barrel/hand pivot point, a.k.a TTB

[cnardone]

Donaldson is the poster child for TTB.

I can't keep up with this thread. I am sorry for bringing back an older post. I agree with a lot of what you suggest. I found myself reading one of your longer posts at the beginning of thread thinking, yes, yes, yes, yes, no. I am having a hard time getting past "actively using the hand & wrists" to get on plane.

I see the barrel path go backwards and getting on plane very early. Hands still very deep. My issue is exactly how to get into that "on plane' position. I am trying these things myself. I am finding, for me (an old out of shape dad who hasn't seen a gym is a long time), when I actively use my hands & wrists, there is definitely barrel dump. Or very specifically, what Donaldson is talking about here. "Too handsy":



Perhaps I am too over baking the use of hands & wrists.

In watching this gif below, I am seeing the TTB action due actively slotting the elbow. The hands & wrists are keeping the bat to forearm angle consistent, which turns the barrel as the forearm moves with the elbow.

As I said, so much of what you said makes sense to me. It is just this one part of the process where I am having a hard time reconciling. Am I misunderstanding something?

 

[Eric F]

Excellent, thanks for the reply. If the rear hip is the power source, what should the feel be? Is it a glute/hammy extension? Aimed at the target? I only recently started to try and feel this extension after @Bonesaw had talked about it. I know that i have focused more on torso upper body power. So would be nice to give her another cue.

My DD's work with her instructor (@Mike-Coach-Q) included a lot of focus on coil and a pulling rear leg.

 

[FP26]

Bugs me how some people on here with so much knowledge who deliberately misinterpret what the pros are advising in these demos... I assume it's an agenda thing or maybe it goes against what they currently instruct. Standing still with no leverage, 0 momentum, no posture etc and moving hands down of course has no effect on the barrel or what path the barrel actually takes in a game.

I understand why you could be upset by this. Frankly my pet peeve is when posters do this exact same thing to other posters. And this isn't a poke at you. There are several here that do it, and it goes in both directions...

 

[fanboi22]

I wouldn't be so dismissive about the AP, AROD. Trout, Yelich demos etc. There is a reason they demo this. TBH, it confused me the first time I looked at it. Didn't make sense to me. However it never ever really mislead me.. I mean yeah if I looked at it and didn't understand it was an isolated movement which should considered as part of the entire swing and asked my kid to stand in the box flat footed and just make that movement.. sure my kid would be in big trouble. I could say the same thing for TTB, standing there flat footed and dumping the barrel would result in issues as well. Before all you TTB people get on me, I understand that TTB does not lead to dumping the barrel if understood and performed correctly, just making a point about seeing and understanding things in isolation.

Bugs me how some people on here with so much knowledge who deliberately misinterpret what the pros are advising in these demos... I assume it's an agenda thing or maybe it goes against what they currently instruct. Standing still with no leverage, 0 momentum, no posture etc and moving hands down of course has no effect on the barrel or what path the barrel actually takes in a game. The hands are doing the same thing in a game swing.. the force applied by the bigger muscles because of good sequence acts on the barrel... The proper posture allows the barrel to continue a long a good path. The pros rely on the body and bigger muscles to get the barrel on path... not just the hands/forearms etc

The problem i have with the Pujols demo is that there ARE hitting instructors out there that teach it - A to C. Hit over the high back tee. Just as when i was searching for pitching instruction, you see the high level players say something and teach it that way, then you see multiple other coaches doing the same thing without explaining it is an iso drill, it causes problems. Also i think many of them didn't know it was an isolation drill and taught it as the absolute way to do it.

That is my problem, i am not being dismissive, just stating there has been and still are many instructors instructing exactly how Pujols describes it.

I am much better of knowing what i know now, but it has been a very difficult task to get thru the stuff that you have to combine with all this other stuff. TTB was the same thing for my DD, dumped the barrel. Then the only comments you get are that you are overcoaching and that you can overbake things. That doesn't help either. Haha.

 

[fanboi22]

My DD's work with her instructor (@Mike-Coach-Q) included a lot of focus on coil and a pulling rear leg.

I have seen some of his work and students on this site. And the fact that your DD was his student, and your DD looks great, says alot. Have already shown my DD a comparison side to side with her. My DD hit a HR in a game and i had video and played it next to your DD. I told my DD she got lucky haha and that she was way out of sink. She didn't like that.

I understand coil, what is 'a pulling rear leg'? Anchor? or the Latta swing kick thru thingy?

 

[julray]

The problem i have with the Pujols demo is that there ARE hitting instructors out there that teach it - A to C. Hit over the high back tee. Just as when i was searching for pitching instruction, you see the high level players say something and teach it that way, then you see multiple other coaches doing the same thing without explaining it is an iso drill, it causes problems. Also i think many of them didn't know it was an isolation drill and taught it as the absolute way to do it.

That is my problem, i am not being dismissive, just stating there has been and still are many instructors instructing exactly how Pujols describes it.

I am much better of knowing what i know now, but it has been a very difficult task to get thru the stuff that you have to combine with all this other stuff. TTB was the same thing for my DD, dumped the barrel. Then the only comments you get are that you are overcoaching and that you can overbake things. That doesn't help either. Haha.

Don't mean to sound like a complete jacka$$, I have issues with that sometimes . But why should you have a problem with the Pujois demo because instructors misinterpret and don't understand. They should know better. This is where I agree about the Hanson principle .. something here doesn't add up. Doesn't mean I should disregard and look for another solution.. try to understand what the best in game are saying. Even as a parent I would pick up a bat, tape myself and see if it makes sense before teaching to my kid. Instructors need to understand and make sure the kid understands. Nothing wrong with isolating certain movements in drills, but the kid has to understand that's part of the bigger process.. that's on the instructor, not a pro isolating a technical part of the swing.

