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#1
09-20-2005, 07:06 PM
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Mike Epstein
What does he say about hitting? What is he trying to teach to batters about mechanics?
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#2
09-21-2005, 01:26 AM
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Ahhhh, Superjew, as he used to call himself. I went to his web site -- http://www.mikeepsteinhitting.com -- and have to admit I'm intrigued. He claims he is the leading teacher of "rotational hitting", which is gaining adherents. As near as I can tell, the differences from more conventional hitting are that the hands start lower and closer to the body than usual, and the hitter lets his hips propel that hands forward and lead to a slight upswing and high finish to match the plane of the incoming ball.
I'd worry that for some kids that approach won't generate enough power to get the back through the strike zone, and kids would be more prone to pull their head off the ball. Anyone have any experience with it?
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#3
09-21-2005, 06:47 AM
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Rotational Hitting Yes Of Course
himself. I went to his web site -- http://www.mikeepsteinhitting.com -- and have to admit I'm intrigued. He claims he is the leading teacher of "rotational hitting", which is gaining adherents. As near as I can tell, the differences from more conventional hitting are that the hands start lower and closer to the body than usual, and the hitter lets his hips propel that hands forward and lead to a slight upswing and high finish to match the plane of the incoming ball.
I'd worry that for some kids that approach won't generate enough power to get the back through the strike zone, and kids would be more prone to pull their head off the ball. Anyone have any experience with it? ALL i can say is get your kid to learn the rotational method.Another great website to try is batspeed.com. spend the money on an instructional hitting video using rotational theories. 
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#4
09-27-2005, 11:31 PM
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Quote:
I've looked at Epstein and Batspeed.com -- both look good, but Epstein seems a bit absolute, insisting that you have to select to go exclusively with one system or the other -- rotational or linear. Someone who seems less doctrinaire/absolute about choosing between the two systems is Mike Schmidt, whose book seems to be pretty well praised. It can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...26235?v=glance Wogdoggy, you seem to talk a fair amount of sense on these boards. Any particular video you think would be worth the $20 or so it would cost?
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#5
09-28-2005, 05:40 AM
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I would start with batspeed.com video.the reason i like this one is its more intriguing for a kid from 9 to 14 then epstein's .batspeed.com has some easy drills the kids can work on by themselves.They also have a message board at the sight where the devoloper will answer questions that you have about the video etc.That is a nice add on too.For all the money you spend on this and that during a season,I guarantee you this will be the best money you spend.
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#6
10-04-2005, 03:07 AM
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#7
10-04-2005, 05:43 AM
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He had a slow swing and made half A$$ attempts at hitting the ball,This is a mechanics video ,it shows the difference between rotational style and linear style.It has two kids in it where they show drills with a heavy bag.The instructor shows different styles of rotation,he mimmicks Sosa,Bonds McGuire,Sheff,Etc Etc ans shows how no matter whta these guys do before the swing they all end up in the same spot.When my one boy was "keyed "in last year he would hit pull shot line drives to left field.This type of swing promotes line drive pull hitting like you see with bonds, big mac and more recently Abreu.Did you see how many HOME RUNS he PULLED at the derby this year? THATS the PERFECT rotational swing.Go to the website and scroll thru the different areas.
 by the way Both my kids improved dramatically ,11 yr old and 14 yr old.The 11 yr old at 65 lbs playing travel with more physically mature kids led his teams in batting for the 1st three quarters of the season and then he dropped off considerably when grandpa starting taking him golfing.1 month after the season his eyesight was corrected from a -2.50 to - 3.25.I dont know ???? But i think the golf swing made him stiifen and straighten his bottom hand on loading which cheated him from power,,I Know the eyesight did'nt help either.The 14 yr old has blasted balls over the fence this year and has hit some awesome balls.The KID,,,, He thinks he's Albert Pujols,I broke the news to him and told him he was too polish.lol.Last edited by wogdoggy; 10-04-2005 at 05:59 AM.
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#8
10-05-2005, 12:21 AM
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Hey, you're a prince for getting back to me so soon on it. I think I'll go ahead and bite the bullet and spend the $39 for the DVD. Did you buy the swing analysis as well?
I'd never really paid much attention to Abreu, but looked around to see if I could get a good luck at his swing. I finally found an MLB clip of most of his 41 homers at the All-Star HR Derby, and I see what you mean about his rotational mechanics. They really are impressive. And, his swing is really consistent, time after time. You can view the streaming clip at: http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/ev...5/hr_derby.jsp
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#9
11-09-2005, 08:44 PM
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But does abrue swing like that in a game????????.........big difference when you are telling someone what to pitch you and how you swing, than when your facing Roger Clemens and he's pitching you what HE wants to pitch you....yes I will agree that the swing needs to remain the same....but to err is human, and as a human(and baseball player) you WILL adjust your swing at EVERY AT BAT..depending the on the pitches your seeing.....NO Swing IS perfect!!!!, but the 1500 players in baseball all have a perfect swing(and how many different styles do you see in those 1500)!!!!...(keep the the mechanics to the basics but DONT TEACH 1 STYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)....If you disagree then please tell me when was the last time you were at bat in a major league game!!!!!!!!!!!(btw did you strike out or hit into a DP???)
