Posted by: Jerry Ridder (jerryridder@excite.com) on Thu Oct 21 07:03:09 2004

(and yes, I too have an electrical engineering degree and design control systems)
>
> Now spend as much time as you did for all your degrees and this will all pay off.
> What I mean is, all this THT, CHP, BHT, Scap, .......... never made sense to me 3 years ago. In fact, it wasn't until this year that my son started hitting the ball using rotational mechanics.
> Most of your time is spent correcting all the things that you taugh him prior to understanding rotational mechanics. ha....
> Your questions will not be answered over night. So, relax bud.
>
> Oh, let me tell you a little secret, ignore that teacher dude, all he'll do is neg you out.

>> Tony,
Thanks for your comments. The reference to EE, etc. was for Paul's benefit (the super moderator of setpro.com). I was pointing out that just because one has a degree, that, in itself does not make you an expert.
As I stated earlier, my son is starting to utilize some of the concepts of "rotational" mechanics as demonstated on Jack's DVD. He certainly has more "pop" in his bat. As you say, it is very difficult to erase "linear" memory, but he is a quick study. The playoffs have given me a lot of opportunities to see various styles of hitters. Use whatever words you want to describe the action, but it is clear that the better hitters all have similar mechanics... shoulder rotation to "hide" the hands while stretching the lead arm, initiation of top hand movement away from the pitcher (rotation around bottom hand), in conjunction with, or because of, back elbow drop to the slot causing the bat head to rotate in an arc to the swing plane, tremendous front shoulder pull as the legs and torso accelerate the upper body and get the hands into contact position (classic trailing arm "L" and almost a straight line from the lead shoulder to the bat head). There may be some "uncocking" of the wrists in an attempt to control the momentum of the bat, but my son claims that he doesn't feel the use of his wrists to accelerate the bat has he did with his "old" swing. And all this seems to be done around a stationary axis which is perpendicular to the swing path... the swing path being along the line of the pitch (i.e. a slight upward tilt from back to front). This sound to me like "rotational" mechanics, but I am here to learn. Does it sound like I have the basics right?

Thanks,
Jerry