Posted by: skip (piks5@sbcglobal.net) on Wed Apr 4 08:05:03 2007

First tourney for my 12u is in 2 weeks. Been working on heavy bag for since mid-March. On the bag, new swing looks good and the boy likes and believes in his new toy. What have some of you veteran CHP guys done when you're starting the season in no-man's-land: you've scrapped the old ( but good) linear swing, but the new one is just out of the box and never been test-fired against live pitching? Keeping always in mind that, above all, to hit well confidence is paramount -- always more important than technique.

1. Do I tell the boy, in games keep hitting your old way until we've perfected the new swing vs. the bag and then against live BP? Has this approach worked for any of you? It's not as if you can do a gradual transition-- lin. vs. rot. are as different as night and day. Can you successfully do one thing in games (lin.) and a diff. thing at home the same night (rot. cuts at the heavy bag?)

2. Do we jump in with both feet, possibly hampering the team as well as the boy's prospects for staying on the team, which re-evaluates in mid=May? His high avg/low power lin. swing will keep him on the team and contributing, but will limit his current and future ability to hit the ball harder.

3. A related question about the switch-over: in order to time fast pitching, he's always stepped and twitched the knob toward the ball (started the hands, slightly) on every pitch as he did his "go...no go" . or "go....go" routine-- starting the hands forward(lin.), then stopping if he takes. But this is obviously wrong for THT/ rot. How do you correctly start, and then stop, your hands with THT? What's the best technique/cues? My instinct says: start THT/elbow-to-slot on every pitch (replacement of lin. "starting the hands" forward.) But this has to be a "violent" twitch because, on strikes, it's the initation of THT, an instaneous/fraction-of-a-second "violent" and short-lived part of the swing. (IMO, knob-to-ball initation is "soft", not violent,compared to THT). I hope I'm making sense.

For me, this initate/abort issue is paramount. For good hitting it gets you into the rhythm of the pitch (timing) and is the physical expression of the mental "go...no go" cue that's essential for a hitter to be selective yet aggressive on strikes.

If I'm correct about how to "go...no go.." with THT, then to make the transition from bag/tee to live pitching (even BP) where you have to make a decision on every pitch, how about if you do the soft-toss-to-the bag drill, but sometimes you don't deliver the pitch (often this is done in conventional soft toss, but as a "stay back" drill)) in order to teach the body to twitch the hands rearward, rather than forward, on every single pitch.

I'd be very grateful for input from hitters who have made the transition from Lin. to Rot. Skip

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Can I add some more to my recent post?

As I swing the bat and try to "start" and the stop the hands (it's a ball, not a strike) I realize that if you "violently" intiate THT/elbow slot but stop before CHP, it's just not comfortable or natural. You've got to do THT/slot/ and then start the CHP and abort if it's a ball. The fact is, once you start CHP, the knob is heading towards the ball for a moment. And it feels natural to take the swing this far before aborting or continuing the swing. It feels similar to the already engrained lin. knob-to-ball, but with a THT/slot thrown in there before it occurs. skip