Just remember NO quarterback was signed to a mutli-million dollar deal for completing 30% of his PASSES!!!!!!!!
__________________
img]http://baseball-fever.com/images/statusicon/forum_new.gif[/img]
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#11
11-10-2005, 08:40 AM
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Videos won't do it all
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Neuro scientists have learned that it takes 200-300 correct repitions to learn complex physical movements to the point that you just do them unconciously. And, that applies to learning from scratch. If you have already learned a movement like the swing, and then try to make changes; it takes 1,500 to 3,000 correct repititions to re-program the brain. If you don't have somebody watching you swing, and you do it wrong, you are just inserting a different incorrect program. You need to video your son often, as you try to change and compare what he is doing, to what you see on the video. It also helps to know WHY you are supposed to do something, and what the pitfalls are if you do it differently.
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#12
11-10-2005, 10:27 AM
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Based upon your statements as to what you understood from reading Epstein's website, I can tell you that you don't understand what he is saying.
Tony Gwynn has no idea how a swing actually works either, Anybody can own a training center,and believe me there are tons of people affiliated with training centers that dont know diddley either,,,but i always wonder about a guy that bad raps others,especially tried and true players like tony gwynn haveing NO IDEA at all...but yet of course you do.You know the best ,nyman mankin and epstein and the worst lau and hudgkins...apparently dave did it with smoke and mirrors for 10 yrs,,,I dont care for daves stuff either but he does have some great stuff too...there is no absolute. wondering why you didnt stay with the epstein instruction for your clinic? did it have the name recognition you thought? not enuf referrals for the 5 grand? You owning a hitting clinic give you absolutely no instant credibilty anybody with a few thousand to invest can open one...get off the high horse and realize you put your pants on one leg at a time too.
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#13
11-10-2005, 10:40 AM
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I also, suggested that people study all of the people I named and make their OWN judgment. I just gave MY analysis to throw into their decision process. I didn't tell them mine was the end all, that's what Nyman thinks of himself, not me. You obviously can't comprehend what you read. Are you a Gwynn fan? Is that the reason for the hostile response? Gwynn could DO IT, but it doesn't mean he can teach it. He actually believes that the body sequence of a swing is; hands, shoulders and hips. Exactly the opposite of what it really is and that can be proven, or you can just take Ted Williams' word over Gwynn's. Ted was much better than Gwynn. Yeah, anybody can open a training center, but I happen to put a lot of work into learning what is best, and the best way to teach it, and my students are having a lot of success. Last edited by jbooth; 11-10-2005 at 10:53 AM.
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#14
11-10-2005, 12:44 PM
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Boys, boys, boys! You're two of my favorite guys on this site, and I hate to see you go at it. Now, Wogdoggy, I don't think there's any call to jump on JB by saying, "Anyone can open a training site." Fact is, I'd rather listen to someone who's got a 'brick and mortar' business that relies on local word of mouth than a guy with an internet site and a video who relies on promotional gimmickry. So apologize and go back and play nice, and maybe we can talk about the merits of the various systems and web sites, which is what the original post was about, right?
