Posted by: grc () on Thu Dec 2 08:07:56 2004

"Put your hands in a cocked position with the bat in a vertical plane and the tip pointed slightly to the pitcher. The bat can be in front of the helmet( extreme) or over the top of the helmet. You will notice your rear elbow will be fairly high. Now stride to hit and see what happens to the hands.
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> You cannot go straight to the ball from there and you must get on plane first. This bat position will force you to ' scap load" the rear shoulder in order to hit the ball. As I have suggested before...."
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> the above comment was recently made by swingbuster at setpro ....."The bat can be in front of the helmet( extreme)"is indeed extreme, but nevertheless i think the comment illustrates what i have said many times before: sufficient bat cock & inward turn will automatically force the knob-to-the-catcher thing, and the hips will automatically be ahead of yhe hands, all without the hitter even having to think about it...and of course the high elbow helps prepare the hands for their circular habd path.....
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> Hi grc
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> It would certainly make a batting coach’s job simple if you were correct. However, of the videos sent to me for swing analysis, many of them have the bat cocked forward, have the back-elbow high and have a fairly good inward-turn but produce a less than satisfactory swing.
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> I agree that a good launch position is necessary to produce a good swing. But regardless of how great the launch position, many (if not most) of these batters that cock the bat forward still initiate the swing with the wrong forces applied in the wrong direction. Only a very few of these kids have the mechanics and rhythm to correctly sweep a cocked forward bat cleanly into the swing plane.
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> In fact, I suggest to most of them that it would be more productive for them to learn to acquire productive mechanics starting with the bat already in the swing plane. Once they can exhibit sound rotational transfer principles from that position, then start raising the bat-head or cocking it forward like Bonds and other Pro hitters.
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> Jack Mankin
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jack, if sufficient bat cock & inward turn does not automatically force the knob-to-the-catcher thing, what specific mental or physical technique do you suggest?.....it seems to me that it is mentally unnatural to move the knob toward the catcher....when a ball is coming from the pitcher, all the natural instincts are movements in the direction of the pitch, not the opposite direction...
if i was of the opinion that the hitter needed to make a CONSCIOUS effort to move the knob toward the pitcher, for a hitter new to this technique i would want him to establish that muscle memory of what i consider to be an unnatural act...the best way to establish that muscle memory would be for him to practice striding/hands back/inward turn with a conscious movement of the knob toward the catcher, over and over again....i would suppose that with enough repetitions over an appropriate length of time that the hitter could get in the habit of always initially moving the knob toward the pitcher without even thinking about it....
but i think the key, in the long run, is for the hitter to accomplish the knob-to-the-pitcher thing without having to think about it in the batter's box....eventually and hopefully the knob-to-the-pitcher thing would become an instinctive reaction....
but again, do you agree that initially the knob-to-the-pitcher thing is an unnatural instinctive reaction and that initially a conscious effort has to be made to accomplish this.....and what specific actions should the hitter take to practice this?.....respectfully, grc....