Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sat May 3 10:51:43 2003

There are a number of issues intertwined here.Two of the most important to separate out as repeatedly pointed out by Paul Nyman at setpro are:

1-Intent,how hard am I intending to swing.This shapes your learning.A whole complex area of motor control and motor leerning and a whole bunch of other things.My take on this is you better be swinging all out all the time,or your timing will be too variable.Maybe as a pitcher you can dial it down a little from your max effort since you have more of a creative role as opposed to the more reactive role of hitting.Williams said the body at 80%,hands at 100%.I believe he meant 100%.

Recently there was quick mention of an amazing/consistent/optimized/maxing his potential guy-Palmeiro on approaching #500.The observer said something along the lines of how smooth and effortless and controlled Palmeiro was.He didn't appear to swing hard.What did Palmeiro say ?

"I'm trying to give it all I can,every ounce of energy that I have into my swing."



2-Relation of mechanics to batspeed/acceleration.

This is a very complicated area too.It sure seems like Bonds hits very high batspeed rockets with a hooking short swing radius.The at bat after his 2 homers in the 2nd Cubs game,he actually hooked one foul into the water that got there faster than any one I have ever seen or imagined.A huge top spin liner.

These inside /short radius swings have a lot of torso turn to power them,and as Nyman has pointed out,when you hook the handpath,while bat tip velocity doesn't accelerate from this,there is additional angular acceleration of the bat ?similar to the tetherball increasing its angular velocity as the rope wraps around the pole.It would take quite an experimental setup with very high resolution to tease out and compare the various contributions of mechanics to the acceleration/shape of the swing.