What difference does it make squishing the bug or not

My son is not a batter but I have watch some of the great MLB hitters teach kids to swing a bat. Everyone uses that term "squish the Bug".
Becareful of people trying to reinvent baseball. I have watched guys like Frank Thomas, Carlos Delgado Vernon Wells and many others use that term.

It is a verbal cue. The idea behind the verbal cue was to encourage driving, from the ground up, hip rotation.

George, squishing the bug is basically a cue used to encourage kids to rotate (as per Texan) and sit on their back side...Problem with this teaching is it disregards the all-important weight shift factor.

George, understand what "balance" in the siwng actually consists of.......Then, you can begin to understand what the back foot does......

stand facing a mirror and place each arm outstretched. Balance is you zipper

Now place the lead arm across your chest with your other arm and have them both hold a bat.

Where is balance now?

Now pull on a bat that has inertia where is balance now ?

The " new balance center" is no longer the zipper; it is forward of your zipper.

You must shift the center of gravity forward before you launch the swing.

Kids start leaning back to line their shoulders up on loopy pitches very early in the preswing.

The backwards shoulder tilt and THEN hip turn spins their back heel back to the catcher behind the line that it started on.

That is bad bug squishing.

The body axis should be vertical during the stride and THEN the shoulders tilt to line up flat hands and release the upper body into the ball

ok, i understand what you guys are saying...but im having a lot of difficulty doing this. Everytime i try to completely shift my weight before my swing my upper body and head end up tilting forward and kindof lunging. And im not getting my back foot in the air either. Are there any drills or anything to work on this

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Originally posted by george:
ok, i understand what you guys are saying...but im having a lot of difficulty doing this. Everytime i try to completely shift my weight before my swing my upper body and head end up tilting forward and kindof lunging. And im not getting my back foot in the air either. Are there any drills or anything to work on this

Forget about strides and weight shifts.

You have to start your swing from your hips, not from your shoulders or your feet. Some people call that Middle-Out.

That will pull you up onto your back toe and will pull your shoulders around.

Squishing the bug is an interim cue that accomplishes some of this, but isn't what the best hitters do.

George, in the hitting forum, there is a thread called "short to zone...long through zone".

The thread occasionally gets off track, but is a great read on this site. Some very good posters offer advice, often conflicting, but highly informational.

Anyway, somewhere early (maybe in pages 3-10) this topic comes up. Shep refers to it as "turning forward". The hips/core turn forward (not spin) bringing the rear leg/foot along for the ride.

Personally, I'd start on page 1 and finish at ....wherever it grows to (currently 37).

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Forget about strides and weight shifts

Perhaps best to forget about the back foot

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You have to start your swing from your hips, not from your shoulders or your feet. Some people call that Middle-Out.

Somewhat conflicting in that you suggest he forget about weight shift but advocate middle-out!

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and will pull your shoulders around

Debatable

Don't think about the back foot coming up. At all. What happens with the back foot is a result of other things that you do want to control. It is not a cause.

The swing begins from the ground up. A strong front leg posts. The back knee begins to drive rotation, the hips rotate powerfully, the torso follows as do the shoulders, helping the arms to start their motion with good acceleration.

The verbal cue of keeping the weight back is useful in helping avoid getting the weight too far forward and avoiding lunging at the ball.

This could get interesting.

Might even lead to rotational vs. linear...

That could be fun!

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Originally posted by Brn2Hit:
Some will advocate that the hands need to start the swing, followed by the hip...not to open a can of worms or anything...

They could, but then they would be disagreeing with the fact.

If you look at a guy like Pujols, his hips rotate just (e.g. 10-15 degrees) ahead of his shoulders.

This movement pattern lets him take advantage of something called the Stretch Shortening Cycle.

I hear coaches using the phrase "snap your hips" as a replacement for squash the bugs more often now.

A picture is worth a thousand words and this is a good example of NOT squishing the bug.

pay close attention to the hips, back knee, and back toe. The front knee locks down in place.

Gonzalez clip

CV

"This movement pattern lets him take advantage of something called the stretch shortening cycle."

For what it's worth, the stretch shortening cycle is a combination of mechanical and neurophysiological processess. It is a rapid eccentric muscle action that stimulates the stretch reflex and storage of elastic energy, that increases force production during the subsequent concentric action.
It is essentially composed of 3 phases.
Phase1. Eccentric phase- preloading of the agonist muscle groups. The Series Elastic Component(SEC) stores elastic energy and muscle fibers or spindles are stimulated. As the fibers are stretched they send a transmission to the ventral root of the spinal cord through type Ia afferent nerve fibers.
Phase2. Transition or amortization-The type Ia afferent nerves synapse with the alpha motor nuerons in the ventral root of the spinal cord.The transmission is sent to the agonist muscle group. This duration has to be kept short. If not the stored energy is lost as heat. The stretch reflex cannot increase muscle activity during the next phase. This is the most crucial phase of the SSC
for allowing more power production.
Phase3. Concentric-this is the body's response to phases 1 and 2. If the energy that was stored in the SEC wasn't lost as heat by being held to long it will be used here to increase the force of the subsequent movement.This elastic energy that was stored increases the force produced during the concentric phase. Also the alpha motor nuerons stimulate the agonist muscle muscle group in stretch reflex (reflexive concentric muscle action).
The effeciency of these phases is essential to performance.
I apologize for this outburst. It is the salmonella controlling my mood. I actually consumed some of the contaminated batch of PeterPan peanut butter and have not been feeling well the past few days and had to lash out at something.