Teacherman, we need to add this beautiful lesson to every little league bylaw!! 😂 I say that because kids they re smarter than us stubborn old guys, and they get it. My boy has to do his drills at home because his coaches frown on his technique at every practice.. (Lord Bless his high school anyway) … funny thing is, he’s the only Freshman that hit the ball out of the park last season , go figure.. Thank you Richard🙏🏼 You’ve changed his life!!!!’
I mean this with complete sincerity, you have scientifically approached the swing in a way that someday everyone will adopt. Thank you!@teacherman I mean this with full sincerity, you have scientifically approached the swing in a way that someday everyone will adopt. Thank you!
I am not I get this. I understand staying back and getting loaded, staying connected, bring the that back side through. But every hitter I see including Judge finishes with a firm front side with that leg pretty straight. I mean Altuve’s back leg comes completely of the ground. I definitely agree not to lunge forward. So I guess I agree with staying back and turning with the back hip, but I see some weight shift and balance with a firm front side at the finish. Ill keep watching to see if missing something.
You can’t use this swing in slow pitch softball because the ball is coming in on an arc. Also a slow pitch swing uses a lot more of your whole body because the ball is coming in so much slower. You have to generate more of the power yourself.
Rotation about the waist will happen no matter what…..it is not exclusive to a push swing or an HLP swing. Hips open and shoulders follow. Successful hitters have a balanced kinetic chain that is transferred from the legs, through the torso, to the arms, and eventually the hands. I frequently see HLP hitting instructors illustrating a “push swing” with all arms and no body…..and completely unathletic and upright. Perhaps he means a push swing is more of a linear swing path where HLP is more of a rotary (cricket bat/propeller) movement? As long as your weight is not overdistributed to your lead foot, we want load, bat lag, and linear acceleration to the ball. A more linear bat pat is far more effective at intersecting a pitch (especially with movement) than HLP where the bat path and had to barrel relationship is too steep, like a propeller. Being quick is useless if your quick/steep bat path only covers a fraction of the plate. I can understand how hitters, at one time, were coached to simply throw their arms and hands at the ball and slap hit. But in 2024, I don’t believe is an epidemic. And I rarely see kids do the same slap hitting that is illustrated here. Additionally, I don’t see many successful hitters in the MLB snap and be so rear legged. When you are getting 95 plus, balance is crucial…..how are you going to hit a fastball moving away if you are off balance on your rear leg?
@historyrepeated4239 his bat path makes a flat disk shape starting from behind the body like all good hitters do. The steepness of this disk depends on pitch height. There are plenty of videos of him hitting on a high tee setting where the disk of his swing is less than 45°. You can not have a horizontal swing in baseball unless you're swinging at stuff armpit high, swinging off plane and trying to intersect the pitch way out front, or dropping your hands and swinging around your waist.
@@povertygarage705Agree and disagree on some of your points. You are correct on the horizontal swing. Ideally, you don’t want to steepen the relationship between the hands and the barrel. For lower strikes, I don’t agree that you want a steeper bat/disc…like a cricket bath. This greatly minimizes plate coverage and is going to be greatly ineffective against a lower strike with any horizontal movement. You are better off mimicking your same swing for a belt high strike, but employing more kneed bend and lower hands. We want a whip, not a propellor. In your disc example, the deeper the disc gets, the more the swing is going to travel upwards…..minimizing contact probability. You are seeing what I’m describing, right?
