MTS: We have built a neat Tool for training the Elbow, hands, bat. Hitter has posted it. Perhaps Chris or Dana can post a picture. Cshilt, is good at that. What it does is train the hitter to take the elbow first, without turning the shoulders. Then it has a traget for the hands, as the shoulder turns . Then the bat releases. It is great with kids because they can see and feel it.
radial deviation
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Who advocates early wrist activation? Not me. What I advocate is what Pujols does in frames 9 thru 11 in your flip book video.
Sorry you don't accept the significance of what he's doing in those frames. At least that's the impression I get from your post on the subject over at baseballdebate.com.
I'll say it again. There are two ways to lower the back elbow. One way is how Pujols is doing it, and the other way is how Megan Bush and most other FP players do it or are taught to do it. Each method results in a different barrel path. Mankin clearly points out how the barrel paths differ in the clips that Tom posted links to.
The difference in how the top hand works is different in the two methods. The best way to understand what Bonds means when he says "you haven't seen my top hand", is to duplicate his basic barrel path, i.e what Pujols does in frames 9 thru 11.
If you do what Pujols does in frames 9 thru 11 in your flip book video it might help you understand how a hitter can turn their hands over without twisting/unhinging their wrist.
Possibly I may not say the hips leading early and would say on time. I think everything has a sequence and a linkage or connection value. This is why we use the half full water bottle so they can feel the weight shifting in their hand and our focus becomes how to flow to the ball and be under control during the entire swing. I put a finger on either side of their hip and say this is where the flowing has to be felt now! We teach our students to feel the core by getting into a postured position. They balance first by bending at the waist and softening the knees and get to toe touch on a flexed knee with the heel of the foot turned back towards the catchers position slightly. I feel the knee caps of the hitters legs should not be pointed in opposite directions or turned in, especially the lead leg or the flow is being misdirected or slowed down. I sit in a chair so I can be lower and tell the hitter I am going to rotate you and put the palms of my hands on their hips (bony protrusions) and turn them slowly. Because it is a static motion it feels a little unbalanced as we turn or position them. Once I get them turned I put my left foot behind their back foot to support them and they can brace off against my foot. I put two fingers at the clavicle notch, the V shaped area directly under the chin and then two fingers at or slightly below their belt line. The hitter puts their hand on their stomach and as I push backwards at the clavicle notch I am pushing forward at the belt line. They can feel their stomach tighten up and they are angled up against their front leg. It takes a little effort on their part to get up on the back foot toe while firming up the front side. Then I slowly tilt their shoulders forward until they feel the stomach become soft. They are looking in a mirror so they can see their posture and how it looks and feels. See it, feel it and fix it! After they swing we have them look to see if their posture, the head is tilted forward or back slightly at an angle with the head slightly down looking at a white rag stuffed into the tee and they are angled up against their lead leg.
They can feel and we teach slow to load, soft to step, landing on a flexed front knee while separating the hands slightly rearward. Then we say the elbows must work together as a single unit and the elbows lead the hands and the knob of the bat leads the elbows.
Hopefully the hips never stopped until heel plant started and rotation begins and the elbows via the shoulders for the purest. Many of us who teach just say the rest of the body, for those that teach the kids may explain it by saying, working in sequence by the elbows leading the hands and the knob of the bat leading the elbows and then we say release the bat barrel to the ball and hit a ball off a tee into the net. We do all this in what we term super slow motion being very deliberate with our motion and compare it to the movie Matrix, so some of the kids call it the Matrix drill.
If I did not answer your question please let me know. I am not an expert however I do know some people who I consider to be experts.
Thanks Howard
What I have found when using the hand path device is that most hitters have been taught to keep their hands inside the ball HOWEVER no one ever told them the shoulders should be moving with the elbows. Try it your self by simply standing in front of the hitter (RH) and hold your right hand with the palm of your hand facing the hitter at shoulder height finger tips up. Ask the hitter to get to toe touch and try to take the lead elbow and touch the palm of your hand. Some simply raise the elbow, some try to take their whole body forward and forget the elbows work as a separate unit and some actually get it and the elbow moves forward as the back elbow is lowering. The ones that do not start their shoulders turning, look very closely at their top hand and you will see the baby finger and ring finger coming loose off the bat because they moved the knob of the bat so far forward they can no longer hold onto the bat with the top hand. Usually they are holding the bat in the back of the hand also. The way we try to explain it to the kids is we say the clavicle notch will become their third eye and we want them to track the ball with their third eye by opening/ turning the shoulders a little more as we lead with the knob of the bat. We then take our left hand palm towards them, finger tips up. The left hand is slightly lower than the right one about 4 inches away and we say take the knob of the bat to the left hand and they start the turn and tilt based on the balls location. The device actually has a ball on the end of it is a visual as well.
