weight on the front foot

Welcome to the hsbaseball web site! Switzerland huh!?

Work on keeping a straight front leg with a closed or 3/4 closed front foot. Your back leg should have some flex in it.

Also you may want to try to bend at your knees a bit more, this may give you a lower center of gravity resulting in a more stable base.

:-D Yup Switzerland, baseball isn't to big yet here

ok ill work on that.

thanks for the tips

To practice keeping your weight back, swing the bat as if you were swinging a tennis racket with your top hand.

Then practice using your bottom hand as a back hand swing as if it were a tennis racket.

Combine the two movements employing the balance, grip and follow through of a golf swing.

You'll feel your weight moving into the swing instead of being on your front foot.

what should the weight distribution be at:

1) Contact
2) follow through

How about 100% forward on contact settling back down to 40% on follow through? That could be a tricky measurement to accurately acertain...

Though it varies from one hitter to the next, the style I describe would be 50/50 at contact.

During the follow through, a greater than 50% would be on the front foot.

This is why the balance of the golf swing is mentioned.

It's style over brute force as Williams would say.

Thanks for the help guys, I'm going to work on those one arm drills.

Thanks,
Swiss55

Balance at the begining of a swing and balance at the end of a swing is important. I would state that as much force and weight shift as possible at contact is ideal (if 100% is possible, which it isn't) as long as you can remain or regain balance at the end of the swing.

Don't let yourself get "army" doing those drills. Don't extend prematurely and choke up on the bat so that you can control the club head.

My own persoal synopsis-

A batter needs to keep 100% of his weight back before he starts to swing. The weight then transfers from the rear to the front 100% during the swing. Keeping the weight back is crucial to hitting with power and effiiency. Players that do not grasp this need to do a simple excersize- throw a ball from the oufield and note how all the weight before the throw is on the back leg. As they throw, the momentum of the arm causes them to transfer all their weight to the front. The front leg is used to support the weight transfer and give the arm something to throw against.

Now swing a bat and notice the same thing. Have them swing the bat by first toe tapping so that they realize all their weight is on their back leg. Now as they swing when their arms are fully during the swing extended have them raise their back leg off the ground to prove to them that their is a 100% weight transfer. Therefore- the farther out in front (wider stance) they have at contact, the more power they will be able to generate.

If this is hard to teach, then follow this- have them initially keep their weight 50/50, Then as the pitcher starts his windup have them shift all their weight forward onto their front leg and then in one motion have them rock it back to their rear leg as they begin to load their arms (kind of a rocking motion). This will ensure that they get all 100% of their weight transferred onto their leg when they begin to swing. Now, where the ball goes is almost always a teller of what a batter is doing- If he is chopping balls straight back or into the third base side, it is almost always that he is transferring the weight to quickly (timing issue) or that he does not have a wide enough stance. Players that have a short stance tend to chop down at balls while players with a wide satnce have a tendancy to have a more uppercut- linedrive swing. This has to do with the balance point of weight shift. In shorter stances the balance point comes quicker and thus it is harder to keep the weight back long enough to have the proper line drive swing. As the batter with this shorter stance starts to swing, he has the tendancy to shift his weight prematurely to the front leg and thus causing his bat swing path to chop more downwards at a ball because his shoulders have began to prematurely start tilting forwards. Batters that keep their weight back in a wider stance tend to keep their shoulder tilt more in line of a line drive swing (the rear shoulder lower than the front). Even if they do start to transfer the weight prematurely, the length of the front foot in front of them allows them to keep the right angle on their shoulder tilt for a longer duration.

That is the style I call the 'sling shot'.

It gains bat speed by planting the front foot, or strong front side.

It is good for hitting off-speed pitches or for guessing fast ball.

The problem I have seen with it is that it takes too long to execute all of the motions on a fast ball 90 or better.

It also causes the batter to commit to a swing location earlier than is usually optimal.