Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Apr 22 02:50:01 2002

>>> My son's coaches keep telling him not to "walk up on the back foot". As he rotates he comes up on his toes on his back foot. They keep telling him this is wrong and to stay back and rotate on the ball of his back foot.

Yet when I look at clips in Setpro and at the fram by frame on this site they all seem to "walk up, or are pretty high on their back toes.

Can someone explain what's right? Pete <<<

Hi Pete

The problem with discussing “what’s right” regarding lower-body mechanics is that there is no one correct way. You can find some great hitter whose lower-body movements will support about any style you can think of. Some good hitters with longer strides and a more erect axis will have most of their weigh on the front-foot with the back-foot dragging forward. But you will also find hitters like Barry Bonds and Reggie Jackson whose axis wades AWAY from the pitcher. You will note that on many of their swings, they have tilted so much weight to the back-foot that the front-foot becomes light and hooks back toward the catcher. Most of the other hitters have lower-body mechanics that are somewhere between those two styles.

So there is no one correct method for generating good body rotation. Great hitters produce powerful shoulder rotation from varied styles. That is one of the reasons why I so often make the statement that drives grc crazy --- Nothing that takes place below the arm-pits has any effect on bat speed .... other than their contribution to shoulder rotation.

Jack Mankin