Bob

Great article on weight shifting Joey. You still see a lot of players not striding though – I believe it’s because the coaches of young kids want to see them make contact before they gain power. Personally … I think it’s better (by far) to teach a proper and dynamic swing and THEN learn to control it. It’s a ‘chicken and egg’ thing – what comes first … The contact or the power? Coaches have got to sell the development pyramid model to the kids and parents before you’ll see any changes.

Let me explain quickly … As a coach … it’s much safer, or less risky let’s say, to tell your kids to just stand stagnant in the box and slow down their bat, and swing with no stride (or with a little lift of the front heel and then dropping it), than it is to get them to attack the ball as the article suggested. At a young age, eliminating the stride phase will most often result in a greater rate of contact for sure, but it’s a dead end street for the kid. So the kid hits the ball weekly, or sort of OK … whichever … and the coach can look the eager young parents in the eye and say “He’s hitting the ball!” But this false sense of accomplishment will be short lived when he’s 14 and switches to a wood bat and can’t hit.

The way a ‘real’ coach does it is to teach the 7 or 8 year old to hit properly, and he may see some foul or missed balls initially, but he can look the parents in the eye and say … “He’s only 8 … wait until you see him in the next few years … he’s gonna kill the ball!” It’s the same sort of thing when you see coaches spend more time instructing the better players, and leaving the middle guys behind. They can get more miles and take more credit from someone who actually has natural ability, and save themselves the shame of working with a player that may not get instant results. I guess it’s all part of the ‘What-have-you-done-for-me-lately’ world we live in – but it’s more to gratify the coaches ego and validate his worth than it is to benefit the player, and stay true to the developmental model known to help players in the long run.

Joe

Great stuff! A true believer! Where has he been all my life? I agree with just about everything he said in the article except for what he said about Henry Aaron. If Aaron was perceived to be a wrist hitter it was because he lunged at times, moving his upper body over his front leg while keeping his hands back.

He alludes to skipping the back foot, which is your term, Joey. He says that the back foot comes off the ground but doesn’t say what direction the back foot travels. I believe that the back foot should skip forward into contact, transferring more energy by adding more forward momentum. In watching tape of Mickey Mantle, I saw that he would skip his back foot a little to the side when batting right handed, towards the dugout. My question is, should the back foot skip forward into contact?

Ryan

Wow, bat to the future! Glaus was probably right, in 1991 that kind of instruction really couldn’t be found anywhere else. Sadly, 24 years later there’s still only a handful of instructors teaching the truth.

Joey Myers

I 100% agree. Coaches are willing to trade long-term results with short term gratification. The player has ALL the risk in the latter scenario. Sorry I haven’t replied to your past email about Quin. I’ve been slammed these last few weeks. I’m so happy for him and you. I love that video of him blasting one against that college pitcher, and he’s only 15/16yo! I’ll reply this next week brother 😀

Joey Myers

Joe, yes, Jim was way ahead of his time. He caught A LOT of flack for his views on hitting. I would’ve hated to explain this stuff back then. Would’ve been very difficult. The “squish the bug” experiment was pretty clear about the benefit of skipping the back foot. I’ve seen it skipped forward, behind the hitter, and towards home plate. It would be worth testing, but I think they all accomplish the same goal.

Joey Myers

lol, “bat” to the future! You’re a clever one Ryan 😀 I totally agree, the industry hasn’t traveled very far since Jim put out this article.

Joe

Joey,

Does he mean that there is no such thing as an axis of rotation at all? Also, he didn’t discuss when the head moves forward, and when it shouldn’t. He’s not advocating Lau’Hriniak weight forward, is he? I think these points need to be clarified, though what he advocated in 1991 ran counter to what was in vogue at the time.

Joey Myers

Joe, JD has said he read your comment and will clarify. Basically he’s saying people were advocating back then (and now) there the axis of rotation should not shift at all. This would be like pure rotational hitting. JD says axis of rotation does not stand still in the case high level swings.

J.D. Sullivan

Hey everyone, this is JD. I wrote the 1991 article we are discussing here. I want to give a huge thank you to Joey for even considering, much less printing this old article. I hadn’t read that article in twenty four years so it was very interesting to read it again. I have always said I have not really changed what I believe since I gave my first lesson in 1987 or 1988. Reading the 1991 article confirmed that for me. As a complement to what is being done at The Hitting Performance Lab I just want to say that many times since You Tube has been around I thought about jumping into the mix. I would start watching some videos and I could not believe the insanity of what was being taught. Furthermore, when I read the comments I realized that people were buying into it all, hook, line and sinker. After a couple days I would just shut it down, I just couldn’t watch it. I would try it all again about a year later and again it was two or three days and out. It became an annual ritual of disgust. A few months ago I tapped into a few of Joeys clips and I really liked his approach and what he had to say. My number one rule of hitting is; It doesn’t matter who says it, a high school coach, a college coach, a professional coach, a major league ballplayer, a Hall of Fame hitter, the latest book, the latest DVD, a professional scout… it doesn’t matter who says it….. IT DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE! I had what I called ’The Test Of The Best”. Countless hours of film of the greatest hitters of all time. Time after time what great hitters thought and said they did at the plate did not at all match up to what they actually did. So I filtered EVERTHING through “The Test Of The Best”. Joey, to me, seems to have that same approach. I have in no way seen all of Joeys videos and I can promise you we don’t agree on everything, but from what I have seen I would say that he is not going to accept anything as fact unless it can get through his tests, experiments and filters. I also really like the fact that Joey is not afraid to go right for the juggler on hitting’s sacred cows such as ‘knuckle alignment’ and ‘squishing the bug’ to name a couple. Attacking those myths is going to make you a lot more enemies than friends, it will HURT your business and you will take a lot of heat for taking contrary positions. It takes serious guts and thick skin to skewer the deep seeded beliefs of the vast majority of American coaches. My hat is off to Joey, The Hitting Performance Lab and all of you for having the resolve to stand up for what is right, no matter what the cost, to further the careers of hitters. Thanks again, JD

Joe

JD,

Thanks for your sincerity and efforts. Yes, Joey has done a great job with his efforts to get players and coaches to match hitting with human moving science.