Posted by: Todd Carroll (coachcarroll59@hotmail.com) on Sun Nov 19 19:17:06 2006

We try to get all of our hitters, and pitchers for that matter to have a relationship between their heels. We want them to understand that as soon as their front heel plants the back one will lift whether we want it too or not, thereby releasing the backside. This means that when you watch a major league hitter, their "first move" is actually the heel plant, which triggers everything else. This move makes "squishing the bug" impossible, which is fine, because there isn't a major league hitter that does that anyaway. Most young hitters have trouble committing their lower half completely to the swing because of the squish the bug theory, they end up taking the kinetic energy and rotating it into the dugout as opposed to point of contact. Hitters should "rotate rotate rotate" as coach says, but there needs to be a linear move before they rotate in order to move the kinetic energy into the body's center of gravity.