Posted by: Major Dan (markj89@charter.net) on Tue Sep 24 10:15:38 2002

My 13 year old son has been getting weekly private lessons at Grand Slam in this hitting technique. He has now has 3 lessons and practiced his swing every day. He is frustrated as he used to be a good hitter. In games he seems to almost always be swinging under the ball. He seems to drop the barrel of the bat more then he used to. It appears to me his swing is more like a golf club swing now. I don't know what to tell him. Any suggestions?
> >
> > Hi Larry,
> >
> > I have created a program specifically for the mental side of hitting. The feedback we have gotten from our program has been excellent. Please visit my website at http://www.hkrelax.com and read some of the testimonials. The reason you cannot consciously correct his problem is because the problem is subconscious. The program comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.
> >
> > Respectfully,
> >
> > Ernest Solivan
> > Performance Consultants International
>
> Ernest-
> nice advertisement. I'll check out your site. But for you to assume that barrel drop is mental is a leap that I don't understand. I can't see how you came to that conclusion.

From the hkrelax website -
"Remember that what’s motivating you to sabotage your success in the batter’s box is usually not mechanical, but mental."
Lots of convoluted wording. Considering both the number of instructors teaching poor technique and the overwhelming number of kids not being taught anything, there are a lot of crappy swings out there. Bad mechanics is IMO the primary reason kids fail to hit.
You can have good mechanics and fail but its really hard to have bad mechanics and succeed.
It is doubly harmful to take a kid with a poor swing and give them 'mental' training. The implication is that they should be hitting well but are a head case. That is dboubly unfair to the player.

There are players who get too nervous, who struggle mentally. These programs may very well help a player struggling with those issues.
However "what’s motivating you to sabotage your success " is a pretty strange phrase. How many players want to (are motivated) keep themselves from succeeding (sabatoge your success). ???
It takes a pretty confused individual to do that. And maybe in that case there are so many issues - probably life issues - involved that real help might be better than pop psychology tapes.

In my experience 90%+ of all hitters have poor swings or swings that will at some point limit their success at some level. There are certainly a number of kids who are afraid of the ball. That is the one 'mental' area of the game that we have all seen. But I don't think the tapes focus on that.
I don't know who the target audience is. But I don't think it is the kid who is working on a new swing and struggling though the transition process.