DD Hitting sequence
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DaveD
The third one from the left is the stacked elbow in my opinion. They are out of sequence and the parallel to contact is missing.
Thanks Howard
- May 13, 2008
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This is a good looking swing. I think pics #1 and #2 are what I'd work on.
In pic #1 her weight is a little stacked on the back leg and the front shoulder has rotated to start the swing. She is going to have a harder time picking up the ball without a two-eyed look at the ball. Look ahead towards where the pitcher would be with a slightly open stance.
In pic#2 her hands have dropped slightly to start the swing. I'd rather see a little bit of separation as her head starts to track the ball to the contact point.
In pic #1 her weight is a little stacked on the back leg and the front shoulder has rotated to start the swing. She is going to have a harder time picking up the ball without a two-eyed look at the ball. Look ahead towards where the pitcher would be with a slightly open stance.
In pic#2 her hands have dropped slightly to start the swing. I'd rather see a little bit of separation as her head starts to track the ball to the contact point.
- Oct 12, 2009
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Her separation is off because in Frame 1 she is creating separation by reverse-rotating her shoulders (showing her numbers to the pitcher) as you do in a golf swing. That is common and works off of a tee but not against live pitching. She needs to create separation by opening her hips before her shoulders, not by reverse-rotating her shoulders.
Aside from this, she looks quite good.
Chris,
I'd agree, she is heavily reverse rotating, but I will say she does it a lot more off the tee than she does when she's looking at pitches. We've just recently added motion back to her swing--she used to complete her negative move prior to pitcher's motion, but was having a hard time triggering. Using the face the fire drill, she reacquired the feel for stepping to the ball, and has made some good progress. Thanks for sharing your views. Something I will look harder at.
Cshilt,
I agree with what you're saying about her loading and head position. She seems to see the ball pretty well, but could always use some work on getting her head into the right position. Thanks to you, too.
Dave
I'd agree, she is heavily reverse rotating, but I will say she does it a lot more off the tee than she does when she's looking at pitches. We've just recently added motion back to her swing--she used to complete her negative move prior to pitcher's motion, but was having a hard time triggering. Using the face the fire drill, she reacquired the feel for stepping to the ball, and has made some good progress. Thanks for sharing your views. Something I will look harder at.
Cshilt,
I agree with what you're saying about her loading and head position. She seems to see the ball pretty well, but could always use some work on getting her head into the right position. Thanks to you, too.
Dave
DaveD
Great attempt to get it better!
It looks close to what we do. Have you been to a clinic or do we know each other?
To set up we always a throw down home plate with this kind of tee so the hitter can measure off the back corner of the plate so when she strides we can see that she is even or slightly behind the tee.
Next put a piece of tape or find an object see can focus on to gain the ability to track in all her tee work in my opinion.
Try to capture her set up and stance. It would appear she has strided or did not stride based on her lead foot position , so I am not sure.as there is no reference point.
We use set, separate to toe touch as Chris pointed out, so I see not separation.
Elbows would be frame three as it is pretty close to elbow and hand stacked and for me Coach Enquist in RVP makes this pretty clear. I do not use Power V as for me it would be viewed from the catchers point of view. However you are indeed close. It appears the elbow is in too close and possibly the lead elbow did not make a good first move.
The fourth frame would be knob parallel to contact, some call it bat lag and that looks good. Again the tee looks too far back so bat lag could be too steep yet it looks good from my point of view of what you are attempting to do.
The fifth frame because of tee location and foot position would be barrel to ball and contact.
I would say her bottom half looks strong, very strong and someone has worked with her as this is unusual. Many players step high or long and never get to a good position to allow the weight to transfer effectively and she looks solid and the drive off the back knee and no recoil backwards and front knee getting stiff at contact for me is what I look for. Her back is arched or tilted back a little giving me all the indications of a powerful stance.
Through the ball is missing to extension however her head was down and if the bat goes straight through as this is a pitch up the middle I would expect the bat to finish over the shoulder in my opinion.
Again the bottom half looks very good.
Tracking and weight shift is next in my opinion.
You may want to try just taking a belt or piece of rope and get her to the position where she is starting to turn the corner and where I see the hand stacked over the elbow and put tension in the rope or belt and see where she is actually as to the elbow and how far or close she is too the hip.
Then have her get to bat lag and see where it is and ask her where she feels most powerful at. In too close and she will feel the difference and away she will feel more powerful, just make sure she is not too far away or she will be casting out.
Because the girls have narrower and rounded shoulders and the carrying angle of the elbow is different you basically can not say one size fits all when it comes to making this move has been my experience.
Thanks for being brave enough to even post pictures of your daughter....by the way nice socks!
Thanks Howard
Great attempt to get it better!
It looks close to what we do. Have you been to a clinic or do we know each other?
To set up we always a throw down home plate with this kind of tee so the hitter can measure off the back corner of the plate so when she strides we can see that she is even or slightly behind the tee.
Next put a piece of tape or find an object see can focus on to gain the ability to track in all her tee work in my opinion.
Try to capture her set up and stance. It would appear she has strided or did not stride based on her lead foot position , so I am not sure.as there is no reference point.
We use set, separate to toe touch as Chris pointed out, so I see not separation.
Elbows would be frame three as it is pretty close to elbow and hand stacked and for me Coach Enquist in RVP makes this pretty clear. I do not use Power V as for me it would be viewed from the catchers point of view. However you are indeed close. It appears the elbow is in too close and possibly the lead elbow did not make a good first move.
