Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sat Dec 14 09:28:11 2002

Tom Guerry talks about this internal rotation of the top hand elbow; is that the thumb turning in to the body at load, then the palm of the top hand going up while the thumb goes back to the catcher and the elbow into the side and then what happens when the elbow is palm up and into the side? does it just get pulled along with the lead shoulder or is it pushing forward or does it stay in the L/bent mode or none of the above - - it looks like to me, different hitters all do something a little bit different, but exactly what they do is hard for me to tell.

Internal rotation is much more easily felt than seen.Lots of arm actions are also complex mixtures of rotation/flexion/extension/abduction/adduction,etc.

Internal rotation is what ideally happens with the back arm when the hip and bat are cocking.Bart has mentioned the importance of bat cock.The coaching question is how/when should bat cock be accomplished.

Here's a video example:

www.angelfire.com/80s/baseball1/hitting/bondshrd.html

A rear shot of Bonds in the home run derby.

hip cocked at frame 11,int rotation of back arm for a few frames leading up to this.Then scap loads/pinching back scap.Max scap load at same time hip "uncocks is at frame 16.

Toe touch is frame 15.

heel down,elbow down to slot,torso strats rotating frame 18.

Ultimately we are teaching/learning feel that needs to become automatic.