Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Thu Mar 10 11:24:11 2005

> > Most great hitters have virtually ALL the weight on the front foot at contact.Same with golfers.
> >
> > Lau Sr was one of the first to applly the golf type principles to hitting,emphasizing a weight shift TO not AGAINST the front leg.He called this "front foot hitting" which was preferred to "back foot hitting" "bugsquishers".He encouraged a forceful forward move and turning the back ankle over to get "heel to sky".
> >
> > Some hitters can keep a little weight back if they really lean their axis of rotation back.Bonds could be an example.Lau Jr classifies him as one of the few successful "backfoot hitters",but even Bonds gets pretty much entirely off the back foot at contact,see for example the Bonds 02 clip ar youthbaseballcoaching.com.
>
> In your opinion does Mike Epstein and Jack Menkin teach this??

Yes.

My opinion is that both Jack and Mike teach a short swing radius version of the rotational swing that is optimized for quickness,Mike emphasizes lower body more,including specifically the "L" in the back leg which goes along with getting off the backside.Jack has found that focussing more on upper body gives the desired result.I personally think their info fits well/complements well.I am also an arm action is king believer in that the optimal organization of the swing is best learned ultimately by upper body/arm action focus once the basic rotational pattern is learned with techniques like Jack and Mike describe-bat on deltoid/one hand swings/heavy bag/torque numbers progressions,etc.

The Lau/Peavy approach on the other hand promotes a longer swing which I think is less than optimal.Still it is a rotational/connected swing that Lau is after that is based on the same fundamental pattern.