Posted by: BHL (Knight1285@aol.com) on Tue Feb 17 22:43:15 2004

Hi Folks
>
> Epstein believes in a straight hand path. His thoughts are identical to those of Steve Ferroli, whose work I know well. Hips spin, hands shove off straight (that's the shortest distance, you know), like a motorcycle accelerating off the top of a speeding train that's going around a curve.
>
> They both spent a lot of time with Ted and this is their interpretation of Ted's prodding "push the ball, you PUSH the ball."
>
> Maybe Ted said push but meant only unbroken wrists. We can't know now. We do know that Ted hit the dang outside of the ball when he pulled it, which was most of the time.
>
> I think this whole thing is a dead end street. Let's worry about rotating and getting a circular hand path. Then we'll worry about just hitting it, never mind which quadrant.
>
> Melvin
>
> Hi Melvin,

I had the chance to look at clips showing me the forearm position. So, perhaps my fence drill had little "literal" worth. However, before doing it, I always had trouble "slotting," and can do it well now just fine. Nevertheless, I have Mike's CD Rom, and he has an exercise where both palms are pressed together, fingers pointing towards the sky. The individual then drops the heel, and presses both hands flat. This "flat palm hitting" seems to have more in common with Mankin's principles since both fingertips end up pointing towards the plate.

To be fair to Mike, in a chapter in his book, he agrees that appliying torque from diametrically opposed directions will produce batspeed. Moreover, on his latest CD-Rom, he argues a chp is de facto for proper swing mechanics. In fact, on his forum, he describes a chp as "the path hands take, as they follow the body, tightly, around the axis."

Now, I am not attempting to market his beliefs. I am just trying to show individuals that he most likely evolved from teaching a linear hand path, and back hand torque, to BHT, THT, and chp. I just had clear that up.

Batspeed.com customers should also realize that I believe his explanation of the swing is the most thorough of any that I have ever seen! I do not, then, as some suggest, favor Mike over Jack. I just believe that Jack provides a better overall analytic explanation of the swing than Mike, whereas Mike provides better "cues" than Jack in how to attain to cues. For example, Jack has a great job in describing rotation around a stationary axis. However, I do not believe that pivoting the front heel open to a 45 degree angle woeks as well as opening the heel to 45 degrees, and dropping the heel, because, until that heel plants, Jack's rotation cannot occur!

Therefore, I think each site serves a great purpose--Jack, on what occurs in the swing, which is described in The Final Arc II, and Mike, on ways to attain it. The two complement each other quite well! This is because analytical information and "cues" are two different elements that can fit together nicely.

Therefore, if someone asked me whether I advised them to become a batspeed.com customer, or an Epstein customer, I would say do both. Then use the information to pu together a swing in the way that I described.

Sincerely,
BHL
Knight1285@aol.com