Looking over all the opinions JB uttered in the last few posts, I can't really find much to disagree with about any of them, even where he accuses me of now knowing what I'm talking about. Back on September 21st, when I was talking about my first impressions of Epstein's site, I said, "As near as I can tell, the differences from more conventional hitting are that the hands start lower and closer to the body than usual, and the hitter lets his hips propel that hands forward and lead to a slight upswing and high finish to match the plane of the incoming ball." In hindsight, I realize that I did miss the main points of Epstein's system by a mile. See, that's when I asked you smart guys for advice, bought the batspeed.com video and love it (as does my son), and I'm almost a smart guy too. I think a starting point for any comparison of the systems is assessing the target audience. On rotational hitting, I think Jack Mankin's BatSpeed.com is focused more on younger (8-12) kids, and it sorta tops out at the experienced kids. Epstein doesn't have nearly as much free info on his site or in his forums, so I can't be sure, but it sounds as though he gives a lot more detail that would be of assistance to the 14+ age bracket. BatSpeed, by contrast, seems to leave out a lot that you need to pick up elsewhere (usually on the site) -- e.g., the ideal grip and how to hit pitches in various locations. This gets to your best point among many good ones JB, which is that videos can get you only so far. I view the Batspeed video and others that I've bought and books I've read as a starting point for my own observations and successful experience. I think what has drawn me to being a rotational adherent recently is not just that I'm picking and choosing arbitrarily from success stories, but that the system as taught by Mankin and, apparently, Epstein makes sense to me. Just like you may not know as much as your doctor, but if what he or she is telling you sounds like gobbledygook made up on the fly to try to convince you of their opinions, it's time to get a new doctor. BTW, JB I went to the web site for your First Pick Training Club. I was amazed to see that we're almost neighbors! (I'm just across the Richmond Bridge in Berkeley, and I have a cousin who lives in Novato (but their family sport is tennis, not baseball.) I think the fact that you can in one session have a tubby, fiftyish woman reporter with a bad dye job hitting line drives in high heels ought to be the greatest testimony to your system! It was hard to tell much about the hitting due to the age range of the kids shown (and that kid in the "Club" video was dropping his hands before he launched  ), but I really liked the pitching motion you had all the kids doing. (Although, what is a kid who looks like he's 8 doing pitching from the stretch; do any leagues in that age bracket allow leadoffs, or is that just a teaching technique to isolate the later part of the motion?) My son has a strong arm, but he tends to shorten up on his leg raise (or corkscrew the leg back towards second) and not get that nice reach back ('scapular loading', if you will) that your kids have, so a lot of his pitches tend to go low and outside to righties. He's got a semi-pro pitching coach to work with on that, cuz gawd knows he won't listen to me.
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#15
11-10-2005, 01:27 PM
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it seems to me he just came across as a know it all,gwynn dont know crap,this guy has a big ego this guy is linear this guy is that and i own this and i know that...thats all,,just a lil too much.to just dismiss hugkins is ridicoulous,,yeah he is somewhat linear but if you look at his stuff some of its good too..like the way he holds the bat.etc...so you can find some great stuff in everbodys stuff if you look hard enough,,,thats all.
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#16
11-11-2005, 06:13 PM
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"did you strike out or hit into a DP?"
"you put the MOE in moron" "Anybody can own a training center... there are tons of people affiliated with training centers that dont know diddley either" are things cool here, now?
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#17
11-12-2005, 10:55 AM
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Quote:
hit-it-hard
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#18
11-12-2005, 12:30 PM
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you guys are hurting my brain with your long posts, me no think good
__________________
Born True Blue
Last edited by ElCaminoSS; 11-12-2005 at 12:34 PM.
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#19
11-12-2005, 12:33 PM
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__________________
Born True Blue
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#20
11-12-2005, 07:09 PM
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A classic example is that recently JBooth built a cute little contraption to illustrate, not prove, that there may be some benefit to using the top hand to start the bathead moving, which is a real world issue for weak, scrawny kids. Nyman spent his post dismissing the simplicity of the contraption, without addressing the real world points the contraption demonstrated. When I followed up asking if, even though top hand movement might not do much to generate speed, was there anything wrong or risky about using it to start the swing, everyone went silent. The big red flag for me with Nyman is that he does not know the limits of his expertise. Discerning folks like you and me can recognize that there is a lot of good that you can take out of the date he generates without necessarily buying into everything he concludes. I deal with and hire experts all the time and have to constantly make sure they are not offering opinions beyond their area of expertise, just as I have to make sure I advise people for whom I work what the limits of my specialized skills are and when they (or I) have to hire an expert to help when the problems extend beyond what I can do. While I haven't seen Paul's CD, he doesn't seem to pay much attention to the fact that kids' shoulders and hands aren't pins around which rectangles perfectly spin, and they go into instruction with a host of pre-prgrammed physical impulses based on bad baseball coaching, or soccer instincts, or dancing, or any number of prior physical acts. One of the things that is wonderful about the site is the swing review thread. What a wonderfully helpful notion, and the participating coaches are so giving of their time. I think it's valid because most of the advice is consistent with each other, and the coaches seem to work to reconcile their perceptions and will alter them when "errors" are spotted. Then again, it may be they've all bought into the same malarkey. Still, the ratio of good advice to crapola is far higher than on any site I've ever seen, this one included. Paul's interventions are limited and he introduces just so much of the physical theory that seems to apply to a particular point at issue in a thread. I can't say I understand (or fully agree with) everything