Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Sun Sep 4 13:07:15 2005

>>> I cannot seem to stop my back elbow from moving in towards my belly button at contact! I can't keep it at my side and this is the ultimate aggravation with me because if I gould get this to happen I would be completely satisfied with my swing at the moment and not have to worry about rolling over on balls because of my stupid elbow flying all over the place. Sometimes I feel like I need to completely revamp my swing to fix this... Any help would be appreciated. Oh and Jack should my hands becoming close to my shoulder and staying there to stay connected throughout the swing? I'm kind of lost on that too.

Take a look at the clips: ( They only worked when i viewed them in firefox although it might be i just dont have the plugin for it on IE)

http://media.putfile.com/blf005

http://media.putfile.com/blf004

http://media.putfile.com/blf003

ANY andvice at all is appreciated, thanks for your time

btw.. I am a college freshman at a D3 school looking to earn a starting position <<<

Hi Dave

It is good to hear from you again. – The reason your back-elbow is from moving in towards your belly button is because you are relying to heavily on the back-arm to bring the bat-head to contact. In doing so, the inertia of the bat is causing your elbow to swing past your side and inward. To solve this problem, you must get the lead-side more involved in swinging the bat-head.

Dave, I will place below a couple posts that contain drills I have successfully used to keep batter’s elbow back in the slot at contact.

Jack Mankin
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Re: Back elbow - bellybutton

Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Wed Apr 13 11:57:36 2005

>>> Hi Jack
You did a swing analysis for my 10 year old daughter Kassidy 2-3 months ago and it was great! Very detailed and personalized. The main problem she was having was her back elbow sliding toward her belly button instead of staying by her side. She's still having this problem which is causing the bat to "drag" through the contact point. Any drill ideas etc. on how to help her stop this.
Thanks <<<

Hi Terry

Thank you for the kind words. – There are two main cause and effects that occur with Kassidy’s problem (elbow sliding toward her belly button). (1) Relying too heavily on the backside to swing the bat. (2) Spine bends as the back-shoulder drops to allow the elbow to swing under and inward.

As I pointed out in the swing analysis, Kassidy needs to get the lead-side more involved in the swing. To accomplish this, have her address the heavy bag with her normal launch position – make sure the hands are up near the back-shoulder. Place a playing card between her chest and biceps of the lead-arm. The arm should be tight enough across the chest to keep the card from falling.

Once she has assumed the correct launch position, have her take her top-hand off the bat. The top-hand should remain up near but not touching the bat. She should practice using the rotation of the shoulders to swing the bat to contact (heavy bag) without the card falling using only the lead-arm. This means the bag should be placed far enough back (about even with the lead-knee) so that the bat is brought to contact before the arm sweeps away from the chest.

This drill will obviously reinforce the use of the lead-side in her swing. However, she may still retain the tendency to collapse the backside. For the back-shoulder to drop and bend the spine, the lead-hip must slide foreword (toward the pitcher). Impress upon her that the lead-hip must not slide forward, it should stay back and rotate around toward the catcher during the swing.

Once she is comfortable in correctly performing the one-arm drill, she can then place the top-hand on the bat. At first it should just relax and go along for the ride with the elbow staying back at the side. At this point of the swing, the main function of the top-hand is to provide a pivot point for the lead-side to pull the bat-head around (BHT) – the top-hand serves like an oarlock while oaring a paddle through the water.

Terry, if she can grasp the true function of the top-hand once the elbow lowers to the side, not only will her problem be solved, her bat speed will also increase

Jack Mankin
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THT & the THUMB Drill

The direction of force the hands apply at the handle to initiate the swing is a key difference between linear and rotational mechanics. With rotational transfer mechanics, the batter does not drive the top-hand forward at the start of the swing. They keep the hands back during initiation and accelerate the bat-head rearward in the swing plane before they direct their energy toward the ball. When the top-hand is pulling back (or just holding back at the shoulder - resistance) during initiation, the lead-arm will remain across the chest, and shoulder rotation will then accelerate the hands into a circular path. When the force of the top-hand is pulling rearward, the rotation of the lead-shoulder (through the lead-arm and hand) pulls the knob around toward third base. This applies torque at the handle that accelerates the bat-head rearward. With this early rearward acceleration, the bat-head can stay in sync with much quicker hip and shoulder rotation.

There are two keys to efficient rotational transfer mechanics. (1) Do not drive the top-hand forward at the start of the swing (2) Make more productive use of the lead-side during the swing. To help a student accomplish these keys, I have my students practice the following drill. -- The “Thumb to the Shoulder” drill works best when practiced with a heavy bag (or tire) before hitting off a tee or soft toss.

I have the student take their normal launch position – with one major change. I have the batter lift the thumb of the top-hand away from the bat and point it toward their back-shoulder. As the batter initiates rotation to start the swing, the thumb should be close to or touching the shoulder. The batter should try to keep the top-hand pulling back so that the thumb remains at the shoulder at the start of rotation. The bat-head is accelerated back toward the catcher by lead-shoulder rotation pulling (through the arm and hand) on the knob-end of the bat. The accelerating trajectory of the bat-head will cause the top-hand to separate from the shoulder as the forearm rotates and lowers toward the horizontal contact position.

Note: The top-hand is pulling back with the finger, not driving forward with the palm. Therefore, lifting the thumb away from the handle presents no problem.

In order for the batter to keep the thumb at the back-shoulder during initiation, he must pull the back-elbow back toward the third base dugout. He is now learning the basics of how to apply Top-Hand-Torque while generating a CHP.

Jack Mankin