@@historyrepeated4239 I can visualize what you're saying. I absolutely agree that the knees should be bent. That's what gives the player ability to adjust, but it's also what let's them have a tilt in their spine that gets their shoulder angled in a manner that when they swing, the rear shoulder works under and determines the plane of barrel. No amount of squatting and dropping hands is going to compensate for a low pitch unless you just throw your hands out at the ball and lose a tremendous amount of power. Pitches in the lower half of the zone are gonna require a swing of around 45° to hit hard. This angle, or even more, doesn't really change the plate coverage. It actually helps quite a bit with low outside pitches. Breaking balls rarely break directly sideways. They typically move one way or the other and with some downward motion from gravity. Good curveballs break 12 to 6. Having an angled swing keeps the disk of the swing more on plane with many breaking balls like a slider for example. What really matters is how much of the disk of the swing does the ball travel through. If a player has good eyes, they're gonna put the disk of their swing inline with the ball at whatever is the necessary angle, but if they have an early barrel turn, the bat gets in the zone early and the ball is going to have to travel through more degrees of the disk meaning their chances of hitting in terms of their timing window from early to late increases greatly. Go get a string, tie it to something and pull it straight with just a little downward angle. This simulates the path of a straight up fastball. Now get a disk of some sort. Use an old DVD or something. Lay about 30% (from the outside edge to inside) of it on the string and imagine a person of proportional size standing next to it as if that were the swing he was creating. If that string crosses around his hips or lower, the DVD is gonna have to angle quite a bit to stay laying flat on that string with a comfortable swing. But even if the DVD was held horizontal, it really doesn't increase how much of the disk the string travels through. It just makes it more difficult to follow the downward angle of the string. This why I'm constantly always yelling at the 14 year olds that I coach, that have a very level swing, "You're over the top of it", because they can only hit if they perfectly intersect the angle of the pitch because their disk has a very small piece of pie that will hit the ball. Hopefully, any of that makes sense. 😄
@@povertygarage705 Yes....some sense. But the degree of "squatting" your referencing is most likely for pitches that are so low they aren't in the strike zone to begin with. If you have to lower your hand/barrel relationship to 45 degrees (if I'm visualizing it right), that most certainly is a position that is much less common. Few pitches will require you to have that drastic of an angle. I hope you realize that I'm not a proponent of a horizontal/level swing......and never have been. But I see you reference it and Teacherman seems to be obsessed with it, as if this is still a "thing" in 2024. Even back in the day, Ted Williams stated, you want a "slightly upward" swing. Not level and not overly steep. Also keep in mind that the action of slotting the elbow also triggers the shoulders tilt slightly upwards. We need to be careful not to conflate elbow slotting with barrel snapping/dumping. So.....here is where we get into the meat and potatoes. Your disc example does make perfect sense in that the bat path we all swing represents a path that rotates about a point located on the body. It's like the rings around Saturn. The disc is the exact reason why you would never want to enter the barrel into the zone, early, by dumping or snapping it. In order to snap it backwards you absolutely have to steepen the hands in relation to the bat barrel. Thus, you've now made your disc way too steep with less plate coverage. We can go back and forth about shoulders tilt, hip/torso rotation, weight balance, etc., but even those components have varying degrees of gray area as far is what is the best approach. That being said, there is a reason why nobody, past or present, dumps or snaps their barrel towards the catcher. It's because the disc you are referring to has to be steepened to pull of that movement. This is where I see a large gap in HLP teaching and real world application. How can Bonds be the prototype HLP case study if never "snapped"? He also had a decent stride with a front foot brace......which doesn't resemble the rear legged launch that is frequently illustrated. The dots just don't connect together. The same can be said for Judge. Now maybe there is a loss in translation in words vs. movements with Teacherman, but I think he is doing himself a great disservice in trying to illustrate movements himself. Nobody is swinging the way he demonstrates. That is a huge negative and there have been countless of people watching these videos that know that the movements don't look the same. I'm sure my advice will fall on deaf ears, but the "snap" movement needs to simply be discarded from the HLP teaching catalog.
@historyrepeated4239 we have to be careful that we're on the same page when we talk about tilts and angles. When I say 45°, I'm thinking from a rear view of the batter. When Ted Williams talked about a slight angle up, he meant from a side view. I don't mean 45° from a side view. That would be ridiculous. 😆 That's like trying to cut up under the ball to hit it straight up. To understand what Rich is really after when he talks about the snap, just watch videos of George Brett. He rested the bat on his shoulder but never swung across his chest. He literally just whipped the bat rearward off of his shoulder. Everyone slots the elbow, but not everyone turns the barrel immediately with a strong whip while slotting the elbow. Some of this just comes down to forearm strength and guys like that probably don't even think about it and just naturally do it. What made Rich's method a game changer for many people is that his focal point is on this whipping motion and on starting it early so that the barrel comes up to speed very early in the swing. The top hand has to supinate some to do this, and Rich will show that motion in isolation and exaggerate it to no end. In an actual put-together swing, the supination happens for a very small window of time and quickly rolls into a more palm up/palm down position as the barrel comes around from behind and follows through. Some people literally don't do this. They just slot the elbow and drag the bat into the path, and have a wrist motion closer to swinging a hammer. This is the key difference that Rich is trying to show when he splits these types of hitters into two camps (the barrel turners vs. the barrel pushers). If you want the most exaggerated example of wrist supination turning into a forward swing, search "snappy gilmore," the one-handed golf ball driver guy. It's this rear whipping wrist supination kinda move that is what gives his club so much velocity, and it's super easy to see because he has a very long swing. His swing can be long because he hits on his time. A baseball player hits on the pitcher's time and has to be reactive, so the swing is shorter and more compact for reasons of quickness, so it can be harder to notice these things.
