Posted by: coachmark (mm@tulsasilverhawks.com) on Wed Apr 6 10:24:28 2005

> My son is 12 and needs just a little help. He normaly hit just ok. The kids in his league throw alot of junk. Alot of fastballs some curve but mostly all over the place. I have worked with him with opening his hips and throwing the hands out first then swing. He now hits to the fence almost all the time in practice. I also pitch about 30 plastic golf ball to him while he use's a broom handle. He rocks about 15 to 20 of them. What can I do to get that extra jump to clear the fence. We did use weights, but it messes with his pitching. His throwing elbow has been hurting after about 20 pitches.
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> I can not lose him as a pitcher. His throws somewhat fast but he puts it all over the strike zone. He use's the fastball, slider and slurve (slide & curve). I only let him throw 0ne curve out of every 5 pitches, and it is side not over hand. Any suggestion would help out alot, our season starts this coming Saturday.

Ron,

Well I'm glad you came to batspeed asking a question about hitting and recieved such opinions on you son's pitching. Hopefully I can share my experience with my 12yo son and his hitting that will help you.

My son is 5'3" and 103 pounds, so as you can tell tall and skinny. He has a good swing and has been a good contact hitter for some time but usually hit short to mid outfield or strong grounders to the infield. We too thought there should be more, although skinny he is strong, as we have a light fitness program for him to workout. Before all the critics start in on me on lifting weights do your research and ask how we accomplish this without hurting him or the fear to hurt him.

Well the answer for us was Rotational hitting!!!! What you described sounds like linear hitting like how my son use to hit. We have started changing to rotational hitting, purchased the DVD, read a lot, and studied all we could. My son has watched the DVD twice and practiced off the tee to learn the new hitting style. After just a couple of weeks and practice about every day he is hiting further and they have been good strong line drives. The last game he hit a line drive to the fence, center field.

So my advice to you is look into rotational hitting from this site and others. Research it and practice it everyday until he changes his style...

If want to discuss pitching now we can do that but I figure you know what you want there!!! :)