Posted by: Jack Mankin (Mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Sat Apr 19 23:01:34 2003

>>> My feel is that 100% of the power comes from the torso and that my legs respond to the torque. For my legs to respond to all of the torque they need to be in an athletic position, strong, stable and in touch with the ground. I feel a strong sense of leverage from the ground. <<<

Hi Coach C

You have made many valid points in your posts to the site and you and I appear to have very similar views regarding what constitutes good swing mechanics. But I would like to discuss a little further your contention that 100% of the power that drives shoulder rotation comes from the torso. If I read your post correctly, you feel that the legs and hips serve mainly as a platform for the torso to rotate the shoulders from and hip rotation is just a reaction to torso rotation.

As I see it, your contention may have some merit for the golf swing but not with the baseball swing. In the golf swing, the hips only rotate about 30 to 40 degrees to contact. With the baseball swing, the hips rotate 80 to 90 degrees while (from the inward-turn position) the shoulders rotate around 105 to 115 degrees to contact. This means the torso accounts for about 30 to 40 degrees of angular displacement of the shoulders while the legs and hips are supplying close to 90 degrees. Therefore, I place a much greater value on leg drive (especially the lead-leg) to the swing.

Jack Mankin