Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Tue Jun 14 14:01:42 2005

>>> When talking about top hand torque and how you use it at the beging of the swing I am not understanding. Are you using you top hand to pull the bat up to your shoulder and to hide your hands behind your head , while your bottom hand is pushing the bottom part of the bat towards the catcher? Then at the actual swinging phase your bottom hand pulls the bat towards the pitcher and the top hand is pushing? Is your rotation actualy bringing your hands around not your arms? How do you know if you are doing this correctly? <<<

Hi Jason

In order to understand how to apply THT you must understand why it is important in generating bat speed. Great hitters generate great bat speed because their swing mechanics accelerate the bat-head around the entire swing plane. This means that they first accelerate the bat head from its launch position rearward (back toward the catcher) before they direct their energy toward the ball. Their bat has already attained good angular velocity as it accelerates through the lag position.

The average hitter only thinks of accelerating the bat-head out in front of the shoulders – or from the lag position. Their swing mechanics have the top-hand driving forward to initiate the swing, which accelerates the knob toward the ball but leaves the bat-head trailing behind the hands well into the swing. For the bat-head to be accelerated rearward during initiation, the batter’s top-hand must apply a rearward force (pulling back with the fingers) on the handle.

Jason, below are a couple posts from the Archives on this topic. They should help answer your questions.

Jack Mankin
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Re: THT

Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Sep 8 15:14:35 2003

Question/Comment:

>>> Following is a link to a file with some frames showing my interpretation of THT. Please let us know if this is correct. How do you teach it? Is the que flatten the hands useful? (The file is best viewed in frame by frame mode)

(http://webpages.charter.net/nickkio/THT.mpg

Thanks, Nick >>>

Jack Mankin's reply:

Hi Nick:

In order to generate maximum bat speed at contact, the better hitters first accelerate the bat-head back toward the catcher before rotating and directing their energies at the ball. The purpose of Top-Hand-Torque is to apply forces to the bat that will accelerate the bat-head in an arc back toward the catcher. With many hitters, Bonds and Sosa to name a couple, the bat-head is accelerated back in two phases.

The first phase occurs prior to shoulder rotation and we refer to it as “Pre-launch” Torque. During this phase, the batter starts with the bat cocked forward toward the pitcher and has his hands some distance from the back-shoulder. Bonds, for example, starts with his hands low and forward from the back-shoulder. As he prepares the launch position, his hands (as a unit) are brought up and pulled to the back-shoulder.

The bat-head is being accelerated into the normal launch position by the top-hand being pulled back at a faster rate than the bottom hand (THT). Therefore, the hands as a unit are being pulled to the back-shoulder but the top-hand is moving faster, or, arcing around the bottom-hand. During the pre-launch phase, one can clearly see the top-hand being pulled up and back (or toward the catcher).

The second phase of THT occurs during initiation as shoulder rotation begins. The direction of force applied by the top-hand at initiation continues to be rearward, but shoulder rotation accelerates the hands (as a unit) around and forward. Therefore, once shoulder rotates begins, the hands (as a unit) are viewed moving forward, but the rearward directional force of the top-hand causes it (and the bat-head) to arc around the bottom-hand.

Many good hitters do not use pre-launch torque in their swings. They apply THT at initiation as described for the second phase. Since they are applying THT as the shoulder start turning, the hands (as a unit) will always be viewed moving forward. --- Nike, the clips you are showing has the batters starting with the bat at (or past) the normal launch position.

Note: With linear mechanics, at initiation, the direction of force of the top-hand and the hands (as a unit) are both forward. This results in a straighter hand-path. --- With THT, the rearward directional force of the top-hand results in the hand-path being directed more parallel with the catcher’s shoulders into a more circular hand-path (CHC).

Jack Mankin
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Re: Do I understand THT right?

Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Fri Apr 9 03:16:11 2004

>>> Jack, I need something clarified. When you mean "apply THT at initiation of swing" I know you mean that you use your top hand to apply a rotational force to the bat and blah blah, you are "using" your top hand. Right? So what do you do with the bottom hand at initiation. BHT? Do you "use" the bottom hand in any way, or do you just let it do its own thing and only "use" the top hand at initiation. My understanding so far has been that if proper THT is applied at beginning, than BHT will come in by itself before contact. I think you said so, a long long time ago in an old thread. But I'm not exactly sure. <<<

Hi
During initiation, the bottom-hand stays at the back-shoulder and serves more as a pivot point for the back-arm to pull the top-hand (and bat-head) around. But it is important to note that as the top-hand is being pulled back toward the catcher, shoulder rotation is pulling the bottom-hand (and knob) around toward the pitcher.

The top-hand pulling back not only accelerates the bat-head into the swing plane by applying torque to the bat, it also helps keep the lead-arm connected with body rotation to generate a productive circular hand-path. And Dougdinger, you remember correctly. --- "A ballistic motion, once initiated, produces trajectories that can only be efficiently changed at its margins." – This is an important bio-mechanical principle.

For pitches from the middle-in, when a batter correctly applies THT and CHP at initiation, the bat-head trajectories will stay is sync with shoulder rotation trajectories. Therefore, the lead-shoulder will have rotated to the point where the bottom-hand is being pulling back toward the catcher (105 degree position) generating BHT to accelerate the bat to contact.

Jack Mankin
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