We made this for Coach Larabee formally at WSU and we made some more now that he is at Arkansas State.
Dan, I sent Gerry an email asking him to post it.
- Nov 29, 2009
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I like the way you teach Hitter/Howard while I might disagree slightly with some aspects of what you teach. I know what you teach will work and work very well. From your description I would consider you an expert in teaching hitting. One more question, your hitters how do they do with offspeed pitches with out guessing right on the pitch?
I've heard the story about Slaught and Bonds before. Fortunately we have slow motion video clips to study what the best like Bonds do. We can also duplicate their basic movements ourselves to get an even better idea of what they do. I study the slow motion video and then duplicate the movements myself. IMO, it's the only way to truly understand what the best do.
For instance, for the longest time I didn't understand the whole hip cock/bind thing. I finally figured it out simply by duplicating Pujols' no stride/minimal stride movements. It's impossible to do what he does without creating a bind in the back hip.
We can also learn from hitters like Williams who had an excellent idea what they were doing;
Wade Boggs, Ted Williams and Don Mattingly rendezvous to - 04.14.86 - SI Vault
So, when Bonds says "You've never seen my top hand", I try to understand what he means, rather than just blow him off as someone who doesn't know what he's talking about, or down play it because it might not fit my methodology. IMO, many in the FP community are down playing some of the movements seen in video clips of MLB players, because the movements don't fit their methodology.
No doubt, I'm somewhat out of touch with many in the FP community because my target is the MLB swing similar to Bonds, Pujols, Williams etc. When I see clear video evidence of how Pujols' hands turn over as his back elbow lowers, I don't try to explain it away, or worse, just ignore it. When I see clear evidence of how Bonds arcs his bat head rearward in the excellent clip posted by BM taken from overhead, I try and duplicate it.
In my world it's all about the video clips. If my DD's movements don't match the video clips then we keep working.
Dan if someone can explain to me how to put a picture into one of these post I would be more than willing to show the device as long as Howard is willing to share it on here.
Dana.
Thank you!
It starts with timing and rhythm in every thing we do and tracking the ball and it is not a short answer and neither is the process to teach it.
First we let the hitter pick their stance by standing in front of a mirror using a parallel stance and getting a good two eyed look. This means turning their face far enough towards the mirror as a (RH) so they can see the white of the left eye all the way around the eye. I ask if they feel any tension in their neck or shoulder area and they usually say yes. I ask them to move their back foot towards the first baseman about two inches and they say that feels comfortable now. TSW called it a 5 degree open stance. The only kids I have that use a closed stance have all had lazy left eye surgery and all are righted handed and the lazy eye is the left eye.
Hitting any pitch starts with vision and being able to see the ball. We work off the pitchers mechanics and teach it by having the hitter look into the mirror and I stand behind them and off to the side and back so I do not get hit when they swing. I go through the pitchers motion and stop at the top of the K position and give them a check point as to starting their load. I have timed Jennie and she comes from the top of the K to release in 11 to 16 hundredths of a second and from release about .24 to .28 hundredths of a second. We explain it in time relevance that blinking their eyes twice as fast as they can is about one second. Now blink one time and it is about one half of a second....so we explain in less than a blink of an eye if you are not at toe touch and still moving you may not be on time and dancing with the pitcher. I go through my motion in real time in front of the mirror again and they try to time their swing to my motion. We get them to not look at the pitcher rather towards the outfield so they can see their motion and pick up the pitchers window of release. The key for us has been the flexed knee, and we do not want them to stop or pause and encourage them to land on the inside edge of our foot (eversion).
