Time to put a youth baseball fallacy to sleep. Send it out to
pasture. File it in the cold case baseball section of the local
library cellar. Eliminate it from modern day baseball instruction
and just consider it old time folklore.
Time to put a youth baseball fallacy to sleep. Send it out to pasture. File it in the cold case baseball section of the local library cellar. Eliminate it from modern day baseball instruction and just consider it old time folklore.
Where it came from I don’t know. It’s never mentioned in any hitting book I’ve ever seen, yet I keep hearing this jargon around the youth baseball batting cages, games and practices. It’s yelled from the stands by parents and from the dugouts by coaches.
I’m talking about the dreaded saying “get your back elbow up to hit.”
I cringe when I hear it. I’ve seen kids cry because they’re being yelled at while at the batting cage, but they’ll never hit with this style. They become frustrated, not knowing that a little alteration would bring them success.
While you’ve probably seen some major leaguers get their back elbow up to some extent, none of them were taught to actually hit that way. And besides, they’re so strong and have tremendous bat speed through the hitting zone that at the point of contact their bat is in the correct position. However, no major league hitting coach is standing next to the hitting cage telling them to get their back elbow up.
I’ve listened to countless numbers of youth coaches, parents and people seemingly thinking they’re in the know tell me the reasons why your back elbow should be up to hit, from supplying more power to hitting lower pitches better. Most of the reasons in regards to youth baseball are off track.
If these same people studied hitting in more depth they would understand the disservice they’re doing to young hitters. Simply put, if a kid’s back elbow is up to hit (by high I mean his back elbow is actually pointing toward the backstop behind home plate) he must then drop it to hit, causing the bat to drop which then means the bat takes a slower and long looping path to the point of contact, thereby swinging under the ball and missing it.
With slow pitches or balls lobbed in a game of short toss, youth players can get away with a long looping swing. In time, though, as balls are thrown harder and with less reaction time to get the bat out in front, balls will sail by the hitter before their bat gets to the hitting zone.
Yes, every once in a while a youth hitter that keeps his back elbow up will get a hold of one and hit it a country mile, thereby justifying the thinking of back elbow up. Most likely the pitch was low and inside making it easy to just drop the bat head and hit it. In turn, pitches thrown on the outer half of the plate or waist high with some velocity won’t be handled by the youth hitter because his hands have dropped.
As a youth player is approaching the ball to hit, his hands (or the knob of the bat) must take a direct path to the ball. If your back elbow is up this can’t happen. If you did take your hands to the ball with your back elbow up you’d see the bat in a very awkward position. So awkward, in fact, that it would make it impossible to swing.
Younger kids usually don’t have forearm strength, core strength or strong hands to generate bat speed. Therefore, it’s essential to teach them the right mechanics to hit. Keeping your back elbow up is not one of them! Forget about what professionals do. Concentrate on what’s the best thing for a young hitter to learn.
If kids are taught correctly and learn to swing down or level on the ball and hit line drives this fallacy can finally be put to rest.
So bury the hatchet on this one. Toss a bottle into the ocean with the saying scribbled on a piece of paper inside of it that says “keep your back elbow up” and hope that it never floats ashore for someone else to read. Keep it out of your thoughts and create new habits for a sound swing.
Rich Taylor is the CEO and head instructor of California Pitching Academy and a scout for the New York Mets. Reach him at
rj********@ya***.com
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