I
PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTION:
There is something amiss with my personal youtube channel. To see the videos in each section, please highlight, copy, then paste into your browser. Click on the highlighted version that shows up in the browser and play. Works perfectly but obviously involves an additional step that I would have preferred not to impose on you. If you are having a problem, please let me know in the comment section, and I will work on rectifying it.
Thanks
JC-CO
t's good to see the Mets hitters taking advantage of a weekend's worth of relatively ineffective pitching from a Marlin's squad that seems to have lost its way after last weekend's unceremonious sweep of the Mets.
I'm optimistic, of course, but within limits. Those limits were immediately tested in last night's loss to Seattle, where tested by quality pitching, the Mets looked lost at the plate. I have been vocal in expressing concerns about what is being taught throughout the organization. I don't expect that my concerns will provide an impetus for change.
But I do feel I owe it to the readers to explain my view of hitting mechanics in some detail so that the reader can judge for themselves whether there is any substance, not just to my concerns, but to the basis of them.
I have taken a fair bit of time this weekend to put together a series of videos of dubious cinematic quality to explain and illustrate the general principles that are involved in a hitting motion in baseball. For clarity I break the mechanics into the following phases:
* Recruiting energy;
* Loading (turning the recruited energy into potential energy)
* Transition (which is by far the least talked about phase of the swing but among the most important)
*Unloading (turning the stored potential energy into kinetic energy)
* Directing the energy (sending the energy out in a particular direction)
I have videos on each of these phases in what follows. In each video I discuss some potential issues and explain some of my preferences and identify what I take to be general flaws that should be eradicated if a swinging pattern is to be effective, achievable and repeatable.
I close with a series of videos that are designed to explain concerns I have about the motions of Bichette, Baty, and Alvarez.
My goal is educational, not critical. I fully recognize that there will be others who take issue with my approach, but that's fine with me. I try to keep my comments as general as possible to avoid controversial claims in biomechanics, kinematics or kinetics, to the extent possible.
At a later date, perhaps, if enough people are interested, I can go into the mental side of hitting and in doing so introduce concepts from cognitive and neuroscience, explore the difference between 'teaching' and 'coaching', explain the concept of 'deliberate practice' and perhaps go into more detail about the ways in which data can both help and hinder progress in coaching.
At this point, I just want to equip the readership with some tools and understanding when they watch at bats during a game -- especially those readers who would enjoy doing so with a critical but understanding eye. Though every player's swing will differ to some extent, that does not mean that there are no global principles that apply to the kind of motion they are trying to execute. There are elements that effective, achievable and repeatable hitting motions share, many of which I am pretty sure I never had in baseball, but which I have to a degree in golf! So without further ado, but with apologies for my limited editing and filming skills ...
The swing motion is a fluid and continuous motion, but breaking it down into its component elements can be clarifying
The basic swing
Key ideas: two connections a player has that define the ways in which completing the task of hitting can be accomplished: connection of feet to the ground and hands to the bat. The energy in the ground and the player recruits it into his system, which consists of various parts of his or her body that work poorly or well, in sync with one another or not with the ultimate goal of delivering that energy to the ball. Everything that happens from the moment the player settles into the box to completing a swing is a movement pattern that involves lots of parts of the body put into use to execute that goal.
A well functioning system can amplify the ballistic impact the bat has on the ball. It is much harder to create a well functioning system than it is to be victimized by a suboptimal one. There can be failures to recruit sufficient energy, leaks in the energy one does recruit, and premature release of that energy, and more. There are many patterns that work, and even more that don't. Hitting a baseball is hard to do, and even harder when pitchers are trying to make it difficult to do so.
Every hitter has a pattern that is unique to the player, but that does not mean that there are no general principles at work. Facts about the player impact the way in which those principles are realized in an achievable, effective and repeatable movement pattern for that player.
I am not a baseball hitting coach, and little of what I know comes from my own experience playing baseball. I am a golf coach and I have played golf reasonably well. I have had the benefit of learning by teaching as well as by playing.
To be clear about my view of my competence: I wouldn't personally feel comfortable teaching elite players in golf or baseball, but I do have a good sense of how to construct a well functioning swing in both sports and how to help others learn it. The thing to remember is that all professional baseball players we have the pleasure of watching perform are elite hitters. They are the top 1% of the 1%, no matter how lost a pitcher can make even the best of them seem from time to time.
