Posted by: chris () on Mon Jun 19 10:50:37 2000

The Fence drill is great cause it is designed to get the hands (and the head of the bat to the ball quicker i.e. later in the swing). But if you want pure power, take a great big loopy swing and start the bat head early, and I guarantee you will win the distance championship. That is simple a result of the radius of swing and extra time to accelerate the bat, therefore the speed of the bat head is greater
Here's the problem guys, - you can't do that against good pitching - you are usually striking out. Period. So watch the kids who are 10 years old and smashing the ball, and I will show you a good golf swing. When they are 16 years old those kids have either learned to bring the hands in the zone quicker or are gone from baseball. So early bat head speed is great, as long as you don't trade off being able to get the head of the bat on the ball, which means late decisions, and moving the head through as quickly as possible.
To compensate for this, the body is used to torgue up - and then literally uncork with the arms taking the power stored in the hips and abs, through the shoulders and into the arms. This increases the force placed on the arms (rather than starting early out back with just arms, you now get tremdendous force applied to the bat by taking the body energy from the hips leading and then putting it into the arms as you torgue through.
The maximum acceleration still occurs out front - this is obvious - cause pull hits go a lot further. (Just look at the TV highlights and watch which ball jump off the bat - its when the pitch is up and in when a batter gets around on it and say goodbye.) So extending the hands (while in fact happening after contact), reinforces a player that he must continue to accelerate as the ball is met - or go "through" the ball.

So I vote for the fence drill. It may not cure everything. But it permits a better batting average. And if they learn to use the rest of their body properly, will generate great power.




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????
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> > 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
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> @ 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