Posted by: Henry (dearborn@lisco.com) on Sat Oct 28 18:45:26 2000

Jack,

Thanks very much for the swing review of my 10 yr old son Mike. You picked up details that I never would have noticed. So I would encourage anyone who is thinking about having Jack look at their swing to go ahead and do it.

Also, I would like to mention some things on your "Final Arc" video that helped us. We had already seen quite a few hitting videos, and the "Final Arc" helped put a lot of them together. The use of the golf club to demonstrate torque was very helpful, but what had the most impact was your emphasis on swinging with a "relaxed" upper body. His swing came together when he learned to do this.

The way we went about learning to swing relaxed was to cut a broom stick down to a 31" length and use this to practice bottom hand swings. It's hard for a Little Leaguer to be relaxed with a normal bat because they are always fighting with the weight of the bat. So with a 31" broom stick he can really learn what it feels like to swing fast and relaxed. Also, learning with bottom hand swings is equally important because its just about impossible to get any speed on the stick without proper lower body mechanics, such as hip turn, etc. From my observations, poor lower body mechanics is the downfall of most Little Leaguers.

After getting that down we did soft toss using a tennis racket as a bat which gave him a feel of what it felt like to hit relaxed with full power without having to concentrate too much on making contact, again it also meant that he didn't have to fight with the weight of a bat. We then progressed to soft toss with his normal bat.

This is what worked for us with great results.
Thanks again!