Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sat Mar 2 09:48:08 2002

My video of Bonds shows his head moving back 8-12 inches from intiation of swing to contact. I believe his leaning back body angle helps produce an uppercut swing plane to hit home runs.
> > He plants his front leg and rotates his right shoulder forward while the left shoulder and head are pulling back toward the catcher.
> > A very powerful move.
>
> >>Tom I have been swinging trying to start my swing with explosion of the hips and keeping my hands back.In doing so I feel like my shoulders are getting snatched around.In doing this I feel like I'm not leaning back but being driven backby the hiptorque of the front leg being pushed back.Now I know that we should be some what equal with front and rear leg working against each other but the rear leg seems to be just going sideways using less power of the leg than the front leg which catches the weight with the whole thigh and calf bent in a move that is like an angled squat backward.My point is I think more is going on with the front leg drive than the rear and the backward lean comes from the drive back of the lead leg pushing back.

RQL-

When you discovered that you needed to pull back with the bottom hand to keep the inside ball fair did you find it helped to lean back more the more inside the ball got ?

I agree with your point above.I am trying to make the point that even though Bonds is what Lau Jr calls a 'back foot hitter'(or perhaps a non-front foot hitters-seepp29-31 of his book)he still "gets off the backside".This means he rotates well around a stationary spinal axis.No lunging.He must be using the front side well to do this.In fact the more you lean back,the more lower body/front side work you may need to do to achieve balanced rotation.I think this degree of lean back does assist in keeping inside balls fair with limited hook.

Some speculation on Bonds "axis".If we assume that he has optimal rotational mechanics,then we can assume that the bat is swinging in a plane perpendicular to the axis.If we measure the degrees above parallel(to the ground) of the swing as seen from the righty's batter's box this should give the axis for that particular swing.More upright for high ball,more lean back for low.More lean back for inside,less for outside.You will need the front view of the same pitch to see location.