Posted by: rob (robbiagini@comcast.net) on Tue Feb 15 13:45:35 2005

My 14 year old son has a problem where he opens his front side too soon and his hands tend to drag. I have had trouble finding an easy way for him to stop from doing that. Recently I have noticed with most every good hitter that when the back knee begins it's turn the hands should begin to move forwards as well. So, I am telling him to pretend his hands are connected to his back knee and when the back knee starts to turn, the hands starts to go.
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> Does this sound ok?
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> Hi Rob
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> Welcome to the site. – In order to give you the best advice, I need to have a good understanding of what you mean by “he opens his front side too soon and his hands tend to drag.” If you mean he opens the front side during pre-launch and therefore, is not in a good loaded position (hands hidden from pitcher) to initiate the swing, I would agree that this is a problem for rotational hitters.
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> If however, he does initiate the swing from a good launch position, I fail to see how he could open the front side to soon at the start of his swing. Keep in mind, with rotational transfer mechanics, the muscles in the arms are not used to bring the hands around. Also note that although the rotation of the back-knee and hips contribute to the rotation, they are not connected directly to the arms and hands. It is the rotation of the shoulders that fling the arms and hands into their circular path.
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> Rob, when viewing a batter from the mound, we should see the front shoulder starting to rotate before the hands appear. That is why I am not sure what you mean by, “he opens his front side too soon.” It could be you are envisioning a more linear approach to initiating the swing.
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> Jack Mankin
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Thanks for responding to my question. I have read this site for years and have hesitated to post because I have a hard time understanding a lot of the terminology. To me one interpretation of the linear approach is that in the initiation of the swing the hands come forward at the same time as the body and there really is little or no rotation. In my son's case I don't think he is even doing this. He is trying to rotate his hips because he has been told that he should over the years. So, I don't think he starts for a good launch position. However, he has gotten into this bad habit of beginning his rotation early so his front hip opens up (toward third base for a right handed hitter) and his hands a left behind leaving him with no power, as he ends up swinging with his arms only, because his hips have already opened.

So, in an effort to coordinate his movements, so he is using is hips and legs during his swing, I thought he needed to have a point of reference as to when to trigger his hands. Since he does do the knee and hip rotation already, I thought that he could cue the initiation of his hands at the same time as the knee begins it's rotation. If you look at all of the video's on this website (http://www.youthbaseballcoaching.com/swings.html), every one of those guys have their hands starting forward when the back knee begins it's turn. And actually if you look closely at the timing of the hands and back knee throughout the swing, it is almost as if there is a rope tied between them, because their movements seem to be so much in synch.

I could be way off base here, but I am trying to give him an easy way to get his swing together.

Thanks,

Rob