Posted by: Alan () on Thu Aug 22 09:38:53 2002

Jack and others:
>
> I film my son a lot & put his swings on my my computer, frame by frame.
>
> The problem is that when he lands, toe & then heel, rather than immediately starting his swing his body will shift forward about 3 frames before he starts his swing. This results in his knee being even more bent by the time he actually starts his swing.
>
> I know you say this forward body shift is bad and I agree with you. The question is HOW to restrain this forward body shift.

He needs to work on his hip rotation to specifically get the front leg and hip involved. What tends to happen is the fron leg and hip are used as a pivot point and the back leg and hip do all the work to push the hips around. Have him think that the front leg and hip also need to pull the hips around. A good example would be if you were to put your hands on his hips and rotated them you would have to push forward to make his back hip come around and at the same time pull backward to make his front hip come around (by the way this is another example of using torque in the swing). For your son to duplicate these movements he is not going to be able to bend the knee because he is going to have to use the front leg to push his front hip back and around.