Posted by: The Hitting Guru (hitman3527@aol.com) on Thu Mar 9 21:32:55 2006

> > > lemme redo this message.
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> > > I read somewhere in a book that u are suppose to tighten ur muscles as hard as u can in the pretrigger, then loosen the muscles right before you start your swing, so that you are only using as much muscle as your body needs, thus maximizing your swing speed and coordination. If you agree with this lemme know. Anyways on to a another question, (sorry if this is a little off topic)on the swing mechanics where you state that the person hit the ball nearly 500 feet; how far would it go if it was just thrown up in the air with your hand, instead of being pitched too?
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> > > P.S i read this from a book about the prelaunch
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> > Look up Ted Williams' video "the Science of Hitting" on "baseball's rare films" on the internet. If you do not mind spending about 35 dollars, Ted offers instruction on hitting which illustrates basic hitting principles. I believe he mentions the top hand should be held firm like one would grab a hammer. The bottom hand would be held more relaxed.
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> hmmm... he ment holding firm i believe which i read from his book "The Science of hitting" because he felt it gave better grip and cooridination, However i believe alot of the things Charley lau pointed out about ted were wrong. Most obvious having one foot back and one foot front which meant his feet were in a straight line, which invented the "williams shift" that fielders used. I'm still somewhat a little bit of a noob on hitting, so i don't know much :), but i'm just repeating what charley said.



Alec. If you say Lau said what he said upon your reading, maybe he did. But Lau in many instances spoke like a lay person and as such may have tried to explain something that may have not been the spirit of his thoughts. Ted Williams stance from what I have seen and heard was at least slightly closed though he was close enough to the plate to be a pull hitter. As far as the Williams's shift is concerned, I believe Lou Bodreau came up with it in an effort to get Ted to go against his strength. Their is no secret that Ted like pitches in certain areas and was less of a threat to the opposite field especially when he broke a bone in his arm during all star games festivities one year.