Posted by: Alan () on Mon Aug 18 09:20:06 2003

For now, I am leaving the top-hand torque steps out of my sons' swings, and letting them just start with the bat over their shoulder as they did with their old linear swings. We will work that move in after they have everything else down pat. Which may be a while.

As far as getting them to use the front leg to drive hip rotation, I agree that this has been a little bit of a problem. We have been working mainly by hitting into a bag. Then we move to a tee, and hit for technique (not distance) into a fence. They seem to do fine up to this point, but tend to break down a little when hitting a live pitch, or off a tee into a field - they want to push more off their back legs, and arch their backs trying to drive their bodies forward. Last night we tried something different - hitting into a field off a tee, but at half speed, like doing the "rotate around fixed axis" drill into a bag. They seemed impressed with how far the ball went in this situation, so I am hoping with more practice and reinforcement we can overcome their instinct to drive forward trying to get more power.

Alan