Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Sun Feb 1 13:21:21 2004

Hi All

The Super Bowl will be over in a few hours and our attention will begin to shift to baseball and spring training. Along with getting the arms and legs in shape, coaches will also be developing programs to improve their players hitting performance. Helping a player develop a swing that allows him to consistently hit hard line drives is one of the most challenging tasks a coach has to face.

When setting up your program, I would suggest that one of the most limiting factors to a hitter's development is he or she envisions only those parts of the swing which occur out in front of them. In other words, they only concentrate on swinging the bat-head forward toward the ball. However, as I have often pointed out, great hitters are able to generate great bat speed because they first accelerate the bat-head back toward the catcher before they turn and direct their energy toward the ball.

As a hitter initiates the swing, it is very tough to keep his hands back when he is only concentrating on swinging forward. If a coach would have the hitter envision the bat-head first accelerating back toward the catcher at initiation, the hands would have to stay back to accelerate the bat-head in that direction. --- Therefore, Coach, I would suggest you have your batters think about accelerating the bat-head over the whole 180+ degrees to contact instead of just relying on the last 90 degrees.

Jack Mankin