radial deviation

[ssarge]

Tom, I wish this early rearward bat movement stuff had clicked with me two years ago. When I look at clips of hitters like Bonds, Pujols, and Williams now, I just shake my head. I can't believe I missed it. When it finally clicked with me, I worked it into my swing, at which point I had one of those "ah ha" moments. Once you do it, the benefits become crystal clear. I tried it against live pitching and it felt really good.

I was surprised and skeptical at first by Mankin's belief that the early rearward bat movement fixed other common issues such as bat drag, poor connection and lack of separation. After working with my daughter I'm now a believer. I was able to get her to duplicate the movement off of a tee within minutes. What amazed me was how consistent the position of the back forearm was as it turned the corner. You always get that good "V" in the back arm or as some would say "bicep to forearm pinch".

Wellphyt:

My skepticism continues, and was honed by over a year of using Mankin's material with a large number of students. Obviously, that limitation could have been mine, and not the fault of the materials. But my experience was seriously profoundly different than yours. Especially when it came to the swings the girls brought into games / live hitting.

Consequently, clips of you or your daughter demonstrating this success would be valuable to see. Before and after would be great. If you have achieved an improved frame count or demonstrably more bat speed, that would be persuasive to others (beyond just me), I would think.


The experience you are having with your daughter is great. Treasure it, because it seems to end very quickly.

Do you have opportunity to work with hitters beyond your daughter? Would love to hear about the results, how they are performing in age group or college play, etc. Not trying to put you on the spot. Well maybe I am, a little, because as I said, I have had a different experience with your materials than have you. But I think it helps everone to evaluate the efficacy of the information by seeing that it is working.

If you have provided this information previously, I apologize for having missed it. Please don't recreate it, just point me to it.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[SBFAMILY]

Scott. Hitter works with many kids. Many are LD, so many of our teaching and hitting tools are designed so that the non gifted kids can learn. That is why he is a respected hitting instructor in our area and a mentor to many of us. .

 

[Hitter]

Hitter:

I know you are involved with Bustos, and I think that is great. She is a phenomenal hitter.

I will review the links, and appreciate you pointing them out to me.


I hope you will permit me a question. There is a school of thought out there, to which I BELIEVE I subscribe. The thought is that evaluating the absolutely exceptional (to the point of being unique) athlete is of interest, but real value is gained in evaluating the non-exceptionally gifted but nontheless top-producing athlete.

Bustos has a giftedness and size-and-strength package that make her unique (or very close to it). When she hits a ball 300 feet, it is impressive. When a 5' 8", 140 lb, 18 YO girl hits a ball 275 feet, that seems really impressive, too. And I've seen that many times, as I'm sure you have. And so the question is which hitter is of more value to study?

I recognize you might well have a bias in this specific question, and that is more than understandable. But in general, what are your thoughts about this? Is it more valuable to study the athlete whose giftedness and strength are undeniably superior, or is it more valuable to study someone with more moderate giftedness, size, and strength who has attained great success?

Thanks,

Scott

Scott

Hope you got my PM also...

This is a great question and I have an opinion on it. There are about 800 plus MLB players that are playing at the highest level of the game and who knows how many in the feeder system to become one of them. Now we try and compare every minute detail of what we consider an elite MLB hitter is and exactly what is it they do so well and in this case just hitting. Some have chosen to enhance their performance through chemistry and some through alcohol or drugs and were still successful on the field. You do not have to like Bonds however he has always had great eye hand coordination and you can not get that out of a bottle yet! Stronger equals more distance and that seems to be a factor with a lot of people. AP made an adjustment in the home run derby to try and get more distance. Yet he won individually at the end of the year and had another great year and makes a ton of money. He does what he does because of his athleticism however how many females do you know that could emulate his mechanics and be successful at the high school or college level?

Now which swing would you like to customize to fit your daughter? How old is she, what is her eye sight and eye hand coordination? Now if she is less than 10 years old what do we have to work with?

Yes talking about and comparing what elite MLB hitter does has its merits and is entertaining however how does that relate to a parent trying to glean something off this or any site to help teach their daughters. Is it useful information and how can it be used to actually teach someone how to do it?

CB's approach as well as mine is to lay a foundation for hitting at each clinic we do or with any team or individual we work with. This foundation is grass roots simple and easy to understand and i will not go into that much detail however it works.

I too was and still am in awe of CB...we met in my garage in Jan. 2002 for a work out as a friend of mine use to be her agent and wanted us to share ideas. I watched her hit a few and ask her if she knew she could hit it harder if she kept her head down and was more balanced in her stride? She ask me what I was talking about so I demonstrated for her what I meant. Please understand I never taught CB how to hit! Her dad George and her Uncle Jesse did and in my opinion they did very well. I explained to her that she was stronger with her head down at contact and she came to contact with her head up slightly and then down slightly and then hit again and said, "Dude I can feel that!" There are other who feels that has no merit and try to explain it away as theory. She was hitting the ball 325 to 350 before I ever started working with her! However she can make a mistake and still hit it 250 feet now. She has in my opinion better balance now than ever before. She told me that I was the first one to explain something to her that she could feel the difference in what they were explaining and then when she hit she said I could feel it. She also said that feeling thing is very important to me Howard as a woman athlete as we have to feel things to better understand it and most male coaches can not explain it to us nor do they take the time. Again some will explain feeling has no merit when teaching and we say it does.

