Posted by: dan (dlong@speedracer.com) on Thu Feb 23 15:14:33 2006

> starting his hands forward too soon and feeling for the pitch. I have tried many things to get him out of doing it and have had some success but not the results that I would like. He hits the ball on the sweet spot more than anyone on his team but sometimes cheats himself by not attacking the ball.
> Any thoughts??????

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My son is 9. To me it sounds like he did something similar last year. His weight shifted forward on every swing; if he timed his big weight shift right, he was moving forward when he hit the ball in a linear fashion. More often (much more), he moved early and took a slow swing to compensate (waving at the ball), resulting in weak hits, at best, line drives towards second/short. I tried a lot of stuff with him, including the heavy bag drills on Jack's video, throwing soft toss from behind him, etc. Sometimes he'd accidentially get it, but could not replicate easily. As someone who swung the same way when I was a kid and isn't a coach, it was hard for him to make progress this way (though with some instructional expertise, I feel like it could have worked).

This year what I have been doing is working with him seriously on Mike Epstein's approach on the lower body. What I mean by that is working with the "torque" and "numbers" drill espoused by Epstein. In the torque drill, head and toes point to the pitcher, balanced stance, both knees bent, rear leg on ball of foot, swing thru, ending with weight back. Numbers drill is Emansky-esqe; on 1, hitter strides landing on ball of front foot and inward turn, on 2, hitter drops heel, tilts rear shoulder, and "releases" hips (first part of hip turn, I guess, he's not real clear on this), on 3 hitter swings.

I don't get as clear a picture of the mechanics of the rotational swing from Epstein as I get from Jack in The Final Arc and this board, but attempting to actually get the message across to my son, I have had a lot more success addressing the lunging problem with Epstein's drills than any other approach. He didn't hit a ball for a week, just working on the drills. He still hasn't see live pitching (been about 3-4 weeks I guess), just me throwing wiffles and a little batting cage, but the lunge is 100% better. It is an astounding difference.

Now I'm able to work on some of the other issues, like ensuring a circular hand path and trying to teach top hand torque, plate coverage, etc. I still don't understand entirely Epstein's explanation of mechanics (e.g., where is the advantage in gaining maximum torque between hips and shoulders - shouldn't you use the opening of the hips to start the bat? and what type of swing are we trying to ingrain with the fence/enforcer drill?), but that has not stopped those drills from making what appears to be a huge difference in correcting my son's lunge. If this is your issue, I highly recommend Epstein's CD-ROM. I don't own his video, and his book is only a series of articles he's written for publication elsewhere (basically using the same ten homilies as an ad for his clinics/video). Best of luck.