Thread: High Pops

My 13yo daughter has a problem hitting high pops. The pops are very high - I'm guess 3-5 seconds before it comes down (she rounds 1st and on her way to 2nd when it's caught). I assume this is caused by her hitting the bottom half of the ball. Any suggestions or drills on how to correct this?

How is her swing when hitting soft toss or hitting off of the tee? Is she consistently driving the ball up the middle? If pop-ups are a problem I suspect poor hand path. Usually a bad first move (of the hands) by dropping them.

I agree with cshilt. If you are popping up… the elbow may be getting ahead of the hands and as the elbow goes forward it puts a strain on the shoulder and it would appear you are dropping the shoulder when in fact the elbow just got ahead and forces the back shoulder down ward because the front shoulder is forced upward at an angle and we hit under the ball. The drill we use is the one hand drill with the back hand hitting tennis balls into a net with a PVC pipe. It isolates the back hand to see if this is the issue.

Thanks for the replies. It seems the problem as suggested was handpath. Her allstars coach told her that her arms should be extended on contact. So that was what she was doing. I'm not sure why this would cause the high pops. Anyway I told her to keep her rear elbow near her body upon contact and that seems to fix it.