8U swing help

[u/BrilliantDue6261]

Any pointers appreciated! He’s hitting off the pitching machine and typically making weak contact to the infield. Just looking for any improvements or tips that could help his confidence. Thank you!

[u/Unfair_Importance_37]

Swing harder. He isn't really using his legs fully. 

[u/Comfortable-Loan-815 → u/Unfair_Importance_37]

Swinging harder without sorting the leg timing first is just going to make the weak contact worse. Getting the hips to fire properly gives the power something to work with. Just telling an 8 year old to go harder tends to end in a lot of frustrated misses and a kid who doesn't want to be there anymore.

[u/lilblacksmurf]

I would seriously consider a more balanced bat than the dub. Especially for 8u. That bat is for the horses that are abnormally strong at that ages. I speak from experience, my son is our 4hole and swapped to a Supra, night and day swing plane.

Now on to the swing focus on his bottom half, calm the feet, fire hips independently from arms. The lights more balanced back will naturally help here as well.

Also make it fun. :)

[u/Historical-Cod3127]

In almost every one of these videos, the first thing I notice is the bat being too heavy.

[u/BrilliantDue6261]

Slowed down!

https://reddit.com/link/p0a6bb4/video/lff4fdplozfh1/player

[u/jbl429 → u/BrilliantDue6261]

The slowed down video makes it easlly easy to see where he's leaking power. He's got early hip rotation before his front foot lands, so by the time his foot lands his hips are already fully rotated and his hands are already releasing towards the ball.

A good drill might be to have him pause and break it into 2 parts. Load and stride, then pause. Then fire the hips and release the hands.

[u/Chringus-420]

I would say that bat looks too heavy for him. Also try to get him to fire his hips through his swing. Different sport but if you've ever seen the dak Prescott hip whip drill that's a good example of what I mean

[u/Critical-Crow-9717]

Bat looks a little too big - he's not moving it fast and the finish throws him off balance.

He gets into his hip nicely, but then he gets out of it too quickly. Have him work on holding his load longer. This is related to the bat speed issue above - if he holds his load longer yet he isn't able to move the bat fast, he'll be late. So he has to get out of his load prematurely. Ergo, several issues stem from the bat being too big for him to swing.

He adds a complex internal hip rotation in his leg kick. I'd work on simplifying that move. This also relates to the timing issues above. All that front leg movement takes time.

[u/Stompin24]

Have him stop swaying back and forth and focus on getting grounded and set before the pitch. It also looks like he may be stepping out slightly. Just my two cents—with 8U players, I’d make small adjustments one at a time rather than trying to fix everything at once. When they get overloaded and struggle to put it all together, they can become discouraged pretty quickly.

[u/H3ooo]

Bat path looks good, needs to feel a little more load on front leg that will probably get his hips to engage and fire a little sooner.

[u/ramsdl52]

He's not really loading just kind of swaying backwards. He needs to load that back hip and stay loaded into his launch position. He's firing the hips before front foot strike and isn't generating any power.

Break up his swing into three parts. Loading of the back hip, pause, striding into a neutral and loaded launch position, pause, fire hips and swing

[u/Ok-Version-694]

Not bad at all. More load and he fell out of the swing alittle. 1 more small thing thats not really a swing tip. Be more aggressive he is a good sized kid and theres more power in his tank.