She went on to say your entire method of teaching seems to be based on someone with a learning disability. I told her about our sons accident and that he had a head injury that resulted in a short term memory loss, loss of executive order motor skills and was partially paralyzed on the left side of his body from three cerebral contusions and a post lateral fracture of the right hemisphere. This is when she turned and looked at Scot Lawson and said this is why you hooked us up! She said I have a learning disability and I am dyslexic! This is why you are so big on getting the athlete to see it, feel it and fix it and have all these mirrors.

Scott is she the real deal or one exceptionally gifted female? I had been working with boys mostly until 96 and then started working with girls and found out because I had worked with boys what the girls did not know and that was basic neuro muscular skills, like balance, weight shift and how the body works. You think this funny ask your daughter to drive a nail into a 2x4....please start the nail and use a 16 penny nail and enjoy the show! Now explain to me how the wrist works and the elbow and the grip on the hammer you should be using....Scott that is grass roots fundamentals! I have made a nail simulator out of car shock and modified it and push it down and the hitter attempts to keep it down by hitting it. It is too funny to see the girls do it and then I give the hammer to the dads and it gets even funnier. I have made one that we hit down on vertically and one horizontally. If you have seen RVP when Don uses a hammer I made him that one and others he actually used during B/P when he was with the Tigers. Grass roots fundamentals not theory or an explanation that requires exceptional knowledge of hitting mechanics. The boys learn it by accident as to balance by running up and down hills, jumping over a fallen tree and the girls unless they were allowed to play with the boys seemed to miss it and then when they are 9, 10, 11 or 12 want to play sports and look awkward and who is teaching them? Crystl had brothers and because George worked with them she tried to do everything they did and did not understand she balanced differently than a boy or that she needed to be taught how to flex her knee more to shift her weight better as she played baseball and softball and pitched until she was 18 on a boys team. It was on the job training!

So why is it when we talk about great hitters and all the mechanics and movements we need to teach the girls we over looked how they function as to balance weight shift and basic neuro muscular skills how do we miss it. We seem to search much harder to make our explanations of what we see them do understandable so we can teach our daughters what? I remember skipping rocks, throwing at bottles and cans shooting a B/B gun and sling shot. When was the last time your daughter did any of these activities? So why not look at the best female hitters and what they do well and not so well and compare what they do with your daughters athletic skills and try to help the parents who do not and do not need to learn what scapula loading is? Do we all need to become so aware of bio mechanics to say we coach that kid and she just got a full ride to Valparaiso and they liked her arm and stick. You are indeed correct when you see a kid get it, the feeling is huge and then you know why you want to do it again with someone elses kid. This girl was cut from a team at 13 because she could not throw and her hitting was below par.

Crystl will tell you herself she is no one special however she is and was a hard worker when it came to softball and baseball. It also does not hurt to have 20/9 vision in her right eye and 20/8 in her left eye and in season she used the flash focus vision system.

Your question: Or is it more valuable to study someone with more moderate giftedness, size, and strength who has attained great success?

I think there is value in both and then become real enough that not all of our daughters will attain her success on the field. I think she had a .400 plus average over ten years and three errors in fielding on the US National Team. This is something your daughter could shoot for. Look at the basic skills being talked about and then have one of those V8 moments when you see girls at 12 to 18 years old and ask how did they get this far and can not even throw a ball without their arm hurting them and then look at how they hit! In my mind it is related...in my opinion.

One last thought..when her and I were in Indy at a 50 team showcase we were walking around with some college coaches and they remarked in their inability to even throw properly. CB asked the girls during our clinic how many times they had practiced last week off a tee knowing they would be seen by college coaches. Over a hundred girls there and only 1 said I practiced twice and 7 said they practiced once and CB asked was it own your own? NO! Then you did not not prepare and your parents wasted their money on gas, food and hotels. You can not argue with logic no matter who it comes from sometimes.

Thanks for asking the questions and I hope I answered them without offending anyone.

Howard

 

[ssarge]

Great answer, Howard, and much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to personalize it, and making it so full of content.

I did get your PM, which I appreciated, and responded in kind. I was aware of a good deal of your CV, but was really pleased to read about the number of kids you have worked with who have matriculated to the college game. That speaks for itself.

Thanks very much, and highest regards,

Scott

 

[ssarge]

Scott. Hitter works with many kids. Many are LD, so many of our teaching and hitting tools are designed so that the non gifted kids can learn. That is why he is a respected hitting instructor in our area and a mentor to many of us. .

