Posted by: Mark () on Tue Jun 18 17:58:46 2002

>>>
Can you suggest some drills. I have the tape and the only drill I
see is the swinging into the heavy bag. My daughters swing looks
great swinging into the bag and during soft tosses.
But aganist live pitching she looks bad. She swings late and hits weak ground balls. Good thing she can fly, other wise she'd be lucky to hit 100. Is it a timing problem or loose linkage and how do we
solve this? Please give me some drills to help. Oh by the way she is 10 and I bought the 1 1/2 yrs ago.

There is a key point here about mechanics and motor learning and the concept of backward chaining which Jack gets at via the heavy bag and some of his other drills.
>
> If the end of the motion isn't learned/perfected/controlled, the beginning of the motion can not be executed correctly or learned. This is part of what has been expressed here as top down control of a bottom up motion. Without good transfer mechanics, good body rotation is impossible, you can only sway either by lunging(back to front)or collapsing the backside(uppercut/never off backside. This swaying prevents getting the lower body energy efficiently transferred into batspeed. <<<
>
> Hi Tom
>
> Good point, but it is also true that with loose linkage and poor initiation, low-load body rotation can take place. It just doesn’t accomplish anything. It is a lot like the transmission slipping in your car – the motor turns but the energy isn’t transferred to the wheels. I have seen some very weak hitters fully rotate the hips and shoulders.
>
> Jack Mankin
>