Posted by: Bart () on Fri Jan 24 06:41:37 2003

I have read epstein's material on "wathervaning" and I have his tape, but the concept is still a bit unclear to me.

If I understand correctly, using a lower oitch as an example, if a hitter tilts his lead elbow up this will help tilt the axis backwards a bit, in turn helping to obtain a more upward plane of the swing.

When I simply tilt my lead elbow up or down a bit, though, it does nothing to change my tilt of axis. What DOES change the tilt is a conscious dip of the front shoulder (simply tilting the lead elbow up will not in itself cause the back shoulder to dip....it seems to take a conscious dip of the back shoulder to tip the axis backwards a bit.)

But dipping the back shoulder seems to have drawbacks. For example, it seems that the more shoulder dip there is, the more weight that remains too long on the back foot. Also, it appears that the more shoulder dip there is, the more that rotation is inhibited.

I would appreciate your thoughts on weathervaning, shoulder dip,etc.....

Bart