The fourth frame would be knob parallel to contact, some call it bat lag and that looks good. Again the tee looks too far back so bat lag could be too steep yet it looks good from my point of view of what you are attempting to do.
The fifth frame because of tee location and foot position would be barrel to ball and contact.
I would say her bottom half looks strong, very strong and someone has worked with her as this is unusual. Many players step high or long and never get to a good position to allow the weight to transfer effectively and she looks solid and the drive off the back knee and no recoil backwards and front knee getting stiff at contact for me is what I look for. Her back is arched or tilted back a little giving me all the indications of a powerful stance.
Through the ball is missing to extension however her head was down and if the bat goes straight through as this is a pitch up the middle I would expect the bat to finish over the shoulder in my opinion.
Again the bottom half looks very good.
Tracking and weight shift is next in my opinion.
You may want to try just taking a belt or piece of rope and get her to the position where she is starting to turn the corner and where I see the hand stacked over the elbow and put tension in the rope or belt and see where she is actually as to the elbow and how far or close she is too the hip.
Then have her get to bat lag and see where it is and ask her where she feels most powerful at. In too close and she will feel the difference and away she will feel more powerful, just make sure she is not too far away or she will be casting out.
Because the girls have narrower and rounded shoulders and the carrying angle of the elbow is different you basically can not say one size fits all when it comes to making this move has been my experience.
Thanks for being brave enough to even post pictures of your daughter....by the way nice socks!
Thanks Howard
Hitter,
Thanks for the detailed input. I haven't in fact, been to any of your clinics, but I have gleaned a great deal of information from this forum, especially over the past few months. If I had less trouble getting the whole video clip of this swing online, you would have seen that she did take a step to initiate the sequence, and that her weight transfer makes sense within the context of the whole motion. She does seem to hang back some at the start of her forward move, but she gets it there at contact.
Now that she's stepping and counter-rotating to set up her hands, we've been working on not turning her shoulders so far. I hadn't noticed how much she was focused on the ball on the tee, and not any kind of tracking--she tracks pretty well with moving pitches, but does get caught off guard by inside pitches more often than I am happy with. I'm going to try some of your tracking devices tonight with the whole team.
A couple of things that have worked really well for us have been the reverse top hand swing and the face the fire drill. All 11 of my players have made nice strides forward since we put those into heavy rotation in the cage.
One problem that is really bothering me is that most of the girls on my team revert back to many of their old habits when a real pitcher throws a real ball at them from a real distance. I can throw as many windmill whiffle balls from whatever distance I want and they knock the snot out of everything. Off a tee--downright scary good. We virtually never use machines, mostly doing soft toss, tennis ball drills, and whiffle quick pitch. Do you have any suggestions for what we can do to make this transition from "theoretical hitting" (tees, ST, etc.), to live hitting BEFORE we get to games? All of my pitchers throw in practice, but not traditional BP. I have them work on getting batters out. BTW, we're on our 13th consecutive rainy day here, so not a lot of field workouts are getting done. Again, thanks for all of your help--Hitter and everyone else--this board is really an amazing resource for all of us.
DD
Thanks for the detailed input. I haven't in fact, been to any of your clinics, but I have gleaned a great deal of information from this forum, especially over the past few months. If I had less trouble getting the whole video clip of this swing online, you would have seen that she did take a step to initiate the sequence, and that her weight transfer makes sense within the context of the whole motion. She does seem to hang back some at the start of her forward move, but she gets it there at contact.
Now that she's stepping and counter-rotating to set up her hands, we've been working on not turning her shoulders so far. I hadn't noticed how much she was focused on the ball on the tee, and not any kind of tracking--she tracks pretty well with moving pitches, but does get caught off guard by inside pitches more often than I am happy with. I'm going to try some of your tracking devices tonight with the whole team.
A couple of things that have worked really well for us have been the reverse top hand swing and the face the fire drill. All 11 of my players have made nice strides forward since we put those into heavy rotation in the cage.
One problem that is really bothering me is that most of the girls on my team revert back to many of their old habits when a real pitcher throws a real ball at them from a real distance. I can throw as many windmill whiffle balls from whatever distance I want and they knock the snot out of everything. Off a tee--downright scary good. We virtually never use machines, mostly doing soft toss, tennis ball drills, and whiffle quick pitch. Do you have any suggestions for what we can do to make this transition from "theoretical hitting" (tees, ST, etc.), to live hitting BEFORE we get to games? All of my pitchers throw in practice, but not traditional BP. I have them work on getting batters out. BTW, we're on our 13th consecutive rainy day here, so not a lot of field workouts are getting done. Again, thanks for all of your help--Hitter and everyone else--this board is really an amazing resource for all of us.
DD
Greenmonsters
Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
Remember to have realistic expectations, it takes somewhere between 1500 to 10,000 reps to tweak mechanics and build new muscle memory. Its a process.
Only ______ (fill in the blank) left to go!!!
Good luck - GM
Only ______ (fill in the blank) left to go!!!
Good luck - GM
- Oct 12, 2009
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This is why you have to practice the way you want to play.
For instance, it's why you have to get rid of reverse-rotation off of the tee and make sure they are creating separation the correct way.
You can't expect them to practice reverse-rotation and then not do it in a game.
The same is true for other aspects of the swing.