When I soft toss they look through the net in an area about 24 to 29 inches which would be a typical hand height release of a pitcher. When I start my hand down they see it out of their peripheral vision vision and they determine when to start their loading sequence. We do a very simple knee cock so the weight is inside the back leg and not over it so their is minimum head movement and more efficiency in the weight shift. As they go to toe touch our hands move rearward slightly and as we are or about to get to touch touch they move their head to the right a little. Their nose is pointing towards were the second baseman normally plays however their eyes are in the pitchers window of release. The eyes can move faster than the head so we give our head a head start and minimize the head movement and maximize the eye movement. Then we have a white rag glued inside the tee and we want their head to be down a little after contact. This has nothing to do with vision and we teach you are stronger with your head down not up. We make a conscious effort to get them to learn how to sit on the front knee a little to make adjustments to the speed of the pitch. I thought Coach Enquist explained this very well in RVP by showing a hitter with her hips still moving forward and when the hitter sensed the speed of the pitch they stayed flexed on the knee longer and when they sensed the ball was faster they get to heel plant sooner. We do a drill where I have them get to toe touch and bend the front knee once after toe touch and their hands are back and I soft toss to simulate a faster pitch. Then repeat and bend the knee once and then a little more and soft toss and that is off speed. Then repeat and bend it three times so they sit on the knee a little more and soft toss and say that might be a change up. Now we do a timing drop drill and I lower the ball probably mid thigh as they look through the net and I flex my wrist and they start their load and I drop the ball continuing my hand upwards and out of the way. That is a fast ball, little higher and that is off speed and and a little higher and that is a change up. Now we have tied the feeling back together and we vary the height of the ball. I do not stand on buckets or ladders and do the timing drop drill as I have never seen a ball delivered from that angle. Keep it real and use the same vision mechanics.
Now to the cages...Barry Bonds use to do clinics with Barry Bonds and he taught me what he calls the Bonds drill. We put a left handed glove on a right handed hitter and tell them to go through their hitting mechanics and we throw using an arm circle and release and the hitter tracks the ball to the glove and catches the ball in front of them. Now we move to the cage and start all the way in the back of the cage beyond where the catcher sets up. If using a public cage you should not go beyond the safety area. If in a cage with a pitching machine it is critical that the person feeding the machine understands how to feed it or they destroy everything we have worked on. Hold a ball in your left hand at the feed tube and do an arm swing with the ball in their right hand. As you get to the K position they load and as you start down feed the ball. We work from low to high slow to fast. We step forward after each catch and see how close we can get to the machine. Then we reverse and go high to low and fast to slow. A cycle is up and back and take a break. Now do it with the bat and we feel they are creating what we term as a swing DNA because the more we see it the easier it is to adjust. Do not let them move forward until they make solid contact. In fact make them step back and try it again and before long they are challenging them self. Be careful of getting to close to the machine as you can drive a ball back into the tire. Crystl demonstrates this when we have cages at the clinics and stops with 10 feet of the machine for safety. Th e machine is set a 55 MPH and many on here saw her do this last Feb. at Westerville High School In Columbus Ohio. We allowed all of our kids to try it. One 11 year girl got within 15 feet and it was over her head at that point. At the end of the drill my friend explained, Bonds took a glove and put it on his bat and said if I can track the ball into the glove and catch it, then track the ball as long as you can and catch it with your bat! We do not use pitching machines for batting practice, we use it for timing and rhythm and creating a swing DNA.
Bottom line we hit pretty much every pitch fast or slow because we practice for it. We tell our kids it is your job to determine what you think you can hit and you determine your hitting zone as we do not have a strike zone it is our hitting zone. The only thing we want the umpire to do is call safe or out and it is your job to determine what you think they can hit.
I hope this helps in some way.
Howard
- Oct 12, 2009
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I am always interested in what Pujols does and am interested in what he does during those frames, but I would classify it as more of a running start and external rotation than an active top hand as some people (seem to) say.
At least, it doesn't fit the classic definition of an active top hand.
- Nov 29, 2009
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Hitter
I agree totally with a lot of what you say and do except for toe touch. I like for eveything to be settled and ready to explode at the k position. In fact this is when I want the front foot down and still. I want everything clear and settled to read the pitch and eliminate as much head movement as possible. No moving parts during the decision phase at all. With the proper load forward movement is instantaneous once the decision is made. I am guessing by what you mean when you say swing DNA you are meaning building a swing to a point where it is done without thinking about it. With the foot down early seems to eliminate getting out front with the offspeed pitches even if the heat is in the mid sixties
I agree totally with a lot of what you say and do except for toe touch. I like for eveything to be settled and ready to explode at the k position. In fact this is when I want the front foot down and still. I want everything clear and settled to read the pitch and eliminate as much head movement as possible. No moving parts during the decision phase at all. With the proper load forward movement is instantaneous once the decision is made. I am guessing by what you mean when you say swing DNA you are meaning building a swing to a point where it is done without thinking about it. With the foot down early seems to eliminate getting out front with the offspeed pitches even if the heat is in the mid sixties
