Hands to the ball

There are a number of self proclaimed experts in our area that teach hands to the ball, one middle school coach and her best friend who coaches middle school at another county and both give lessons. It’s toes as close to the plate as possible, use 30 or 31 length bat, hands to the ball, roll your wrist and squash a bug. My daughter who is a pitcher loves to face their students, if they hit the ball solid almost always foul ball, fair ball is mostly always off the handle.

PEPPERS said:

There are a number of self proclaimed experts in our area that teach hands to the ball, one middle school coach and her best friend who coaches middle school at another county and both give lessons. It’s toes as close to the plate as possible, use 30 or 31 length bat, hands to the ball, roll your wrist and squash a bug. My daughter who is a pitcher loves to face their students, if they hit the ball solid almost always foul ball, fair ball is mostly always off the handle.

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Or pitch them high and low.

These are generally also level swingers with little to no adjustability.

Chris, it's the level swing part that most bothers me with this cue. I've seen and worked with so many kids who are taught this, especially off a tee. The wind up dropping their hand way down, and either being level or actually having the head of the bat a little higher than the hands. Either way, it results in a lot of weak ground balls and popups.

The only thing I tell my hitters about their hands is to keep them above the ball. If the do that, they're far more likely to get a solid hit. I like to focus on bringing the fat part of the bat to the ball.

this is the results of teaching hands to the ball and hit the ball with the knob drills.....only after of a few months of her being taught....previously she was a good power hitter.. YouTube - kk2.mp4 ..............

she tries out for varsity in a month as a freshmen HELP ?????

SEGa said:

this is the results of teaching hands to the ball and hit the ball with the knob drills.....only after of a few months of her being taught....previously she was a good power hitter.. YouTube - kk2.mp4 ..............

she tries out for varsity in a month as a freshmen HELP ?????

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I watched the video.

IMO the cause is simple .... it is ***YOU***.

You are directing her to "explode with her shoulders" ... and that's exactly what she's doing.



You do NOT explode with the shoulders in terms of rotating them in a direction of the hips towards the pitcher. The hips lead the way. The thorax will be rotated/pulled forward by the hips. You have this pretty close to completely backwards ... the upper body will initially resist 'rotation' ... it is because of swings like this that one hitting system had to develop a term called "bypass". Charley Lau Jr also explains the concept well in his book.

YES..the problem is me... repeating things she has been taught, and then i found Chris Olearys site on rotational hitting and now i am trying to help her and her parents get her swing back, her dad has been doing the hit the ball with knob drill for months now.. I KNOW NOW that is wrong....I want to know how to fix it.

kenkrause said:

Chris, it's the level swing part that most bothers me with this cue. I've seen and worked with so many kids who are taught this, especially off a tee. The wind up dropping their hand way down, and either being level or actually having the head of the bat a little higher than the hands. Either way, it results in a lot of weak ground balls and popups.

The only thing I tell my hitters about their hands is to keep them above the ball. If the do that, they're far more likely to get a solid hit. I like to focus on bringing the bat part of the bat to the ball.

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Do these instructors actually understand adjustability?

Next time I hear this, and am a position to do so, I'm going to ask them, "And how do you adjust up and down in the strike zone when swinging like that?"

I'm assuming most of them have never even thought of this.

CO ... go ahead and do it. I have. When I come across an instructor teaching a "level-to-the-ground swing", I claim "confusion" and ask them to demonstrate the "level-to-the-ground swing" that they are promoting when attacking a "low & inside" pitch. The response I get ranges from "silence" to "stutters" to "the instructor putting themselves in an odd position as they figure out that they don't have a complete picture" to "claiming that a different swing is taught for different pitch locations".

I had one guy that responded with ... "I thought you were my friend". I laughed and told him that friendship had nothing to do with it ... what he was teaching was hurting people, and if he truly was my friend then he'd start doing the right thing instead of skimming money from ignorant people.

Basically you have two choices to attack the the low/inside pitch with a barrel that is level to the ground .... 1) you can either lunge ... or 2) you can squat into a position that resembles someone taking a 'dump in the woods'. Either way, the image that comes to mind is not pretty.

FiveFrameSwing said:

Basically you have two choices to attack the the low/inside pitch with a barrel that is level to the ground .... 1) you can either lunge ... or 2) you can squat into a position that resembles someone taking a 'dump in the woods'. Either way, the image that comes to mind is not pretty.

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Ok, that made me laugh out loud!

SEGa said:

YES..the problem is me... repeating things she has been taught, and then i found Chris Olearys site on rotational hitting and now i am trying to help her and her parents get her swing back, her dad has been doing the hit the ball with knob drill for months now.. I KNOW NOW that is wrong....I want to know how to fix it.

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Fair enough.

First, the hips should be seen to rotate ahead of the shoulders in a "good swing". Failure to create a swing that has the hips leading the way generally means that the Kinetic sequence is incorrect. In a swing with a clean Kinetic swing sequence one can rotate the hips ahead of their shoulders without conscious effort.

Here are a few examples.

Pujols:



Ortiz:



Bonds: