locking the front leg prior to contact
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MarkH: That clip talks to my earlier point about successful athletes having varying mechanics and yet still successful. I believe if an athlete practices enough reps of ANYTHING within reason, their COORDINATION increases, and the potential (for contact in this case) increases. As you point out Soriano clearly starts hip rotation before heel plant. Seems to me the best way to pitch him is low sliders away that almost FORCE him to hit weaker grounders to the right side, yet he is one of the better hitters in MLB.
I do understand your point and can't rebutt it, though I do see many different styles from successful athletes and don't want to use any one model as the ONLY one that works. As for teaching, you have to choose something youo feel is most succesful and the athletes that have different mechanics then you teach..... if succusseful, leave them alone, if not, try and tweak something.
** I tell my girls, if you are hiitting .400-.500, I won't say a word, BUT if you are hitting .180, I'll suggest you try something different (or you just won't bat much, cause we can't hurt the team.)
I do understand your point and can't rebutt it, though I do see many different styles from successful athletes and don't want to use any one model as the ONLY one that works. As for teaching, you have to choose something youo feel is most succesful and the athletes that have different mechanics then you teach..... if succusseful, leave them alone, if not, try and tweak something.
** I tell my girls, if you are hiitting .400-.500, I won't say a word, BUT if you are hitting .180, I'll suggest you try something different (or you just won't bat much, cause we can't hurt the team.)
The Key word is ELITE. This is a issue you have with parents and students. They watch and elite player do something, like Mark posted and they think that is the way it works. We do not teach the extremes. They may work for an Elite player but not for the majority of the players in the game. That is why when we use RVP, we pick players that match the swing we are working on. Each player has different ability and you teach what works for that player.
Is that what you see happening in the provided Soriano clip?
As I watch that clip frame-by-frame, it seems pretty clear that he is rotating the hips INTO footplant. And I think this is consistent with the better hitters in the world.
I get that point, but respectfully disagree. First, I think I differ from you in what constitutes an "extreme." And in my experience, learning doesn't work as linearly as that. Someone (for example) doesn't plant the heel, then rotate the hips for x number of years, THEN all of a sudden start rotating into foot plant because they are becoming elite. Rather, they become elite because they do things like use their core to rotate the hips into footplant, then continue rotation as the foot plants and thereafter. One movement, one continuous action, NOT two separate movements.
And this is NOT semantics, "chicken before egg," etc. Nor am I trying to be argumentative. This is a crucial point in determining how to instruct hitters. Has little to do with the rotation of hips into footplant question (per se). That is merely an example of some broader points.
Namely:
1) There are certain things so fundamental to the swing that it is better to learn them from an early age (and I agree there is room for divergence on which things ARE that crucial, although IMO, the hip rotation question IS one).
2) The best swings are continuous movement, not a series of independent actions. Optimal loading sequence followed by an optimal unloading sequence, with a little overlap. In effect, one long continuous movement. HUGELY different than emulating a series of movements and swing positions in sequence as separate steps. (and one of the drawbacks of RVP, IMO, though it is a fine product which I use frequently).
3) The biggest challenge in teaching a kid of typical athletecism the swing is NOT putting their body into the correct position(s) at various points in the swing. It is teaching them to begin to MOVE THEIR BODY in a way that emulates how elite athletes naturally move their bodies. Which is very differently than how most of us do it. Elite athletes are quite simply, savant-like in their motor skills. Others of us aren't. In my experience, though, a "typical" athlete can get there in limited ways (for example, moving their body for the sole purpose of hitting a softball).
And I striongly believe that failure to TRY to do this all but insures a hitter won't BECOME elite. Proper mechanics are extremely important. How to move the body is an underlying foundation though, and it is the reason their are athletic trainers in the world, which is a completely different function than mechanical instruction.
And not to over-punctuate the point, but the hip rotation question illustrates this. Rotating the hips INTO footplant is a movement that is natural for elite athletes, less so for most of us. But representaing a pattern of movement that others CAN learn, if only for brief intervals of athletic performance (say 0.5 seconds).
Best regards,
Scott
IMO, all elite hitters do this, it is just more clearly viewed in that clip of Soriano. I don;t think there is a single hitter in MLB who drops his heel, THEN starts the hips rotating. Unless he was fooled by a pitch or for some other reason is trying to retard a particular swing. But not in a typical swing.
ABSOLUTELY correct for the coach of a team.
An instyructor probably should take a more long-term view though. Namely, are the mechanics sufficiently efficient that it is likelty the kid will continue to produce at lofty levels up to the highest level of play to which she aspires. Your point about developing coordination through repetition is valid, for sure. And yet, there are mechanical inefficiencies (a 7-video-frame swing instead of a 4-5 frame swing) that will preclude success at the top levels. For sure. Working in conjunction with a kid and her parents, an instructor needs to weigh that and implement a more long-range plan.
A team coach on the other hand, is INSANE to do ANYTHING with a .400 hitter. I don;t care if she holds the barrel and hits with the handle. The upside to messing with a hitter like that in a team setting (little time to spend with each individual kid, less experience as a specialized hitting guy, an understandable desire to make the kid better for SATURDAY, not for two years from now) limit success.
