quote:Swinging a bat is about a series of body movements, or, as I call it, sequencing....
There is a flow to the sequencing of body movement....It does no good to practice a part of the sequence since you are not learning how to do that part in it's proper sequence....You will not be in the flow...
A hitter needs to learn body movements as they flow from the last movement and into the next body movement....
Painting by the numbers won't do it....
The above is posted by Bluedog in another thread. I thought I would start this new thread since we hijacked the other one. Maybe it can get back to what the OP was talking about.
I see what you are saying BD and hitting is all about trying to work through a sequence of motions / movements to hit the ball. But each sequence is essentially independant of each other although they work best following one after another.
The purpose of drills are to
1 - work on a particular part of the swing
2 - work on developing a shorter stroke
3 - get loose for on field BP
4 - reinforce correct techniques
Let's say you got a kid who is popping up on the IF quite a bit. First thing you got to do is identify what is causing this obviously. For this discussion let's say he's dropping his hands to cause the popups. How is getting on the field and taking the same cuts over and over with some guy behind him saying "don't drop your hands" going to fix him? It's not - all you are doing is reinforcing the bad habit.
Get the kid off to himself and set up a drill where you can create focus on the problem. A drill I like doing here is a variation of what Bob Morgan used to do when he was coach at Indiana University. I get the kid on a tee and during his set up I hold a broom just behind and slightly under his hands / bat. Now if he drops his hands on the swing he gets immediate feedback on what he's doing wrong. Do this enough then his muscle memory takes over and this part of the swing is fixed. Then he can go back out to big field BP and fine tune the whole swing.
I can't tell you how many hand droppers this drill has fixed over the years I've been doing it. The drill creates a more proper swing path toward the ball to allow the bat to hit more surface area of the ball.