Posted by: KSTEVENS () on Mon Mar 1 12:00:07 2004

Jack,

I read the following from your batspeed research section:

"So, in the swing of a great hitter, what appears to be wrist action is actually the "push - pull" action of the hands generating a large amount of torque. This torque was developed from the large muscle groups and causes the bat head to be greatly accelerated. --- If the batter does not initiate the swing with torque and rotational forces, he will not be able to obtain the position of power required to apply maximum torque to the bat before contact. This is especially true for pitches on the outside part of the plate."


Would you agree that over-gripping the bat can prevent a hitter from being able to get torque? And in regard to the section under truisms and fallacies about "keeping the shoulders in there," one of the things that I think results from this "bad" advice is that the hitter begins to think of the body as two separate segments. Without even thinking about it, I have found that some kids end up having no coordination (for lack of a better word) between there upper and lower body. For example, like you said, their shoulders are not rotating at the same time as their lower body. I usually tell kids that do this to forget about thinking of the body as being divided into upper and lower halves, but to think of the body as one unit. This unit must rotate all at once. This usually gets the kid to understand that his upper and lower body (shoulder/hips) must be in sync and rotating together. Do you think that this is an accurate way to explain this concept?