Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sat Aug 21 11:38:34 2004

Lots of discussion has been going on about tht lately and many seem to be confused.My
question to those with film is does top hand begin to pull bat back before slightest dip in
the rear elbow.Do you feel hitters try consciously or sub-consciously to pull bat back with
op hand while keeping the elbow up level to the ground.
> >
> > the elbow moves first, but only slightly before the top hand starts to go to work for
the great hitters.
>
> >>The reason I wrote this thread is there is always so much talk about tht but I have
been finding with kids I work with that if they load properly then begin lowering there
elbow before rotating lead shoulder they have tht.I agree with all of you with the
abducts,and externals but I can't teach that to kids so I try to find steps that are easy that
gain the same result.Load,lower[elbow] and turn is there sequencing.I have however for
most of my video studying saw that during the load the knob began to go at catcher which
tipped barrel somewhat toward the pitcher and as soon as the front heel came down then
elbow came down and this was the beginning of the barrel being pulled back to catcher
with top hand..
> I believe the essence of tht is getting loaded then allowing the back side to focus on
slotting the elbow which pulls the top hand back and barrel while the lead shoulder then
kicks in[this area is where I think Tom says scap is still loading]the lead shoulder pull
helps keep hands ahead of elbow and controls the knob[also swing plane]as it wants to go
up from elbow slotting,lead shoulder balances it out with bottom hand pull.
> What often breaks down tht is that rear shoulder rotation wants to take over lead
shoulder rotation which stops applying the torque or the top hand wants to push to the
ball 1st.

rql-

I think that's a great description that can work to unload/untwist things from the middle
up instead of interrupting the desired full load/unload by the back shoulder going out of
sequence (analagous to what you might call"rushing" in throwing).