Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Tue Jul 29 10:03:21 2008

>>> To clarify I shouldn't say that a player's front arm has to be fully extended at 180 degrees (straight). The only reason you see a bend in a major leaguers front arm when they swing is because their biceps and pectoral muscle get in the way of each other as shoulder rotation begins. The upper arm is pushed forward by the chest while the lower arm (forearm) stays in place; this is what causes that slight bend that you see in all hitter's. This bend is a "natural bend" because it happens automatically without being forced.

So when a player has this "natural bend" that's what I call "fully extended" because he can't really get any more extended than he already is. Fully extended doesn't mean the front arm will be at a 180 degree angle or perfectly straight.

This "natural bend" will increase on inside pitches because a hitter’s chest will push the upper arm for a farther distance which will increase forearm drag.

I think too many times people see this and think that player's purposely try to "tuck" their hands in on inside pitches and leave their hands extended on outside pitches, but this isn't the case at all. These are the natural positions the hands will be in without any extra physical effort.

With that being said I would like to say one more thing. I think video analysis is great, but proper interpretation is what really matters. It's more important to know what a hitter did to get into a certain position than it is to simply know what the position looks like. (It took me years to figure out what major leaguers did that caused their back toe to nearly come off of the ground at contact rather than rest on the pad of the feet. I tried everything from forcefully turning my back leg to even pushing upwards with my back foot to try and force my body to be in that position no matter how unnatural it felt. One day while I was hitting off of a tee the critical movement that I wasn't doing suddenly came to me and everything clicked. Now I can easily hit the ball over 400ft. I only wish I had known this when I was in high school!)

What I'm saying is that 99 percent of the swing happens automatically. Once that front heel comes down and the initial thrusts/forces are exerted everything else goes on its own. The 1 percent that you control as a hitter is the initial movement. Once one can master the initial movements and channeling of forces you'll be halfway home to becoming an elite hitter.

The second half is being able to take the limited amount of information you’re given when the ball leaves a pitchers hand and extrapolate that info to predict where and how quickly the ball will arrive at a desirable contact point and then calibrating your swing based on this extrapolation. All this occurring in a time frame as small as 0.3 seconds in some cases <<<

Hi Chuck

Thank you for the clarification and I can see why you are able to hit 400-foot shots with ease. You outlined batting principles that efficiently transfer the body’s rotational energy into bat speed. I particularly liked the paragraph you wrote below.

(Chuck)
“What I'm saying is that 99 percent of the swing happens automatically. Once that front heel comes down and the initial thrusts/forces are exerted everything else goes on its own. The 1 percent that you control as a hitter is the initial movement. Once one can master the initial movements and channeling of forces you'll be halfway home to becoming an elite hitter”

This is the key to a great swing. You are describing a bio-mechanical principle that states: “A ballistic motion, once initiated, produces trajectories that can only be efficiently changed at the margins.” In other words, once the swing is initiated, the balance of the swing is basically on auto-pilot. This is why THT is so important in developing a high level swing. If the swing is not initiated with the correct forces, the balance of the swing is an exercise of compensation.

Jack Mankin