Thank you, it seems a few of you have come to this conclusion. Most of the issues regarding solid contact is relating back to the front shoulder.
Not squaring up the ball
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Thank you, it seems a few of you have come to this conclusion. Most of the issues regarding solid contact is relating back to the front shoulder.
For those of you mentioning "turning the barrel", do I dare mention Stanton, 
. Not trying to be cheeky here, I am not an instructor but I gave it my best shot last year to try to teach my DD how to turn the barrel. That's when the issues started, not being able to square pitches up and getting jammed inside. I blame it on my poor instruction and maybe not enough time dedicated to learning this technique. Like I mentioned in my opening post, I am reverting her swing and stepping away from turning the barrel. My biggest challenge right now is, 1. Front shoulder opening, will work on that, 2. I believe her bat plane is too extreme on pitches higher in the zone which I believe may also be leading to slicing the ball
I want to flatten her swing out a little, I guess more like Stanton's. She has one more year of ball (not going to continue in high school), and I want her to be comfortable and have fun. How can I eliminate the extreme tilt that is currently in her swing?
The pic above is a pitch at the upper thigh, I think her tilt is a little extreme here
. Not trying to be cheeky here, I am not an instructor but I gave it my best shot last year to try to teach my DD how to turn the barrel. That's when the issues started, not being able to square pitches up and getting jammed inside. I blame it on my poor instruction and maybe not enough time dedicated to learning this technique. Like I mentioned in my opening post, I am reverting her swing and stepping away from turning the barrel. My biggest challenge right now is, 1. Front shoulder opening, will work on that, 2. I believe her bat plane is too extreme on pitches higher in the zone which I believe may also be leading to slicing the ballI want to flatten her swing out a little, I guess more like Stanton's. She has one more year of ball (not going to continue in high school), and I want her to be comfortable and have fun. How can I eliminate the extreme tilt that is currently in her swing?
The pic above is a pitch at the upper thigh, I think her tilt is a little extreme here
- Jun 8, 2016
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What is the ratio of front toss swings to tee swings per week? Simplest way of improving her hitting without getting too technical and killing her with drills is to have her hit a bunch of front toss/BP and see if she can figure out
how to barrel up balls pitched to different locations. My DD has plenty of issues right now with her swing which rob her of power and adjustability but (imo) due to the shear amount of front toss
she sees, and her athletic ability, she is able to get the barrel to ball fairly well for an 8 year old. Instead of having her hit off the tee in your basement (if that is what it is) buy 2 or 3 dozen wiffle balls/anywhere
balls and have her take 100 swings 3 or 4 times a week in the basement instead. You can use your Bownet for protection (which is what I do in the garage).
how to barrel up balls pitched to different locations. My DD has plenty of issues right now with her swing which rob her of power and adjustability but (imo) due to the shear amount of front toss
she sees, and her athletic ability, she is able to get the barrel to ball fairly well for an 8 year old. Instead of having her hit off the tee in your basement (if that is what it is) buy 2 or 3 dozen wiffle balls/anywhere
balls and have her take 100 swings 3 or 4 times a week in the basement instead. You can use your Bownet for protection (which is what I do in the garage).
She is hitting into a bownet and we have a dozen or so wiffle balls. We practice front toss.. the only problem with a wiffle ball I find is it's hard to tell if she's squaring the ball up or not.
I hear what you are saying about repetition, I'm a big fan of not getting too technical, that's a mistake I made last year.
- Jun 8, 2016
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Yeah, it is harder to tell with wiffles but after a while you can get a feeling for it. Anywhere balls are probably better in that regard.
- Dec 11, 2010
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When I look at this video I immediately had the feeling that she is a hitter I’d like to work with. She is trying to hit the ball hard and she is athletic. Be careful to not discourage that. I’d hate to see her pushed toward a rigid or robotic looking swing.
I’d start with lower half. I think as that gets better some of the stuff above her hips and her sequence will clean up with a little tweaking. To me, It looks like she is trying to turn her hips hard without the benefit of driving with her back foot. Like they said above, narrow her up a little (at least for now) and make sure her front foot is just behind the stem of the tee. Get some white tape and set up a batters box in your hitting area so she can set up “in the box” consistently. A few things you can do to help her feel what her back foot should be doing are “walk throughs” and have her land her front foot at a 45 degree angle on the ball of her foot. Since she isn’t really striding now, make sure she is landing that front foot lightly before her hands “go”. I also like knee to elbow drill (same thing with having her pay attention to how she lands her front foot) and tip and rip for her. I might also temporarily play with keeping the bat pinned against her shoulder as long as possible for a few swings, and a few reverse top hand swings with the emphasis being to have back foot turn hips, hips turn torso, and as late as possible as the torso turns the barrel to the ball on the tee.
Hopefully after you work on the tee you have a place to hit moving balls, preferably front toss so some of the tee work can creep into a moving ball swing and ultimately her game swing.
If you can find a place to do it, go do the bat throwing drill. Same thing with this: start working on self toss. (Don’t think I’d try doing that into a bownet) That one takes time for hitters to figure out and it usually looks awful at first but once they figure it out it seems like a lot of good comes out of it for sequence.
I’m probably going at this a little different than other posters. They will chime in, probably flame me a bit, but you can trust them especially if what they are saying makes sense to you. Just wanted to throw out a few other ideas.
