Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Thu Aug 14 09:48:38 2003

>>> It seems like you are saying front leg should be bent bit at hitting.com (Huggins) they say it should be stiff? Please clarify. <<<

Hi Art

The batting program offered by Dave Hudgens is very different from the batting principles featured here at Batspeed.com. Hudgens teaches the linear approach to hitting, whereas, we promote rotational mechanics. Linear mechanics has the batter shift his weight forward to promote the full extension of the hands (and knob of the bat) straight back at the pitcher, which has the bat-head training linearly behind the hands. --- Rotational mechanics promotes the batter to keep his hands (and knob of the bat) back at the shoulder and allow shoulder rotation to accelerate the hands into a circular hand path (CHP) and the bat-head to be accelerated in an arc back toward the catcher.

With the Hudgens program, the batter is taught to shift his weight to a firm (or stiff) front leg. The front leg action blocks the front-hip while the back hip comes through. This means the body rotates around the lead-hip. Dave Hudgens refers to this as a "Back to Center" move because the center of the body, the spine, moves forward during the swing. --- Rotational mechanics has the batter rotate around a stationary axis (the spine). This means the lead-hip must rotate back (toward the catcher) at the same rate the back hip rotates forward (toward the pitcher). To facilitate getting the lead-hip to rotate back toward the catcher, the batter strides to a well flexed front-leg. The lead-hip is then rotated back as the front-leg extends (straightens) just before contact.

Therefore, both linear and rotational mechanics would have the lead-leg straight at contact. But they have very different approaches as to why and how the leg becomes straight.

Jack Mankin