Posted by: coach halou (halour@netscape.net) on Sun Feb 13 14:47:47 2005

Jack I have been reading your message board with both interest and amusement. As a long time coach (more than 30 yrs). I hate to admit it but I have taught both rotational and linear hitting. To my dismay I was convinced by college coaches recruiting softball players that this is what they taught and wanted when looking for recruits. I saw a lot of talent reduced for several years and decided to resort back to the rotational style. I have read on your board that some (experts) dont agree with the concept of THT. Maybe I can give them an example that will help clear this up for them. When I was a young lad I spent a lot of time on my uncles farm. He taught me the art of roping. I became very profcient at this. To make a long story short I use this concept to teach batters to pull back to initiate the rotational forces needed to create optimum bat speed. If your hand goes forward first you loose all of the torque needed to start the rope in a circular path. Even when throwing the rope forward the throw must wait for the circular hand path to be completed (which means no linier movement). If linier movement is used the rope will go limp and all is lost. If you want to get the head of the bat around to hit the ball this concept works. If you want weak hit infield grounders use linier techniques.