Posted by: above&beyond (minorleaguehits@yahoo.com) on Mon Oct 1 03:14:37 2007

From the load position:

Hip rotation is simple. The hyper extension of the front leg pushes the left side of the waste back. The back leg rotates where the ball of the hip bone meets the pelvis with out straigtening at the knee at all. The two legs create the waste pop not only need for power but for a prone position for the upper body to hit precisely.

Fact:
By staying on toes or balls of our feet we will rotate much quicker. The The reason is because our heels will not be hooked into the ground by our cleats to slow our rotation down.

Upper body is not as simple. It's mechanics should be taken seriously like master martial artists take their forms and mechanics. Improper mechanics lay no lethal strikes, but precise mechanics make the most amazing tools or weapons out of the human body.

First of all, your abdominal muscles should be strong enough to hold on to the torque created by the waste-pop. If they are not strong, the abs will not be able to use the torque of the waste-pop. A weak hit will come from that because the abs could not transfer the torque power from the legs to the shoulder, arms, and hands.

Next, I will tell you how the arm actions of hitting are similar to throwing a baseball. Find and study some pictures of proper pitching mechanics. You will see that once the glove arm's elbow is pointing up and the glove is pointing down as the throwing arm's elbow is pointing down and the baseball is up upper body rotation begins. The bends of each arm should be mirroring each other equally yet opposite of each other. Once you have begun to rotate your upper budy, you should pull your glove arm's elbow back and down while bending it. This pulling back assists the torque in your shoulders. The forward push of the throwing shoulder, and the back on the throwing arm side assists the shoulder torque.

Translation from throwing mechanics to hitting mechanics:
Those throwing mechanics play into your hitting mechanics. Did you ever hear about keeping your front elbow in? That is because your front arm has to tuck its elbow down and backwards in the swing just like in the throw to create good shoulder torque. Did you ever here about putting your shoulder and the back muscles on the top hand side into the ball to add power? This adds the forward part of torque you need to hit like when you throw.

Simply put, by pulling your front elbow down and back while pushing your rear shoulder and back muscles on the catcher's side you hit with power. These same mechanics for creating good shoulder pop are effective for throwing too. The torque or shoulder-pop is being used not only for power, but accuracy too.

People that use linear or coach linear hitting have not swung a bat enough to realize their is no such thing as linear hitting. Linear hitting does not use the most torque a hitter can get out of his shoulders. That is why linear hitting is weaker and not hitting at all. Its fly swatting.

Arms: At contact the arms should make a V. The back arm should be a lil' bent and the front arm is straight. As your front arm heads downward and forward towards contact, that front elbow should be pulling down from the load postion and back like when throwing. The back arm, shoulder, and back muscles on catcher's side should be pushing the head of the bat forward. Just at contact the front elbow is done making its down and backward motion on the bat handle and it will just straighten out by giving the front hand forward. The front elbow jerks back and then straightens out. The back arm and other muscles will squarely push or ram the barrel of the bat stiffly onto the ball. Pulling the bat hand back with front arm and ramming the bat barrel forward with the back arm creates a rotational motion in the bat beginning from the load.

Keep your hands a little bit apart for better bat rotation and power.

The hands or better yet, the wrists play their part last. Look at it like this. Hold your hands in front of you in fists with your thumbs up. With your wrists only, move your thumbs away from you straight forward. Position your hands the same way, but put the top hand on top as if you are holding a bat and about to hit. At the same time both wrists move forward. That forward motion should be done fully at contact. Take a look for yourself. Make your arms in to the V made at contact, and make the wrists moved forward. Wrists assist torque too - wrist-pop. You should also notice that the top hand's palm is facing up and the bottom hand's palm is facing down. That will always happen unless you are swing the top of your front hand and the palm of your back hand to the pitcher. If your palms are not facing the right way, you can not use maximum wrist-pop torque. If your palms are not swinging the right way, it is because you are not using your arms and shoulders the right way when making torque with either arms or shoulders.

Question?

Why do we use sticky batting gloves and sticky pine tar on our hands for hitting?

Answer.

The force of the pitched ball (not a soft toss ball or ball on tee) will make your bat turn downward or upward when you make contact. Pitchers love that because that either creates a grounder or a fly ball. The bat turns in our hands if we don't have strong hands and sticky hands to hold it squarely against the ball. We have to have the handle of the bat at the back of our fingers not our thumb for maximum bat speed, but the fingers aren't as strong with out help from the thumbs, so the bat is easily turned in our hands by the pitch the hands are sticky and strong. I guess sticky and strong hands make line drives.