FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Carlos Correa allowed himself to take a 10-day vacation with his family this offseason -- after spending three days at Disney World, they hopped on a weeklong cruise to all bask in the sun together.

Otherwise, he stayed home in Houston. He’d head to the gym at 6 a.m. for a workout, then take ground balls and hit, then he’d go home to enjoy time with his two young sons, spend the evenings with his wife, Daniella, then rinse and repeat.

After consecutive offseasons of chaos impacted by two different free-agent contract negotiations and the birth of his second son last spring, Correa smiled as he called this last offseason “so chill” -- which was good, because he knew the work he needed to do.

“This year, it was like, right when he got off, he went to work,” hitting coach David Popkins said. “I'm really excited for him.”

After all that work starting in November, Correa arrived in Twins camp on Thursday with a healthy left heel and a more compact, direct swing, eager to put one of the most challenging seasons of his career behind him and work back towards the top-of-the-lineup star he became when the Twins gave him a record six-year, $200 million contract last offseason.

“I saw the swings in the cage and a lot of guys are looking dangerous already,” Correa said. “I'm very excited for what's to come this year. It's a team that's very young, but got enough experience last year for us to believe that we can do it against any team. I'm excited to get started.”

Among all those swings, Correa’s does look visibly different, and it starts with how he sets up in his stance, with lower hands and a much lower back elbow before he begins his swing motion. He’s using more of a toe tap than a kick with his front leg, aiming to be smaller with his move into the ground.

In all, he’s trying to be more consistent and efficient with his movements in an effort to improve upon the struggles of a .230/.312/.399 season, a career-worst .711 OPS and an MLB-leading 30 double-play grounders. The plantar fasciitis in his left heel that bothered him throughout the season played into it all, of course, and it led to a chain of various adjustments and issues that never quite had Correa feeling as stable as he wanted at the plate.

At first, the heel pain meant that more of Correa’s weight would shift to his toes -- and with his leg kick, too much of his chest was falling over the plate as he loaded. That, coupled with his added flexibility, led to a lack of consistency and added length in his swing.

“I think just constantly having to adjust with what your body is doing to avoid pain in the heel, your length is just constantly making adjustments, and we saw some problems,” Popkins said. “For him, it was a lot more than he's ever had to do in the past."

Nowhere was that more apparent than in Correa’s uncharacteristic struggles against fastballs. He hit .241 and slugged .417 off fastballs last season, significantly down from a .333 average and .503 slugging percentage against those pitches in ‘22 and .292 and .497 marks in ‘21.

With a more compact swing, Correa can make later swing decisions. He can react to fastballs later and aim to drive them to the opposite field, which also gives him coverage to react to offspeed pitches and drive them to his pull side. He doesn’t need to commit to fastballs, which could help his overall contact rate and decision-making.

“[The] 2021 [season] was one of my best years and everything was short and everything was very compact,” Correa said. “I felt like I could let the ball travel, and we're trying to get back to what was working in the past.”

It took a bit longer than Correa expected this offseason for the heel pain to go away, but he says he’s running and doing all his movements without pain now. Health leads to more effective reps -- and he’s already seen the benefits of that in his offseason work.

“When he just gets volume, he's so good naturally that he's going to figure out solutions, he's going to figure out alignments,” Popkins said. “Like his elbow, that was all him, getting that elbow down. [Let's] see how it goes.”