Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Tue Apr 2 14:22:02 2002

>>> Happy Easter Jack-

I should have remembered how much you dislike the term whip because of the inaccuracy of the word(mass not tapering,for example).I have the same distaste for "throwing the hands" but that doesn't bother other people as much.

I do think it is usefulanalytically to segment the swing into the equivalent of "flail" and "whip" the way Nyman does.I am still not sure how one phase exactly transitions into another,I am particularly interested in the back foot motion you see with each phase,which I believe is a marker of reactive torque.

In an efficient/desirable swing,the back toe drags(unless obscured by weight bearing due to backward leaning axis)during the flail portion of the swing,indicating that the hips have decelerated and transferred momentum upward.Until this has started,the bathead should stay in/not demand significant transfer of energy from torso.Once toe drag is underway,the bathead comes out.This process of energizing the torso by hip/lower body deceleration and transfer of momentum has been referred to by me and others at setpro as "rotational whip" because there is sequential transfer of momentum and tapering of mass from the lower to the upper body.Of course there are muscle contractions creating force and leverage(change of direction)and elastic forces too.

Next,if you watch the back foot you will see the ankle turn behind the player.I think of this as a second wave of reactive torque as the "L" comes out of the back elbow and the flex comes out of the front elbow.This more rapidly sucks energy out of the torso(which turns less on the outside location) and is I believe what you(Jack) might call a tht phenomenon,since the idea is that the bottom hand is relatively stationary and the top hand is moving around this bottom hand oarlock(the opposite being the case with bht on the inside pitch).In the past I have thought of tht more at/before initiation than what might be happening at contact.In any case,connection needs to be maintained through contact.For the outside location this means the upper front arm should not get away from the torso while any flex comes out of the front elbow.

Just looking at the back foot can tell you a lot about the swing.The arm swinger has no toe drag because there is no store and transfer sequence for the lower body to develop and transfer momentum to the torso(lower body energy doesn't get transformed into batspeed).All they get is the ankle turn,then the back foot comes around with followthrough.The worst swings just bring the back foot around.

You can see the desired action on the delgado clip setpro thread 000571.

Do you find these phases useful at all? Is there a significantly different principle at work?

What would you call the phases?

Are the transfer mechanics best described as just variations of how torque demands transfer out of the torso as oppose to "whip" ? Is the torso just like an energized flywheel with transfer only triggered by the chp and how the center of mass of the bat is torqued out?

Thanks for wading through this!<<<

Hi Tom

I brought this thread forward because it should provide for an interesting discussion. --- For some time, I had thought that Paul’s vision of swing mechanics was basically the same as mine. We just used different terminology to describe it. But the more I read and hear from Paul’s site, the more I am coming to believe we may be discussing two very different concepts for bat speed generation.

I hope a further discussion of your last post may clear-up or point-out any differences we may have. Tom, I hope you don’t mind if we cover just cover a couple of points at a time.

>>> In an efficient/desirable swing, the back toe drags (unless obscured by weight bearing due to backward leaning axis) during the flail portion of the swing, indicating that the hips have decelerated and transferred momentum upward. Until this has started, the bathead should stay in/not demand significant transfer of energy from torso. <<<

I noted that you said the bat-head “should” stay in (not “will” or would”) until toe drag. Does this mean that Paul believes the batter should delay applying torque and rotational energy to accelerate the bat-head until the back foot drags forward? What distinction does Paul, or you, make between a circular-hand-path and his term “flail?” Does Paul believe torque (hands applying force from apposing directions) is a significant factor in generating bat speed from initiation?

Jack Mankin