12 YO Hitting

One thing right off the bat(no pun intended) is the "arm bar." His left arm shouldn't be that straight. Hands shouldn't go too much past the right shoulder. HTH

Doug

Contact right after extension.

A thing of beauty.

I don't see an arm-bar... The lead arm is extended more then normal, but there is still some visible flexion in the elbow, and not a lock of the elbow.

You might want to try moving his hands in closer to his body to see if that promotes a more inside-to-out swing to see if that improves his hitting, if not, leave him alone.

-Good luck.

Jacob has a nice powerful swing imho. I am not sure I would muck with it. He'll smooth things out as he continues to practice over time.

Curious who the AC/DC fan is

Thanks for the input. His batspeed is 71 to 78 mph with a high school bat. He was flexing his elbow too much at points this spring so he went with more of a Ken Griffey or Albert Pujols approach with the lead elbow. As a result he is close to being barred on the lead elbow. We were also trying to get the rear elbow to drop into the slot just a hair later to generate a little more batspeed so he was less inside the ball. He generally hits hard and for high average.

AC/DC is great hitting music.

It's a pretty powerful kid you have there and these are just little things to look at. The academy my son goes to likes the shoulders to stay more in line with the pitcher(a little closed obviously is OK). When Jacob brings his hands that far back, it really shuts off his lead shoulder. If and when he starts to face faster pitching, it will be harder to handle the inside pitch. Like others have said tho, he's 12, just let Jacob hit.

Powerful swing for a 12 yr. old. Poor load of weight against the back leg (prior to swing), causes hands to cast (long swing to contact point) and loss of power because of inability to shift weight during swing.

Below is a drill that Cal Ripken demostrates. Please understand he is OVERexagerating the load portion of the swing. Players need to feel the weight come back before it comes forward. Enjoy.

Ripken Video

quote:

Originally posted by Leverage:
12 YO hitting off a tee

Any input?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZHHzQoJUe4

There is a lot of good there, certainly power is one, but his adjustabiliy as he moves up the ladder will be poor with that swing. Think about this for a moment. Why does he have the tee so far out in front? What is he going to do on a good change-up??? He needs to add lateral shoulder tilt and he needs to get more flex in his front elbow. That front arm can straighten, but not until the hips are pulling it straight. You've gotten him off to a good start, but there is much more to do as he moves up the ladder.

Good point on weight shift. He was having a problem getting his front foot down. Several people including myself noticed this and really starting working on simplifying the stride and shortening it. I believe in going back to go forward but only as it relates to timing and pitch recognition. I haven't been watching the back weight shift as the focus has been on getting the front foot down. I'm going to look at some MLB video and revisit the weight shift. Thanks for your input.

Power,

We moved the tee out front some to work the left center gap. His focus has always been to hit the right center gap. He could take an inside pitch and hit it hard to right center and take any other pitch there. I wanted more gap to gap hitting depending on where the ball was pitched so we started working left center. I was thinking the other day that it is time to get back to hitting and this means gap to gap work as opposed to trying to crush everything left center. Good observation and something we are about to start working on now that practice begins tonight.

I will look more at the lateral shoulder tilt and check some video and watch him in the cage. I think I agree with this but need to see some live hitting and video.

The only thing I disagree with is the lead arm/elbow flex. The lead arm of great hitters goes to somewhere between 150 and 170 degrees as the shoulders begin rotation. Griffey and Pujols are guys that start nearly barred. All good hitters end up close to being barred at shoulder rotation.

He hits most every pitch pretty well and doesn't get fooled much. He has 20/12 vision and can see anything. He is also swinging a 33/30 and been working since may on swinging a drop 3.

Thanks for taking the time to review and I'm going to get him back to balancing the right and left center hitting out. Also going to check the shoulder tilt as I'm pretty sure I agree with this but need to see a little video.

Good to have a second set of eyes as it is easy to overlook things.

I really like his swing and his approach. He looks to mash and I love that in a kid. I wish I had some video of my son at that age because its scary not only in body and looks but how much his swing mirrors my youngest sons at that age. I look forward to you keeping us up to date with how he does.

Wouldn't touch much in this swing; not bad for a 12 yr old. Best part of his swing is his "intent" to knock the **** out of the ball. Like alot of what I see.

The arm flex (just be sure he doesn't lock)and hand position issues you can address at some point as he gets close in some of swings to dragging the bat a bit. Won't kill him at age 12 but will hurt against faster pitchers he'll see in the future.

Overall, I wouldn't tinker at all with him. Leave him alone for now or you run the risk of making him Dad's "experiment". He has a long road ahead of him that he has barely started. Good luck.

His hands are too far from his shoulder.

Causes bar arm, sweeping, slow swing.

Simple fix.

his hands suck back in behind his head before he swings...idk, that's the only thing i see "wrong" with his swing. i'm just commenting on this because I kind of had this problem not too long ago and fixed it by not moving the hands so much. I'm able to get the same, if not almost the same, amount of power with little movement as opposed to a lot of backward movement with the hands.

Son was barring arm quite a bit a few years ago.

Bought this elbow-guard...



If you criss-cross the straps (top strap to bottom velcro, and bottom strap to top velcro - Forming an "X" on the front of the arm), it makes it very difficult to straighten the arm...

I had him hit less than 40 balls with it on, and he's never done it since.

I've used it with other kids as well, and it works everytime.

Try it, Good luck.

http://www.onlinesports.com/pages/I,MW-CPCEP.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/JUICEbaseball#g/u