Looked at another way: What's the upside? A .400 hitter becomes a .425 hitter? The downside is that she hits .200. Not a good tradeoff, IMO, and it sounds as if we agree.
Best regards,
Scott
Yes and no. If they are hitting as well as they want to at the highest level they aspire to, yes. If they are crushing average pitching with a seven frame swing and they want to be better, then no.
The point of RightView, I thought, was to swing and move like elite athletes swing and move. Don emphasized that point when I listened to him debate a hitting point with Englishbey at the Ronald McDonald tourney in Houston years ago. If that emphasis has changed I find that very disappointing. Great hitters rotate into foot plant or heel plant. I suggest emulating great hitters. Or at the very LEAST, don't discourage hitters from doing something elite hitters do.
Photo 5 of 16, ULL vs. UNT
Photo 6 of 16, ULL vs. UNT
Photo 5 of 7, UCLA vs. Michigan
Same thing more subtle. Photo 9 of 16, Fastpitch
No stride swing with hip rotation into heel plant. Photo 3 of 16, Fastpitch
Again this is out of control. I hate Video clips because I don't know how many students and coaches that have no idea what is STYLE and what are mechanics view them. Then they go and try to hit like what they just watched.Elite players have things that are Style that they can do that the average little suzzy cannot do. I don't know how many players we get that we have to fix things they thought was the correct way after viewing a clip. Again we do not teach extremes. My above post was taken wrong by ssarge and I read it again. My point that I was making was Extremes and Style. YES RVP has not changed. You can watch many different Styles, but you need to know what you are doing many don't. Freeze the frame at heel plant and most elite hitters are all the same. I have seen kids come in with the wildest Stances, because dad told them that is how the Elite players hit the ball. Example bat straight up in the air, they forget to watch that the player got the bat in the slot position before the negative move.
You have a valid concern. The key is what do almost all great hitters have in common. You need to watch a lot of clips just of one hitter to figure out what they are doing. You need to watch a lot of different hitters to see what they have in common. Even that will be limited by our pre-existing ideas and our training. For instance some struggle to understand momentum. Others have been trained to understand it or understand it intuitively. That's why I put several examples up because I believe all elite hitters rotate the pelvis into foot plant. If Slaught/RightView teaches differently I was unaware of that. I do think his analysis tends to be a little two dimensional from looking at clips from across the plate but I'd be shocked if he did not think good hitters rotate the pelvis into heel plant.
This was sent to me to respond to this thread.
I am repeating myself:
The idea is to get the hitter to feel and understand weight transfer. Have them put their shoulder up against a wall with their feet directly under them and then ask them to lift the foot up that is not against the wall and they will not be able to do it because they can not transfer the weight. Also point out as we walk it is heel toe transfer and repeat to be able to lift our foot and we want to control this as think slow to load, soft to step on a flexed front knee and separate our hands rearward and that our hips never stop moving and neither do our hands. We just want them to change direction like we do in Tai Chi when doing the flowing move. We also do this with a half empty bottle of water and place it in the hitters hand horizontally and say load and shift the water back and then shift it forward and they feel it move in their hand. We want to be in control of our weight shift so we do not want the water to have bubbles so we control the flow and how it feels. We try to keep the explanations simple enough for a 12 year old to understand and so the parents can help them see it, feel it and fix it. We are losing kids and parents in my opinion when we become so scientific in our explanations!
When we throw we land on a flexed knee by landing on the ball of the foot and the knee is soft or flexed and our weight will transfer off the back side. We do the same thing for hitting and keep the weight on the inside portion of the lead foot to keep our body in motion to prevent the knee from locking out at contact suddenly. We want a weight transfer or weight that is transferring back to forward to build momentum.
There are some hitters who tend to land more flat footed which stops their weight transfer and this usually results in the front side opening too soon. Then there are the hitters who step more on all five toes with the heel very high and the side of the foot or heel pointing towards the pitcher and they usually spin out and never get the heel planted and you will notice their knee cap is pointed some what towards the catcher and the pressure between the knees is lost....slow to load, soft to step on a flexed front knee and the hands separating rearward and like the water flowing and never letting your body stop while thinking to the ball and through the ball and never stopping just like the flowing water.
