Swing down

[Shawn]

BTW Hank Aaron said to swing down in his book.

 

[julray]

Except I was thinking to rigid.

Sorry Shawn, no idea what you are talking about there

 

[Shawn]

Sorry Shawn, no idea what you are talking about there

To much rigid with the shoulders, arms/hands connection and the posture dictated everything. To much hold on to the bat and turn.

 

[julray]

To much rigid with the shoulders, arms/hands connection and the posture dictated everything. To much hold on to the bat and turn.

Yeah I don’t see rigid being part of the process.. can you elaborate?

 

[Shawn]

Yeah I don’t see rigid being part of the process.. can you elaborate?

Trying to create a swing plane with the hands taking out of equation. With the hands just holding onto the bat and using only posture to bring the bat around.

 

[julray]

Trying to create a swing plane with the hands taking out of equation. With the hands just holding onto the bat and using only posture to bring the bat around.

You don’t use posture to bring the bat around. Posture is established to create space for the hands. That’s what i didn’t understand about your comment. Establishing and maintaining posture has nothing to do with being rigid .. it encourages good barrel path.. helps with direction, allows the barrel to get on plane and stay on plane through out the zone for a long time. It allows the hitter to swing out from the body(proper extension) instead of wrapping the bat around the body.

Posture creates the angle for rotation .. it doesn’t power the rotation, so I can’t try your experiment above.. I can’t use posture to rotate/bring the bat around

 

[Quasimodo]

Is this swinging down, IOW are you trying to swing down or just swinging around the posture? I always thought it was posture, but I could be wrong.

Are you trying to swing down, or just letting the posture set the plane?

Not in my opinion. He says it is obvious that they are. Well how can you launch the hands from the shoulder, or swing at any pitch below the shoulders without changing the bat's plane? You can't! In fact the bat head entering the hitting plane behind the back leg is an element of linear hitting. Antonelli makes certain claims in particular about hitting that just are not true. It isn't that he is wrong, but he exaggerates things that are just not taught in linear hitting like pushing the hands and "swinging down" on the ball. If he is right, and often is, he doesn't need to indict linear hitting by using some 2nd year coach's weird science. I, like most Division 1 fastpitch coaches or coaches on the international level, teach a marriage of linear and rotational elements. it is impossible to eliminate rotational elements of the swing. Now about the hitter in the first video.

As soon as his front toe touches, he is going into shoulder tilt, getting his shoulders and bat on the same plane to hit the pitch. If you look at the videos, his bat-head is on the plane of the pitch behind his back leg, which is perfect. Notice that every single batter in the videos, even the kid in red, has his bat-head on the plane of the pitch behind their rear leg. His bat was never dropping while IN the strike-zone. That would be hitting down. He has an upper-cut which most baseball people approve. That is not my specialty. I never played baseball after 13 years of age, only fastpitch. He hit the ball well. What he did do that looks odd is he tilted his hips, moved them out of the way; as you can see his rear foot step back to regain balance. He hit the ball near the end of the bat partly to to this movement. But if the pitch was a slider which fooled him a little. So he did a great job of making solid contact. It isn't easy to judge a swing when the batter is fooled. And there are very few perfect pitches to compliment perfect swings.