Posted by: John E. Rickel (rickj@dakotacom.net) on Sat Apr 3 20:36:08 2004

Well, for my son, its been about 9 months since we started serious work on a purely rotational swing. We've worked our way up to front toss drills, cage work and they look OK. So now we're starting the season and at the first game, well.... just horrible. He's initiating the swing WAY TOO EARLY. Then of course, in order to save the swing the shoulders pause and he lunges forward very badly. His first two AB's he K's with wildly ugly swings. In his third AB, he delays long enough to make contact but basically "cue sticks" a blooper into LF (RHB), still way to early. I know the problem is suddenly he has better bat speed, THT is initiating the swing quicker and yet he's still using his old timing cues. All I can say right now is wait longer on the pitch, but that message doesn't seem to be sinking in. How long do I let him work this out?
> -Max

My 10 yr old had the same problem. Starting the swing early, then stopping the shoulders and lungeing. I did a couple of things and his timing got better. But I'm not sure which one did the trick. Here's what I did. First of all I threw him lots of wiffle balls in the back yard. I would throw some very slow so he had to wait to initiate the swing. Then I would throw them harder and tell him to wait as long as possible and hit to opposite field. I also had him use different weighted bats from 16oz to 27 oz. I think this made him more sensitive to timing (pay more attention to it) since he had to start the heavy bat swings sooner and the light bat swings later in order to make good contact. Anyway his timing is much better now.