Posted by: daw () on Mon May 11 13:07:58 2009

> Hey Guys,
>
> How do you hit at the big league level? How do you catch up to those 95 mph fastballs?
>
> http://blog.swingtraining.net/page/2.aspx
>
> Scroll down and watch the part that says " Arod: Creating a compact swing". Obviously easier said than done. But this is how the elite do it. I promise if you go in there thinking "rotate the shoulders" or "circular hand path" you will not even sniff the ball.
>
> What's the key to this high level swing? Well there are a few things obviously such as balance, timing, batspeed, all the generic obvious stuff. But if anybody wants to become better I suggest you listen to Arod at the end of the video and really think about what he is saying.
>
> If anybody is interested let me know I will go into it and explain what he is doing and what are the MOST IMPORTANT things to work on in the batting cage.
>
> For what it's worth, I am close with Arod's "father figure" who runs the Kendall Boys Club down in Miami, he raised Arod and knows exactly how he thinks about hitting. (Even though he tells you at the end of the video what changes he made to his swing).
>
> I am just trying to help anyone who wants to improve their game or talk about hitting. Good luck to all of you prospects out there.



A very interesting clip and it reminds me of the former all american fastpitch player who gives hitting lessons in this area. The swing she "teaches" in no way resembles the swing she used during games to set the school record in homers. In fact she used the so-called "compact" swing in the on-deck circle, but fortunately for her she used a circular hand path in the batter's box.

Do you think the swing he uses on the clip to hit the pitching machine is the same swing he's talking about with Katie Couric? I don't. You can see the beautiful "long" arc of his swing, especially the one from the side with Couric in the foreground, and most especially when he "visualizes" himself jacking one in Yankee Stadium. That ball rockets to left center.

I would be very interested to see if you can find a clip of AROD hitting the ball hard in a game with the swing he shows Katie Couric, as opposed to the one he uses against the machine when he's actually trying to crush it.

Even great hitters aren't at all reliable in describing their own swing. Ted Williams himself wrote in his autobiography about his swing coming from "down low" because he wanted to get the ball up in the air. Clips show that his stance did have his hands very low, almost waist level, but as he cocked he pulled them up to his back shoulder. I never read or heard anything that says Ted studied his own swing and there really wasn't teh technoligy to do it back then anyway, so perhaps he didn't even realize that he wasn't "down low" when he pulled the trigger.