Coach says DD drops back shoulder

[gmdetective]

Greetings all, During our last practice my DD's coach mentioned to her about dropping her back shoulder was causing her to hit popups. I don't really see it, looks more to me like she is trying to get her bat on the plane of the lower pitch. What should I be looking for?, like I said he seems to notice on lower pitches, her head maybe?
Thanks, Patrick Hunter

 

[Wellphyt]

I have pitched a lot of batting practice over the years. The players that pop up a lot generally do so because they;

1. Swing down and slice or undercut the ball. It's very hard to swing down on a ball that is going down and hit it square.

2. Drop their hands or get on plane using their hands. This can result in the back shoulder dropping. Lateral shoulder tilt works great if the player has a connected swing, meaning they keep their hands at the back shoulder when they launch their swing. However, if the player drops their hands and tilts their shoulders, they are essentially getting on plane twice, which will lead to pop ups or easy to catch high fly balls.

 

[SBFAMILY]

Very simple. If the elbow gets ahead of the hands during the swing, watch the back shoulder drop. This leads to pop ups. Your coach doesn't understand what the root cause is. Why many of us use one hand drills. Hands in front of elbow , ground balls.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

The rear shoulder will be lowered. The rear hip and torso will twist/turn with the forward weight shift, and in so doing the rear hip & torso will pull down on the rear shoulder. That is the basis for having a “connected” swing.

See if you can ‘feel’ that happening in the clip of Pujols below. Take note of the rear shoulder being lowered as the rear hip rotates forward.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

Very simple. If the elbow gets ahead of the hands during the swing, watch the back shoulder drop. This leads to pop ups. Your coach doesn't understand what the root cause is. Why many of us use one hand drills. Hands in front of elbow , ground balls.

SBF, what you have described here ... the elbow getting ahead of the hands ... which suggests to me that you may be attempting to describe a bat-drag situation ... , this more often than not is the result of failing to establish "connection" at swing initiation ... and frequently, but not always, the rear shoulder is not lowered to the extent that it should be lowered. The swing is simply not "connected" and the rear hip failed to grab the rear shoulder. You'll see a lot of young kids with a "level shoulders" swing mentality suffer in terms of failing to establish a "connected" swing, and if you look closely you'll often see that the bat is being dragged ... whether or not it is detected via the RVP-Connection-Point elbow/hand alignment metric.

 

[SBFAMILY]

FFS your video on the back side of AP sure looks similar to what Hitter describes as the hand is nearly stacked over the elbow. I wonder what it would look like from the other side with this much slow motion.

I have seen him drop a ball and say this is dropping and I have never seen a hitters shoulder drop off. He then takes his lead hand and pulls on the top hand elbow to demonstrate as the elbow is moved forward the lead shoulder tilts upward and the back shoulder lowers. He feels since girls are audio/ visual learners this helps them understand it better especially in front of a mirror.

Another way we have seen him demonstrate this is too have the hitter stand with their belly button towards a mirror with their arms out to their sides like airplane wings. Bend at the waist and soften the knees. He then holds a ball about knee level and they turn and tilt and pick up the ball with the top hand. Being able to see it from the side and then as if looking at the pitcher seems to help and then while holding a bat while he holds the ball puts the see it, feel it and fix it in their mind. He holds a ball at rise ball level and knee high level and points out the elbow is always above the plane of the pitch and the angle of the bat changes as to plane of the pitch.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

FFS your video on the back side of AP sure looks similar to what Hitter describes as the hand is nearly stacked over the elbow.

The rear forearm is not perfectly linear stacked under the top hand ... and if one were to actually do that, as SL's daughter has demonstrated and brought into some of her BP swings, then the result would be a swing far inferior of what it could be. Such a goal would negatively impact the establishment of "connection", one's adjustability, and create other issues. What you will see is more of a pinched rear forearm-to-bicep ... a "Power-Vee" ... that is formed at "launch" and attempted to be maintained all the way through to the RVP-Connection-Point position. You will see this in majority of Busto's game swings (which can no longer be posted here) as well as in swings like we see below.

Again, the demonstrations by Howard, Dana, SL and some others went to far in this regard. The rear forearm is not perfectly vertically stacked, and doing so would negatively impact the swing. That goal, IMO, should be replaced with a goal to form and maintain the Power-Vee relationship (pinched rear forearm-to-bicep) from 'launch' through to the RVP-Connection-Point position.

 

[SBFAMILY]

I think cshilt made a good post to address this comment on a prior post.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I think cshilt made a good post to address this comment on a prior post.

I must have missed it ..... because I'm not waivering on my stance to NOT have a goal of a perfectly aligned vertical rear forearm. It's simply a bad idea that is not supported by the Hanson Principle.

 

[theaddition]

FFS your video on the back side of AP sure looks similar to what Hitter describes as the hand is nearly stacked over the elbow. I wonder what it would look like from the other side with this much slow motion.

I think Donny perfectly described what we are seeing when he described
BHUT (bottom hand under top).
He then talked about how a top hand that faces the pitcher cannot effectively move forward.

On a side note, with my DD, pop ups occurred because of when she drooped her shoulder. As she strode out, she simultaneously was dropping her shoulder rather than striding with "loaded shoulders".