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**MSandman** · 04-03-2006, 05:14 PM

wog,

I took the liberty of converting your QuickTime movie to a GIF, removing some extraneous frames, cropping, and posting here. I also made four 2-frame sequences of what some might consider pertinent points in the swing.

Of course, people can still view the movie to slide back and forth. But for anyone who might want to see the [18] meaningful frames...

Just trying to help.

Sandman

**swingbuster** · 04-03-2006, 06:11 PM

wrist unhinges way too early casting the bat. Sandman captured it well as usual. Still say it is a synchronization problem and not necessarily a rotation problem...

woggy...better weight shift ...hips turning but I think the top hand must be unleverged with hand set.

What have to got to lose. I would make sure he knew how to load. I would tell him to cock the hands and the hips. I would tell him that his hand move will lead his hips back. His hips, rear elbow and bat knob will go back. The bat knob will point to the hip as the hands owrk BHUT. The lead elbow will go down and the rear up and the bat barrel will go out to splitting his helmet or more. The bat going to vertical and staying there during the stride will lock his scap back and rear elbow up until the bat turn back on plane.

Better descriptions below from article I am writing....

Hide your hands. From the pitchers mound the coach should get the impression that the hitters hands disappear during the load. This is a function of the hips coiling the weight into the back side, the shoulders rotating back around the spine on the general plane they will return, postural adjustments and the hands being taken spatially around behind the body vs staying “ out over the plate”

Hips and hands. We use this cue to teach the player that the negative moves of the “ backswing” are linked together. Most players do the wrong thing with the hands and many coaches try to “ kill the feel” of the hands. We have found it better to teach the players what the hands do first and replace the bad hand action with the proper hand action. We want to unleverage the top hand and cock the hands in a specific pattern. We also feel that we can link the now NEGATIVE hand move in the mind with the negative hip coil. We want to think coil the hips and hands together going back. When reviewing clips of bad swings, it is common to see the hands go back and then immediately come forward leading the hips in the swing. This is called an arm and hand swing

Keep Your Shoulder In.. It is possible with bat barrel positioning during the load to keep your shoulder in longer. When the loading pattern is BHUT and the rear elbow goes high. The lead elbow is in close and then the bat barrel is forced over the helmet and maintained in this position during the stride. The barrel position locks the shoulders back and the rear elbow / entire shoulder mass is kept back until after foot plant. It is locked back there until the bat barrel turns back on plane by the slotting down of the rear elbow and the elevation of the lead elbow which takes the barrel back behind the helmet into the launch slot

Negative moves. The baseball swing does have a backswing and few players execute it properly. The quality and timing and synchronization of the back swing will determine the quality and power of the swing

Visualizations and Indicator Points.

Mechanism...a pattern of body motion that insures a certain action that might be hard to accomplish otherwise. It is not a hitting absolute but ofter employed by many high level players

Coaches must develop a good eye to learn to see certain mechanics to enable themselves to make swing adjustments

Elbow behind belly button at toe touch. When every batters front foot comes down his hands should be cocked and his lead elbow should be behind his belly button. This shows that the wrist/ forearm angle is at least 90 degrees and the shoulders are turned back when the swing is initiated

Heel to sky; laces to pitcher toes dragging. What a great point here. This will answer the two very important questions? Did the weight transfer to the front side and did the hips turn through. Full momentum transfer and full hip turn are essential for power

Hips coil behind the shoulder turn. Imagine your player wrapping his arms around a hula hoop that is placed over his head. Now rotate the shoulders turning this hula hoop away from the pitcher. Now feel the hips coil behind the turning shoulders back and hold this position. Let the hips reverse and get in front of the shoulders and turn the shoulders forward all the way through until the belly button is facing the pitcher

Hips rotate in front of the shoulder turn . Hips go in front at the cusp

Wrist/ bat angle forms and releases in time with lead leg lock out. Actually the hips turn to completion just before the wrist unhinge on the ball. The completed hip turn is seen as the lead leg locks into extension

Throw the top hand through the center of the ball. The role of the top hand cannot be carried out unless the first move of the barrel is correct. The top hand connection on the bat handle works in concert with the rear elbow slotting down to lever the bat backwards toward the catcher into the back side of the swing arc. The elbow/ shoulder action that raises the rear elbow and lowers the lead elbow is a set up move for the reverse to happen which as described above reverses this action and hand torques the bat around the hands

Hand Torque. The hands transferring pull to the bat handle in opposite directions as the shoulder rotate begins creating a separate rotation center using the wrist and forearm muscles in an additive manner

BHUT loading... another way of training the loading pattern of the shoulders and bat barrel

Maintaining the shoulder load to foot plant with barrel positioncan be taught.

Negative moves..what leads them, and how to get the hand, rear elbow / shoulder unit, and hips turning back as the body is moving forward. You need to locate the key points on the body to watch during the loading phase to see if the entire body is coiling in synch. The point of the rear hip, the tip of the rear elbow and the cocking of the hands should be leading the weight transfer back in a circular path as the lead foot releases.

Hand action leads the swing back and lower body leads it forward neurologically

How do we start back and then how do we start forward....need to know these things.

