Weight Transfer

[FiveFrameSwing]

Source: David Marshal, M.D .Medical Director, Sports Medicine Program Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

Source. Plus goggle it and I agree with MTS most coaches that works with females run into this problem. I always like to quote one other thing we buy a girl a $300 bat but won't show them how to use a $5.00 hammer. If you want a chuckle watch a girl try to drive a nail. They have to learn how to use the hammer to use a bat. They are both tools. Boys rarely have these issues.

Another source on differences.

Source: Physical Therapy Corner: Knee Injuries and the Female Athlete
Jump Training Techniques

SBF ... regarding the 'bold' ... can you describe the problem?

 

[RayR]

FFS - I don't know the science behind it - I just know that they like spinning the knee.

When I speak of firing the knee it is a queue to get the upper leg to turn with the hips (Elvis drill). Otherwise we get a lot of spinning.

One exercise they do is to coil slightly and then unwind the hips as the rear knee fires. They can do so the rear foot drags foward with the turning hips and move across the floor. They try to keep the shoulders from rotating while doing this. This results in lateral tilt and some shoulder turn since the hips are opening all the way.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

Additionally, biomechanical research shows that the gluteus muscles, or external rotators of the hip, fire differently in males and females. In males, the hip muscles fire a split second before landing, thus stabilizing the hips, or core. With females, the glutes don’t fire before or after landing, so the hips rotate in, the knees buckle inward, and the ACL is stressed.

This right here ... do you have some good sources for this? The reason I ask is that I have multiple female hitters that tell me that they do feel the muscle action in their glutes.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

This is why Howard has stated several times that girls are taught differently than boys, however they function differently as to balance, center of gravity, grip, laxity and carrying angle just to name a few. I got the privilege to watch and work with three very good hitting coaches teaching weight transfer a few weeks ago. Dave Petkau, Don Slaught and Howard Carrier. All were using a box to get girls to feel the difference.

IMO the conclusion from this has been to train/condition appropriately so as to avoid ACL injuries ... which research has borne out is effective.

I personally don't view this as an excuse to invent new hitting mechanics and defy the Hanson Principle. Some of what we were seeing defied the Hanson Principle, and it seemed that this was the excuse being given.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I have more issues trying to correct the "negative move" which is really just a hip slide back towards the catcher. Slide back / slide forward...

Consider replacing loading via a 'negative move' via loading via 'coil'.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

FFS - I don't know the science behind it - I just know that they like spinning the knee.

Sounds very painful. The spinning I see in a lot of girls is with respect to the rear leg in general.

When I speak of firing the knee it is a queue to get the upper leg to turn with the hips (Elvis drill). Otherwise we get a lot of spinning.

I used to do this. Now I find "the move" more productive.

One exercise they do is to coil slightly and then unwind the hips as the rear knee fires. They can do so the rear foot drags foward with the turning hips and move across the floor. They try to keep the shoulders from rotating while doing this. This results in lateral tilt and some shoulder turn since the hips are opening all the way.

There was a time I placed a focus on the rear knee. Didn't always get the result I wanted.

I don't really get 'firing the rear knee'. To me, something else is firing, and the rear knee movement is a 'result'.

Much like you are advocating the correct loading of the upper back muscles and getting things like BHUT, etc. to occur naturally, instead of teaching those actions directly ... the action of the rear knee can also be obtained as a 'result'.

With 'the move' I find that the action of the rear knee is more a 'result'. I get the proper knee action without any focus directed there.

 

[RayR]

I don't have to consider it - I am already doing that. Some kids pick it in one attempt - others cannot stop themselves from hip sliding...very frustrating.

I don't believe anyone that claims they can fix EVERY hitter that walks through the door in 6 swings...some girls just cannot do it at first. It's like asking them to pick up a 500lb weight...

Consider replacing loading via a 'negative move' via loading via 'coil'.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I don't have to consider it - I am already doing that. Some kids pick it in one attempt - others cannot stop themselves from hip sliding...very frustrating.

I don't believe anyone that claims they can fix EVERY hitter that walks through the door in 6 swings...some girls just cannot do it at first. It's like asking them to pick up a 500lb weight...

Sorry ... should have assumed.

