Correct Your Back Shoulder Drop And Discover A More Powerful, Consistent Swing 

“You’re dropping your back shoulder! Get your back shoulder up!” It’s a phrase echoed in ballparks across the country. But is it the right advice? Honestly, it’s not. But while it may be bad advice, it’s not lousy coaching. But your barrel usually drops with you when you drop your back shoulder. As a result, it is impossible to be short to contact and long through the zone of contact. This lowers the point of contact and makes it much more challenging to hit the ball properly. When the back shoulder drops, the angle of contact changes, and the ball is more likely to go foul or weakly hit.

So, instead of a base hit or a home run, you earn an instant fly-out or foul ball over the backstop—or worse, a swing and a miss. 

While it may sound like decent advice, it is missing the point. Whether you are a parent, athlete, or coach, think of it this way. Imagine driving a car with only your front tires pointing in the right direction; no matter how fast you go, you won’t make it very far. 

Players, you know this feeling all too well. You’re standing in the box, focused on the pitcher, when suddenly you hear the coach yell out to fix your back shoulder. Your entire mental focus is on your shoulder, not the next pitch. Your process, timing, and rhythm are all thrown off, and you promptly miss the next pitch completely. 

Sound familiar?

Is it your back shoulder? Or something else?

Let’s be clear, however. I’m not telling you that your back shoulder drop isn’t a problem. It is. It’s a big problem. It’s jacking up your swing and needs correction. But dropping your back shoulder isn’t the actual underlying problem. It’s only a symptom. You can find the solution at the root of the problem, far beyond the external symptoms. 

When you get a headache, take a painkiller like Tylenol or Motrin. For a time, those drugs mask the symptoms of the headache, and we assume there are no other underlying issues. But if you start getting a headache every day, you’ll dig deeper into the problem. What else is going on here? The painkillers are only temporally masking the pain, not resolving the underlying issues. The headache, even though it feels like a problem, is not. It is the symptom of a different issue. Getting rid of the headaches requires getting to the root of the problem. 

The problem is your elbow.

If dropping your back shoulder is the symptom, the root problem—the underlying issue—is your lead elbow inverting up. 

When your lead elbow inverts or moves up, your back shoulder has no choice but to go down. The muscle connection between your back and shoulders is forcing the issue. There is an equal and opposite reaction between the two. In a sense, it is Newton’s third law in action. The force of your lead elbow has an equal and direct impact on your back shoulder. The conventional wisdom from most coaches is that if you focus on your shoulder, the rest will correct itself. But just like Tylenol, it’s a temporary fix that only masks the larger issue. 

Now that we know the culprit is not your shoulder but your lead elbow, we can remove the well-meaning but short advice from coaches and get down to a proper triage that will speak directly to the root cause rather than the symptom. 

First, coaches, promise yourself and your players that you will remove from your vocabulary the phrase, “Get your back shoulder up.” 

Good. Let’s get started. 

So, how do you fix the issue?

If the lead elbow inverts up, getting the back shoulder up is impossible. Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait.

See what I mean? We prove this to our players by holding a hitter's lead elbow after it inverts up, then telling the hitter to get his back shoulder up. They notice the awkward, uncomfortable, and nearly impossible feeling when we get them in such an awkward position. Finally, we ask the hitter if he can hit from there. The answer is obvious. He can’t. No one can.

So how do we fix it?

Fixing back shoulder drop by feeling the overcorrection

There are two steps to fixing the back shoulder drop. The first being foundational or mechanical, and the second being non-mechanical or feel-based.

First, we instruct our hitter to relax the lead elbow when they get into their stance. Some hitters will walk into the box, set their stance, and automatically point their lead elbow slightly up to nearly point at the pitcher's mound. Some coaches argue that dropping your back shoulder increases the probability of hitting a low-pitch fastball. While true, we do that on purpose for the pitch down and away. The further down and further away, the more the body will have to accommodate the low/away location. With that said, too much shoulder drop on the low away pitch will result in a lazy pop fly, which we have all done.  

Instead, the lead elbow should be pointed down at the ground. You should be able to draw a straight line from the top of your shoulders, through your upper arm, and past your elbow to the ground. 

We provide a simple corrective instruction to help you feel this motion correctly: “Fire your back hand on top of your lead arm.” Okay, that’s perhaps odd and slightly complicated. Let me explain what that means. Draw an imaginary line from your back hand through your front forearm to your elbow. The feeling you’re looking for is that back hand moving over the top of your lead arm using that line. 

To be clear, this does not happen in reality. You cannot actually fire the back hand over the lead arm. But this exercise is designed to help you experience the over-corrective feeling we want you to feel when you swing. If you think about firing your back arm over the lead arm with a relaxed elbow, you will eliminate your back shoulder drop, hitting the ball squarely with more power and precision.

To be clear, this does not happen in reality. You will not actually fire the back hand over the lead arm. But we want the hitter to feel like he is firing the back hand over the lead arm because it is much easier and simpler to correct.

Giving a hitter his simple cue allows him to keep his same swing action but slightly change the swing shape. Nothing technical, nothing complicated, and nothing that requires exhaustive swing “retooling.” It is a simple, positive, actionable cue the hitter can perform that will also give instance and unmistakable feedback by seeing the ball struck on a line instead of in the air.  

A hitter cannot see himself swing—only feel himself swing.

The best athletes spend less time thinking about what they are doing and more time feeling it. Not emotional feelings (no touchy-feely stuff here), but an intuitive nature that enables them to self-diagnose and quickly self-correct. A quarterback knows when the ball leaves his hand if the throw is on target. A basketball player knows if his 3-pointer will clang off the rim. And a hitter knows the feeling of the perfect swing. 

We train our hitters to know precisely what a good swing feels like. And when something feels off, they understand how to correct it. Their minds are on autopilot, constantly searching for the right feeling. But to be a self-diagnostic and self-corrective hitter, you need to know what it feels like to invert and what it feels like to correct the inversion.

Our process is more than just instructing on what the “right” swing looks like. When working with a hitter, we ask you to describe how your swing feels. This way, you identify what a good swing feels like from what a bad swing feels like. Then, we use simple cues that he can use to identify a problem (self-diagnose) and what cue to use to adjust (self-correct). This process helps your muscles commit the right feeling to memory, making it repeatable and correctable. 

After a few rounds, a hitter can identify the feeling of a long swing or a noisy swing (too much pre-swing motion) and immediately be able to cue himself with the correct cue to correct it for the next pitch. For more on this, check out our blog on swing feeling. 

If you’re struggling with this verbal explanation, take a second, and the complete breakdown of The Back Should Drop.

Welcome to your Individual Hitting Process

It’s what we affectionally call an IHP. It is a specific pregame hitting program unique to every hitter specifically and uniquely designed for you with three goals in mind. It works with any hitter, with any hitting style, and with any hitting coach. 

1. Prepare and have success in today’s game.
2. Reinforce successful swing habits from today’s game to tomorrow.
3. Correct swing flaws so one bad game does not turn into a slump.

Accomplishing these goals will give you stronger hitting mechanics, leading to a more barrel-accurate swing with one critical result: Purposeful and violent offensive action.  

Read more about how to develop barrel accuracy and swing strength in my book. “BASS The Path to Elite Level Hitting.”

See ya on the field

Coach Leo

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