Someone explain to me the obsession with "knee drive" for hitting

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Apr 2, 2015
1,198
113
Woodstock, man
Me:" If you are coiling inward as you stride, it is impossible to open the front shoulder. "

Why do you want to do that on an outside pitch, open completely pulling the front shoulder?

1. Are you confusing the word 'inward' with the word outward?

2. Good hitters don't stride differently for different pitches. The pitch takes .400 sec to arrive, and the swing forward move takes abt .200 sec. So, you must begin the stride at/before the pitcher releases the ball, and the front foot must be down when the ball is halfway there.
 
Nov 30, 2018
359
43
Marikina, Philippines
Me:" If you are coiling inward as you stride, it is impossible to open the front shoulder. "



1. Are you confusing the word 'inward' with the word outward?

2. Good hitters don't stride differently for different pitches. The pitch takes .400 sec to arrive, and the swing forward move takes abt .200 sec. So, you must begin the stride at/before the pitcher releases the ball, and the front foot must be down when the ball is halfway there.

Are you talking about turning your front shoulder in or inward to create coil. No I wasn't but I was confused by about your context. #2. No one believes that that I know of, and neither do I. You have a capacity to stay back on off-speed, but your stride can not vary since as you said, the pitch takes about .4 seconds or less sometimes to get there. My girls never faced Abbott or Osterman, but we did face Barnhill, Carda, and Jamie Moore. Do you think you can teach them to vary their stride; in particular since you don't know the pitch wholely until it is about 18 feet away? "Outward"? Outer half, outer third? Swinging at balls off the plate isn't a good idea either. Let's just say "outside part of the strike zone", which is too many words.
 
Last edited:
Oct 13, 2014
5,471
113
South Cali
And I am saying it is the opposite! Just as in my personal photo, my upper body remains in "coil", like the tip of a bullwhip and releases as required. My National team girls do not open up early or they get fixed. Opening premature is a huge sin in my opinion. What you are doing with this argument is creating a small finite window for accurate contact in a sea of variations of location, speed, and movement. And there is no capacity for adjustment for these issues.

first off the body isn’t a whip. The arms, hands and bat are. The body gets you in position to ‘whip’. Rotation as a power source via the back knee, hips, shoulders or any body part is not what the best do. Rotation is innate.

I’m not saying you can’t hit that way. I’m saying it’s not adjustable. One pitch at a time.
 

BigSkyHi

All I know is I don't know
Jan 13, 2020
1,385
113
Disagree.. Its a swing from a leveraged fyb hitting position. Its a great angle for the "down to" part of the swing.
This is that man's swing. Far too many of the youth coaches out there confuse isolation drills, tee work, front toss and bp with game swings.

 
Nov 30, 2018
359
43
Marikina, Philippines
first off the body isn’t a whip. The arms, hands and bat are. The body gets you in position to ‘whip’. Rotation as a power source via the back knee, hips, shoulders or any body part is not what the best do. Rotation is innate.

I’m not saying you can’t hit that way. I’m saying it’s not adjustable. One pitch at a time.

Well you better tell my Women's National Team members and the Junior National Team that as well. I guess I don't know what I am doing. You seem very dogmatic if I must say, even when your video shows the lower half and back knee drive in the video you offered up, pulling/driving the upper body to the ball. The last element being the contact of of the bat-head, driven by the top-hand, simulating the crack of the whip (tip) when the hip rotation is already completely closed.
Back knee, shoulder tilt with hip rotation, bat lag to "slot", top-hand punching through the ball, then the wrists snapping the bat head. I do not see a one phase robotic twisting of the "whole", but maybe my eyes are lying to me.
When rotation drives your front shoulder off the plate, how does a 5'10" boy or a 5'5" girl reach that outside pitch? Do they "cast" their hands?
All thing hitting and pitching are physics, not a belief system. Of course I teach fast pitch pitchers, not baseball, but they are both physics. If bat speed is a function of a twisting, no use of any form of coil, like a baseball pitcher uses as they unwind to release, then bat speed is limited by rotation speed plus wrist-snap. Is it?
You form coil by turning the front shoulder in, creating a reasonable amount of bat-wrap, keeping the hands loaded and the bat in lag as long as efficiently possible, but you are not allowed to be flexible at the waist? Why? If the pitch location allows, you release the upper body as the player in the video. Or, as Chris Davis does in this video, you can even make the mistake of rotating too far, as in both the video and Javier Baez photo, but stay closed up top a little longer, the hands back, then you can drive that outside pitch.



