Posted by: RQL () on Thu Jan 1 20:29:12 2004

I am currently coaching a 9 and 10 year old team. We have been working on preswing movements to get into a proper loaded position. My questions is, would you teach a young hitter to load the same as a college or professional hitter? Or should they use a simplified version?
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> > > If you were working with a 9 year old that had never received any instruction on the rotational swing, how would you describe the load to him?
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> > > Thanks in advance for any help.
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> > > Have a great day.
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> > My suggestion would to you is to keep it simple. Most young hitters do not even understand what you mean when you talk load. I run a training facility and I talk to them about the different types of loads but the one I stress or teach mainly is the slight inward turn of the front knee. I tell my hitters to simply lift up the heel of the front foot and slightly turn the front knee to the back knee. This allows the front hip to coil ever so slightly. When striding I teach them to take their hands straight back across their chest with a small inward turn of the front shoulder. By doing so it puts them in what I like to call " the power position" or "launch position".
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> > The biggest problem I run into when teaching young players the load is they generally have a tendancy to straighten their front leg which causes them at times to stand tall and to transfer most of their weight to the back leg. So make sure that when you teach the load that your hitters are keeping their legs flexed until contact at which time the front leg should be fully extended or almost fully extended.
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> > Hope this helps
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> >>My daughter is doing just that,front leg straightening and weight back on leg,I saw it on film to pick it up.I think posture at the waist straightens and takes the weight away from plate when this happens ,keeping the head and shoulders leaning a little towards the plate with the bent legs helps keep body in right position.
> The problem with my son is that he is loading fine but also letting the bat start coming back out of the load so that at toe touch his bat is almost pointed at catcher,I do not know how he hits the ball as well as he does like this but it is causing some problems with consistency I believe.Any ideas on fixing this on a 9y.o.
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< Hey RQL,
The best way to teach a 9 yr old or any old is to show them how to do it... or break it down into a drill that will show the student how it feels to do it right. to get a student to feel the proper sequence of the bathead facing the catcher(we do want the bathead facing the catcher, but not too early in the swing)try doing this with your son. do you guys hit the heavy bag? i'm guessing that you do... when he's in his stance stand behind him near his right elbow(RH). grab his hands and as he strides forward pull his hands back to his armpit area. when his heel touches, you're still holding his hands, have him rotate his front knee which will rotate his front hip. still holding his hands his torso will engage then his shoulders engage which will pull his arms and hands, which your are still holding. here's a key point, the hands will remain in the armpit area as the shoulder is turning. if you recognize an out side pitch your hands will come down sooner along wih the elbow. if you recognize an inside pitch the elbow still comes down, but the hands stay in the armpit area a split second longer. this allows the hands to stay tight and the rotation to accelerate to it's maximum. this gets your bathead around on the inside pitch and you won't get jammed.
The holding the hands drill only takes a split second to complete (the stride, heel touch, knee rotation, front hip rotation, torso rotation, shoulder rotation pulling the arms pulling the hands). in this split second your son will FEEL the timing involved in the old saying "keep your hands back". if you're lucky after you hold his hands for ten sets of ten repetitions(100 total) he'll be able to transfer this to the bag, then to the T, then to soft toss, then to a machine, then to live. i wouldn't progress to the next station until he has mastered the first. if it doesn't transfer go back for more repetitions. when he's got it mastered in live then do the same proceedure and teach him top hand torque with a super lite bat in the top hand from the armpit area into the bag using your new found hands back technique.(how's that for a runon sentence).
Give it a try. getting the feeling is a great teacher. it speeds up the process. take care, Rich