Plus, as he told Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein, Trout back in his comfort zone in center field after the Angels had shifted him to right field and designated hitter duties amid his battles with injury. Trout also slimmed down in an effort to take some of the stress and weight away from his lower-body.
Put it all together and there’s reason to believe this could be Trout’s best season since his perennial MVP days. The biggest reason why? After years of injuries, Trout has returned to good health with a little help from an unconventional resource.
The other secret to Trout’s success? A six-figure recovery chamber
The Angels star is among several high-profile names, including fellow baseball stars Freddie Freeman and Alex Bregman, to invest in the recovery and longevity technology company Ammortal.
Touted as the state-of-the-art in restoration and rejuvenation, the company’s Ammortal chamber gives the user the experience of layered, red-light therapy, electromagnetic fields, voice-guided breath work and meditation, full-body Vibro-acoustics as well as the inhalation of molecular hydrogen while reclining in the zero–gravity capsule. The experience comes with a hefty price tag, for the Ammortal chamber can be purchased at a cool $159,500.
Trout began using the Ammortal chamber during the 2025 season and this past winter became an investor in the company. During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday, Trout raved about the machine.
"I do the Ammortal Chamber every day and it's incredible..
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) April 17, 2026
It's a good reset for about thirty minutes and it's great for your body..
It's definitely been helping me" ~ @MikeTrout #PMSLive https://t.co/3HqYqF6HsC pic.twitter.com/D1ACAkBi8u
“People ask me all the time, ‘What is is? Is it helping you?’ I do it everyday when we’re at home, we got on at the stadium [Angel Stadium]. It’s hard to explain unless you’re actually in it. There’s 10 different settings with like recovery, energize, release. Bunch of modalities—red light, magna wave, pulsing. It’s incredible. I do it for about 30 minutes a day. It’s like a good reset.”
“You’re not thinking about anything. You’re off your phone. It’s like a reset. And it’s good for your body. I do it every day before the game and if I have a long one and I need a little recovery after postgame, I’ll get a little recovery postgame. Yeah, it’s definitely been helping me.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Inside the Subtle Swing Change That Powered Mike Trout’s Historic Home Run Binge .
