Posted by: James (JHool2@aol.com) on Thu Jun 15 18:16:38 2000

JACK......PLEASE RESPOND.....WHY DO SO MANY COACHES PRESCRIBE THE FENCE DRILL IN THE NAME OF BEING "SHORT"TO THE BALL? AM I RIGHT OR AM I WRONG THAT IF YOU HAVE A CIRCULAR HAND PATH AND KEEP ELBOW IN THE SLOT YOUR SWING WILL BE NEITHER TOO "LONG" NOR TOO "SHORT"...IT WILL BE "JUST RIGHT"??????? CAN YOU PLEASE ILLUSTRATE WHAT A "LONG" SWING IS AND WHAT "HANDS SHORT TO THE BALL IS"? CAN YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW ANY MAJOR LEAGUER WOULD HIT WITH HIS EXACT SAME MECHANICS IF THERE WAS A "FENCE" BETWEEN HIM AND THE PLATE????PLEEEEASE RESPOND, JACK, BECAUSE I HAVE POSED THESE SAME Q'S TO FENCE DRILLERS AND RATHER THAN RESPONDING THEY GET UPSET....BUT, I REALLY WANT TO LEARN, BUT FIRST I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND.....TELL ME, AM IRIGHT OR AM I WRONG????
>
> GRC,,
> I have seen you're comments on Fence drills before on another site so I know you have an opinion on this. In short your previous comments stated that you do not believe in the fence drill. In my opinion This drill does work good in some cases but like most things in life it is not for everyone. I had 2 kids on my current ball team that had a BAD loop (Long swing) what ever you want to call it. And with the fence drill they learned to for lack of a better word Push Pull the bat thru the zone. These kids went from a slow bat with NO power to catching up with the ball and 120% increase in power. Part of a baseball swing is made up of muscle memory and In these cases the FENCE DRILL helped turn bad muscle memory into something that could be worked with and actually get results, which in turn causes the child to respond more and get back the desire to TRY and WANT to hit again. So does it work? "YES" it does in certain cases. GD

@ I dont know it all but I think that the fence drill came about because people saw some video tapes of major leaguers, and basiclaly what they saw was that when a major leaguer rotates, his hands usually get to his forntside, outfront , to his front hip, whatever you call it ---- before the bat head. Hence the short, inside-out swing look. The fence drill was developed to stop kids from PUSHING the top hand at the pitcher and the bat out away from the body. Pushing is wrong, but the linearist didnt realize that the mechanics they taught did not displace the bat and therefore no batspeed would be created early in the swing. Major leaguers they saw in the videos were creating batspeed early in the swing, VIA - PRE SWING TOP HAND TORQUE. BUt they did not see that. For the most part its true that the hands do reech the frontside before the bat. less true for outside pitches, i think. Basically prior to the swing, good hitters pull their top hand back toward the catcher. This causes the bat to start a tight loop. Then the rotation brings the hands to the frontside faster then the loop casts the bat outward, so the swing usually looks short. But its a short swing with properly initiated bat speed. Linearists ignore the top hand torque portion i just tried to describe. so they get their hands to the frontside but their bats have no whip because there is no displacement prior to rotation, to cause any type of inertia in the bat head. So they got to the frontside and THEN try to muscle the bat around. Its not a successful way to hit. ANd thats where the fence drill can go wrong. JIm