Posted by: Tom W (sluggoking@msn.com) on Fri Apr 28 10:30:48 2006

> I have been working on with my daughter utilizing your mechanics, tapes, and drills. Her batspeed has increased dramatically. The problem we are having now is her timing. She not making contact with the ball in the strong part of her swing - top hand/bot hand torque position rather her follow through. This is making her either pull the ball extremely or hitting off the end of the bat resulting in weak hits. When swinging into the heavy bag or off the tee she is real strong. Is there any drills or tips that may assist her with this increased bat speed and timing issue?

I agree with Patrick on the live pitching. I don't have ANY experience in the softball world just baseball where good pitchers change speeds almost every pitch. Even though it might not be the optimal bat for her, you might want to switch to a longer or heavier bat to "slow" her swing down a little so it remains in the zone longer. I didn't do the math (no time) but a bat starting from a resting position that reaches 65 mph spends a lot less time in the optimal hitting zone than one that only reaches 45 or 50 mph. My son had this same problem last fall and the bigger (heavier) bat helped, now he's starting to do the same thing again and we're shopping for another bat.

Tom W