I hope you find the videos interesting. Feel free to let me know in the comment section.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vi0LgJdzv1A
The loading phase: What does 'loading' mean and why is it important. How the body moves to take the energy and load it optimally so that it can be most efficiently be unloaded and sent out to the bat. Loading of the hip/pelvic structure, and loading of the ribcage, arm structure, shoulders, arms and levers (in the arms and the hands) are discussed separately.
Two Videos
Lower body loading
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FSy4wk3FjAo
Upper body loading
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lYpIWGrwS6I
The transition phase How the body moves in transitioning from the loading to the unloading phase of the swing. This is the least discussed and in many ways the most important phase of the swinging motion. A poor transition precipitates a lot of energy leakage and a premature release of energy. It is the period in the swing in which the body executes the change in direction of the bat from its farthest distance from the body towards the ball. Ironically, though the swing itself takes almost no time at all, some transitions are faster than others, some have great flow and fluidity and others do not. All types can be effective or not. In this video I only explain what this phase is and why it is important. I would be happy to explain in more detail at another time, how it happens and when it should begin and how, when properly done, it allows everything afterwards to happen in ways that seem effortless yet powerful. That is the fluidity and flow we see in the best swings, what appears as a seamless connection from storing to unleashing.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2TVKzdsM648
The unloading phase: How the body moves to create the unleashing of the energy through the arms into the hands and into the bat and onto the ball. It is a remarkable sequence of movements.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IzmYE9DV1YE
Directing the energy: Amazingly, a hitter does not simply unleash the energy but he or she has the power to direct it and focus it; and with different intentions to release it in different directions the body responds and moves differently, as if on command, with no additional thoughts beyond the intention to release the energy in a particular direction. Because of the time it takes for the body to respond to a signal from the brain, the intention to direct the energy in a particular direction cannot be made during the swing but before it.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4MeurCHcFWc
Bichette's motion: Synching the trigger of the leg kick with the movement of the barrel. Look at his address. The bat barrel is around his neck/head and pointing pretty much to left field. It doesn't mean he has a long swing. It means that the barrel has to travel a long distance in his swing. Is the trigger additive in any way, or is it the source of an unnecessarily complex timing issue? That is not something I can answer.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_HEVxmxslTM
Baty's long and languid swing: A swing is long, in my terms, when the arms keep moving back on their own initiative and are no longer connected to the turn of the rib cage or shoulders. They drift beyond the trail pec and in some cases beyond and behind the trail side of the body altogether. When this happens the lead arm typically goes across the body and the hands are no longer connected to or in sync with the body's rotation. The hands have to catch up and get back in front of the body, thus throwing sequencing off. The result is a hitter being vulnerable to off speed stuff and high heat and to any pitcher who can set one up off the other.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sTVtu5uIs9Q
Alvarez's upper body swing: The paradigm of powerless effort. Outside to in swing path; reduced plate coverage; a power outage that is easy to explain. Has no coach seen this? If they have, why hasn't it been corrected?
Video
11 comments:
I have to change the links which are out of order. After I do that, please copy each link in the right order and paste and open in browser. I will see if I can find an alternative as well
The videos are now all in order. All you have to do to access them is highlight, copy then paste into your browser. I will continue to work on a more direct route that involves only clicking on a link in the post that takes you to the appropriate video in my channel.
Nice work, Prof. Jules.
The illustrations are very helpful because readers will interpret terms differently. When you see it, you understand it. Hope the coaches are watching.
Hope anyone is. I don't get what's going on in the organization. I can tell you one thing for sure and that is that the hardest bit is for any coach to be able to help someone change a movement pattern that is so ingrained, and which had been so successful for years (often against inferior competition). And for obvious reasons, players at this level are looking for immediate results. And there is something else that people -- both players and coaches -- don't understand, and which I can explain as follows. Make a V in space. Now, any change you suggest whose most fundamental feature falls within the space that is inside the V will fail, if for example the existing pattern of the player falls within V space. It is a guarantee of reversion back to the original pattern. The significant change that you are drilling has to fall outside of the V, which means on the downside that it will feel all different and therefore wrong to the player. Then as soon as there is a set of bad outcomes trying it out, the player will lose whatever. commitment he or she had to the change. So the main job in coaching is to overcome this hurdle. And that is not something that your average hitting instructor will know if they don't understand the science of learning, not teaching, learning.
