Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Wed Jul 10 09:42:22 2002

What does it look like? I assume there is a back foot hitter?
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> A front foor hitter is someone like an Otis Nixon, Ichiro who transfers their weight onto their front foot during their swing. Often mimicking the idea of slapping at the ball. They are usually extremely fast and hit for little power.
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> There is no real back foot hitters but the proper hitting technique of keeping your weight centered. Using the belly button as a centering point, the hitter should rotate, not shift, and a pefect swing would mean that the belly button does not move forward or back.

Terms become meaningless in baseball to a very high degree.Any cue can be interpreted in a wide range of ways.This is certainly the case with "front foot".However,at the very least it is useful to understand it in some of its historical context.You can get a good feel for this in Lau Jr's book.

Lau's dad started looking at video and saw that people were not describing what was actually there.The common wisdom was that you kept from opening up early by keeping the weight back and shifting it against a firm front side.This became known as back foot hitting(to Lau) associated with insruction to push things open from the back.

Now when Lau looked at video,esp. Aaron,he saw that Hank got entirely off the back foot.He saw that most great hitters did.He hypothesized that the better way was to "shift weight to the front side" not keep the weight back or shift against a firm front side.

Lau Jr goes on to classify hitters bases on back or front foot and presence or absence of top hand release(as a marker of extension.

Lau was also interested in the handpath which is work Lau Jr has carried forward.He came to conclusions about the importance of "pulling"(not pushing) and extension and how to use the body to achieve good extension and avoid the "2-piece" swing by which he means a swing cut off early by wrist roll.

Worth a read.