Bat Speed -- Baseball Hitting Forum

Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Mon Jun 29 19:27:17 2009

> How do I get my son to quit over-rotating his back foot? Heal should point to the sky, right? He has it going around pointed to first. This is while doing the back arm drill into the bag.
>
> Thanks.

The only thing you can tell him is to not over rotate. Over rotation really comes from bad weight distribution on the rear foot. The weight during rotation should be on the ball of the foot near the big toe. What happens in over rotation is the weight shifts from the ball at the big toe to underneath the small toe. This causes the ankle to over rotate as the weight shifts to the outside of the rear foot. So it really is improper initial weight distribution that continues to the area under the small toe which can result in the ankle rolling in extreme cases and the batters rear weight is on the small toe side of the foot.

I over rotated twice when I hit over the weekend and it feels wrong. I made really good contact with the pitch and it was a nice hit but didn't explode off the bat considering the quality of contact. My adjustment was simple. I felt it and it felt strange so I made a conscious decision to rotate properly. It really caught my attention.

The rear foot should drive the rear hip up into the plane of the pitch. When you over rotate the rear foot, the hip seems to take a circular path more parallel to the ground and not necessarily into the path of the ball. The rear hip also seems to become less stable as the foot isn't in good contact with the ground.

Opposite field hits require even less rotation of the rear foot.

I don't know of a drill to prevent this but get his initial weight distribution right and have him rotate on the ball of his foot close to the big toe. Sometimes my big toe and ball of my foot gets sore from hitting. Probably old age but a strange place to feel any soreness from hitting.

Since opposite field gap hits don't require as much rotation maybe he can hit off the tee opposite field gap and understand the point you are trying to get across.

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> > How do I get my son to quit over-rotating his back foot? Heal should point to the sky, right? He has it going around pointed to first. This is while doing the back arm drill into the bag.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> 
> The only thing you can tell him is to not over rotate.  Over rotation really comes from bad weight distribution on the rear foot.  The weight during rotation should be on the ball of the foot near the big toe.  What happens in over rotation is the weight shifts from the ball at the big toe to underneath the small toe.  This causes the ankle to over rotate as the weight shifts to the outside of the rear foot.  So it really is improper initial weight distribution that continues to the area under the small toe which can result in the ankle rolling in extreme cases and the batters rear weight is on the small toe side of the foot.
> 
> I over rotated twice when I hit over the weekend and it feels wrong.  I made really good contact with the pitch and it was a nice hit but didn't explode off the bat considering the quality of contact.  My adjustment was simple.  I felt it and it felt strange so I made a conscious decision to rotate properly.  It really caught my attention.
> 
> The rear foot should drive the rear hip up into the plane of the pitch.  When you over rotate the rear foot, the hip seems to take a circular path more parallel to the ground and not necessarily into the path of the ball.  The rear hip also seems to become less stable as the foot isn't in good contact with the ground.
> 
> Opposite field hits require even less rotation of the rear foot.
> 
> I don't know of a drill to prevent this but get his initial weight distribution right and have him rotate on the ball of his foot close to the big toe.  Sometimes my big toe and ball of my foot gets sore from hitting.  Probably old age but a strange place to feel any soreness from hitting.
> 
> Since opposite field gap hits don't require as much rotation maybe he can hit off the tee opposite field gap and understand the point you are trying to get across.

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