What I do with those that have a difficult time getting away from a load via 'sway', 'negative move', or 'scrunching' is "set the screw" at the ball of rear foot. At first, I'll have them apply a small amount of pre-set clockwise pressure (RH hitter) between them and the ground (5% force effort is enough to get this happening). What I find is that this quickly stablizes the rear leg making it more resistive to sway, scrunch and the negative move ... yet receptive to 'coil'. Once they get it, I'll keep the pressure point emphasis on the ball of the rear foot, but remove the pre-set clockwise pressure.

 

[Wellphyt]

I have more issues trying to correct the "negative move" which is really just a hip slide back towards the catcher. Slide back / slide forward...

I know. The reason for the backward sway is because that's the mental image the girls have of the backward weight shift. Eliminating backward sway as the lead foot is picked up to stride is not an easy thing to do. The only way I have found to do it without falling on my face is to coil as soon as I pick up my lead foot. A very narrow stance will also help during the initial learning process. IMO the correct mental image the girls need to have is a horizontal spinning action done with the hips. The hip thrust "look" that gets talked about a lot is IMO the same basic spinning action with a rearward tilted axis. If you look closely at slow motion video, I think you will find that much of the uncoil is on a horizontal plane with the head as the axis.

I went down the "hip thrust look" path for a while and abandoned it after reading "SOH". I have also abandoned the Elvis move as that was causing the girls to consciously I/R their back leg and leak the coil. I've since adopted "The Move" which in my mind is what I've always done naturally when throwing overhand. I'm sure most everyone else on here does also.

Here is a clip of my daughter from September 2009 leaking the coil, spinning out or whatever you want to call it.

 

[SBFAMILY]

Wellphyt, please review the data as to boys injuries verses girls for same or similar injuries and what would be the differences. Just ask why five times.

The certified trainers would appear to disagree with your wife. Jensen Brent at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati is published on the subject of ACL injuries and prevention and maybe she could look it up and tell us the differences,

Santa Monica Sports Med and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the NCAA also has some research that suggests otherwise also and it was not just one tom boy it was about 1,300 athletes playing basketball and soccer, which have a higher rate of injury for the ACL.

Epidemiology of Severe Injuries Among United States High School Athletes

Epidemiology of Severe Injuries Among United States High School Athletes ? Am J Sports Med

Baseball/Softball. Baseball and softball players incurred 0.19 and 0.18 severe injuries, respectively, per 1000 AEs (Table 1). Baseball and softball accounted for
4.5% and 4.1%, respectively, of all severe injuries. The most commonly injured body parts were the knee (16.2%), shoulder (15.4%), ankle (14.7%), and hand/finger (11.8%).
Girls sustained a greater proportion of knee (30.7%) injuries than boys (3.0%) (IPR, 10.34; 95% CI, .001) (Table 2). Although boys sustained a greater proportion of<2.83-37.75; P shoulder (21.5%) and wrist (11.4%) injuries than girls (8.7% and 2.5%, respectively), these differences were not significant (IPR, 2.48; 95% CI, .05, respectively). =.089; and IPR, 4.56; 95% CI, 0.80-26.10; P =0.81-7.65; P The most common diagnoses were fracture (47.2%), incomplete ligament sprain (12.8%), complete ligament sprain (10.0%), and dislocation (9.3%). Girls sustained a greater proportion of ligament sprains (incomplete .011). This =tear) (21.5%) than boys (4.9%) (IPR, 4.36; 95% CI, 1.25-15.18; P also held for dislocations in girls (13.7%) compared with boys (5.2%) (IPR, .001). Of all severe girls’ softball injuries, <2.63; 95% CI, 2.45-2.82; P 68.8% resulted in medical disqualification for the season. Fielding (24.6%) and sliding (20.0%) were most commonly associated with severe injuries. The proportion of severe injuries associated with pitching was greater in boys’ baseball (19.3%) than girls’ softball (1.6%) (IPR, 11.98; 95% CI, 1.54-93.55; P .001), although it is important to note that the mechanics of pitching differs = between boys’ baseball and girls’ softball. Conversely, batting led to 18.0% of severe injuries in girls’ softball and 4.2% in boys’ baseball .01) (see Appendix, =(IPR, 4.33; 95% CI, 1.30-14.46; P available in the online version of this article at American Journal of Sports Medicine -- Supplementary material). The most common mechanisms for severe injury were contact with bases (21.3%), contact with another player (14.9%), and contact with the playing surface (11.0%). Being hit by a pitch made up a greater proportion of severe injuries in girls’ softball (12.2%) than boys’ baseball (2.2%) (IPR, 5.48; 95%
.016). =CI, 1.11-27.03; P