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Ok, I will bite. How can you tell what someone is doing in their swing without video or some data gathering system? ? I am a bit confused...if I can video a hitter from the front, side, rear or top, can I not see how their body moves and how the barrel is delivered, or not delivered to the ball? Also, with 3-D analytics/metrics/data, whatever you want to call it, can I not see how the players swing looks? If I understand what it takes for the body to move the barrel to the ball, shouldn't these analysts/video help me in seeing that better? Lastly, maybe you can, but I can't see a players full swing without video, especially if I am tossing or pitching from in front of the hitter.
You can see what the body is doing by using those tools. what you can't do is determine which muscles are being most active while swinging. The swing and frankly all sports are about actively using certain muscles groups. If you are not using the correct muscles, your swing will not be consistent nor will it ever be elite. The hips are not a muscle they're bones the scapula is not a muscle. The arm the leg are not muscles, they do have muscles in each of those appendages. It's called muscle memory and that's why only 1% make it to the big leagues, they know how to use the correct muscles. If that wasn't the case then everyone would be able to do it.
Hi Dedric, thanks for watching and the question. First, if you understand and agree with the concept that we don't swing level to the ground, we swing level to the ball, this will make more sense. Also, with the top hand being at the top of the rear shoulder is a starting place. That puts the bottom hand just at the armpit which in lower ball, or by the rule book is the top of the strike zone. The barrel on a fundamentally sound swing is below the hands at Contact. The measurement I am most familiar with and teach is -25 degrees below the hands at Contact on a pitch middle-middle. To get to a pitch below the waist we tilt our shoulders more and maybe get into our legs more depending how low the pitch is. Do the hands get lower than the shoulders? Of course, but the goal is not to go higher than our shoulder and not lower than our belly button. That is where tilt and sink come in. We certainly don'ts the pros keep their shoulders level, drop their hands and squat to the ball to swing the barrel level to the ground. Hope that clears things up and tanks again for the question.
Just watched Matt Antonelli talk about this with his take on Christian Yelich talking about Barry Bonds telling him to swing down on the tee and hit the front of the plate with the ball. Matt explains how it was common in MLB for coaches to ask players to swing down on the ball but in reality it may just serve as a cue to be shorter to the ball. He says this cue may work for some but not others. Anyone can clearly see that Bonds didn’t swing down on the ball either but, like Mike Trout, A-Rod, etc, may feel like they are. I have this debate with other dads and coaches too. I guess we need to keep such cues in our bag of tricks to try on the appropriate players instead of being rigid because it doesn’t fit our hitting philosophy. As always, thanks Rich!
Old school v new school. Old school makes sense for game and “how to play” theory. It doesn’t make sense for teaching technique. In my opinion. Video, numbers, analysis etc don’t lie.
Great observation, Papi. I would add that either don't work 100% of the time, but data, etc, does, as far as giving you the direction to correct flaws and improve a player. How you interpret and then relay the data back to the hitter and instruct him how to 'feel' certain movements is very important and separates a good instructor from mediocre and bad instructors.