He is working too far down stream to fix his problem. It has origins in his backswing

**Ohfor** · 04-03-2006, 06:11 PM

He's not rotating from his center. Poster boy for hand/arm dominance.

**tom.guerry** · 04-03-2006, 06:34 PM

woggy-

He may be on the verge of making a jump to a much better pattern.

Sandman has done an incredible job with the video - THANKS MIKE !!!

I would also pay attention to the earlier frames,especially the two before the five that Mike highlights here in the 2 frame boxes.The major loading/timing problem starts to really show up in those 2 frames, but let's go back further,starting with inward turn.

1-Inward turn - is pretty good. He might benefit from a little more pigeon toeing of the back foot toward the pitcher. This will help the hips turn open later without forcing the back leg to turn down and in too soon.

Turns the hips back, doesn't sway the weight back too much,nice move.Sits nicely, gets a good athletic position,good head position,etc.

Hands are a little further out away from body thandesirable.

2-hip cok - pretty good action again with good internal rotation of back arm and lead leg getting bat more vertical,front knee turning in, hands in closer would be preferred here. (a little too much lift/dreaded "standup" is starting to rear its ugly head,though)

3- hand cok - starts pretty darn good. Back elbow is up,back scap pinches,knees spread, "shows sole" (of lead foot).BUT this is where the trouble really becomes apparent in the 2 frames before Mike's big 5.

UNIVERSALLY as I have been "speculating" there needs to be synched external rotation of the back arm and lead leg in a good rubber band winding phase to prepare for a good ongoing body coil.

Instead woggy Jr, here does the all too common "premature external rotation" of the back arm where the back elbow has already started down while the lead leg feels the need to keep on internally rotating. This is preparing the body to push the swing from the back. He is going to "stand up" (lose hip cok before any weight shifts),flop the front foot open, drop the hands,push the weight to the front, pull with the front arm, no upper/lower body separation, then spin the whole body in one piece, then lean back/extend arms to try to keep accelerating through contact.

The general Dixon type approach of inserting the right middle phase in here is necessary, it's just that Dixon doesn't understand the details here as well as Epstein,for example. Epstein's wind rubber band and drop and tilt is a vastly better description than the Dixon "phase 2 shift to explode/phase3 explode" thing.

What JR needs to do,instead of his current non-high level pattern is get the arm action sequence right so he is still cocking the bat as he sits and the front leg starts to turn open,THEN he would-

4-wind rubberband - he would continue to sit as the front leg turns open and the bat begins to uncok with synched back arm/lead leg external rotation with front leg going first. Then hips would turn,then back leg as lead arm internally rotated up some,interrupted at right time by

5-drop and tilt - where hips would uncok and weight shift would be blocked and lead arm internal rotation and shoulder "tilt" would create last bit of stretch/keeps hands back while unloading was working from middle up/uncoiling to drive shoulder link.

Sounds complicated, but just an explanation of what the high level MLB player he is emulating is actually doing. Woggy junior is pretty close to emulating well.

Who is his role model ?

It would be good to look at Jr and the role model side by side.

**swingbuster** · 04-03-2006, 06:48 PM

Instead woggy Jr, here does the all too common "premature external rotation" of the back arm where the back elbow has already started down while the lead leg feels the need to keep on internally rotating. This is preparing the body to push the swing from the back

Tom knows...but if you cannot take all the points home...take this one and learn a mechanism to fix it.

**MSandman** · 04-03-2006, 07:26 PM

Tom,

Here are the 5 frames preceding the 4 frames I had posted:

And to get them all in the same scrollable area of one screen, here are the original 4:

Enjoy!
Sandman

**Ohfor** · 04-03-2006, 08:25 PM

Woggy does all the things "arm action is king" teaches.

What does he get? A very long, slow developing swing with no quickness.

You simply can not teach a kid connected rotation by teaching arm action. It is an add on later only after he learns how to use his body to swing the bat.

He has a slop filled launch that takes forever and therefore he won't handle good fastballs and the combination of good fastballs and off speed pitches will make him think about soccer.

And, Tom says he's close to a high level swing.

Not picking on the kid. But, if you're trying to get better before you meet with Steve, I'd sure be careful who I listen to.

Study LClifton's daughters launch. Figure out medicus. And when you meet with Steve, tape his one arm, lead arm swing. Study them. Those three things gave my son a better mental image of what has to take place. The better mental image got him in the ball park. It will do the same for your son.

The 4 frame sequence that Sandman posted immediately above this post............no big leaguer does what your son does with his arms. Why does he do that? Because he doesn't understand how to rotate from the center. If he did, he would not do that.

Your son does not rotate. He simply moves to a position from which he can swing with his arms. And, that is the definition of slop. The time it takes for him to move to that position will piss him off for as long as he does it. He will misread it as "I'm late." When actually, he's early but late. Early to where he should be hitting the ball yet late to where he's trying to hit the ball.

No rotation. No connection.

**Ursa Major** · 04-03-2006, 08:49 PM

I think for a starting point, focus on the two sequences below.

The far left one shows the back leg start to straighten and the hips begin to spin for no purpose, as there's no connection to the torso. The next one over shows the disconnection of the hands from the shoulders; so, posture's gone at that point.