@@LowUTR in tennis you are moving all the time all over the place. so you are swinging from a variety of positions. you also swing with just one hand a lot of times. so it just seems different don't you think?
@@nofurtherwest3474 It's not dissimilar at all, and much of the same mechanics apply. Just put both in slow motion and you will see. The tool is different and the goal is different. I.e. no one is top spinning a baseball on purpose but is often done in a tennis volley, but the mechanics are similar.
@@danielhoward4566and to that point, because of how inconsistent the zones are, hitters are having to chase pitches that are out of the zone because they're gonna get called if they dont put them in play
I'm not saying he's wrong OR right. It just seems to me that so many guys have had success in so many different ways. Look at George Brett or Frank Thomas. Their technique would never be taught by anyone, yet they ended up in the hall of fame. Seems to me the more ready you are to hit the more success you can have.
He is wrong and he is also correct. MLB players starts to lower there elbow at toe touch, which creates tilt also makes you snap your wrist naturally. It is not baseball it is science. Also how he kicks out will load your hands and coil your body naturally. These hitting coaches does way to much. The swing is a domino effect if the feet is wrong then the whole swing is wrong. Land on toes and lower the elbow while you are on your toes that is all you need.
@bigdaddybaseball1114 - bro, it seems like you're trying to make some good points here, but you might be better off to dial in your grammar and your punctuation before you try explaining technical things to people.
@TM-oz2bj he is wrong about tilting and snapping the wrist. Your body does that automatically if you lower your elbow while you are on your toes. Try it yourself.
@@bigdaddybaseball1114I’ve been learning the complete opposite actually. Feel the weight in your heels and glutes. You don’t want the weight on your toes
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
I think it is time for a book TM!
Teacherman, we need to add this beautiful lesson to every little league bylaw!! 😂 I say that because kids they re smarter than us stubborn old guys, and they get it.
My boy has to do his drills at home because his coaches frown on his technique at every practice.. (Lord Bless his high school anyway)
… funny thing is, he’s the only Freshman that hit the ball out of the park last season , go figure..
Thank you Richard🙏🏼
You’ve changed his life!!!!’
I mean this with complete sincerity, you have scientifically approached the swing in a way that someday everyone will adopt. Thank you!@teacherman I mean this with full sincerity, you have scientifically approached the swing in a way that someday everyone will adopt. Thank you!
I am not I get this. I understand staying back and getting loaded, staying connected, bring the that back side through. But every hitter I see including Judge finishes with a firm front side with that leg pretty straight. I mean Altuve’s back leg comes completely of the ground. I definitely agree not to lunge forward. So I guess I agree with staying back and turning with the back hip, but I see some weight shift and balance with a firm front side at the finish. Ill keep watching to see if missing something.
Can i apply this one legged method when i play slow pitch softball?
You can’t use this swing in slow pitch softball because the ball is coming in on an arc. Also a slow pitch swing uses a lot more of your whole body because the ball is coming in so much slower. You have to generate more of the power yourself.
Thanks for your reply and exclamation
Rotation about the waist will happen no matter what…..it is not exclusive to a push swing or an HLP swing. Hips open and shoulders follow. Successful hitters have a balanced kinetic chain that is transferred from the legs, through the torso, to the arms, and eventually the hands.
I frequently see HLP hitting instructors illustrating a “push swing” with all arms and no body…..and completely unathletic and upright. Perhaps he means a push swing is more of a linear swing path where HLP is more of a rotary (cricket bat/propeller) movement? As long as your weight is not overdistributed to your lead foot, we want load, bat lag, and linear acceleration to the ball. A more linear bat pat is far more effective at intersecting a pitch (especially with movement) than HLP where the bat path and had to barrel relationship is too steep, like a propeller. Being quick is useless if your quick/steep bat path only covers a fraction of the plate.
I can understand how hitters, at one time, were coached to simply throw their arms and hands at the ball and slap hit. But in 2024, I don’t believe is an epidemic. And I rarely see kids do the same slap hitting that is illustrated here. Additionally, I don’t see many successful hitters in the MLB snap and be so rear legged. When you are getting 95 plus, balance is crucial…..how are you going to hit a fastball moving away if you are off balance on your rear leg?
@historyrepeated4239 his bat path makes a flat disk shape starting from behind the body like all good hitters do. The steepness of this disk depends on pitch height. There are plenty of videos of him hitting on a high tee setting where the disk of his swing is less than 45°. You can not have a horizontal swing in baseball unless you're swinging at stuff armpit high, swinging off plane and trying to intersect the pitch way out front, or dropping your hands and swinging around your waist.
