Posted by: Coach C () on Thu May 20 06:44:10 2004

My son has started casting on his swings in live pitching situations instead of rotating the hips and dropping the back elbow to his side, especially in game situations against faster pitching. Any good advice for how to eliminate/prevent this problem other than, of course, practice, practice, practice?

It sounds like he could be manipulating the arms back as the body moves forward. The arms can not be manipulated back as the body moves forward, however if the arms seperate back as a consequence of the body going forward then that's o.k. The key is to not manipulate the arms.....this would be false interpretation of THT or scapular loading. Casting is the art of getting the body too far ahead of the hands.

I sense that there is a natural tendancy for most hitters to, under fast pitching conditions, create more speed with the hands. To that end hand manipulation that directly effects the arms can creep in. A player can hit this way for a long, long time, but under high level pitching it will fail. The reasons are many, but a few are that when the body outraces the arms it V-shapes the swing plane, when the body outraces the arms it makes it a longer swing (giving the hitter way less time to make good decisions) and lastly, makes hitting the inside pitch next to impossible. There are many other issues as well.

The hands want to hit hard in all of us, but you must tame this animal instinct until the appropriate time in the swing.

Good Luck......your problem is rampid in every swing I see at the youth level (in golf it's called "over the top").

Coach C