You know what those two segments should look like. I would start there.

**Ohfor** · 04-03-2006, 08:57 PM

I would say the odds on him learning the proper "carrying of the middle" and "rotation from the center" without a closed front foot and without no stride practice is very poor.

**swingbuster** · 04-04-2006, 05:28 AM

I think we are all close here. In the left frame above I see poor upper body action that can cause rotational problems. I have always thought that the core has a hard time turning the top if the top isn't turning to match it. The core must rotate to eventually throw the top hand. The top hand/ bat barrel cannot get thrown if it moves forward at swing initiation

At best, the rotation he does generate isn't being transferred efficiently to the bat. His swing is outside / in and there is no power there. His hands get " tossed outside the line" at the first move. If they were just turning back on plane at this point they would be about 20 degrees farther back around his body naturally at that point

So ..how can he keep the hands back, inside the target line, the knob starting out to oppo box, generate some hand torque, stop the hands and hips from moving together, allow the upper body to be turned in a circle to match the hips that you train to turn in a circle, and create an earlier spatial connection between the hip turn and shoulder turn and get bat bareel displacement vs pulling the arms around the body ???

THere are two ways and he is failing at the one he is trying . I agree with Ohfer on this point...he is opening up the front side . If you do that you better make darn sure your top side is still closed and his is open too. Is you are an X angle guy, and I am in a sense then he has little to none.

He is living proof that you can swing very hard and not move the bat barrel very much. A player that doesn't quite get the objective yet of focusing the energy on the ball with top hand pop. Top hand pop comes very late in the sequence so it is a coaching goal but not maybe a teaching cue early on. Getting the top hand to start right in the sequence( back to catcher) helps to bring it out at the end of the whip.

**wogdoggy** · 04-04-2006, 06:09 AM

He has a slop filled launch that takes forever and therefore he won't handle good fastballs and the combination of good fastballs and off speed pitches will make him think about soccer.

agreed but ,these pre movements may be happening way before the ball is on top of him.
yes he opens to swing

ohfor NOTHING will make him think about soccer,but maybe wrestling.100 bucks says he takes you in 3 min or less.LOL..

I know its a mess guys.problem is I cant make this kid think about all this stuff when hes playing a game every other day.

as you can see I can't even get this kids front foot down without rolling over
I see his shoulders and hips all together with no seperation.
I would like some suggestions on teaching this kid the initial load.

LOAD hands only? won't this elongate the lead arm?
Load buy keeping hands still while turning waist?

leave hands alone and walk away from them?

maybe we can start there.

**MSandman** · 04-04-2006, 06:20 AM

Originally posted by wogdoggy

leave hands alone and walk away from them?

maybe we can start there.

I would think just the opposite?

**swingbuster** · 04-04-2006, 06:24 AM

LOAD hands only

? no

Load buy keeping hands still while turning waist?

no

leave hands alone and walk away from them?

maybe we can start there. no

Hips and hands. We use this cue to teach the player that the negative moves of the “ backswing” are linked together. Most players do the wrong thing with the hands and many coaches try to “ kill the feel” of the hands. We have found it better to teach the players what the hands do first and replace the bad hand action with the proper hand action. We want to unleverage the top hand and cock the hands in a specific pattern. We also feel that we can link the now NEGATIVE hand move in the mind with the negative hip coil. We want to think coil the hips and hands together going back. When reviewing clips of bad swings, it is common to see the hands go back and then immediately come forward leading the hips in the swing. This is called an arm and hand swing

It is in here Woggy...he will not be late if he starts on time. Also when he gets the sense that he can throw that top hand down on that ball in all location he will have MORE TIME. If he continues to see a baseball as an object to turn on and pull to LF on every pitch he will always feel rushed and tentative as he will have no success on ball middle and away. He will take those pitches and stare at the umpire and get behind in the counts all the time

See Rays Piazza clips and comments...

Remember your son has an aluminum bat and a ball with a rubber core....it will go

**wogdoggy** · 04-04-2006, 06:43 AM

Also when he gets the sense that he can throw that top hand down on that ball in all location he will have MORE TIME

Throw the top hand?
wont this cause a straight linear downward handpath?
dont we want to create a circular handpath like the one jack touts on his new bat thingy ma giggy?
If i have him concentrate on throwing his right arm I know he'll never devolop the circle?
barry talks that stuff but we all see he doesnt really do it.

I know the type of swing He needs to devolop,,they seem to happen effortlessy and are pull liner shots.I see his bat stays connected to his shoulder on these few and far in between hits.
its happens when his top part stays back and his hips go first.

what amazes me is how far this kid can hit the ball with these junk mechanics.
Hopefully we can get an after a weekend with steve clip going..maybe the BEST ADVERTISING for STEVE yet.LOL.

IF STEVE can fix this kid up in a weekend we'd all have to take a bow..

Piaazza clip..look at the rear foot just clear out to let rotation happen..aaron does this and my kids rear foot does the same..

Is this O>K>??

to me it looks like piaazza didnt really rotate that well on this shot,,maybe cause it was outside?

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