Posted by: Coach C () on Sun Apr 20 01:22:04 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. <<<
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> Hi Coach C
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> Jack Mankin

We do have very similar views and in the end you may be right. However, I won't let you off that easy. Power, as I see it, comes mainly from the degree of torso coil (upper half) against the legs (lower half). My feel has always been that if I can begin in the stance with the front leg slightly open (5 to 10 degrees) and toe slightly open (5 to 10 degrees) and set-up with a term I would call "upper body coil", I've eliminated one major step in the swing. You see Jack I feel that the stride serves no purpose in the swing. Over the years it's been called a timing step or a balance move, but my thought has always been is that it's a positioning move......so I decided to eliminate that step all together. The results for me were amazing. Contrary to what I thought would be the case I hit the ball to all fields, this I theorized was a result of not transfering any significant weight to the lead side before the swing, thus staying on the ball with the lead shoulder as long as I needed to. I truly have developed the sensation of just sitting there and weighting for the ball to get to me. One rather obvious benifit was the head movement, it went to zero. The rear hip drives my swing, thus timing issues that the front side push can do to a swing are more easily tamed by just hitting with the back side. The only stride I have in my swing is when my back foot lifts from the violent twisting of the rear hip through the ball. My rear hip and bat are one unit.

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Now about the lead leg, if one gets into a fairly athletic stance, and begins to turn the the upper body, the lead leg will straighten automatically.....the harder one makes that turn the harder that leg will straighten.......the harder comes from the abs, lower back, shoulders. My swing thought is to swing with fast shoulders...staying connected of course. If I were to do any purposeful driving with the legs I risk having the transmission slip, bad timing, head movement, and possibly pulling off the ball. In your description of lead leg drive, is there any head movement prior to the initiation of the swing, because if it's pushing then there may be some. In your description of lead leg drive what would be the limits of that drive, I assume the harder one pushes the more power. To me there are too many variables in a game that needs consistancy. Is it your contention that the legs provide power and also maintain balance?

One last thought........I feel all my power is in my lower back and abs, but feel additional strain in the legs, glutes and quadraceps, because of there effort to stay balance. My feelings are that THE PUSHING YOU DESCRIBE IS ACTUALLY THE RESULT OF THE UPPER BODY AND REAR HIP JOINT BRINGING THE BAT WEIGHT FORWARD, DRIVING THAT LEAD FOOT DOWN TO THE GROUND AND THE LEAD FOOT FIGHTING TO STAY CONNECTED TO THE GROUND. This is how one has the feeling of staying back. I feel that having the back side and bat working together gives me my max potential.

One last question.......How far should one's feet be apart at contact? If you say it vary's then do wider legs give me more push or narrow legs. Willie Mays had a huge gap between his feet, but Palmeiro hit's with very narrow feet, both great power. There feet move to where they feel balanced I say.

I understand I will not win this debate with you, but I must stay firm.........driving (or pushing) would seem to be bad for me.


If baseball was played on ice would you push then? In your scenerio you would slip much earlier in the swing then me. Neither one of us would hit the ball, but you'd look funnier (HA! HA!)

Balance is the key for me in all things.

Keep up the good work my friend.