Posted by: Ankie Jr (willcummins@hotmail.com) on Sun Aug 19 08:57:21 2001

Maximum,

I read some of your posts, and I thought I would leave you a post that may help you.

I am 32 years old, 5'6", 135 lbs, and I have been playing softball for about 5 years.

A couple of years ago, I was going through a problem similar to what you seem to be going through, and a friend from another team helped me to work it out. It seems I was trying to get all my power from the lower half of my body. I was keeping both of my arms close to my chest throughout the swing. Which means the furthest point of the bat was a little over 34 inches (the length of the bat) from my chest.

What my friend told me was hitting that way was not producing enough bat speed. He gave me the example of water skiing. If you swing around when you are water skiing, the further you are from the boat, the faster you go.

So here's what I did. I moved away from the plate to make sure my lead arm was straight when I hit the ball. And I made a conscious effort to make sure that lead arm was straight. By my rough calculation, I added about 16 to 20 inches to the "ski rope" which increased my bat speed tremendously.

And after lifting weights for two years and seeing no improvement, I began hitting the ball further and harder. (Even on the other side of the fence in fair territory! Not bad for a 135 pounder.)

Reading your posts about not hitting the outside pitches and your comments about what your coach was trying to tell you, I think if you try hitting this way, it may solve some of your problems. It will feel really funny at first, but I think when you see the results, you'll keep at it until it feels natural.

Oh, and one more thing. Yogi Berra once said, "You can't think and hit at the same time."


Ankie Jr