Posted by: Nick (nickkio@aol.com) on Sat Nov 8 10:20:33 2003

RQL, Pro Hitter and Doug,

I have been on a two-week road trip and am now just catching up. I am putting this post up here because I wanted to make sure you saw it. Thank you for the comments and analysis you made regarding my son’s swing ( http://webpages.charter.net/nickkio/B/ ). He is thirteen, loves the game and has always worked a lot on it. However, in the past two months the work has become more productive and the results have improved. It started with a conversation I had with an occasional contributor to this site, and e-mails from Jack Mankin, and Coach C, all whom I asked to take a look at his swing. The feedback I received coincided with input I had received earlier this year on the SetPro site from Paul Nyman and the members there. The message: he needs to learn to stop taking hands to the ball, must let the ball get deeper. The concept of hitting the ball closer to the body is a perception issue as much as anything else. I think it is something most kids do. My son and I sat down and talked about it and decided to try to make the change despite the fact that his fall schedule was in full swing. The first couple of tournaments were rough, but then he started to get better. He has always been a pretty high average hitter, but by the end of the season he was hitting the ball consistently harder and farther than he had ever done in his life. Changing this perception has been very difficult and he knows he must continue to work on it or he will slide back.

We now know there are other areas to improve on, as you have pointed out in your comments about not enough scap loading, knee cock and bat cock. These are things that we will try to incorporate over the winter. For some reason (inability to correctly use THT?) the hardest thing for him is the bat cock. It seems when he cocks the bat more, his hands want to go directly to the ball. This is something I have to think about some more.

Again, thanks for taking the time and keep up the great work you are all doing on this site.

Nick