I would like to get some feedback regarding Mike Epstein’s teaching of rotational hitting. I reviewed his site rather carefully, basically trying to determine if I wanted to buy the book or some of his DVD’s. A lot of what he had written on the site made a lot of sense but while there I found some videos of several of his students. In almost every case it appeared that during the forward rotation move of the swing, while attacking the ball, the players heads all had significant downward and backward motion. Even with pitches that were belt high and higher. Several of these players reminded me of having the reverse “C” that many a golfer strives for. This head movement would appear to make it more difficult to pick up the baseball and would put much strain on the back. I have compared this to BatSpeed.com and videos of Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and several other pros and I could not locate any significant head drop or rearward motion for any of these during the bats approach to the ball. In fact, Hammerin’ Hank actually drifted forward some.
My question is, does Epstein teach this drop and backward motion of the head during the approach to the ball or is it just something all these students have picked up while trying to learn his method? He doesn’t talk about it in the write-ups but the students that he uses as examples sure do drop and fall back. No flame, just trying to understand his technique.
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