Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Tue Dec 23 21:24:34 2003

Thanks again for the excellent clips,Nick,and Happy
Holidays !

Nomar goes in and out of the stride style,but not much
stride for the past few seasons.Was this a stride just for
the derby or was this long enough ago that he was still
doing some stride ?

He has a great swing to study.He is one where you can
really see the back foot turn backward as he finishes
cocking the hips.Lugo does this to and jump starts the
hips by pointing the back foot toward the pitcher.

I tend to like this belly-up,hook the handath as much as
possible swing because I believe it is the quickest
swing.As I mentioned before,I think the key to the
transfer mechanics is that the center of rotation of the
bat keeps getting closer to the center of mass of the bat
("swing radius stays circular or hooking").This seems to
prevent deceleration and encourages a quick swing
which reduces timing error.There must be some
physics type way of doing the inertia/momentum/kinetic
calculations,but it still intuitively seems to me that these
players who belly up and hook the handpath like
Nomar and Bonds are getting both quickness and great
max batspeed.I don't think they are prisoners of a zero
sum/either/or game.i think they get better power and
better average.I think Arod is rotational in the same
sense(swing radius circular or diminishing/no
disconnection from launch to contact),but more off the
plate and therefore not as quick and with a wider range
of adjustment required to cover the zone.

The lead arm/bottom hand is determining the swing
radius via tight connection to the front scap which
"unshrugs" as necessary to hook the handpath.The
back arm will go along for the ride on the late approach/
through contact/into follow-through,.Ideally at
contact,the bat should turn about an axis between the
hands if it has hooked maximally.Longer swings will
have the center of rotation still off the knob of the bat as
much as 6 inches or a foot or more.

The more you hook the handpath,the more you apply
BHT,and the more the torso totally transfers its
momentum to turn(not slide/drag)the bat.For
outside,you depend on more THT to get the bathead
out fast,so inspite of a high load/limited torso turn
situation,you still get excellent batspeed.The combo of
THT/BHT/circular handpath is the minimal/simplest way
of adjusting to cover the zone.THT is necessary in
every case to adequately load for the swing.BHT is
necessary in every case to prevent deceleration before
contact.

The theory is nice,but I think more important are the
sequence and synchronization of joint motions during
the cocking of the hips(hitch the hands) and cocking of
the hands(scap load/center bat/hide hands) followed by
THT( slotting of elbow/rotate the bathead-rotate the
front foot)) and uncocking of hips to drive launch(drop
and tilt).

Then to "teach it" you can break things down and
backward chain with no-stride,then add stride.Jack
demonstrates most of this nicely on Final Arc II.

One handed top hand swings for rotational component/
circular handpath.

Add bottom hand to apply BHT.

Rotae the foot/rotate the bathead to apply THT,etc.

You can customize the backward chaining progression
depending on the needs/style of the individual.