Front Leg Advice

[HeinekenMan]

My boy has developed what seems like a bad habit. He is rotating his front foot during his swing. His toe is pointed directly at the pitcher as his bat moves through the hitting zone. It seems that his hips are firing too early. That is zapping his power. Plus, he's pulling off the ball in practice. So he's missing a lot of pitches. He doesn't miss many during games, but he also hasn't been hitting the ball hard for the past 2-3 months.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can get him to keep his front foot closed until later in the swing? One bit of advice I read is to have him point his front foot toward the back corner of home plate. I guess this might help him load the hips a little more, too.

His stance is typically with feet even and weight shifted to the back leg.

If it will help, I can shoot some video this week.

[Bolts-Baseball]

http://www.thepitchingacademy.com/articles/hitting-mechanics/front-foot-closed-and-the-destruction-of-your-hitting-mechanics/

Also, Tee work and opposite-field hitting drills may help...

Good luck.

[songtitle]

Over 20 years, I have tried boards, balls, chalk lines, opening the foot, closing the foot, Stayback tee, and a host of other gimmicks, and tricks... Some of those tricks work on some people.

If you coil inward as you go forward, you can't open up. It's really just that simple. This works on everyone.

[CoolHandLuke]

Without video one can only speculate to what your son needs to fix if any. Lead foot pointing toward the pitcher in itself isn't necessarily a fault but his mechanics causing that rotation probably is. From your description, the most likely cause is insufficient weight transfer at toe touch(again speculating w/o video). A very common fault of weight never coming off the back side and spinning off the back foot. Easier for the lead foot to rotate with not weight on it. Or it could just be a case of the hitter stepping way open and bailing. If he's pulling off the ball as you state, that may be the case. Pretty uncommon for youth to have proper lower body mechanics(stride alignment, weight transfer) and bail with the shoulders. If they bail, it usually with both the feet and shoulders. Just look at his stride alignment and you'll know what to address.

[mudvnine]

Most kids "stride" with their lead/front leg instead of their rear one. Your son is basically picking up his leg, turning it, putting it down.....and then trying to swing.

The lead leg should only come off the ground and/or move, as a result of the weight transfer rearward, that is "caught" and controlled by the rear leg.

The rear leg carries/transfers the weight forward, as the hitter is in the process of timing/locating the pitch, deciding to swing, and then launching the swing. The lead leg is weighted as the swing is happening and not before......"Shift AND Swing" and not "Shift THEN Swing".

This is why some high level hitters can be successful as "No Striders", because while all "shift/transfer" their weight, not all "stride" to do it.


Best of luck,
mud -