Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Jun 30 10:57:46 2003

>>> I have a nine year old son who with very limited coaching hit the ball very very well, his swing was more linear mechanics than anything, knuckles lined up and his wrists broke natuarlly creating excellent batspeed. Last year I purchased the Final Arc video and have pretty much changed alot of what he was doing. He is generating batspeed, but he just dosen't seem as comfortable, there are times when he will crush the ball and other times when he seems to either hit dribblers or little pop flys that can't make it out of the infield. He will hit on the Nedco bat action unit and he will crush the ball for hours, same swing over and over. One thing I have noticed is that his step forward is gone and I can't get him to do it at all. Another thing is that he seems to hit off the end of the bat alot. any ideas? <<<

Hi Eight

The number one reason rotational mechanics generates greater bat speed than linear mechanics is due to the path the hands take during the swing. In a good rotational swing, about 50% of the bat speed developed come from a circular path of the hands. Both types of mechanics rely on torque to accelerate the bat-head, but with a straighter hand-path (linear mechanics), torque (pushing the back-hand past the lead-hand) must account for 80% (or more) of the bat-speed.

When doing a Swing Review of a batter who is having trouble adapting to rotational mechanics, I usually note that although the batter rotates his or her body, they still extend their hands in a straighter path. Using a straighter hand-path and trying to accelerate the bat-head with Top and Bottom-hand-torque (the rotational method of applying torque to the bat) just does not work efficiently.

Without the bat-head acceleration that comes from the circular-hand-path, the batter quickly falls behind the power curve and must extend the back-arm in an attempt to catch up. There is no way a batter can use Bottom-hand-torque if the back-arm extends. Therefore, it is imperative that your son practices and develops the correct hand-path for rotational mechanics. Once he can accelerate the bat-head using only the path of the hands (no torque applied), he can start adding to that bat speed by adding Top and Bottom-hand-torque.

Eight, other than not taking a timing step, I bet that your son’s problems stem from not generating the correct hand-path for rotational mechanics. I will explain how to develop the circular-hand-path in a July 1 post.

Jack Mankin