bad Sue Enquist
 

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Jul 29, 2013
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With everyone only looking at side view videos, I'm sure it seems that way. But the video evidence from the catcher view proves it beyond a doubt.
posey-coil-stride-catcher-view.gif
I'm not saying coil doesn't happen. I'm adamantly stating that it's not the power movement but merely the set up movement.
Answer these questions:
What is the required amount of coiling into the hip?......the the pelvis angle to the femur....
Why minimal to no mention of uncoiling since it is the forward movement that swings the bat?(it isn't)
If the uncoiling/outward rotation of the rear femur in the hip socket is the main power source, then what exercises build the associated muscles so I can turn more forcefully? (what are the muscles?)
 
Aug 20, 2017
1,474
113
Well you better tell my Women's National Team members and the Junior National Team that as well. I guess I don't know what I am doing. You seem very dogmatic if I must say, even when your video shows the lower half and back knee drive in the video you offered up, pulling/driving the upper body to the ball. The last element being the contact of of the bat-head, driven by the top-hand, simulating the crack of the whip (tip) when the hip rotation is already completely closed.
Back knee, shoulder tilt with hip rotation, bat lag to "slot", top-hand punching through the ball, then the wrists snapping the bat head. I do not see a one phase robotic twisting of the "whole", but maybe my eyes are lying to me.
When rotation drives your front shoulder off the plate, how does a 5'10" boy or a 5'5" girl reach that outside pitch? Do they "cast" their hands?
All thing hitting and pitching are physics, not a belief system. Of course I teach fast pitch pitchers, not baseball, but they are both physics. If bat speed is a function of a twisting, no use of any form of coil, like a baseball pitcher uses as they unwind to release, then bat speed is limited by rotation speed plus wrist-snap. Is it?
You form coil by turning the front shoulder in, creating a reasonable amount of bat-wrap, keeping the hands loaded and the bat in lag as long as efficiently possible, but you are not allowed to be flexible at the waist? Why? If the pitch location allows, you release the upper body as the player in the video. Or, as Chris Davis does in this video, you can even make the mistake of rotating too far, as in both the video and Javier Baez photo, but stay closed up top a little longer, the hands back, then you can drive that outside pitch.



bad Sue Enquist

I’ll go, rotation doesn’t drive your front shoulder off the ball. Swinging out of sequence does. That has many causes.

Teaching coil with the upper body can cause the problem with the front shoulder you described. If you turn the shoulders too far inward, the front shoulder will pull off the ball early to allow a hand path to the ball. The hands want an obstructed path to the ball.
I think this is also why you see some players scissor with the rear foot, torso getting out of the way due to striding closed. Forcing Inward coil of the shoulders will create an impeded path and the body will correct by getting the front shoulder out of the way.

Oh, I coach teenagers so I probably don’t know anything
 
Apr 2, 2015
1,198
113
Woodstock, man
What is the required amount of coiling into the hip?......the the pelvis angle to the femur....

MLB hitters are not 'coiling into the hip'. They are not 'rotating the rear femur in the hip socket'. They are turning their entire torso in, then out. It's that simple. Other 'gurus' try to make this thing way too complicated.

The point of the torso coil is that it's not necessary to 'build muscles' per se. You use the leverage of the body/torso. Even the youngest/frailest/weakest kid can learn to do this and have a monumental advantage over most kids.
 
Apr 2, 2015
1,198
113
Woodstock, man
Teaching coil with the upper body can cause the problem with the front shoulder you described.

Based on video evidence of most (almost every) MLB hitters, they all coil the shoulders and hips inward as they stride (or they begin with an inward coil, and hold it). And they coil them 30 to 45 degrees in.
 

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