And the worst mistake any coach can make is to refer to what he or she is trying to get across as a 'tweak'. No tweak feels as different to a player as the kind of change you are asking for. And that will destroy trust; and there you go. That's the end of the joint effort to make progress.
The second biggest mistake is to try to put a timetable on when the change will take root and when better results will occur. You don't know either. And the big reason for that is that it involves both parties working together and a commitment from both.
You go to a therapist, and you ask, 'Ok, how long is it going to take for me to break the pattern of fearing commitment.' To which the right answer is, 'you've had this pattern for how many years now?' And you want to know how long it's going to take for you to break it and replace it?'
Why would a movement pattern be any different. It's work-- on both sides. Full time,
Jules, I have an article coming out on hitting failures tomorrow. Just based on one key number. You should look at the ten players in the article tomorrow, and see how you think your techniques/philosophies might enhance their results.
look forward to seeing your post. I'm very interested in seeing what that number is. I think Hank Aaron once said about his approach at the plate. Until I have two strikes, I am looking for a pitch I can drive. After two strikes, I'm just looking for a pitch.
This site added a high degree of baseball intelligence when you came aboard
Thanks Mack, but to be honest, there always has been and continues to be a lot of BB intelligence among the writers and the readers, many of whose comments are as illuminating as are the posts.
One a ditional comment. Almost all of what I posted are edited down versions of longer videos. I hope they make sense in spite of my editing. I'll get better in time, hopefully. Just to be clear on three videos, in case the editing ruined some of the potential clarity: 1. On Bichette: every player has a trigger to start some part of the swing. In Bichette's case, it is the high leg kick that triggers both thaye load into the right side and the transition to the unloading phase when it returns to the ground. And the other timing element comes from his bat being 'wrapped' around his neck ( a slight exaggeration), which puts the barrel very far away from the hitting zone. Let me add something that is nothing more than an hypothesis. It makes sense, but I can't argue for it being why Bichette would say he does it. It's this. Having the bat wrapped around his neck actually helps to keep him in balance given the high leg kick. Wrapping the bat around his neck in this way, puts some of the weight of hands, arms and the bat on the front side of spine or the midpoint of his body. If instead he had the bat point to the sky and on the back side of his midpoint, his leg kick would unweight his front side entirely and all that pressure and weight would be on his trail side which would create a lot of dynamic imbalance and instability.
2. Alvarez: The point I am trying to make is that he does not recruit or transfer energy through a sequence. that gets his arms moving as a result of prior action. There are always at least two ways of looking at a motion that has the body and the arms moving. One way is that the body movement is designed to put energy and speed into the arms. The other is that you swing your arms and the body will respond to the arm swing to keep you stable and in balance.
What you see in Alvarez can be categorized as falling into the latter category, but note that no matter how strong and powerful his upper body is, how hard he has to swing to generate reasonably high bat speed, and most importantly, note that in doing so his body often is unable to keep him stable and in balance. If he kept the same mechanics as he has now-- built around an arm initiating swinging pattern -- but did so at a speed that would keep him in balance and stable, he would have significantly less bat speed. So he can't have what he needs or wants with the sequence he has. It is just not doable.
He could emulate the short but powerful swings of Bonds, Rice and Piazza, all of which are incredibly balanced but all of which are based on great kinematic sequencing. Look at a golfer like John Rahm: short arm swing but great loading, transition and unloading. Not pretty. Piazza, Bonds and Rice also have moderate to short swings that aren't beautiful, but they don't seem hurried either. That is what Alvarez should be emulating and training to do.
3. Baty: Long swing. The long swing can be easily defined as losing the connection between the hands on the bat and that spot just to the trail side of the sternum. Once the arms drift farther back than that or father still when they are actually behind or beyond the trail side altogether, you have to get them back in line with the spot on your body just to the trail side of the sternum or to the pec at least; and that energy and time is wasted and doesn't really add power, just sequencing problems
It will be interesting to see what they do with Bo once Lindor returns
Post a Comment