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Hitched Swing
by Dave
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Mitchell writes in with a hitting question:
"Dave :
I read your article about batting for softball, my daughter is 11, she has been playing for about 4 years. The last two years have been tournament teams, but even with all of this time and practice she is still having a problem with her hitting. She is lefty and when she swings at a pitch it looks like a two step swing. Her swing kind of breaks in the middle. Some have told me she hits like Darryl Strawberry's old swing. Heres the funny part, when she is practicing off the tee, she swings good and at the batting cage she is hitting 55 mph balls. This problem only appears with live pitching at a game and she is not hitting a ball at a game not even a little contact. Help is needed here and we would appreciate it very much."
Hi Mitchell,
What you are describing is a "hitch" in your daughter's swing. Hitches can be caused by a number of things. But before we get into that, I want you to consider a couple of things.
First consider that there is far less hitting in softball than there is in its cousin baseball. Even at 12U tournament games are lower scoring than in baseball except in certain overmatch situations. Often games which end 10-0 involve just a handful of big hits and numerous aggressive baserunning plays. Many of us approach softball as if it is just the girls' version of baseball. It isn't. There are fewer girls who hit the ball hard and far in softball than there are boys who do so in baseball. Our objective in softball should be more about good contact than it should be about driving the ball far.
Next consider that, if your daughter is 11, she's probably playing 12U softball where the pitching has jumped from probably 45 mph or so in 10U up to 55 mph or even higher in some tournaments. That 55 mph pitch is released from about 34 feet after a 12 year old's 6 foot leg drive as opposed to the 45 mph 10U pitch released from around 32 feet by a beginning 9 or 10 year old windmiller. Now compare those pitches to a baseball thrown by a high school varsity pitcher at 85 mph from around 55 feet, after the stride. The 55 mph 12U pitch takes .56 seconds to reach home. The 45 mph 10U pitch takes .7 seconds and a good high school fastball takes .58 seconds. That means your 11 year old girl has graduated to a pitch which is about 25% faster than she faced at 10U and in many ways is comparable to a boys high school varsity pitching speed!
Also, if you figure the pitch speed jump from 10U to 12U as being around 8 - 10 mph and the 12U pitch speed as around 55, now consider than Cat Osterman is most effective at around 62-63. That means the difference between 12U and world class is about the same as the jump between 10U and 12U pitching! The jump from 12U to 14U, by comparison, will probably be something like around 55 to just shy of 60. This is the toughest year for most hitters.
Next consider the way in which young girls grow. There is a growth spurt around the 11 to 12 age change which is possibly unrivaled at other ages except maybe the 12 to 13 range. Girls do more physical maturing in the 11 - 13 range than they do at any other time. When puberty sets in, sometime around this age, a clock starts in which a girl will typically grow rapidly for about two more years and then stop or significantly slow down. Her muscles will develop quite a bit during this period too. If your daughter is not yet in puberty, she is probably getting ready to travel there soon. Girls going into puberty grow pretty rapidly too and they lose coordination along the way. They get it back but sometimes they get really clumsy first. Bad mechanical problems can develop for a short time as a result.
Again, 11 year olds are often overmatched by 12 year olds. The first year of 12U ball is often very difficult for 11 year olds, far more difficult than say 18U is for 15 year olds. The parent of an 11 year old has to lower their expectations when it comes to 12U ball. You want her to hit but don't reinforce any mental pressing she is doing at the plate. Complement her swing and mental approach. Understand if she weakly grounds the ball to second. If she's making decent contact via a good swing, be happy about that. The strength will come.
If there are fewer big hits in softball, the pitch speed at 12U is one of the bigger jumps an age grouper will face, and the onset of puberty with its accompanying growth, temporary bouts of uncoordination, and eventual increase in strength is about to happen, we must adjust our approach accordingly. What we are after is all about swing mechanics. Forget about results for a while.
Finally consider what happens with world class amateur and professional baseball and softball players. If you go to a practice of high level college, world class or professional baseball or softball players, you will notice that they do a lot of work off the tee and with soft tossed balls. Why do they do this? They do it because most of hitting is the swing mechanics. They are working on muscle / tendon memory. The player currently leading the majors or Team USA in hitting works off the tee because he or she needs to perfect their swing mechanics! You should do the same thing.
Have you ever observed someone go into a hitting slump? Usually they hit into some tough luck and then they begin to press too much. Their swing falls apart and then they really slump. The best way to get out of a slump is to go back to the basics, back to the tee, back to the swing mechanics fundamentals. The worst way to deal with a slump is to keep doing the same pressing and adjust your swing in an attempt to hit the darn ball.
