Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Sun Mar 7 00:50:27 2004

curt terling (steelau@aol.com
My son(LH) has a tendency to lower his left hand and ends up hitting to left or gettng under the ball. Are their any THT drills he scould use or is there any one on one trainers who can work with him. He has a shot at a scholarship with his pitching but he needs work on his hitting. <<<

Hi Curt

Without actually seeing your son’s swing, I can only give you my opinion as to what is probably occurring in his swing. What you have described are swing mechanics that place too much dominance (or reliance) on the backside. In other words, he is relying too heavily on his left-arm to accelerate the bat. He is lowering his left-hand and forearm to horizontal too early in the swing because that is a more powerful position from which to drive the left-hand forward. Much like a boxer would setup to drive a punch to an opponent’s mid-section.

I would suggest he solve this problem before working with THT. Outlining a practice program for solving backside dominance is beyond the scope of this post. But he must work on getting the lead-side more involved in accelerating the bat. It can’t just go along for the ride. If you have our instructional video, have him understand and practice the section on BHT. If not, read all you can find about it on the site, and refer to the Swing Mechanics Page (Frame #5), but you may want to go through each frame. This Page has recently been revised. Learning BHT first will teach him how to use the lead-side efficiently, which should help to solve his problem. Good luck to your son in getting that Scholarship!

Jack Mankin