@@povertygarage705Agree and disagree on some of your points. You are correct on the horizontal swing.
Ideally, you don’t want to steepen the relationship between the hands and the barrel. For lower strikes, I don’t agree that you want a steeper bat/disc…like a cricket bath. This greatly minimizes plate coverage and is going to be greatly ineffective against a lower strike with any horizontal movement. You are better off mimicking your same swing for a belt high strike, but employing more kneed bend and lower hands. We want a whip, not a propellor. In your disc example, the deeper the disc gets, the more the swing is going to travel upwards…..minimizing contact probability. You are seeing what I’m describing, right?
@@historyrepeated4239 I can visualize what you're saying. I absolutely agree that the knees should be bent. That's what gives the player ability to adjust, but it's also what let's them have a tilt in their spine that gets their shoulder angled in a manner that when they swing, the rear shoulder works under and determines the plane of barrel. No amount of squatting and dropping hands is going to compensate for a low pitch unless you just throw your hands out at the ball and lose a tremendous amount of power. Pitches in the lower half of the zone are gonna require a swing of around 45° to hit hard. This angle, or even more, doesn't really change the plate coverage. It actually helps quite a bit with low outside pitches. Breaking balls rarely break directly sideways. They typically move one way or the other and with some downward motion from gravity. Good curveballs break 12 to 6. Having an angled swing keeps the disk of the swing more on plane with many breaking balls like a slider for example. What really matters is how much of the disk of the swing does the ball travel through. If a player has good eyes, they're gonna put the disk of their swing inline with the ball at whatever is the necessary angle, but if they have an early barrel turn, the bat gets in the zone early and the ball is going to have to travel through more degrees of the disk meaning their chances of hitting in terms of their timing window from early to late increases greatly. Go get a string, tie it to something and pull it straight with just a little downward angle. This simulates the path of a straight up fastball. Now get a disk of some sort. Use an old DVD or something. Lay about 30% (from the outside edge to inside) of it on the string and imagine a person of proportional size standing next to it as if that were the swing he was creating. If that string crosses around his hips or lower, the DVD is gonna have to angle quite a bit to stay laying flat on that string with a comfortable swing. But even if the DVD was held horizontal, it really doesn't increase how much of the disk the string travels through. It just makes it more difficult to follow the downward angle of the string. This why I'm constantly always yelling at the 14 year olds that I coach, that have a very level swing, "You're over the top of it", because they can only hit if they perfectly intersect the angle of the pitch because their disk has a very small piece of pie that will hit the ball. Hopefully, any of that makes sense. 😄
@@povertygarage705 Yes....some sense. But the degree of "squatting" your referencing is most likely for pitches that are so low they aren't in the strike zone to begin with. If you have to lower your hand/barrel relationship to 45 degrees (if I'm visualizing it right), that most certainly is a position that is much less common. Few pitches will require you to have that drastic of an angle. I hope you realize that I'm not a proponent of a horizontal/level swing......and never have been. But I see you reference it and Teacherman seems to be obsessed with it, as if this is still a "thing" in 2024. Even back in the day, Ted Williams stated, you want a "slightly upward" swing. Not level and not overly steep. Also keep in mind that the action of slotting the elbow also triggers the shoulders tilt slightly upwards. We need to be careful not to conflate elbow slotting with barrel snapping/dumping.
So.....here is where we get into the meat and potatoes. Your disc example does make perfect sense in that the bat path we all swing represents a path that rotates about a point located on the body. It's like the rings around Saturn. The disc is the exact reason why you would never want to enter the barrel into the zone, early, by dumping or snapping it. In order to snap it backwards you absolutely have to steepen the hands in relation to the bat barrel. Thus, you've now made your disc way too steep with less plate coverage. We can go back and forth about shoulders tilt, hip/torso rotation, weight balance, etc., but even those components have varying degrees of gray area as far is what is the best approach. That being said, there is a reason why nobody, past or present, dumps or snaps their barrel towards the catcher. It's because the disc you are referring to has to be steepened to pull of that movement. This is where I see a large gap in HLP teaching and real world application. How can Bonds be the prototype HLP case study if never "snapped"? He also had a decent stride with a front foot brace......which doesn't resemble the rear legged launch that is frequently illustrated. The dots just don't connect together. The same can be said for Judge. Now maybe there is a loss in translation in words vs. movements with Teacherman, but I think he is doing himself a great disservice in trying to illustrate movements himself. Nobody is swinging the way he demonstrates. That is a huge negative and there have been countless of people watching these videos that know that the movements don't look the same. I'm sure my advice will fall on deaf ears, but the "snap" movement needs to simply be discarded from the HLP teaching catalog.
