Posted by: Paul (coach-J@comcast.net) on Fri Aug 4 08:36:19 2006

I recently took my 15 year son to a hitting instructor which couldn't find too much wrong with his swing other than he was trying to hit the ball more with his lower hand than his top hand. He explained that the top hand is for power and bottom hand is for speed.
With this said, he told my son to imagine when the ball is coming in that there are two balls, one front and one directly behind and to hit the first ball with his bottom hand and the second ball with his top hand. He communicated that the top hand generates more power because he has a longer path to the ball and is also coming through with the lower body. The lower hand is to get the bat to the ball in the shortest time possible. He said to try and imagine your two hands are seperate in the swing, bottom hand to the the ball then top hand to the ball. He suggested a two ball toss, choke up on bat (or get a much smaller bat weight) with bottom hand only, have two balls drop tossed (dad or someone standing in a chair in opposite batters box both balls in one hand parallel to each other)and hit the first ball in the zone. Then repeat drill using only the top hand trying to hit the second ball in the zone. Then,put both hands on the bat and and do the same drill. Amazingly when I dropped the two balls they were very close to being directly in front or behind each other (thank god for gravity being consistant).He then suggested to get a two tee-tee and practice this hitting technique. This sounded like sound advice so my son worked on this quite a bit and it really seemed to improve his power.

Any thoughts, comments?