Posted by: coach13 (halour@netscape.net) on Wed Jul 8 09:58:41 2009

> After lengthy off season work establishing the rotational hitting techniques with my 13 yr old, he started the year leading his team in most all positive hitting categories...now its July and everything is falling off. Still photos have shown me that his hands are much further way from his body & bottom hand elbow is almost straight at contact(on a middle of the plate fast ball), resulting in weak hit grounders and shallow pop ups. A local "old timer" minor league player simply put it;"he is pushing his bat with his top hand and not yanking the bat to the ball with his bottom hand". My son is becoming frustrated and ending the season successfully will prove to him that all that hard work was worth it last year, hopefully supplying the drive for off season work this year. Any suggestions? Your assistance is much appreciated.

Hi Hal

A device that I use to help a player "feel" the connection between the body and the lead arm is to take a 3/4" dowl about 18" long to represent the bat handle, and screw in a screw with a circle end. Then attatch a tubing strap (the straps with the connection option works best) to a stationary object (I use a batting cage pole)with the dowl. They then can rotate with resistance and will connect the core muscles to their lead arm.
Hope this helps
Coach13