Teaching hitting Carrier/Bustos approach

One of my 6th graders. In October started her third year with me. This is something I teach. Parallel to contact. She has a good chance to hit the ball square. Old baseball term, squaring a ball. We learn to do the sequence in slow motion first. Load (straight down in legs, no going backwards). Step out and separate. Elvis move or (knee to pitcher). Parallel to contact. Contact. Then the finish will happen. Will post a video of her explaining it, that her mom sent to me. Really cool....
Thanks SL

straightleg said:

Carrier Olympic hitting coach. In his 40 years of teaching, he always taught throwing, fielding hitting. He would not teach hitting until their throwing mechanics where correct. The 20 years I do the same approach every lesson. He was a big believer in slow motion practice to learn the movements. He also thought if they throw poorly, they hit poorly. I agree. If a girl wraps the ball behind her head when she throws. She will then wrap the bat behind around the corner when she hits. Once you fix the throwing, your on your way to fix the hitting....
Here is one of my 20 doing a slow motion swing to feel how the body works. She started with me in 5th grade, signed and started college this year. Pitcher who hits bombs. She had 50hr. in high school.

Sorry need to learn how to post video from Facebook?

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I almost NEVER post on threads outside of the pitching one, but this post caught my eye on the trending topics on the right of the screen. So, clicked it to see how old it was. In fairness, I didn't read 28 pages of this thread, the first sentence of the first post stopped me. Howard Carrier was never the Olympic team coach. He was never on staff of the Olympic team. To the best of my knowledge, he was never a guest coach at an Olympic camp. Although, truth be told, the guest speaker thing is a remote possibility.

Anyway, I got to meet and work with Howard once or twice, 20+ years ago. I have no idea if he's still alive, we never sent each other Christmas cards but, he's an extremely nice guy and I really enjoyed being with him. Bustos/Carrier, Howard Kobata, Mike Candrea, and I were all speakers at an event in Ohio many years ago, and the hosts took us to dinner afterwards which is when I got to talk to him 1-1 for the first time ever. His story about how he got into hitting was incredible, it's not my story to tell but I was in awe!! I don't pretend to know anything about hitting mechanics so, I cannot comment on the good/bad of the techniques. I can tell you that at the dinner, Bustos said something like (and I'm paraphrasing) "Howard didn't teach me how to hit. He taught me how to turn a 200' HR into a 275' HR".

Hillhouse said:

I almost NEVER post on threads outside of the pitching one, but this post caught my eye on the trending topics on the right of the screen. So, clicked it to see how old it was. In fairness, I didn't read 28 pages of this thread, the first sentence of the first post stopped me. Howard Carrier was never the Olympic team coach. He was never on staff of the Olympic team. To the best of my knowledge, he was never a guest coach at an Olympic camp. Although, truth be told, the guest speaker thing is a remote possibility.

Anyway, I got to meet and work with Howard once or twice, 20+ years ago. I have no idea if he's still alive, we never sent each other Christmas cards but, he's an extremely nice guy and I really enjoyed being with him. Bustos/Carrier, Howard Kobata, Mike Candrea, and I were all speakers at an event in Ohio many years ago, and the hosts took us to dinner afterwards which is when I got to talk to him 1-1 for the first time ever. His story about how he got into hitting was incredible, it's not my story to tell but I was in awe!! I don't pretend to know anything about hitting mechanics so, I cannot comment on the good/bad of the techniques. I can tell you that at the dinner, Bustos said something like (and I'm paraphrasing) "Howard didn't teach me how to hit. He taught me how to turn a 200' HR into a 275' HR".

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I guess another way of thinking about that is he taught her how to turn an outfield fly into a 225’ HR.
And straightleg seems to be keeping his teaching alive.

She does a great job of teaching the slow motion swing...

Hillhouse said:

I almost NEVER post on threads outside of the pitching one, but this post caught my eye on the trending topics on the right of the screen. So, clicked it to see how old it was. In fairness, I didn't read 28 pages of this thread, the first sentence of the first post stopped me. Howard Carrier was never the Olympic team coach. He was never on staff of the Olympic team. To the best of my knowledge, he was never a guest coach at an Olympic camp. Although, truth be told, the guest speaker thing is a remote possibility.

Anyway, I got to meet and work with Howard once or twice, 20+ years ago. I have no idea if he's still alive, we never sent each other Christmas cards but, he's an extremely nice guy and I really enjoyed being with him. Bustos/Carrier, Howard Kobata, Mike Candrea, and I were all speakers at an event in Ohio many years ago, and the hosts took us to dinner afterwards which is when I got to talk to him 1-1 for the first time ever. His story about how he got into hitting was incredible, it's not my story to tell but I was in awe!! I don't pretend to know anything about hitting mechanics so, I cannot comment on the good/bad of the techniques. I can tell you that at the dinner, Bustos said something like (and I'm paraphrasing) "Howard didn't teach me how to hit. He taught me how to turn a 200' HR into a 275' HR".

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Mr. Hillhouse you are mistaken. He was with team China in Olympics as the hitting coach. I guy from Canada I believe was the head coach. His name began with a B I think. Also the story of Bustos is correct. Her dad and uncle taught her how to hit. Howard taught her how to hit it farther.
SL

When I last talked to Howard, he said he had worked or was going to work with the Chinese team. I don't remember the circumstances. I had called Howard to ask about Bowling Green State University which offered my dd.

Mr Hillhouse he coached with this guy, team China, found his name.
Michael Bastian

SL

straightleg said:

Mr Hillhouse he coached with this guy, team China, found his name.
Michael Bastian

SL

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Ok, you're right. I had forgot about the Chinese team. I mistakenly jumped automatically to the USA Olympic team when it was mentioned, that's my bad. Sorry.

Yes, Bastian is quite a character. I had an opportunity to go work with the Chinese team too, circa 2004 or 5. However, the time required was unmanageable for me at the time. I recommended a buddy of mine instead who took the job. A guy who is now (or will be soon) listed as UCLA's 4th coach.

The Chinese were willing to spend a fortune, they wanted a good showing in the 2008 Olympics. So they hired all these American (and Canadian) coaches, offering them lots of perks and money. I remember being told of the Olympic bonuses coaches could earn: $5M for Gold medal, $3M for Silver, $1M for Bronze. That was on top of all the money they were willing to pay leading up to the Olympics. Well, as luck would have it, after the Chinese got every bit of softball knowledge and expertise from the foreign coaches, all of the coaches were told 2 weeks before the Olympics that their services were no longer needed. LOL. Literally right before the games, all the coaches were told thanks but you can go now. Although I think, the coaches were allowed to attend the games if they wanted but, they wouldn't be getting the bonuses if they win. Thankfully, China didn't medal so, nobody got ripped off like that.

Bastian ended up marrying one of the Chinese players. He runs a travel organization called TFS (The Fastpitch school) and has a few teams in different US cities. It's quite a system he has.

Pretty genius w the Slo swings matrix style etc etc echos the mirror work mantra.

This is an 8th grader. Been with me over 3 years. She has gone yard 7-9 times playing pretty high level travel ball. I like her bat speed and how she gets off the backside.

SL