Swing Mechanics Post - Connection

Boardmember
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"The hips and shoulders BEGIN rotating simultaneously after weighted foot plant and the unloading process begins.
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I'd choose Hands.............Was that an option?





You choose C if I am reading it right from your previous posts

hips, shoulder, arms and hands driving through the ball.


That is what I believe in.



Straightleg

boardmember stated:

''Screw the shoulders and throw the hands to the ball and you have INSTANT disconnection...........'

Probably so, so better to understand how the shoulders move.

if you are going to take the toruble to make a distinction between scaps and torso, then i would say the scaps are what you refer to as the shoulders.

if you choose to actively turn the shoulders, you will not necessarily disconnect, but you will interrupt the stretch and fire of the torso.

on the other hand, if you tilt the scaps as the hips 'rotate' ina fairly level plane, then the shoulders will resist turning with the hips and set up a better stretch and fire, better because the trajectory is better timed and directed with quicker acceleration since this last quick bot of torso coil reverses more efficiently.

so I would not recommend 'screwing the shoulders'.

i would recommend torquing the handle, then tilting the shoulders to create a better/quicker/matched stretch and fire. without discnnecting or rushing.

Tom,

Your last post clearly states what I also believe happens in the ML swing. And as for some of your lengthy posts, I happen to like the detail you go into. Would I teach it to kids in this detail? No. Would I like a deeper understanding of the swing with which to hopefully make me a better instructor? Definitely.

Mike

Thanks, Mike.

I would say it helps for the coach to have, among other things, a beginning to end roadmap of what happens in the mlb pattern. I have found this can be done well applying the 1 and 2 plane swing filter as in golf, then within the 2 plane patterns where throwing and hitting are very similar in preparation, arm action is king in synching the upper and lower body with upper in control (hands are neurally strong as Nyman now says).

This roadmap can then be compared/contrasted with the VERY different PCR/W/single plane pattern, and when both are understaood, the coach is in an excelllent position to teach a swing that lest the natural inborn tendencies take over.

While feel is not real, I think feel is MORE than real.

A golf swing and a softball/baseball swing are similar in their rotational principles, but very different in actual application. For one, a golf ball on a tee is a stationary object on the ground, whereas a baseball/softball is a moving object requiring "on the fly" vertical and horizontal plane adjustments. There are several other differences, such as head position, visual focus point, etc.

Considering these differences, I would hesitate to use comparisons between the two for teaching a high level softball swing.

As a start for beginners, I like Englishbey's wooden dowel drills to get a feeling of how the swing works. There are a LOT of fine details, but basically start from a balanced, strong athletic position, you Stride, Tilt & Turn. The dowel keeps the arms isolated and connected to the body, and the tilt & turn starts them getting a feel to use the whole body, not just the arms. Then, progressing to using the end of the dowel to actually hit balls off of a tee shows them how the shoulders and bat align in the same plane through rotation.

Learn A as a base swing.

The complexity of human movement requires progressing from a simple pattern to a more refined one. Learning A allows for a baseline from which to add, adapt, and experiment from and a place to return if the experimentation doesn't prove effective.

It becomes increasingly difficult to determine cause and effect as levels of complexity are added to the system.

Straight

There is really not that much difference between A&B. With B I do think you have a bit more opportunity to disconnect with the swing. I would follow the advise of Bats then develop your own thoughts on what you think works best for the DD.

Elliott.

Tom -

Could you explain "stretch & Fire", "1 & 2 plane swing filter", and the context you are using "plane" to describe an element of the swing? I think you have some worth while concepts, but I'm trying to form a mental picture of what your catch-phrases mean. I tend to be a visual learner, relying on video a lot to understand what is happening. Could you post video showing these principles with a description of what you see happening - "stretch & fire", etc.?

buster-

The golf experience as best described by Hardy shows that there are 2 basic ways of executing a high level swing.

There is swinging the arms/bat/club middle out with the shoulders as the body turns, that is a one plane swing which feels like swinging around and NOT like stretch and fire.

The other alternative is sunching the two ends of the body as the arms swing up and down at the same time the body turns back and forth. In this case the arms swing down as the hips turn open in a more level plane which creates a stretch of the torso between theses two with arm swing being dominant.

The MLB swing pattern is a further adjustment of this 2 plane swing/swing down that allows a quicker wing with late on the fly adjustment.

These patterns are VERY different. you do not learn the "simpler" single plane, then move on 2 the 2 plane. They are each complex and largely mutually incompatible.

The best way I know of to get the picture for the visual type is to see the golf info. If this makes sense, then I can go over how the golf patterns get adapted for single plane/"PCR" hitting and 2 plane/MLB hitting patterns.

As a starter here are 2 golf channel shows with video:

Golf Channel Videos

Golf Channel Videos

Of course as Scott has repeatedly pointed out, Hardy says the one plane swing is the MLB swing.