Okay so this is the position that we want to be in when we complete our hands stroke. A front view shows how the hands work by having the top hand and bottom hand come to the bowl in front of the body. The bottom hand faces down, the top hand faces up and as we open the hands, you can see exactly the hand position that’s in place when the hitter is in contact with the ball. As we close the hands we’ll just snap the wrist to show that it is the hands now that are doing the bulk of the work.
Whether the elbows do not hit the ball, the shoulder does not hit the ball, it’s all in the hands. There are many ways that hitters will do this incorrectly. One way is that they’ll roll the hands where the top hand rolls over the bottom hand at this point. This will usually cause a ground ball because it rolls the bat and the way then that those hands will go following to a first extension is by having a top hand extend out and that pulls the arms into an extension position.
So this is the segment on the hands. Let’s talk about how the bat is used. This would seem like a simple subject everyone would say, “Hey we know how the bat is used” but most hitters do not use percussion on the back. And the reason why they don’t use percussion is that the bat goes to the ball indirectly. The only part of the bat that should ever go to the baseball is percussion. You would either miss the pitch or hit the pitch with the sweet spot of the bat.
First of all we’ll go to the handle and then the hand grip. Palm down, palm up again and actually what is happening when we hit with the hands there is a fulcrum in between those hands and if we split the hands you can see that the bigger the fulcrum the more the hands are identified as to how they work so you can see the bottom hand is actually pulling the bat back towards the body which is abduction and the top hand is pushing the bat forward which is adduction and that is the correct hand action when we hit the ball.
By splitting the hands we’ve enlarged the fulcrum and we fully identify how the hands work. We do not want any part of this bat hitting the ball. It is the shaft of the bat and so that isn’t even directed to the pitch. Let’s go to percussion, percussion is about 6 inch section that is boarded right off 6 inches on the bat and that is the only part of the bat that we use to hit the ball with. As we put the bat up on our stance, in our stance position the hitter should have a kinesthetic feel of knowing exactly where that percussion is just to illustrate one more time we have hands, we have shaft and then we have sweet spot or percussion.
Now we have a better idea with a clearer bat to help us understand those bat segments. Let’s go to it. Let’s fade off the regular baseball bat for our speed bat and if you notice our speed bat is clearly maul you totally understand how the bat is supposed to work. If you go to the hand grips those dots there in the front that’s where the knocking knuckles are going to go on the speed bat in order to help to hit at line up and stroke well and you can see the knuckles go right on top of those notches so that is pointed forward.
Now here’s the other part. You go to the shaft and you see the shaft is clearly defined. Here is what we always say about that. In your minds eye make that part of your bat invisible. It is not there, it doesn’t exist it is not never directed to the ball. Let me go to the very bright percussion area and of course this is clearly out rhyme. Hitters who use this bat learn how to use percussion hits right away because the bat simply spells it out for us.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services