9 Year old Hitting Instruction

I've been a hitting instructor and club coach for many years and I've worked with hitters of all ages and abilities and have seen a lot of success. I've worked with very athletic kids that never saw success and not-so athletic kids that became very successful. Recently I began lessons for a set of 9 year old twins. These girls are both very athletic and have a high degree of potential but are very high energy and have deeply engrained bad muscle memory. All the classic swing killers are there, bat drag, bug-squishing, over striding, over loading, etc. I usually start lessons from the ground up and progress from there with isolation drills and slowly work towards putting a full swing together using vocal commands that go all the way from stance to follow-through. I can isolate the swing sequence in dry swings and Tee drills and have them moderately correct. They stay fairly consistent when going through the full swing sequence by vocal command but when they try to take full swings, regardless of the number of good step-by-step reps, they swing with their original bad mechanics. As I said, these girls are very high energy thus very short attention spans, so I have to be very careful not to over teach or get to monotonous. I get very personally invested in my hitters and these are good kids with good parents and, due to being blessed with natural athleticism, have a high degree of potential but I'm struggling with them. Anyone out there have similar experiences and if so, how did you work through it?

Not an instructor, just a Dad of a 7 yo DD who sounds very similar to those girls. Both her mother and I played college sports and she is a ball of energy. She has a lot the swing issues you mention (I started a thread in the Practical hitting group) and the only thing I can say is what I have been told here a lot..be patient. My little one is slowly improving and I am sure the same will be true for the two girls you are speaking about. I have also found that because she is so full of energy I can only do so much tee work with her before I need to get her moving around a bit. We play a lot of pepper, bounce ball ( a game she made up which is basically just her hitting a rubber ball which I bounce to her) and front toss with wiffle balls. During the summer we went to the park a couple of times a week and I would front toss to her and do long tee work (just hit off the tee into the field). A lot of these things may not be applicable for you since you are her instructor and not her Dad so take it for what its worth..

I am a big reps person, more then mechanical.

I would suggest 1 thing at a time, might be weeks before you introduce 2nd thing.

If they mess up 1st thing working on 2nd, back to 1st for little while.

Might be worth trying to separate them, can get competitive at times forget coach.

quincy said:

I am a big reps person, more then mechanical.

I would suggest 1 thing at a time, might be weeks before you introduce 2nd thing.

If they mess up 1st thing working on 2nd, back to 1st for little while.

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^^^^^^This

Try this.... Focus on feel. With each of your steps, have them pay attention to how it feels in their own body. As you add another step, maintain the same feeling they had in the previous step. When they put it all together, all of those "feels" need to be intact. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When you get to the point of having them hit a ball off the tee, don't be concerned about how hard they hit, or what direction it goes. Have them try to duplicate the feeling of the good swing movement that they have been practicing.

Also, some kids have good body awareness, and some don't. Those that don't are much harder to teach complex physical movement patterns simply because they struggle to control their own body.

Thanks for the good input guys!! Working them separatly is definitely my next step. It was my first preference to begin with but I didn't want to create a hardship for the parents. Like Quincy, i'm a big reps person as well, just need to find a good balance between getting in the right number of reps and losing that attention span. [MENTION=1182]Eric[/MENTION], great advice on focusing on feel. I will definitely integrate that in. And I think you're on point about the "Body Awareness" issue. Especially with one of them. [MENTION=132]Pat[/MENTION]ter, patients on my end is definitely a plus!

One possible Short cut is to have them learn and practice fungo hitting (aka self toss) with their regular bats. Shouldn't be too difficult if they're athletic and striving for distance likely will help eliminate lots of the mechanical slop you're trying to address.

Use their energy and competitiveness on their own with playing Fungo Battle i.e. Have them square off at opposite ends of the field/open park and hit toward each other (sharing one ball), hit from where ball lands and try to push the other one back. Spent many a summer afternoon battling my bros playing variations of this game!

Have their parents burn their energy before coming in......
From my experience with DD and other kids, building lasting muscle memory is easier when they tired. Their defenses are down, their bodies/muscles are ready and their minds are too tired to be anywhere else.

My daughter is not quite 8 and has been taking hitting lessons for about 9 months. I also have coached for several seasons. My DD took to the lessons quite well. One thing I have learned is there is some level of inconsistency is expected. The strangest things can enter her little head and can throw her off kilter. Overall, she has done very well this season.

One thing I like to do is to leave the cage on occasion and take the tee work to the field. I think young kids have a hard time visualizing where the ball would be going when they hit in the cage. I will put them in front of a fence that is far enough away to represent the edge of the infield and try to get them hit the fence before the ball touches the ground.