Bat Speed -- Baseball Hitting Forum

Posted by: Bob () on Thu Oct 11 05:10:27 2007

A lot of people do this to some extent, his action is just more extreme as his head doesn't follow thru the swing, it kind of counterbalances it. He maybe even started out doing it on purpose. I don't know how much of a problem it is, but I guess like anything it's best to correct bad habits when they're young. It's like he's trying to get a little extra body behind the ball at impact and the horizontal head is the result of that motion. Maybe trying too hard to kill it?
I would try the following:

1) one-handed drills with a very light bat. Doing these on one knee when only using the bottom hand make it very tempting to lean in the way he does. This way I think you can isolate the problem and work on keeping his axis of rotation straight. He may not be able to do this correctly in which case I wouldn't overdo it. Come back to it from time to time to see how he's progressing.

2) If you have a pathfinder use that or if you don't, try hitting the heavy bag with a bat held using only the thumb and forefinger of the top hand. Hold it at a point where it's fairly balanced and use it like you would the pathfinder. Using the body to power the swing. Even though his head goes horizontal after impact, I think that's just a symptom of a shift he's doing just before impact. the heavy bag work will focus on keeping his axis straight, rather than spinning out as he does at the end.

3) use a lighter bat and whiffle balls or tennis balls and concentrate on keeping his axis of rotation true

Check out some clips. Maybe if he sees the desired action he'll know better what he needs to do.
http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/pro;jsessionid=ggylergrl1.buffalo_s

http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/analysis

> The upper body motion after my son strikes the ball (very end part of his finish)....head at very end goes sideways. It looks very odd but I don't understand why that happens. Can some one give me advice why this happens and how to correct.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPIVvAma4X8

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> A lot of people do this to some extent, his action is just more extreme as his head doesn't follow thru the swing, it kind of counterbalances it.  He maybe even started out doing it on purpose. I don't know how much of a problem it is, but I guess like anything it's best to correct bad habits when they're young.  It's like he's trying to get a little extra body behind the ball at impact and the horizontal head is the result of that motion.  Maybe trying too hard to kill it?
> I would try the following:
> 
>  1) one-handed drills with a very light bat. Doing these on one knee when only using the bottom hand make it very tempting to lean in the way he does.  This way I think you can isolate the problem and work on keeping his axis of rotation straight. He may not be able to do this correctly in which case I wouldn't overdo it.  Come back to it from time to time to see how he's progressing.
> 
> 2)  If you have a pathfinder use that or if you don't, try hitting the heavy bag with a bat held using only the thumb and forefinger of the top hand.  Hold it at a point where it's fairly balanced and use it like you would the pathfinder.  Using the body to power the swing. Even though his head goes horizontal after impact, I think that's just a symptom of a shift he's doing just before impact. the heavy bag work will focus on keeping his axis straight, rather than spinning out as he does at the end.
> 
> 3) use a lighter bat and whiffle balls or tennis balls and concentrate on keeping his axis of rotation true
> 
> Check out some clips.  Maybe if he sees the desired action he'll know better what he needs to do.
> http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/pro;jsessionid=ggylergrl1.buffalo_s
> 
> http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/analysis
> 
> 
> 
> > The upper body motion after my son strikes the ball (very end part of his finish)....head at very end goes sideways.  It looks very odd but I don't understand why that happens.  Can some one give me advice why this happens and how to correct.
> > 
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPIVvAma4X8

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