When you teach someone how to ride a bike why are the training wheels used? Why not just take off the wheels and give them a good shove? To give them a sense of how to generate momentum and which side of their body is best fitted for applying that downward pressure on which pedal and where should that pedal be positioned to apply the most force and how to judge distance and how to stop the bike before they hit a bush or run into an object is probably why most people use training wheels. Then when you take off the training wheels they find out the bike no longer steers left to right using the handle bars and you must use more balance to direct the bike and you must learn how to lean and balance. When the bike is perfectly balance neither training wheel is on the ground and they can sense when it is perfect IF you point it out. I think the same thing applies to teaching hitting as how you start to apply weight transfer starts with throwing and then you can relate balance and weight transfer to hitting. I especially like Don's interlocked two handed throw so they can see it, feel it and fix it and relate it to hitting. They feel the weight shifting forward and never coming to a complete stop while getting their body to the position of throwing the ball and or hitting the ball. Would we agree the leg is completely locked out at contact with the ball or is it still firming up as we are hitting the ball which was the question I think. Exactly to the point of which hitters style would you choose? Bustos, Whately, Mendoza for example? Don worked with UCLA engineering last year with Team USA using pressure pads on the floor at load and then at toe touch and Bustos was the only one to be at 50/ 50 at toe touch and Whatley was 90/ 10 and Mendoza was 60/ 40 and they started hitting the ball with more power. After this was pointed out the players tried to be more balanced and flowing to the ball and CB lead the team in individual home runs and Team USA lead in team homeruns. Yeah they still came in second place however I think the point was made they needed to flow to the ball and not step, stop and rotate. Children's Hospital in Cincinnati has a device they can put in your shoes that can read the pressure on the foot in many places and it uses a battery back pack and sends the signal back in real time. I am trying to get one of our kids who trains there to use it so we can see her weight transfer from load to touch, to heel plant, to contact, to extension to finish. Become the water and flow to the ball! Bruce Lee was ahead of his time in my opinion and probably would have been a great hitting instructor also.
I am repeating myself:
The idea is to get the hitter to feel and understand weight transfer. Have them put their shoulder up against a wall with their feet directly under them and then ask them to lift the foot up that is not against the wall and they will not be able to do it because they can not transfer the weight. Also point out as we walk it is heel toe transfer and repeat to be able to lift our foot and we want to control this as think slow to load, soft to step on a flexed front knee and separate our hands rearward and that our hips never stop moving and neither do our hands. We just want them to change direction like we do in Tai Chi when doing the flowing move. We also do this with a half empty bottle of water and place it in the hitters hand horizontally and say load and shift the water back and then shift it forward and they feel it move in their hand. We want to be in control of our weight shift so we do not want the water to have bubbles so we control the flow and how it feels. We try to keep the explanations simple enough for a 12 year old to understand and so the parents can help them see it, feel it and fix it. We are losing kids and parents in my opinion when we become so scientific in our explanations!
When we throw we land on a flexed knee by landing on the ball of the foot and the knee is soft or flexed and our weight will transfer off the back side. We do the same thing for hitting and keep the weight on the inside portion of the lead foot to keep our body in motion to prevent the knee from locking out at contact suddenly. We want a weight transfer or weight that is transferring back to forward to build momentum.
There are some hitters who tend to land more flat footed which stops their weight transfer and this usually results in the front side opening too soon. Then there are the hitters who step more on all five toes with the heel very high and the side of the foot or heel pointing towards the pitcher and they usually spin out and never get the heel planted and you will notice their knee cap is pointed some what towards the catcher and the pressure between the knees is lost....slow to load, soft to step on a flexed front knee and the hands separating rearward and like the water flowing and never letting your body stop while thinking to the ball and through the ball and never stopping just like the flowing water.
When you teach someone how to ride a bike why are the training wheels used? Why not just take off the wheels and give them a good shove? To give them a sense of how to generate momentum and which side of their body is best fitted for applying that downward pressure on which pedal and where should that pedal be positioned to apply the most force and how to judge distance and how to stop the bike before they hit a bush or run into an object is probably why most people use training wheels. Then when you take off the training wheels they find out the bike no longer steers left to right using the handle bars and you must use more balance to direct the bike and you must learn how to lean and balance. When the bike is perfectly balance neither training wheel is on the ground and they can sense when it is perfect IF you point it out. I think the same thing applies to teaching hitting as how you start to apply weight transfer starts with throwing and then you can relate balance and weight transfer to hitting. I especially like Don's interlocked two handed throw so they can see it, feel it and fix it and relate it to hitting. They feel the weight shifting forward and never coming to a complete stop while getting their body to the position of throwing the ball and or hitting the ball. Would we agree the leg is completely locked out at contact with the ball or is it still firming up as we are hitting the ball which was the question I think. Exactly to the point of which hitters style would you choose? Bustos, Whately, Mendoza for example? Don worked with UCLA engineering last year with Team USA using pressure pads on the floor at load and then at toe touch and Bustos was the only one to be at 50/ 50 at toe touch and Whatley was 90/ 10 and Mendoza was 60/ 40 and they started hitting the ball with more power. After this was pointed out the players tried to be more balanced and flowing to the ball and CB lead the team in individual home runs and Team USA lead in team homeruns. Yeah they still came in second place however I think the point was made they needed to flow to the ball and not step, stop and rotate. Children's Hospital in Cincinnati has a device they can put in your shoes that can read the pressure on the foot in many places and it uses a battery back pack and sends the signal back in real time. I am trying to get one of our kids who trains there to use it so we can see her weight transfer from load to touch, to heel plant, to contact, to extension to finish. Become the water and flow to the ball! Bruce Lee was ahead of his time in my opinion and probably would have been a great hitting instructor also.
No problem there. Good thought process but nothing new. Read Dixon's book. When that came out, that was new. I'd suggest where he said "I think the point was made they needed to flow to the ball and not step, stop and rotate." I agree with. This is central to my point. If you aren't rotating the pelvis into heel plant but are waiting till heel plant to rotate the pelvis you will not flow.
