dropping hands and rear shoulder

Question
My son is 7 and in first year of machine pitch after 3 years of tee ball. what can i do drill wise to help him eliminate his uppercut swing he picked up in tee ball. needless to say he is struggling to hit the ball.

Answer
Hi David,

I have to first apologize for not getting a response to you sooner.  I received an email alert from AllExperts stating this question had not been answered.  I had attempted to answer your question back on the 31st; however, it appears the email was never delivered.  I try very hard to respond within 24 hours because I know many people are looking for timely responses.  For this reason, I do apologize to you and your son.

With all this said, I will now address your question.  I think there are few ways you can go about correcting this issue.

1.  Consider videotaping his swing and the swings of other major league players.  Have him watch the two swings in contrast in slow motion.  This will help visually "see the differences" and truly recognize there is a problem.

2.  Start to rebuild his swing.  I will give you two drills that can help:
a.  Use two batting tees drill.  In this case, you want two of them with one in front of the other by about a foot.  Then, have him hit a bucket of baseballs with the baseball placed on the first hitting tee or the one closest to the pitcher.  This drill will help physically have to change his swing as he will want to avoid hitting the first time.  If he needs to break down his swing into parts, this is perfectly fine as well.  The goal should be to get a good base of repetitions of which he can slowly build back up to machine and person pitch.

b.  Soft toss drill.  This exercise is performed with a bucket of wiffle balls.  Essentially, you or someone else will be pitching these wiffle balls to your son underhanded with you positioned to the side of your son and throwing this ball at roughly his waist or hip closest to the pitcher.  This goal is designed to improve his hand and eye coordination and will require him to see the ball all the way.  This can be very helpful in requiring him to make good contact.  In addition, he can make a point to hit on top of the wiffle ball to avoid hitting with such a large uppercut.  

3.  Besides these drills, you will want him to get into the habit of him swinging his bat every day.  I am not sure of the age of your son, but have work up to 75 to 100 swings per day.  Here, is a link to an article I wrote on this subject:
http://www.baseballtrainingtechniques.com/Baseball-Hitting/
Baseball-Hitting-Practice.html

Having him simply swing the bat everyday will help him develop the new swing faster.  This is because it develops muscle memory that he will end up automatically using later on.

4.  Periodically videotape his new swing to make sure he is not regressing.  If any regression occurs, you should go back to the two hitting drills and start over again with these steps.  

If further issues still persist, I would recommend considering getting lessons from a hitting instructor in your area as they can visually see what we can not.  However, I believe this will most likely not be necessary as you should be able to help your son resolve this issue with a little practice.

Best,
Jack Elliott
http://www.baseballtrainingtechniques.com