DD Hitting sequence

[Hitter]

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

Ask your girls to try something....most girls have a full length mirror in their house.

Get a pair of socks and have them get ready to hit while looking in the mirror and interlock their bottom hand index finger to the top hand baby finger and hold the socks in the top hand.

Think slow to load and soft to step and separate the hands rearward a little at toe touch. If they are counter rotating they will not be able to see the socks in the mirror as the hands will be behind their head in the mirror. In my opinion they need to see what it is they are doing incorrectly first.

Then have them repeat and keep the hands visible by separating the hands rearward. I see the same thing when teaching how throwing and this helps them see it. feel it and fix it faster.

Then have them keep the hands interlocked and throw the socks into the mirror.

You will be surprised how fast they will pick up on it as the mirrors do a great job of teaching them.

Thanks Howard