Posted by: Graylon (g_dunc@hotmail.com) on Thu Jun 12 21:41:46 2008

> (Teacherman statements)
>
> “I suggest you remove the word 'connection' from your hitting vocabulary. Only amateurs who deliver the energy to the barrel through shoulder rotation worry about connection. Of course, they HAVE to worry about it because delivering the energy through shoulder rotation is full of slop.”
>
> “The forearms......from an armpit handset.
> "Maintaining the box" is a major cause of bat drag.”
>
> “Shoulder rotation is a slow moving vehicle when it comes to adjustability and swing plane. WAY too slow for the task at hand.
> The axis of the barrel's rotation MUST be the hands.
> IF it is the spine.....I would love to pitch to you.”
>
> Hi All
>
> This is an open board where different theories of the baseball swing can be presented. However, I would caution you that the above views presented by Teacherman are invalid and if followed could limit your hitting potential. It is the rotation of the shoulders that bio-mechanically transfers the energy generated from the large muscles of the legs and torso through the arms to the bat.
>
> This is a bio-mechanical fact that Teacherman either does not understand or chooses to disregard. He has stated on this site that the energy generated from the rotation of the hips “bypasses” the shoulders and goes directly to the forearms. I would strongly suggest that before placing any value on Teacherman’s statements, you first have him produce a mechanical or physic principle that can explain how energy from hip rotation can somehow jump from the hips to the forearms without being transferred upward through the rotation of the torso and shoulders.
>
> Note: Teacherman, I will only accept your posts that addresses accepted mechanical or physic principles to supports your claims. I realize this will be difficult because I am certain there are none.
>
> Jack Mankin


Jack,

I'm not defending Teacherman, I don't need to. I have learned a lot from you and your site and I have also, learned from Teacherman, as well as Epstein and others.

IMO it is more of a "feel" issue. The shoulders are going to rotate they ultimately have to. The bypass is more of a feel. In the kids I have worked with, when they rotate the shoulders to power the swing the hands and bat are always left behind and the swing looks slow and they tend to pull off of the ball. But I will say when they do get the bat there on time and square the ball they have a lot of power.

I have found that when shoulder rotation isn't actively trying to be acheived and the focus is on the bat being turned in the hands to the ball. The shoulders stay closed longer allowing the hips to turn more, creating stretch and tension in the torso, giving the hands a solid platform to be launched from.

When I work with my son I mostly work on the hands turning the bat rearward (PLT) and then maintaining the arc of the bat to the ball, by the bat turning in the hands. Everything else seems to fall into place.

This disscusion could go on forever. Again I think it is a "feel" of the shoulders being bypassed.

One last thing. When I ask my son what he feels in his swing when he is hitting good, he just says "effortless power".

Graylon