Posted by: Big Hitter () on Sun May 30 21:05:06 2004

I would stay away from a Reaction Trainer or anything else from Setpro, unless you don't mind getting taken to the cleaners. One thing I started doing with my sons when they were about 7 was having them hit a ball on a rope tethered to an 8-foot tall aluminum frame made out of three pieces of 10-foot EMT pipe (about $10 a piece at any hardware store). The ball was a rubber pitching machine ball with a hole drilled through it. Two pieces of pipe were sunk 2 feet into the ground and the third was connected to them across the top using EMT connectors. The rope was cut to keep the ball in the strike zone but I constantly adjusted the length to keep the ball at different heights, from the knees to the letters. At the top, the rope was tied in a loop around the EMT pipe to allow the ball to circle all the way around. This gave them a way to evaluate their progress. By the time they were 10-11, they could hit the ball hard enough to get four or five times around. If you have the room in the backyard for it, this is a great and low-cost training aid--you get the repetition of a swing away (but at a slower pace to give batter time to reset properly) with a ball that moves similar to a live pitch.