Posted by: Sandman () on Thu Jun 15 13:04:42 2006

My 11YO son has the same struggle, but I don't think it's timing; it's a combination of various mechanics issues, IMO.

When I watch it on video, I see:

1. his hips and lead knee open far too much during his stride, sapping power.

2. an upright posture, in which he is not leaning over the plate.

3. his hands prematurely get away from their starting position relative to his rear shoulder (likely influenced by his upright posture, as the ball's lower than his shoulders, but w/ an upright posture, he HAS TO drop his hands to get the bat down there).

The result of these is that as he starts his swing (after stride), his hips are open quite far already, but the bat is still pointing to the catcher. I believe Jack refers to this as "the transmission slipping"?

What I've been working on w/ him to try to overcome this is:

1. Coil the hips a bit during the stride and KEEP them coiled until just before the front heel drops to start the swing.

Example: http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseball/APujols%20-%20hip%20coil%20during%20stride.gif

2. Keep the hands near the rear shoulder and turn the shoulders and hands as a unit. Of course, if he doesn't bend over the plate (from the hips), the only pitch he can hit like this would be at shoulder height. I've been having him do this as a drill, turning forward about halfway to contact, then backward back to where he started turning from... back and forth a few times, then on the last time forward, finish the swing.

Example: http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseball/APujols%20-%20hands%20during%20launch.gif

For reference, here's the entire Pujols clip from which I made the 2 miniclips above:
http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseball/APujols_Swing_SView.gif

I've only recently (past week?) started focusing on this w/ him, so I don't have any results to report yet. I will try to update this thread sometime within the next couple weeks tho.

Regards,
Sandman