Upper Body Turn
Joey is an excellent athlete that is a sophomore at St. Francis High School in Mountain View. He definitely has some quick twitch in his long levers. Our main goals with him are going to be to get his swing a little tighter and create a little bit of a freer flowing swing.
This is a swing from Joey's tee work. You can see that the ball is placed middle away. Sometimes knowing where the ball is located tricks us into making certain movements. When a ball is away, two common moves are to step more toward home plate or to turn our upper body to square ourselves up to this ball. The second one is what Joey is doing here:
You can see that Joey turns his back to face the pitcher. I would expect the shoulder angle to turn a little bit, but not to the point that I could read his number on his back as the pitcher. Here was the result after we talked about this. Note - this is off front toss and not off tee, which may be easier because the ball wasn't always away.
This looked a lot better. You see Joey had to make a timing adjustment. He was early on the first couple swings because he wasn't having to turn his whole upper body as far as previously.
Other things we will be working on going forward:
- Having the tip of the bat directly over his head on load
- Trying to get the right shoulder lower than the left shoulder at the contact point
- Keeping the right elbow a little tighter to the body on the swing
Points 2 and 3 should allow him to hit the ball deeper in the strike zone and not have to catch it as far out front.
Let's go!
