Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Wed Nov 10 17:25:48 2004

>>> jack it finally cooled down in fl. so I went out to hit some again and I tried to do some 1 handed swings with a 34/31 bat.I found to my surprise that I hit a ball with my lead arm only nearly 300' in the air,yet top hand only they were line drives just over the infield and ground balls through infield.Yet when put together I did not hit a ball over the 310" fence,these were all off tee.I also realize that my bottom hand is my dominant arm which felt like it had some play in it.The bottom hand also tended to get under the ball more where the top hand got over the top .Some of this makes perfect sense to me but my concern was how much was my top hand helping me,or tht for that matter.Then I thought maybe I am not applying it well.I will admit that the ball just jumps off the bat with both hands for liners in the gap and it gives me more consistent swing plane ability ,and I am using my whole body on these swings so it isnt a case of just using bottom hand vs. top hand.
I guess the surprise that I hit it 1 handed that far on a tee to begin with and then not so far with the other seemed to make me wonder if there is something here to make of it or not,just a head scratcher puzzle to me at this point. <<<

Hi Rql

Sorry for the delay in my reply. The salmon and steelhead are starting their run and I was traveling to Oregon. – Although I have worked mostly with the top-hand, my work with the one-hand swing produced results similar to your experience.

Most of my work with one-handed swings has been with the top-hand swinging at the heavy bag. I have bat speed readings from students and myself for various one-hand paths and lengths but not for ball flight distances. I also have bat speed readings for using the same hand-paths but swinging the bat with the steering wheel knob attached (eliminating wrist torque). --- Note: After taking videos of their swings, all students should start learning a CHP by using the lighter dowel with the knob – it is a much easier weight for them to work with the knob. Then they can use their bats for the one and two-handed swings

Below are a couple of interesting observations I made.

(1) After developing a good CHP with the steering wheel knob, many students could attain as much or more bat speed swinging their bat with one hand as attained with their original two-handed swings.

(2) For a given hand-path, I found my bat speed attained with the steering wheel knob attached to the bat (31 – 34) was about 15% lower than when allowing my wrist to apply torque.

When you analyze the student’s one-hand and two-hand swings frame-by-frame, it is not difficult to see why the bat speeds attained from both were close to the same. The total bat speed attained is determined by how much was contributed from both the CHP and how much from the torque they applied. Their one-handed swings accelerated the bat almost entirely from the CHP (little torque) while their two-handed was largely powered by torque (little CHP).

Most of the original swing mechanics (two-handed) exhibited by the students closely resemble the linear mechanics exhibited by the batter in Nick’s clip - http://webpages.charter.net/nickkio/HandstoBall/Linear05.mpg . Their fairly straight hand-paths (little CHP) transferred little of the body’s rotational energy into bat speed. Most of their bat speed (maybe 75+%) came from the torque they applied by driving their top-hand past a slower moving bottom-hand. – Remember, in the baseball swing, “there is no whip of the bat that occurs from a straight extension of the hands.

After working on developing a more productive hand-path, many of these students generated bat speeds with their one-handed swings, equal to or better than, their two-handed swings. From earlier tests, I would say that about 85% of their bat speed (one hand) came from the CHP with about 15% from wrist torque. Their one-handed swings were somewhat longer and required a couple of extra swing frames to bring the bat to contact.

Decent bat speed can be achieved with a linear swing relying mainly on torque (75+ %) to accelerate the bat. However, in order to generate great bat speed in 4 to 5 swing frames requires that torque must be added to a productive hand-path (more 60% CHP, 40% torque to 50/50 %). For most of these young hitters, it will take a great deal of time, effort and ability to maintain a productive hand-path while learning to applying torque (THT and BHT).

Jack Mankin