This is a long-winded way of getting to what I think is your daughter's problem. I think she is reacting to drastically faster pitching by pressing. She is trying to match the high speed of the pitch by swinging hard. She feels small when she steps in against a big 12 year old throwing 55. Machine pitching isn't the same. So it matters little if she can hit 55 in the cages. She needs to swing less hard (though firmly) in order to hit the 12U pitchers she is facing.
It is now August so much of the summer season has gone by. What I'm going to suggest you do is work off the tee rather than the machine. You can also work soft toss. Your emphasis is going to be on that smooth stroke you see when she hits off the tee. Don't let her body reinforce the hitched swing she does in games when she feels a little overmatched. Have her do sessions of 50-100 balls smoothly hit off the tee. Then do some soft tossed hitting. Stay away from the machines as long as you can.
Do a couple sessions per week through the winter if you can. Teach her body to forget how to hitch. If she hits smoothly off the tee twice a week for two months, she won't remember how to hitch! Focus on solid contact not hitting the ball hard. The hard hitting will come with a good swing, an increase in body and muscle mass, and age. Have her hit the top half to the middle of the ball. Don't let her try to hit the ball hard or far by swinging hard.
If you ever had the opportunity to watch the hardest hit balls by the best hitters, one thing would stick out in your mind. You would be surprised at the ease of swing which produced those hard hits. Daryl Strawberry never swung hard when he hit even monstrous home runs 450 feet to dead center. I know. I watched him every night as a young Mets fan and later when he played for the Yankees. His swing was always about smoothness. Most of the best softball players are the same way. There was one home run hit in the world cup which was produced by one of the easiest swings I have ever seen. I was shocked the ball got out of the yard because I couldn't imagine such an easy swing hitting a homerun. But that's the way things usually go.
As a final note regarding swing hitches, I want to express a little about the most common cause of a hitched swing. I discussed mental pressing above but there is something more insidious than that. Often we teach hitters to step into the pitch in order to generate greater hitting power. That's wrong for softball and is probably wrong for baseball too. I remember sitting calmly watching my then 8 year old at a "clinic" game. Her coach tried to get her to step into the pitch as if she were playing old man's arc pitch softball and trying to drive the ball over the fence. Many years later she still steps too much.
The proper step (if you even step) in softball is one which produces the 60-40, 40-60 result. You start with 50 percent of your weight on each foot. As the pitcher goes into her wind up, you shift 60 percent of your weight to the back foot. As you swing, the object is to be moving 60 percent of your weight to the front foot at the end of the swing. At the point of contact, about 50 percent of the weight is again on the front foot and the momentum is towards the 60 percent at the end of the swing, after contact. Power in the swing is generated by the hip movement, the force generated by nearly full arm extension, and the weight shift. "Western style" swing coaches teach the girls to not step but rather lift the front foot up on the toes as the pitch wind up occurs and then put it down again with the swing. Those who don't teach "western style" hitting usually teach a step but that step is a small one and is a timing device, not a momentum builder. It can assist with the backward shift of 10 percent of the weight but it does not generate hitting force in and of itself.
One of the important fundamentals of hitting is the "quiet head" which doesn't relate to either not talking or being calm. A quiet head is one that is not moving. Your eyes are an important part of the swing. You need to have them unmoving like the eyes of a sharpshooter before during and after pulling the trigger. The head is still mostly because of other mechanical things. For example, if you take an old man's arc pitch swing with its big step, there is no way to keep your head quiet. Your head moves and so do your eyes. A good swing is one in which the head moves the least. If your daughter is hitching, her head is moving and this is causing her to miss the ball as much as the hitch itself is. There can be other causes to a hitch but the bottom line is if you aim to keep your head quiet and your eyes steady, you probably won't hitch. Two problems are solved at the cost of one.
I hope this adequately addresses the problems your daughter is facing. I've gone and written far too much. What I really want to communicate is work off the tee and at most using soft toss. If your daughter swings nice and smoothly off the tee, reinforce that by doing just tee work. Teach her to forget the hard pressing swing she developed in her first year of 12U tournament ball. Talk to her about not pressing so hard in games. Tell her to work on making good contact rather than driving the ball. Tell her that a hard swing does not help you make contact with a fast pitch. Don't let her muscles and tendons remember how to swing hard with a hitch. Make her body forget this mistake.Labels: hitting
Permanent Link: Hitched Swing
 
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