Posted by: Matt () on Sat Aug 7 21:01:38 2004

Hi all. I bought the tape a year ago, and although I don't think I understand THT and BHT completely, I think I've applied Jack's teachings pretty well. I've tried to correct my problems, namely moving linearly toward the pitcher, resulting in hitting off a bent front leg, lunging at the ball, and starting out with my hands so high that I chop down on the ball slightly on contact.

Here's the problem I'm having now: I can keep my weight back and hit off a straight front leg every time- in the cages. In a game, it's been much much harder to not go back to my old, lunging, non-hip-turning-very-much, linear ways. I'm hitting like crap this year, and as a result getting far less game time to work on my swing against live pitching. As far as I can tell, it's got to be one of two things:

1. Nerves- I do feel some abdominal tightness in game situations that I don't feel in the cages. That might keep me stiff and inflexible in the box, to the point where I swing very linearly and without much hip turn.

2. Adjustment- I know where (to a degree) each pitch is coming when it's coming out of a pitching machine. If it's an actual person out there, it could be high / low / outside / inside / curving / sliding / sinking / etc. I have to make a very quick minor adjustment 99% of the time (to say nothing of just laying off the pitch), and it seems that it might be then that all the training goes out the window and I'm back to lunging at the ball and shifting my weight forward too far. I've noticed I hit a lot better at the "good" cages near me- where every pitch is a laser beam right at the same spot- than at the "lousy" cages I go to sometimes, where the machines have much worse "control". But, that makes sense, right?

Anyone have any training tips or suggestions? Anyone else feel a big difference between live hitting and cage hitting, to this degree?