Expert: John Priest - 6/22/2008

Question
How do we repair a flaw.  My daughter who is 20 plays fastpitch softball.  She is an excellent hitter.  Her machanics are great, dads tell their sons to watch her at the batting cages and the expert there has his kids he is teaching watch her.  The problem is only when she is live hitting (with a pitcher) she will collapse the back foot over instead of rotating on it (she doesn't do it in the batting cages).  She still rotates with the hips.  She hits homeruns this way also.  I think she loses a lot of strenth this way, using only arm strength.  Also I think it causes her to dip under the ball sometimes.  How do we correct this error in mechanics even though she does okay with it I think she could do even better without it.

Answer
Deby,
You are correct, she is loosing power and bat speed by only using the arms and it does make the back side collapse too much.  When she is hitting in games she make be focusing too much on getting the ball out in front making the hands jump ahead of the hips.  If the hands take the swing over than the rotation will suffer.  Remind her that what controls the swing is the rotation.  She also may be rotating the hips only which will make the rotation slower and the back foot and shoulder won't join in.  The rotation should start with the back foot, to the back knee, to the hips, to the back shoulder, then the hands will transfer to the swing.  If this happens in the proper order than she will have balance, and she will be able to transfer her rotation speed to bat speed resulting in more power.  Early bat speed creates better late bat speed.  Early bat speed is created by the hips.  Early bat speed will give the swing more speed which is the late bat speed.  

Let me know if I can help with anything else and thank you for the question,
John Priest