Swings From This Weekend

[CobraAssist]

Quick little video of 3 swings from this weekend. Swing and a Miss. Swing and a Foul. Swing and a Double deep down the LF line. Slowed each of them down too. The girl she hit the double off of was throwing pretty hard, so she made a good adjustment on an inside pitch. Liking this Windows Live Movie Maker thing. You can do all kinds of fun stuff with it.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iwjG6QC8tGQ1RKQTBNM293WlU/edit

Josh

PS - Anyone having trouble with the YouTube Uploader?

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

Looks like she's inserted an extra segment into the sequence ... sort of a stride to toe-touch, followed by a break in the motion, and then a repeat re-sequencing. Is this by design? If so, why?

 

[CobraAssist]

By design...that's a large resounding NO. She was having issues with two things a while back. One of them was the old "steppin' in the bucket." The other issue was a bit of a long overstride that was wrecking her timing and causing a bit of a lunge.

With the bucket stepping, we actually opened her stance up. Have heard mixed emotions with people doing this, but for her, it has worked like a charm.

On the overstride, we were just trying to shorten it up a little bit. Well, we've been working, working, and then working some more. Both of us were getting frustrated because we weren't really seeing any results. Finally, about 2 weeks ago, I told her to just stop thinking, take what we've worked on, and just get comfortable. I told her to "show me some rhythm, see the ball, and smash it." The swing you see is what came out of that. Am I crazy about the little step-in? No, I'm not. But, it's one of those proof is in the pudding kind of things. She HAMMERED the ball this weekend. The one other thing that I've noticed with the shorter stride is a bit of a "bug squish." That's something that we will continue to work on, but with a trip to Florida next week, not messing with her.

In regards to the extra segment...do you see an issue with it? Do you see anything else? Please fire away.

Josh

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I do like the rhythm. Don't underestimate the value there. Advantages include ....

· Give the body enough time to get to a proper hitting position.
· Keep the muscles loose, relaxed and ready to fire.
· Avoid the feel of being sped up.
· Avoid jumping at the ball.
· Using rhythm to slow the game down.
· Using rhythm to control the weight shift.
· Using rhythm to provide a solid use of the backside ... a backside that is under control.
· Using rhythm to give us more time to react to the pitch.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

p.s.
I'm not viewing this as 'bug squish'.

 

[CobraAssist]

Roger that. It's not a constant thing. On the ball that she hit down the line, it appeared that's what she did, but I also thought that it was more of a reaction to the pitch. She immediately recognized it as inside, so she exchanged lateral push for clearing her hips to get the barrel on the ball. Do you see that as a decent explanation?

Josh

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

The pause in the middle causes her to re-start her entire swing sequence. That comes at a cost of power and timing.

She tackled the tough part … i.e., she developed rhythm, but she didn’t develop that rhythm with the mindset of encompassing one smooth and continuous flowing motion.

A drill I have hitters work on to help remove pauses is to say “SsswwwwwiiiiinnnnnnnNOW!!” That is, as they start their loading process they say out loud “Swing NOW!!”. When a hitter has a pause in their motion they tend to stop saying it … “SsswwwwiiiiinnnnnnnNOW!!” becomes “Swwwiii….oh darn, I paused again”.

Me personally, I’d work on losing the pause.

 

[CobraAssist]

Totally agree with the “SsswwwwiiiiinnnnnnnNOW!!” idea. But, the way I see it, timing in itself is all about personal preference and comfort level. So, for right now, if it ain't broke, I'm not going to try and fix it. I've seen some pretty successful hitters have some pretty jacked up timing mechanisms. In the long run, do I think it's something that's going to stick....probably not. But, if it does, and she goes 4-7 next week with 8 RBI's, I'm not going to be complaining.

Never saw a response about this: "On the ball that she hit down the line, it appeared that's what she did, but I also thought that it was more of a reaction to the pitch. She immediately recognized it as inside, so she exchanged lateral push for clearing her hips to get the barrel on the ball. Do you see that as a decent explanation?"

Josh

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

All of her swings are reactions, including the third swing shown. What I believe you are referring to as a 'lateral push' is still present. Her sequence used appears similar.

 

[Stand an]

I would show her these videos and try to get her to understand that the practice drill is designed to get her to the second position. I am also seeing the back elbow tuck under too much on all three swings. This drops the bat head down and slows he swing overall. She was on all three of those pitches until that elbow got ahead of her hip. Just my opinion.