Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sun Oct 21 09:06:36 2001

Hi Tom
> >
> > Would you mind expanding further on your above post. – Seriously Tom, I not only enjoy reading your material, I also never fail to gain from your insight and thoroughness.
> >
> > Jack
> > Tom,please tell me about what you meanby the bat coming out of the arc,when and what causes it.This could be the holy grail of the subject.

Here are some initial stabs.Maybe something will ring a bell.

Coming out of the arc would be best seen on an overhead shot.It happens closest to what is often referred to(for other reasons) as the "lag" position.As Jack has pointed out,there is less and less ability to adjust as the swing proceeds.In experimenting with swings going back and forth between hitting and golf,I think a swing works if you maintain connection(ultimately a matter of "tempo" or how the muscles are used to sequence body positions over time),keep the hands from getting away from the center of rotation from launch to when the bat is extended and get on plane by the time the bat head is torqued out of the handpath arc.This is another way of saying that the trigger for energy transfer to the club/bat will be when the center of mass gets away from the center of rotation of the body/axis of rotation.You don't want this to happen by extension of the hand path or by letting the clubhead out of the powerplane,instead you want to control this by "firing the bathead" with the club on plane.This is something the brain can be programmed to complete consistently.As the bat nears extension,the hands can get away from the axis of rotation without so much loss of energy going into dragging the bat along its longitudinal axis instead of turning the bathead to create angular velocity.In golf.to maximize distance,you want to delay firing the clubhead to the last possible instant as this allows more storage og energy in the torso and more "violent" release into the club.

If you draw an arc based on the position of the hands in the first few inches after launch,the main demand for momentum/energy transfer from torso to bat will be when the center of mass of the bat is torqued outside of this arc.The faster the bathead is fired from this point to extension the more effectively the energy of the torso is turned into batspeed.In terms of sequence,the hips need to have begun deceleration before this,or the lower body energy will not have gotten to the torso in time to get into the bat.This can be seen as back foot/toe drag,especially in hitters who are accentuating rotation before firing the bathead(turning on an inside pitch without leaning back a lot on their axis of rotation-look at the Mickey Mantle clip for example).In the Mickey clip,I can stop the picture at any given frame(I wish I had the capability to run it in reverse,but I don't).If you stop Mickey right where the back toe starts to kick up a little dust,this is just when the bat head is getting out of the handpath arc,what looks like the "lag" position.This toe drag is caused by reactive torque going down the non-weightbearing back leg signifying that torque is also going up into the torso from the lower body at the same time.This is a sign that hip turn is being actively decelerated.In the well timed swing,the beginning of toe drag accompanies the firing of the bathead.The bat must be into the right plane by this time.The handpath must stay in until the bathead has fired.Some ongoing posture correction and some tightening of the hand path is possible between launch and "lag",but less and less as "lag" is approached.This late tightening of the handpath is commonly seen to get the sweetspot on a very inside pitch.Tightening the handpath accelerates the turn so that more turn happens before the bathead fires,and the swing radius can be shortened as well to help get the sweetspot on the inside ball.From golf,I think you don't lose efficient transfer as long as the center of mass of the club(clubhead/sweetspot of bat)doesn't drop past the "power"plane-the plane perpendicular to the upper torso.On the other hand,once the bat head has extended,you can let the hands get away from the center of rotation to get good contact without ruining the swing.

The efficiency of firing the bathead in triggering the conversion of body energy to batspeed also depends on good body position so you "don't get behind the power curve" as Jack has described.This is an aspect of ongoing tight connection(how body position is changing over time) that especially requires the hands to stay in front of the back elbow,the elbow staying in the slot(not pulling ahead toward the bellybutton-sometimes the Dusty "box" cue is more meaningful than "slot")so that the body energy turns the bat(batspeed generation)instead of using up/wasting some energy dragging the bat along its axis which lengthens the swing and slows angular velocity of the bathead.

Let me know where to go from here.