on the posts but, after thinking about it, have come to agree with your point that it is better to learn the elite wisdom and scale it back to the level appropriate to the hitters you're working with. (As contrasted with learning just enough to get by coaching, without understanding why you're giving a particular piece of advice.) Thanks for making the point so well -- the best learned lessons are often, like that one, points that are so valid that you wonder why you weren't able to put them together in your head yourself. I agree with Jim's point on repetitions -- the old "muscle memory" issue. My son has had coaches who talk about muscle memory and overcoming old habits, and then they never run drills (or instruct kids to do drills at home) to develop the right muscle memory. They just yell once at practice "Step to the pitcher" or "Don't drop your hands" and think they've done their jobs. I'll be sure to quote it to the kids -- "One of the most esteemed coaches in the San Francisco Area says that all you kids who've been swinging wrong -- and that's all of you -- have to go home and do these "maintain the box" drills 3,000 times in front of a mirror to stop you're flailing. And do your homework too."  You raise a good point
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#21
11-12-2005, 07:44 PM
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The primary reason for my posts were from a lessons learned point-of-view:
Originally while I learned everything I could from multiple folks, I somewhat boycotted Nyman because of his obnoxiousness. And looking back, all it did was set my learning and my kid's hitting back - and maybe save me getting my ego bruised a few times. And I see this same thing happen regularly with others who just don't want to put up with his personality. I really don't blame folks for not wanting to deal with him - I'm just trying to get them to think a little about who they're really hurting by not listening to him. As for the THT post from Jim and your followup post, this is really a prototypical Nyman example. He is convinced his simulations clearly explain that THT is a) unnecesary and b) likely to be harmful. And he has done his homework on this subject - he spent an incredible amount of time looking into it as Jack would never back off of THT - so I tend to believe he is correct. (That and the fact that when I tried to add THT to my kid's swing, the result was a huge increase in disconnection.) Once he has truly convinced himself - which takes significant due diligence - it generally takes someone making an incredibly strong case for him to become interested in it again. (Again, not saying his handling is correct...) hit-it-hard
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#22
11-13-2005, 02:08 AM
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I'm not worried about my ego being bruised, and if I was worried about dealing with obnoxious people, I wouldn't live where I do (Berkeley, CA!). I expressly go into my discussions there by saying, "I'm sorta new to this high end stuff and here is my perception, so what am I missing?" I think people generally, and Nyman's acolytes particularly, are happy to spread the word to an informed newbie, as long as the newbie isn't trying to either throw out terms he obviously doesn't understand or is trying to make arguments that defy experience or data. I think folks will forgive you saying, "Well, the data says that but I have trouble teaching that to kids in the real world," but won't forgive saying without substantiation that some technique makes more sense from a physics-model point of view.
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I went back to Batspeed.com and researched "THT" and found a Mankin post with a clip from one of his videos, in which he says about THT: "... just help that bat along... add torque at initiation to complement what the bat wants to do.... add a little force in that same direction to kinda help it along." This obviously refers only to hand action at the very initiation of the swing and not to some later point, and doesn't call for anything close to the violence of the "fishhook" or "bottom hand torque" hand action near the contact point. The post is at: http://www.batspeed.com/messageboard/23938.html, and you can download the video clip from that post. Yet, some Nymoids are still arguing that Mankin is calling for THT just before contact. I can see how a conscious, vigorous top hand move can throw off an effort to stay "in plane" with the swing. But the problem is that, as you say, they don't want to re-visit it even to see if there might be some small morsel of helpful information from the original concept. Dismissing "THT" doesn't get back to what I view to be the essential question: do you help kids with certain age/skill/strength characteristics get the bat moving and into an acceptable swing plane by doing something consciously with the top hand? If so, what kinds of kids? How should you teach it? As I mentioned, I've had no response to my much more limited inquiry.
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#23
11-13-2005, 08:02 AM
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Yes, they are weak in the arms and the core, but they need to learn early that the body swings the bat, NOT the arms and hands. You need to teach them the principles of leverage and use of force. The bat weighs less than 2 pounds, the muscles in your legs, torso and shoulders are designed to move body parts that are MUCH heavier than 2 pounds. Your wrists and forearms aren't designed to move as much weight. Therefore, learn to connect the bat to your body (make it part of the body that the big muscles move) and use the big muscles to rotate the whole unit (body with bat attached.) They absolutely MUST learn to rotate the body and to start the rotation with the lower body. After I explain the details, I just tell them to turn their feet/hips and then the front shoulder and PULL the bat with the front arm. If you emphasize that the whole front side from the ground up, is pulling the bat around, they begin to stop pushing the bat at the ball and get more batspeed. It's like playing a game of tug-o-war with the bat being the rope, and you are trying to pull the catcher to the pitcher. You have to use your whole body and shift all the weight around the front foot. The fence drill helps them learn to rotate and pull, versus throw the head and push the handle. Last edited by jbooth; 11-13-2005 at 08:05 AM.
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#24
11-13-2005, 01:05 PM
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hit-it-hard
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#25
11-13-2005, 01:08 PM
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Btw, one other person who is not mentioned enough in these conversations is Jim Dixon. If you can find a copy of his out of print book "The Exceptional Athlete" (1990), grab it and consume the contents. It has some problems in different areas, but his basic description of how to use the center to swing/throw filled in a lot of gaps of my knowledge.
hit-it-hard
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