Posted by: Michael (mchosmer@gmail.com) on Sat May 9 21:54:11 2009

> > > My 9 year old son is considered a good hitter, good power, great hand eye coordination. Lately he has been geting out in front with his hands and hitting too many ground balls. I know there are many different things to look at but what is the the most consistant reason for this and how do you fix it.
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> > > Bill
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> > I'm not sure if you bought the DVD on this site but this is how I began to understand the rotational aspect of hitting. From there you can go to still Internet pictures of great hitters making contact and notice every aspect of their body position from the feet up. After this read some of the other well known hitting books and see what they have to say about hitting. Just stick to the rotational and make sure that you and your son understand THT, BHT, rear elbow slot, and rotation as taught here. Take it slow because these things take a while (a year or two) for a kid to understand and eventually burn into muscle memory. This has worked extremely well for me and my son.
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> > Hitting the heavy bag as mentioned in the Jack Mankin video is very good and hitting the ball off the tee and up the middle or to right center for a right handed hitted works as well.
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> > Ground balls to the left side are usually the result of hitting the outside of the baseball (right handed hitter) so to fix you teach hitting the middle of the ball which will translate into more balls up the middle. Ground balls in general are the top hand wrist rolling over the bottom hand prematurely at contact with the ball or hitting the baseball too high on the ball or swinging level with the ground as opposed to swinging level with the plane of the pitch. Because the plane of the incoming pitch is so exagerated and downward sloping at 9 you really can't tell if he is hitting too high on the ball or not. Most of the time they are not on plane because the slope of the pitch is too great. At 9 I would be working on hitting the ball hard up the middle ground ball or in the air. On tee work and soft toss, I would stress line drives up the middle. Nine year old pitching is just too unpredictable other than to stress hitting it hard up the middle for a kid that is pulling the ball too much.
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> > As a general rule, creating correct muscle memory is how problems are corrected so it is easier to fix swing mechanics on the tee, with a heavy bag, and some soft toss. Correcting swing mechanics on the pitch is harder with kids because their concentration is focused on the ball and they tend to forget during the swing.
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> teach them:Let the ball come to me

You do not need to make things complicated for your son. Hitting is obviously about two things, timing and mechanics. Now without watching your son it could be simply his timing is off or he has a mechanical flaw of making contact with his arms already extended. Watch this video... the part that is titled "Arod creating a compact swing" http://blog.swingtraining.net/page/2.aspx.

Notice the part where he uses the term "alligator arms", it's all about learning to create and very compact swing. If you pause the video when he is making contact with the ball, notice how close his arms are to his body. What he is doing is giving himself the most time possibly to square the ball up and letting his strength create the distance. He is making himself have a short swing which makes him very difficult to get beat with fastballs.

I can tell you how he does this, but it is difficult to explain on a message board. The key is to understand the concept. Tell your son to stop reaching for the ball and to let ball come to him. Both of his arms should be bent when he is making contact. That way he is in the most powerful position possible to hit the ball.

The best thing you could possibly do is video him and let him watch. You can even compare him to major league hitters on the internet so he can see the difference. He will learn quickly using video.

Best of luck.