Elbows

[ifubuildit]

Ken

I am not an advocate of tilting the shoulders as a result of the back elbow being up. I want my hitters to have shoulders parallel to the ground with the back elbow up. By that I mean level with the shoulder. Not raised above the shoulder like you see a number of kids try to do with their swings. The front arm will be directly across from the chin. Not dropped down like you see some MLB players do today.

MLB players can get away with that but a young hitter cannot. Allows too much room for slop when you introduce dynamic motion that serves no purpose other than to break connection and the swing plane going to the ball.

The young hitters I see tilting the shoulders tend to be the ones who are looking for a way to load becasue that is what their coach taught them. They are too young to understand that all this will lead to is bat drag or dropping the hands because the shoulders are trying to adjust at the same time the core is rotating and the elbow is attempting to get into the slot. I say attempting only becasue in most cases it doesnt happen.

Elliott.

 

[Mark H]

I recommend ifubuildit. I suggest reading everything he writes carefully and asking him questions about anything that doesn't make sense to you. Use him. He's a great resource.

 

[ang4yanks]

Elliot, no need to defend with me. I have identified and respect your knowledge of the sport.

Ang

 

[Ken Krause]

Ifyoubuildit, take a look at the hitters siggy has put up on this link Mark posted before. Which ones do you not see starting with their front shoulder down? I'd say they all do it.

I was at a clinic over the winter with Deb Hartwig. She showed video of Lisa Fernandez superimposed over Albert Pujols. Both had similar swings, and both were front shoulder down. I think those are some pretty good examples.

 

[Ken Krause]

A couple of Pujols photos

I am at my home computer now. I pulled a couple of stills of Pujols hitting in a game that illustrate a couple of points. I have edited this post since I originally put it up. I was having trouble figuring out how to put photos up. I can't seem to do it here, so I tried using Facebook. That didn't work too well either -- anyone who wants to see them has to have a Facebook account.

Then it hit me. I have a blog. Duh! So here's a link to the post, where you can see stills of Albert Pujols in his stance and at toe touch that were pulled from video shot by a friend of mine. It definitely shows him lowering his front shoulder as he goes into launch.

 

[Mark H]

Lowering the front shoulder. Seems a phrase that could be taken a lot of ways or as Steve puts it, lacks sufficient explanatory power so my answer is, it depends. Understanding tilt toward the plate as a mechanism for pitch location adjustment as diagrammed by Siggy then lowered becomes a question of lowered in relation to what. Sorry to make this long but I'm hoping to make myself understood in spite of all of us having different points of view and different terminology. If a hitter is hitting a chest high pitch or a knee high pitch, if they "lower the front shoulder" by turing the chest away from the pitcher and toward the catcher very much that's a bad thing. If they "lower the front shoulder" by, what is it, abduction or adduction, of the front shoulder, IOW, not moving the chest but rather loading the front shoulder in toward the midline or toward the catcher, that's a good thing.

Kids tend to do it the bad way, commonly called counter rotation, on the tee even if they don't do it against a pitcher because they turn the head back toward the tee instead of out toward the pitcher at the first and they let the torso turn with the head.

If anyone has questions why counter rotation is a bad thing we can discuss that but it relates to time and to swing plane.

 

[Mr. Charlie]

Here we go again. It seems like we have gone through this before, and I promise not to belabor the point. My feeling on the elbow is whatever works. The thing I find interesting is what two people say they see when they look at the same thing. Whether the elbow is up or the elbow is down I guess depends a lot on what a person calls up or down. When I look at Pujols I see elbow up, Ken sees elbow down.

I call it elbow up because the elbow is pretty much even with the shoulder, not even with the mid torso. I also call it up because the upper arm is pretty much parralel to the ground, not at a 45 degree angle.

I think that slight shoulder tilt helps the hitters make sure they stay closed longer and not fly open too soon.

 

[Mark H]

Yep, words and definitions can be a problem and up is a relative term. When you say shoulder tilt what's your definition?

 

[Ken Krause]

I call it elbow up because the elbow is pretty much even with the shoulder, not even with the mid torso. I also call it up because the upper arm is pretty much parralel to the ground, not at a 45 degree angle.

I call it elbow down because it's down in relation to the hands. If you lower Pujols' hands to his shoulder or armpit, and change nothing else, his elbow will be by his side. The only reason it appears to be elevated is because of the height of his hands. The forearms tell the story. They form the upside-down V. If the back elbow was elevated, as I understand the classic definition used by coaches to instruct hitters, the right forearm would be parallel to the ground and the two forearms together would form more of an L shape. In fact, both the forearm and upper arm would be parallel to the ground. But they're not.

That's how I am defining "get the back elbow up." Again -- hands at the shoulder, back elbow raised to the same height as the hands.

With that definition in mind, do you still think the back elbow is up?

 

[Ken Krause]

I think this has been tried before on other forums but should we open an area where we can try to agree on definitions and at least reference the same terminology? Or would that just complicate things?