Posted by: Joe Hernandez (coach2hit@yahoo.com) on Sat Jun 3 16:06:10 2006

Jack,

First make sure that you have identified the problem correctly. Sometimes, especially with young kids, their foot work is not correct...so trying to take care of the "upstairs" without paying attention to the "foundation" will only lead to further hitting difficulties and frustrate a youngster. Also, that he is seeing the pitch with both eyes...sometimes a kid is only looking with his front eye and moves his head during the swing to see the ball with both eyes and in so doing pulls his shoulder.

Having said that, symptomatic of "opening" or pulling the front shoulder too early is hitting weak fly or ground balls to the opposite field. Sometimes kids want to do too much with a pitch and they open their front shoulder... often the hitter will tilt his front shoulder upward as well, causing the hands to drop and in the process drop the hands thereby dragging the barrel of the bat, hence the hitting to the opposite field.

Assuming that your boy is a right-handed hitter, then he is pulling his front shoulder towards third base. What you need to ensure is that at separation, he moves his hands to the rear shoulder...this is the position he needs to be in, "loaded" to attack the ball. Then the front shoulder as well as the hands should move towards the ball and not away.

Just do some soft toss as you remind him to move his hands towards the rear shoulder. He needs to just focus on this until he has performed it enough that it becomes "automatic". Be patient and remember he is just a kid...let him have fun, don't over instruct.



> my 9 year old son is opening up his front shoulder to soon,is there any good drills to help him keep it closed intill he hits the ball,thanks