Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Sun Feb 8 15:59:44 2009

> I understand that as well. My question still is what would you tell a young hitter initiates his top half?

Hips open, hands begin tht, rear elbow slots into an L, bht begins initiating as core muscles in stomach bring the hands around just prior to and after contact. I'd encourage the kid to get on swing plane as soon as possible when the rear elbow is slotted into an L because the bat stays in the strike zone longer.

I'd buy the Final Arc DVD on this site and watch it first by yourself and watch what you can with the child over a couple of sittings. Very difficult to keep a kids attention so it takes a couple of times. I would also go to MLB.com and watch a couple of great hitters hitting homeruns. You can watch this with him as well. Main thing is take your time because this takes time for a young kid to digest. Words can describe torque to some extent with a kid but they really need a visual. I even need a visual and watch video clips of homeruns on mlb.com. Still shots of great hitters at contact are good for seeing what is going on with their lower body.

You want to also make sure that the child understands to have firm front leg so that the bodys axis of rotation doesn't drift forward during the swing. You can have all the torque in the world but if the body is drifting forward too much it is difficult to make solid contact especially against faster pitching. A lot of hitting instructors will refer to this as staying back and it is very important. I don't know if "staying back" is the best description because what you are really doing is stopping the axis of rotation from continuing to drift forward at contact. The drift is stopped by a firm front leg which also greatly improves consistency.