Posted by: FiveFrameSwing (lyons.chris@yahoo.com) on Mon Dec 22 23:01:49 2008

> Has anyone thought about using a cue of hips in front of shoulders,I have been seeing some kids with the problem of lunging ,not letting the ball come to them,and the cues were using are not working,so I was trying to do what they did then trying to figure out how to stop it if it was ingrained in my swing and I felt that if I focused on keeping my hips thrusted forward toward the ball ahead of the shoulders then rotating them into the ball,the rear tilt and swing plane fell into place,these ideas are not thoughts to necessarily take to the plate but to use to help break a problem.Has anyone used this or thought of it before and did you find any success.


I believe what you are advocating is a swing that creates hip/shoulder spatial separation.

Basically you want to see hip rotation ahead of shoulder rotation ... as in the link below.

http://groundup.hittingillustrated.com/hitting/HipsBeforeShoulders/HipsLeadShoulders.htm

Personally I never had much success using the cue "hips before hands", or similar type cues. My students wanted to realize this, and while some could do it naturally, others couldn't ... and when swinging at full speed the cue didn't help any.

What I found was that it was important to build the mechanics into their swing that enabled my students to realize hip/shoulder spatial separation without conscious effort. Certain mechanics favor this ... generally they also favor a "well timed" clean Kinetic sequence. Certain characteristics favor obtaining hip/shoulder separation ... suchas having the lower body properly synchronized with the top hand/arm, having the hands move back towards the catcher DURING the forward stride, obtaining early lead arm extension, the realization of a good hand/barrel load (such that the bat is angled back towards the fiedl ... i.e., slotted ... and not neutral or pointing back to the catcher) and of course a well timed shift to the front side.