A ‘stride’ is not needed to have a sufficient ‘stretch’.
Be careful when teaching a ‘stride’ directly. All too often a hitter takes steps backward when a stride is directly taught. The only stride I wish to see is that resulting from the loading of the rear leg.
Below is a ‘no-stride’ type swing … with plenty of ‘stretch’ prior to the additional dynamic stretch associated with the launch.
Yes, and you can also see his deltoid stretch as he lifts his hands up and back. He is thinking of the cues "keep the front shoulder in", and "keep the hands back." He thinks of those two as he pushes off of the back leg. That creates the connection/stretch between hips and hands. The core muscles are stretched and the shoulder muscles are stretched. The bat is now connected to the body and will move with the body, without any need for use of arms, until later.
As noted by the green line; the hands don't move back in space, but as the two red lines show; as the hip moves forward; in order to keep the hands in the same spot in space, there needs to be a feeling of moving them back. They don't move back, but the slack is taken out of the shoulder muscles in order to keep them in the same spot, as the body moves forward.
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