Posted by: Coach C () on Sun Nov 23 23:12:24 2003

Way down below in a post there was a discussion about not hitting the ball at full batspeed. i believe this to be true, however i don't think that most hitter back off 20%.
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> Tom mentioned the caos theory in evolution of the human being and its application to hitting. i think what he meant was the following. if you're hitting the bag and you're using your game swing and it's clocked at 90mph, that's your comfort range. if the coach tells you to concentrate on the rotation of your hips and rotate as hard as you possible can, pulling with the lead hip and you clock in at 93mph your mechanics can't have deteriorated or else it would be impossible to increase your speed. what has deteriorated is your concentration on timing/ball. now the coach tells you to maintane that hip rotation and now really concentrate on pulling that THT... now you've clocked in at 95mph. shoddy mechanics, no that would be impossible again, right? if the hitter was extending his hands in his max THT that would have slowed the bathead. if he had lunged linear that would have wobbled his axis of rotation and again slower batspeed. once again what has happened is his focus is on mechanics and not on timing/ball.
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> Now the coach wants you to do one more thing... keep that 100% rotation and THT now he wants you to really blast the BHT... bingo 95mph without a care in the world about hitting the ball. coach says that was fast but he knows that you can swing faster than that. give me a balls to the wall swing and don't think about anything but swinging the bat as fast as you can(INTENTION) WOW!! 98mph
> what was the hitter concentrating on? i'd say nothing... it was caos. it was 100% maxed out swing. could he do that in a game? yea. could he hit the ball? probably not. so why even do it?
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> By pushing your body/mind into caos it either dies or reorganizes into a higher level of evolution. swing at 100% often in practice then back down and keeping it smooth, loose and ever
> accelerating... by backing down from caos to say 93mph you are now capable of focusing on the timing aspect of hitting. and little by little you can get your game swing closer to caos... keep in mind that if your bat speed is going up your mechanics have to be falling into place, it's the law and the laws of physics usually can't be broken. make any sense... regards, rich

One of the best posts I've read in awhile.

I believe it to be human instinct for most to always try to do more, especially when things are going bad, or (strangely enough) when things are going really well. This is when the science of hitting mechanics sometimes (actually most times) crosses the limits of the human condition. I would suggest that in every facet of motor learning (writing, speaking, guitar playing, etc.), the aim was to always start slow and work up. However, most people (me included) are impatient and want instant gratification. We consume ourselves more with the outcome, not the process. The process comes first in all things. Hitting the ball hard is not the process it is the outcome. Batspeed is the outcome as well. It has been stated many times it's batspeed before contact that matters, I whole heartedly agree with everyone on this issue. The problem is that most people have batspeed after contact and most batspeed indicators don't reflect this key point. Hitting the ball hard doesn't say whether ones mechanics are right or not, generating batspeeds over 90+ plus doesn't indicate sounds mechanics. Sounds mechanics will give you those things, but those things will not give you sound mechanics. So what comes first.......the process. Go 80% to 90% and you'll be focusing on the process, not the outcome. Peace.

Coach C