I've had it done to my DD.. coach gets an instructor to come in to practice, she preaches knob to the ball with no posture ABAF sequence.. after practice I say to my DD.. I don't think so.

It's so funny when parents spend weeks researching a new bat and then just hand their DD off to the first instructor they find on the web.. None of this is directed at you FB.. just saying in general

 

[Eric F]

I have seen some of his work and students on this site. And the fact that your DD was his student, and your DD looks great, says alot. Have already shown my DD a comparison side to side with her. My DD hit a HR in a game and i had video and played it next to your DD. I told my DD she got lucky haha and that she was way out of sink. She didn't like that.

I understand coil, what is 'a pulling rear leg'? Anchor? or the Latta swing kick thru thingy?

Thanks for the kind words. My DD still works with Mike, or did, until "lockdown". We are getting together with him this weekend...at a safe distance.

A pulling rear leg is where the upper rear leg is pulling the rear hip, not pushing it from behind.

One of the things I've noticed in Maddie's video is that her barrel at contact is more in a parallel line with her shoulders (looking from above) now than it was when she was more shoulder rotation dominant. I used to see her shoulders rotated beyond the line of the barrel. This rotation was pulling her hands laterally. They didn't have a choice but to move in that direction. As we got her more aggressive with TTB, there as a period where she was ripping everything foul. Her barrel was getting more parallel with her shoulder line, but her shoulders were still rotating too far/early. Once we got her shoulder rotation controlled, her flight path became much more centered. In BP her best hits have been to dead center.

 

[_MIA_]

Thanks for the kind words. My DD still works with Mike, or did, until "lockdown". We are getting together with him this weekend...at a safe distance.

Have fun!!

 

[Cornbread]

I can't keep up with this thread. I am sorry for bringing back an older post. I agree with a lot of what you suggest. I found myself reading one of your longer posts at the beginning of thread thinking, yes, yes, yes, yes, no. I am having a hard time getting past "actively using the hand & wrists" to get on plane.

I see the barrel path go backwards and getting on plane very early. Hands still very deep. My issue is exactly how to get into that "on plane' position. I am trying these things myself. I am finding, for me (an old out of shape dad who hasn't seen a gym is a long time), when I actively use my hands & wrists, there is definitely barrel dump. Or very specifically, what Donaldson is talking about here. "Too handsy":



Perhaps I am too over baking the use of hands & wrists.

In watching this gif below, I am seeing the TTB action due actively slotting the elbow. The hands & wrists are keeping the bat to forearm angle consistent, which turns the barrel as the forearm moves with the elbow.

As I said, so much of what you said makes sense to me. It is just this one part of the process where I am having a hard time reconciling. Am I misunderstanding something?

And he is allowing the core to slot the elbow against a resisted upper body. Rear obliques in this gif

 

[Mudders Brudder]

Get a fresh cup of coffee julray, another long story to follow....

Bugs me how some people on here with so much knowledge who deliberately misinterpret what the pros are advising in these demos... I assume it's an agenda thing or maybe it goes against what they currently instruct.

So you've mentioned on several occasions that you're not a coach or hitting instructor, and there's nothing wrong with that, but unfortunately it limits your data base from which to base your opinions of what others are doing "deliberately" or not. Let me try to explain...

We all started with the exact same limited numbers of students that we based our knowledge of hitting off of. When I first got into teaching the swing, it was largely based on what I learned from Dave Hudgens through a seven cassette VCR/VHS course (yes, VCR/VHS...lol), and taught that to my oldest son (now 30) with great success. Fortunately for him, Dave's instruction fit perfectly into his proprioception of swinging a bat, but unfortunately for myself, it made me think I know everything about teaching hitting...when in fact, as I would later - unceremoniously - learn at another hitting forum, that was not at all the case.

That's when the real lessons started, and my interpretations of what the "pros" were saying and doing (Hudgens included) could not just be accepted out of hand verbatim, and more critical thinking and comparing what they were saying/doing in their teaching to what they actually did in their competitive swings needed to be applied.

For the record, Hudgens taught swing "down to" the ball, pounding it into the ground just out in front of the plate (still did when he was with the Astros I believe I heard), but that was one of the things that we (son and I) removed from the lessons early on because it didn't jive with the other things Dave taught (posture, stride, weight distribution...), was deleterious to his overall swing and ball flight, and mainly...because it didn't match up to the barrel paths we say when looking at video of MLB players at the time. So IOWs..."Been there, done that".

My son was a big Albert Pujols fan back in the day, when Albert used to hold his hands high, and lay his bat back oddly, and my son emulated that with some minor changes to make it work for him....

....then copied Albert's game barrel path, and had great success with it.

Did I teach that stance to other hitters? No, but to land this airplane, we've watched/studied AP for a long time, and have seen the changes he's made throughout his career, so when a couple of years ago he got on television, and demoed "that" swing path, I called over my then adult son to take a look, and he just laughed, and said, "Right. Like that's at all how he swings it in a game...hahahaha!"

So it's not like we're I'm "deliberately misinterpret[ing]" what Albert is saying/showing, it's just that we have a long history of watching what he's done and is doing, and no matter what position he's ever going to try to move or stride into...there's no way he actually does what he demos in "that" swing path demo.

Sure, he might "feel" like he's doing that, but I "feel" like I'm Superman....that doesn't make me "Superman". Or wait, does it? ?