"Stay back" might be the most-shouted cue in the batting cage, and half the hitters who hear it get it wrong in one of two opposite ways. Some freeze so they don't drift and end up with no load at all. Others gather so far back they sway — the weight slides past the back foot instead of coiling into the back hip. Staying back is the narrow, good middle: gather into the back side, not past it.
Gather, don't drift
The load is supposed to collect your weight into your back hip like a spring compressing — a coil. Your weight settles down and back inside the back leg, ready to unload forward into rotation. That's "staying back": your center of mass loads over the back hip and waits.
Swaying is when that gather keeps going and your weight slides past the back foot, or your hands wrap way behind your head. Now you've drifted too far, and you have to travel all the way back before you can go forward — that's extra timing, and it leaks power out the back. So a sway is a load that overshot, and it's just as much a timing problem as no load at all, only in the other direction.
What the camera reads
Film open side and CoachVision measures your load depth — how far your hands ride back before the swing fires, in torso-lengths, measured relative to your hips. A calm gather reads in a healthy middle; near-zero is the freeze (no load); a very large number is usually the sway, the weight sliding past the back foot or the hands wrapping deep behind the head. The band is generous because leg-kick hitters and quiet hitters both live inside it — what flags is the empty load or the overshoot.
Because it's measured relative to your hips, a walking or rhythmic load doesn't get dinged for body travel — only a genuine over-drift shows up big. And note the geometry: this read lives on the open side; from behind, the load runs along the camera and disappears entirely, so film open side to see your gather.
The fix — find the line with Stride-and-Hold
Stride-and-Hold is the perfect calibrator for staying back: load, stride, and freeze at front-foot landing — weight inside the back hip, hands still back, nose behind the belt buckle — hold two seconds, then swing. Here's why it works both directions: if you froze with no load, you'll feel there's nothing to hold and start adding a gather; if you swayed past your back foot, you literally can't balance the two-second hold, so you'll naturally pull the weight back inside the leg where you can. The hold finds your middle. Ten reps off the tee.
The feel to chase: "load into the back hip, not out over the back foot." You should feel the back leg catch your weight, not the weight run off the end of it.
The camera reads your body, not your bat, and "contact" is your hands' speed peak — so this is a read on your gather, not a grade on the hit. Film one open-side swing, check your load depth, then ten stride-and-holds a round until staying back means gathered, not frozen and not drifted.