I’d start with lower half. I think as that gets better some of the stuff above her hips and her sequence will clean up with a little tweaking. To me, It looks like she is trying to turn her hips hard without the benefit of driving with her back foot. Like they said above, narrow her up a little (at least for now) and make sure her front foot is just behind the stem of the tee. Get some white tape and set up a batters box in your hitting area so she can set up “in the box” consistently. A few things you can do to help her feel what her back foot should be doing are “walk throughs” and have her land her front foot at a 45 degree angle on the ball of her foot. Since she isn’t really striding now, make sure she is landing that front foot lightly before her hands “go”. I also like knee to elbow drill (same thing with having her pay attention to how she lands her front foot) and tip and rip for her. I might also temporarily play with keeping the bat pinned against her shoulder as long as possible for a few swings, and a few reverse top hand swings with the emphasis being to have back foot turn hips, hips turn torso, and as late as possible as the torso turns the barrel to the ball on the tee.
Hopefully after you work on the tee you have a place to hit moving balls, preferably front toss so some of the tee work can creep into a moving ball swing and ultimately her game swing.
If you can find a place to do it, go do the bat throwing drill. Same thing with this: start working on self toss. (Don’t think I’d try doing that into a bownet) That one takes time for hitters to figure out and it usually looks awful at first but once they figure it out it seems like a lot of good comes out of it for sequence.
I’m probably going at this a little different than other posters. They will chime in, probably flame me a bit, but you can trust them especially if what they are saying makes sense to you. Just wanted to throw out a few other ideas.
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- May 3, 2014
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For those of you mentioning "turning the barrel", do I dare mention Stanton,
View attachment 12505
I want to flatten her swing out a little, I guess more like Stanton's. She has one more year of ball (not going to continue in high school), and I want her to be comfortable and have fun. How can I eliminate the extreme tilt that is currently in her swing?
View attachment 12506
The pic above is a pitch at the upper thigh, I think her tilt is a little extreme here
Honestly the quickest way to gaining improvement is learning the turn the barrel from the neck slot. I have a few HS aged players I teach that do not plan to play in college but want to improve their hitting for their last season. Making huge improvements so much so that one player commented that she wished she had started swinging like this years ago.
Lose the tip - place the barrel in the neck slot and turn in.
- Dec 11, 2010
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You guys were chatting while I was painstakingly hunting and pecking, lol.
Pattar you hit a great theme- we try to do around a third tee work and drills to feel different things in the swing and then hit half to two thirds front toss but I have the benefit of a cage. I listed some things that we do regularly in my post above but we don’t try to do everything in one session, we mix it up. I vary it according to how close to games we are: last session of the week I increase moving ball hitting and game prep.
Second great theme you hit was not getting too technical and fussing about every little thing. Pick a few things to work on and avoid fussing about every little thing just like you said.
Thank you. I've been telling her this for a while about driving her back foot. I'm glad you see the same thing. If I place pylon behind her back foot, she drives it forward a little better. I just need to work on that one more. Knee to elbow drill, never heard of it. Is there a video on youtube of it. I searched and couldn't find it.
Are you suggesting to narrow her stance so she can stride a little? I'm assuming by keeping her hands back before before front toe touch will help with her sequence and maybe help prevent the front shoulder from opening up too soon?
I made a post above regarding bat path being a little too steep. I know my illustration is crude, lol, however this where I am seeing contact point a lot and hitting inside pitches off her hands which was never a problem before.
- Dec 11, 2010
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My apologies, it’s knee to KNOB drill. There is a video on FloSoftball “Jenn Salling Knee To Knob Drill” that gives a nice explanation but I think you have to be a member there. There are several on YouTube but they are just demonstrating not explaining.
Seems to me that when the stance gets too wide it takes the hips out of the game. She might not ever have a stride, plenty are successful without it but drills that involve a stride seem to help hitters use their lower half whether they stride or not if that makes sense. In her case it just looks like she is so wide it pinches off her upper half from working a little easier and she has to over compensate other places. Bat throwing is a way to demonstrate that to her, try to throw a bat with wide set up vs. step and throw. Also ball throwing- try throwing hard from a wide stance vs. step and throw.
I very much agree with buttermakers comment above too about starting from neck slot. We did that slightly different but same idea. Like it.
I think barrel plane/contact point will take care of itself somewhat with correct tee set up and front toss. Don’t nag it when it’s not ideal but when she hits line drives with correct trajectory notice it out loud and praise it.
Edited to add: “Mann’s bag drill” here on DFP is worth exploring too. She should be able to feel her back foot driving with that one too.
Seems to me that when the stance gets too wide it takes the hips out of the game. She might not ever have a stride, plenty are successful without it but drills that involve a stride seem to help hitters use their lower half whether they stride or not if that makes sense. In her case it just looks like she is so wide it pinches off her upper half from working a little easier and she has to over compensate other places. Bat throwing is a way to demonstrate that to her, try to throw a bat with wide set up vs. step and throw. Also ball throwing- try throwing hard from a wide stance vs. step and throw.
I very much agree with buttermakers comment above too about starting from neck slot. We did that slightly different but same idea. Like it.
I think barrel plane/contact point will take care of itself somewhat with correct tee set up and front toss. Don’t nag it when it’s not ideal but when she hits line drives with correct trajectory notice it out loud and praise it.
Edited to add: “Mann’s bag drill” here on DFP is worth exploring too. She should be able to feel her back foot driving with that one too.
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