Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Jan 5 23:39:49 2004

>>> Jack,

My explanation is simple. I believe powerful leg drive is a fundamental component of the successful baseball swing.

The question is: How does one recruit leg muscle fibres to maximally drive hips (and overall resultant batspeed)?

In my experience, lower leg muscles (calves, and particularly ankles) are simply too small and remote to contribute significant power to the bat at the time it is required. Rather, employing these muscles strenuously has a dampening effect on overall power transfer since inertia must pull more rigid mass (lower limbs) in a circular arc.

My theory is similar to your loose wrist theory, where you debunk direct wrist muscle flexing as an unwarranted impedance to overall power transfer through the joint. I believe the small lower leg muscle group is best suited for fine balance control, but little more.

However, I am flexible, in that I respect we are all in various states of muscle development. I can envision one with exceptionally strong calves being able to utilize these muscles efficiently. This depends somewhat on the individual, however, I am less convinced of ankle muscle contribution. This grouping is just too small and remote to significantly drive the bathead.

Calf and ankle muscles are necessarily slower to react than thigh muscles since they are located approximately 25% further from the brainstem.

See http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys/4d.html

This article suggests the speed of propogation for mammalian motor neurons is 10-120m/s. Assume maximum speed, and calf and thigh are 0.5m apart. Then it takes 0.5/120=4.2ms longer for the calf to receive the signal. For a 90mph (40.2m/s) fastball, thats 0.17m.

A signal delay in which a pitch travels 17cm is fairly significant.

Regards,
Mike. <<<

Hi Mike

Good answer. I agree with your wrist and ankle analogy and I sure do not have the expertise to challenge your data.

Jack Mankin