Posted by: Tom Waz (sluggoking@msn.com) on Wed Mar 30 10:25:51 2005

Jack,

My son is 13 and very flexible. When he takes the slack out of his front arm his hands wind up 10-14 inches behind him (towards the catcher). It seems to me that this is causing his hands to be very far away from his center of rotation even though his front arm is tight against his chest. His top hand is "dragging behind" when he slots his elbow. It is also causing his top wrist to bend in ways I can't duplicate and that don't seem very natural. I was thinking on having him just pull his top hand to his shoulder and let the front arm react accordingly but wanted to make sure I wasn't changing his swing for the worse by having too much slack in his front arm. Ken Griffey seems to have his hands behind his body before he starts forward with his shoulders but not nearly as far as my son does. Thanks - Tom Waz