Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Sat Apr 21 14:31:22 2007

>>> Dennis. You probably are corrct in your analsis of what works for you. If you have the opportunity, check out some footage on MLB.com of Jason Giambi. He does a great job of going down with his head to get great extension and lift on the ball. He has an ideal pure rotational lift to his swing. I did happen to notice that wrist torque is not as apparent in his swing as he is more of a lower body hitter. His technique demonstrates that one does not have to use THT to initiate the swing in an effort to maximize batspeed in my opinion. A Jime Thome pulls his hands at an angle to the launch position. A Barry Bonds uses more of what Jack describes with his bat drill of torque. Fred McGriff was a classic study in what you describe regarding rearward tilt and extension. I noticed on

Epstein's site that his hitters use more lower body to generate rearward tilt rather than use torque in the swing. His philosopy keeps it simple.<<<

Hi George

Ted Williams proclaimed in his book that the energy for the swing ‘did not’ come from the forward movement of the body. It was actually generated from the rotation of the body about a fixed axis. This break from traditional teaching brought forth the wrath of the batting experts. They said his misguided theories would bring harm to the performance of players who listened to him.

We now know that Ted was right and Mike Epstein has been a leading (if not “the” leading) proponent of rotation around a fixed axis. I applaud Mike for helping countless coaches around the country to understand the true source of the swing’s energy. However, I am not sure what his present views are, but in the past there have been substantial differences in the mechanics Mike and I teach to transfer that rotational energy into bat speed.

George, one of the problems I have always had with Epstien’s approach, is with his principles of transfer mechanics in general and how he describes the use of the lead-arm in particular. He may have changed in the past couple of years, but when I discussed transfer mechanics with him a few years ago, he maintained that the lead-arm should start bent (or boxed) and then extend toward the ball at contact. This, he stated, would take the hands in a more direct path to the ball (classic linear teaching).

I explained to him that findings from my video analysis study showed that the bend in the lead-arm should not straighten approaching contact. In order to generate maximum bat speed that comes from pendulum effect, the lead-elbow should maintain a constant angle to produce a circular path of the hands.

He was also surprised that someone would advocate what he called a “looping “ swing from having the lead-arm straighter during rotation. Mike would not accept my contention that a circular hand-path would generate greater bat speed. He went on to say that even if the hand-path I described could develop more speed, it would produce such a long swing that it could not work against good pitching.

The last time I reviewed Mike’s DVDs, he advocated a linear hand-path and maintained a boxed elbow should straighten to contact. George, do you know if he still holds those views -- even with today’s video analysis capabilities of studying the swings of the games best hitters.

Jack Mankin