Posted by: Joe A. () on Sun Apr 21 13:38:04 2002

>>My daughter has a powerful fastpitch swing. Her problem hitting is >>that she drops her back shoulder and therefore upper cuts. Any >>suggestions to break her of this?
> >
> >Dropping the back shoulder is necessary on the rotational swing except for the very high pitch.This is the way the body rotates.
> >
> > It's a miracle any fastpitch girl can hit if she follows the usual favorite fastpitch cues-"keep the weight back","keep the shoulders level" and "swing down".Trying to make the adjustment to rotational is quite challenging after the kid has been programmed with swing thoughts like these.As Epstein points out,if you start with weight back and keep the shoulders level,the weight has to go forward with the swing.Kids tend to try to make everybody happy by leaving the weight back(never getting off the back side)and swinging up.This is an uppercut arm swing which is then blamed on letting the back shoulder drop.I don't like arm swings and this is a bad arm swing.If your daughter has a powerful swing,then,bless her heart,she's trying to swing rotationally,she just doesn't know how.
> >
> > If she wants to make the transition to rotational,or improve her current attempt to be rotational(whether she and her coach are aware of this or not)then she needs to learn


Your daughter is dropping her back shoulder because she is doing something else wrong. You try to set your shoulders on a 35 to 45 degree angle, which is about the angle at which "back shoulder droppers" set their shoulders. You will find that you have to tilt your spine backward to try to do it. You will also notice that your daugher is not tiling her spine backward but her shoulders are at a 40 or 45 degree angle. If she was she would look really silly at the plate. Its not her back shoulder that is causing the problem. She is doing something else.