Power hitter Becomes Blooper Hitter

[julray]

Well there is your answer..now the question is why is she getting jammed all the time? Video will likely show the reason..probably too much hands to the ball... ..I kid

Too funny..

 

[julray]

I probably used a bad term when I said she was getting jammed. She was keeping her back arm and therefore hands too close to her body. This was the only way to make contact on the inside pitch when she was late. Not sure what the correct terminology is for that but it did not allow her to square the ball up.
We fixed the problem by doing tee work and making sure we placed the tee in the proper spot for contact based on pitch location. I think it is important to have a plate for the visual cue of where to place the tee and therefore where to make contact. Once she saw the difference in where the ball was going she made the necessary adjustments herself when we moved to front toss.

I can relate to your post and my DD was preached the same as yours regarding letting it get deep. She also crowded the plate because she pulled everything.. she backed off the plate and focused on letting it get deep.

What does this mean " She was keeping her back arm and therefore hands too close to her body. Are you saying she was pinning her back elbow to her body and not releasing it?" My DD has a habit of doing that as well

 

[Eric F]

Barrel path...Sounds to me like she's chopping down through contact.

My DD has this issue when her torso starts pushing forward ahead of her rear hip. Another contributor with my DD is when she tries to generate power by turning her shoulders harder. For her, this results in the shoulders turning too soon, and it pulls the barrel laterally through contact. Most often, these two things are happening in the same time, and the result is weak fly balls (usually flares to right), and grounders to the left.

When my DD got back to a pattern of pulling back over her rear hip, the ripped line drives and big fly balls returned.

 

[julray]

Barrel path...Sounds to me like she's chopping down through contact.

My DD has this issue when her torso starts pushing forward ahead of her rear hip. Another contributor with my DD is when she tries to generate power by turning her shoulders harder. For her, this results in the shoulders turning too soon, and it pulls the barrel laterally through contact. Most often, these two things are happening in the same time, and the result is weak fly balls (usually flares to right), and grounders to the left.

When my DD got back to a pattern of pulling back over her rear hip, the ripped line drives and big fly balls returned.

Could be Eric and thanks.. She's a righty and has been hitting weak fly balls to left and harder hit balls to right. I'm sure she needs a ton of work on her barrel path, but results seem to a little different than what you were seeing. I'm willing to bit that your DD got hold of one occasionally and hooked it far, and the grounders to left were probably hard with the occasional one almost taking the 3rd base coaches head off, . That's what my DD was doing previously, hence why everybody preached letting it get deep.

Again it might very well be barrel path.. so thank's again.

 

[Eric F]

Could be Eric and thanks.. She's a righty and has been hitting weak fly balls to left and harder hit balls to right. I'm sure she needs a ton of work on her barrel path, but results seem to a little different than what you were seeing. I'm willing to bit that your DD got hold of one occasionally and hooked it far, and the grounders to left were probably hard with the occasional one almost taking the 3rd base coaches head off, . That's what my DD was doing previously, hence why everybody preached letting it get deep.

Again it might very well be barrel path.. so thank's again.

Get video from the side as well as from behind (backstop). Video from behind was very telling to me about what was going on with my DD that I couldn't see from the side.

 

[julray]

Get video from the side as well as from behind (backstop). Video from behind was very telling to me about what was going on with my DD that I couldn't see from the side.

Will do and I will post, later this week, too much damn cold weather and rain here,

 

[Laphoneman]

Have you tried a different bat I wouldn’t have believed it but dd got a new bat for Christmas. She was mishitting 70% of pitches. Maybe more and that’s just not normal for her so I made her hit with the old bat went back to good hitting. I realized there was a funny bump in the bat so I got it replaced. Now she is hitting good with new replacement bat. So it’s possibly a bat issue.

 

[julray]

Have you tried a different bat I wouldn’t have believed it but dd got a new bat for Christmas. She was mishitting 70% of pitches. Maybe more and that’s just not normal for her so I made her hit with the old bat went back to good hitting. I realized there was a funny bump in the bat so I got it replaced. Now she is hitting good with new replacement bat. So it’s possibly a bat issue.

Yes we have lots of bats, thanks for the suggestion though..

 

[KPower]

My dd went thru this as well. She is a smaller lefty, but is strong and can drive a ball. She was the best hitter on the team for a long time - no OTF HRs, but plenty of extra base hits and then all of a sudden she dropped off. She would hit weak grounders to the pitcher or pop up. It was very frustrating. For her (and know that I am FAR from any hitting expert) she wasn't using her hips at all. She was just trying to muscle the ball. She is strong but small enough that she still needs to use everything she has to really make that ball travel. She loves videoing herself on the tee or at lessons and self correcting (thankfully since I am really NO help at all!) I can tell when she is hunched over and reaching for outside pitches or dropping her shoulder and getting under the ball but that's about it.

 

[softball dad 6]

What does this mean " She was keeping her back arm and therefore hands too close to her body. Are you saying she was pinning her back elbow to her body and not releasing it?" My DD has a habit of doing that as well

Yes that is what she was doing. It is amazing what such a little thing can do to the rest of the swing. It forced the lead elbow up and tilted the bat path down so she was hitting pop ups and pop flies to the opposite field. I am lucky DD is now 17 and knows what a good swing feels like. She can take ownership and make some of the corrections herself.