@historyrepeated4239 we have to be careful that we're on the same page when we talk about tilts and angles. When I say 45°, I'm thinking from a rear view of the batter. When Ted Williams talked about a slight angle up, he meant from a side view. I don't mean 45° from a side view. That would be ridiculous. 😆 That's like trying to cut up under the ball to hit it straight up. To understand what Rich is really after when he talks about the snap, just watch videos of George Brett. He rested the bat on his shoulder but never swung across his chest. He literally just whipped the bat rearward off of his shoulder. Everyone slots the elbow, but not everyone turns the barrel immediately with a strong whip while slotting the elbow. Some of this just comes down to forearm strength and guys like that probably don't even think about it and just naturally do it. What made Rich's method a game changer for many people is that his focal point is on this whipping motion and on starting it early so that the barrel comes up to speed very early in the swing. The top hand has to supinate some to do this, and Rich will show that motion in isolation and exaggerate it to no end. In an actual put-together swing, the supination happens for a very small window of time and quickly rolls into a more palm up/palm down position as the barrel comes around from behind and follows through. Some people literally don't do this. They just slot the elbow and drag the bat into the path, and have a wrist motion closer to swinging a hammer. This is the key difference that Rich is trying to show when he splits these types of hitters into two camps (the barrel turners vs. the barrel pushers). If you want the most exaggerated example of wrist supination turning into a forward swing, search "snappy gilmore," the one-handed golf ball driver guy. It's this rear whipping wrist supination kinda move that is what gives his club so much velocity, and it's super easy to see because he has a very long swing. His swing can be long because he hits on his time. A baseball player hits on the pitcher's time and has to be reactive, so the swing is shorter and more compact for reasons of quickness, so it can be harder to notice these things.
Do you think this is applicable from a tennis perspective as well, considering tennis involves striking a ball, just like hitting a baseball?
Its a different type of swing. Different stance.
@@nofurtherwest3474 Why would it not work? I mean, especially the wrist/forearm kinetics
@@LowUTR in tennis you are moving all the time all over the place. so you are swinging from a variety of positions. you also swing with just one hand a lot of times. so it just seems different don't you think?
@@nofurtherwest3474 It's not dissimilar at all, and much of the same mechanics apply. Just put both in slow motion and you will see. The tool is different and the goal is different. I.e. no one is top spinning a baseball on purpose but is often done in a tennis volley, but the mechanics are similar.
Makes sense, but why then are batting avgs so low across the majors?
pitchers are allowed to get better too. Fastball velocity is up, slider velocity is up.
@@danielhoward4566and to that point, because of how inconsistent the zones are, hitters are having to chase pitches that are out of the zone because they're gonna get called if they dont put them in play
Did you read the title of the video? Obviously not all hitters are greats so not all swing like this.
@@danielhoward4566
Example of great swing that doesn’t snap the bat reward and launch from the back leg?
@danielhoward4566 he has videos saying arod did it, and Griffey didnt and was an exception.
I'm not saying he's wrong OR right. It just seems to me that so many guys have had success in so many different ways. Look at George Brett or Frank Thomas. Their technique would never be taught by anyone, yet they ended up in the hall of fame. Seems to me the more ready you are to hit the more success you can have.
So many mlb players, especially sluggers (judge, ohsani, etc)have a different mentality on his style. They love it! So…
@@jeremywhiteted696 I don't hate it. Seems like it gets your reaction speed up right away.
He is wrong and he is also correct. MLB players starts to lower there elbow at toe touch, which creates tilt also makes you snap your wrist naturally. It is not baseball it is science. Also how he kicks out will load your hands and coil your body naturally. These hitting coaches does way to much. The swing is a domino effect if the feet is wrong then the whole swing is wrong. Land on toes and lower the elbow while you are on your toes that is all you need.
@bigdaddybaseball1114 - bro, it seems like you're trying to make some good points here, but you might be better off to dial in your grammar and your punctuation before you try explaining technical things to people.
@michaelallen1154 I fixed my message I was at work when I wrote it lol
He’s not wrong my guy . That’s yap
@TM-oz2bj he is wrong about tilting and snapping the wrist. Your body does that automatically if you lower your elbow while you are on your toes. Try it yourself.
@@bigdaddybaseball1114I’ve been learning the complete opposite actually. Feel the weight in your heels and glutes. You don’t want the weight on your toes
This video is wrong! Not accurate