Posted by: daw (()) on Fri Feb 1 13:27:17 2008

> > Hi All
> >
> > I have often stated that “the goal of hip rotation in the swing is to aid in generating a more powerful shoulder rotation.” Therefore, would it not be more accurate to say “we hit with our shoulders” rather than “we hit with our hips?” Your thoughts would be appreciated.
> >
> > Jack Mankin
>
> Hi Jack
>
> Just a note then we we then say we hit with our arms which rotate around because of our shoulders and then we then would hit with our hands because our arms rotate around.
>
> I would see the statement that we hit the ball by using our body not just using the bat. Make your body move correctly and the bat will get to the hitting area with power and ease creating the best chance to get a hit but if you use the bat to hit the ball the success of hitting the ball is followed by failure to produce a hit.
>
> Efficient swings are created by eliminating resistance during the swinging process thus if the back foot does not turn the hips will encounter resistance when rotating if the hips do not turn then the shoulders have resistance during their rotation and so on. Resistance will feel like power because it feels like you are doing a strong movement but that strong movement is the muscles fighting to work against the resistance. The easiest swing is the swing where a 200 pound body is rotating/moving a less then two pound object.
>
> Resistance within a swing is created when any movement forward is stopped in order for the body to rotate in one spot. Every swing has some component of forward momentum and the ability to control that momentum without compromising ease of rotation will lead to more efficient swings.
>
> Jack, the closer to the bat that you put the focus of the swing (shoulders instead of hips)the less likely that the swing will be efficient enough to produce consistent hits. I can tell my students just to lift and turn their back foot and they do not even have to worry about turning their hips which produces shoulder rotation and so on and so on. A hitter can still make an error later in their swing then turning their foot or their hips but at least they are in the right position to produce the powerful swing once they make those corrections.
>
> Dave P





An interesting point of view. I'm always most interested in what coaches actually say to their hitters, to key their swing.

We have had some success coming at it from the other direction. We work at getting into the correct launch position but from there we focus almost entirely on the front shoulder, and initiating by exploding it around. Yes, some things will happen in the legs, hips and torso before the shoulder actually comes around but, but just as you have found that keying the early stages takes care of the later, we've found that when focusing on the "result" (firing the shoulders around) the initial part of that "process" (legs/hips/torso) ends up taking care of itself.

Two ways to skin a cat.