I know that he does, and I greatly respect it. (As I respect the experience of anyone who works with hitters personally). He obviously has had great success, and the part about the LD kids is gratifying, and moves me greatly. As does the account re: his son.

My question to him was not loaded. It is because he has worked with perhaps the best in the game and "typical" kids as well that I posed my question to him. And I read his response with interest.

Regards,

Scott

 

[tom.guerry]

failure to teach a good overhand throw is the single biggest opportunity/area for improving player skill development. if you can throw, you can hit in the high level MLB type pattern.

overhand throwing development is PITIFUL in fastpitch. way worse than any hitting learning/coaching.

with respect to head action, chin tuck is very important to stabilize the upper end of the axis. turning head back too much inhibits rotation.

chin tuck fine, but do niot turn the head back trying to follow the ball all the way in or tey to see ball hit bat.

 

[ssarge]

overhand throwing development is PITIFUL in fastpitch. way worse than any hitting learning/coaching.

On the first part of this, we agree. I'm not sure it is WORSE than some of the hitting coaching out there.

failure to teach a good overhand throw is the single biggest opportunity/area for improving player skill development. if you can throw, you can hit in the high level MLB type pattern.

My observation is that the girls who DO throw well at the college level are not, as a group, better hitters. At all. So I would scratch your theory as being particularly relevant. Certainly, your observation is not universal.

But then there are even more LH hitter / RH throwers in FP than in BB, and the "if you can throw you can hit" theory is not meaningful for this subset. Throwing hand is on the BOTTOM of the bat. For that reason too, your theory is dubious in terms of being universally applicable.

Not to mention the fact that MLB pitchers, who have superb throwing mechanics, DO NOT hit in the pattern you describe, as a group. There are other reasons they are crappy hitters, but if there is such universal crossover between throwing and hitting, some of the pitchers should demonstrate it. Largely, they don't.

I know Candrea said it. Let me save you the effort of posting his quote. Or Slaught's. My response to them would be the same. (But then I don't believe the ELBOW "keys" rotation. I'm guessing you don't believe so either, since the H-I belief now appears to be that the hips don't rotate, they thrust, and the shoulders don't rotate, they are bypassed. But the rear elbow "keying" rotation is the predicate assumption for their "if you can throw you can hit" statement.)

The similarities between the throwing motion and the hitting motion are not as plentiful as are the differences. The same can be said of the golf swing and hitting as well. In the sense that throwing correctly is more mechanically difficult and requires more athletecism than hitting, it is reasonable to assume that if you can learn to throw successfully, you can PROBABLY learn to hit. A good pitcher could probably learn to golf, play tennis, or bowl, too. All are athletic activities with some similarity in movement. Assigning more than that requires a lot more evidence than has been presented or seems to be existent, that's for sure.

 

[tom.guerry]

let's all remember this is just "theoretical".

As a true physics of baseball expert, Alan Nathan says:

the physicist's model of the game must fit the game

our goal is not to reform the game [Nyman, Marshall,PCR, other radical nontraditionalists such as Englishbey and JJA] but to understand it.

the physics of baseball is not rocket science. it's much harder.

see slide#1:

http://webusers.npl.illinois.edu/~a-nathan/pob/ppt/BU-Tufts-Sept09.ppt



In this light, I think slaught's definition of the "swing starting" when the back starts down is a good one,

AND, I think if you understand how the throw is like the swing, you will learn/teach an MLB/live and independent hands swing, not a gated core controlling appendages swing.




Englishbey quote from eteamz for reference:

All this is to say ,again ,to mhn999 [and whoever else is interested] ,that the notion that what Paul and myself know and teach ,is pretty much the same as that which is coming from traditional baseball or softball sources ---- that notion is spurious in both large and small ways .

I do not look at this as differnces amoung "camps" ,or "styles" [linear,rotational,hybrid,whatever].


I look at it in a much more radical way:

"Those who principally rely on traditional slogans and "cues" that are a part of baseball -softball instructional lore.
"And those who now attempt to "bolster" this traditional approach with that which sounds scientific ,but upon closer inspection is really "pseudo-science".

"As opposed to those radical ,out of the box types like myself and Paul Nyman [and I suspect there are some others out there who are starting to catch on to this "out of the box stuff" ]who are seeking and using non-traditional sources ,to both explain and teach throwing and hitting."

 

[SBFAMILY]

Scott: I kind of laughed when I read your response on the Left Handed hitters that throw right. The DD is a student of Hitters. She is a good hitter, but a a local college camp they had them throw , as part of a hitting drill. They had to throw the ball to the area they were trying to hit the ball. First base, Third base. She about takes off the coaches head, thowing to first. She turns to the coach and tells her I'm right handed I can't throw with a Sh!!! left handed. She won the hitting contest, as a freshman at this camp against mostly Jr's. So watching her throw in this drill setting , was kind of funny!

 

[Mark H]

let's all remember this is just "theoretical".

And it always will be till you start working with real live hitters on a consistent basis.