Posted by: Melvin () on Wed Apr 25 18:10:12 2001

Hello

Jargon about weight shift and insect crushing just goes on and on. It is such simplistic, artificial cause-and-effect thinking. I think a lot of it has to do with the big name weight shift gurus of the 1980s. People are afraid that just maybe there is something to this weight shift thing because so many famous people said there was. Folks are fearful of letting go of something they think might be beneficial.

Angular acceleration of the bat head cannot be produced by shifting weight. Period. When someone demonstrates it from the blackboard, or with practical examples from elite hitters, we can modify that thereom.

A weight shift should not be confused with striding or re-orienting to balance before body rotation accelerates the hands in an arc. That is not a weight shift as defined by the 1980s hitting authorities. It is simply a balancing of the weight between the legs. We don't say a basketball player does a weight shift when he comes to a quick stop before shooting a jumper. He is simply getting balanced. Same with what some people call a weight shift in hitting.

Once good hitters get balance, there is no shifting of weight forward. It doesn't matter what the follow-through looks like. Some of them pose, some of them move forward after the swing, whatever. But none of them do it while the bat is accelerating. If they did, they would not be good hitters.

I am starting to see many of the good ones take it even further, keeping the back heel down until body rotation pulls it up. Hip rotation, or killing insects, or whatever term is popular these days contributes nothing to bat speed. The back heel coming up is a product of torso rotation. How can spinning the hips at 2-3 mph cause any angular acceleration of the bat head? It can't.

In fact, the best hitters take a page from what golfers have known for a long time: the lower body is best used to provide resistance to the rotating torso and then as a stable platform upon which the body rotates. Add some top hand torque, an slight upswing, circular hand path and unbroken wrists at contact, and you won't be killing bugs, you will be endangering infielders.

Weight shift and bug squashing. Nonsense.

Melvin