Posted by: George () on Sat Apr 21 19:44:40 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
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> 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.<<<
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> Hi George
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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).
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> Jack Mankin


Jack. I am not sure of Epstein's current views. I am just judging by what I saw on his site. I believe he showed previously before and after of some of his students. As such it appeared as though no significant emphasis or work was done with regard to hands or wrists or any reference to torque. I understand at least to a degree your theores of torque. But Epstein's methods seemed to me to be a quick fix to problems be have the hitter use no stride or a short stride in unison with the inward turn. his hitters somewhat to a slight degree used Jeff bagwell lower body work (though they do not step backward) to create launch angle/ and backward tilt unlike a pujols who in my opinion swings more accross than using the upswing rearward tilt like a Giambi or Fred McGriff. I also noticed A-Rod uses more of an across finish dynamics with leg lift explosion than the rearward tilt. I would not call Arod or Pujols linear but I do believe the across finish leads to more line drives than a Giambi rearward upswing.

I believe in rotational hitting but believe some hitters are using more of it than others. Rearward tilt hitters are using more rotation than hitters who finish even or accross their bodies. This is why Ted Williams did not hit homeruns to the opposite field using his technique.