Posted by: Alan () on Tue Oct 28 10:34:28 2003

> I ran across this site, even has picture. Rotation theory is spreading. What do you think? Site: http://sportstechnique.com/baseball.html


This is Ken Van Bogaert's variation of what he calls the "rotational swing". I purchased Ken's DVD a couple weeks before I bought Jack Mankin's "The Final Arc" from batspeed.com. Ken and Jack do NOT teach the same thing. Ken advocates many things that are completely contrary to what is taught on the batspeed.com site: keeping the bat barrel above the hands, extending the arms through contact, a long swing, weight goes forward (against a stiff front leg), and most importantly, wrist roll immediately prior to contact (!).

I am not quite sure what "rotational" means in Ken's context. It is certainly not the same thing that is discussed at sites like batspeed.com or setpro. To be honest, I haven't taken his DVD off the shelf since I ordered Final Arc. Ken's techniques may work for some (maybe big beefy guys like Ken and his son, who can manhandle the bat through contact), but I frankly did not want to invest the time teaching my kids stuff that seemed so radically different from what I was seeing on slo-mo video of MLB hitters.

Jack's teachings, on the other hand, seem to be much closer to what I see in major league swings. While I am still not sure if I see top-hand-torque in Bond/Sosa/Sheffield video clips, Jack is dead-on right about the contact position: bat barrel an extension of lead arm, lead elbow up, lead hand on top of bat, trailing hand below, body rotating around a fixed axis tilted back to perpendicular relative to the ball's line of flight, back arm tucked into slot, etc.

Alan