Thread by @SteveEnglishbey

About 10 yrs. ago in my obsessive search for good info about "how the body works" in the context of swinging a bat, I ran across a retired physician named Jeff Mann. After retiring he turned his attention to trying to understand the golf swing.

The link to his site: perfectgolfswingreview.net
I'll quickly add a couple of points before going further: 1] I did then and do now now understand that there are some pretty clear DISTINCTIONS between a golf swing and a baseball swing.;2] I have never swung a golf club.

Growing up when and where I did [basically Pasadena Tx in the early 70's] ,if you were caught playing golf or soccer, you were likely to get your ass kicked!!

But, yrs. later, when I started my foray into teaching [and early on being VERY fortunate to run across a non-player ----Paul Nyman], I pretty quickly realized that good info COULD come from guys who were not affiliated with baseball coaches.

Aside from the Setpro website info I ran across a damn good golf book ..."Search for the Perfect Swing: The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your Game."

Shortly thereafter I ran across Jeff Mann's website.
Since then, I have spent hundreds of hours looking at his info. There is NO ONE who has more depth of focus than this guy. Simply put, he is VERY prolific in his writing and VERY thorough.

For me, his output yields a great exercise of both trying to understand what he is saying and trying to understand how this can relate to understanding the baseball swing [or softball].

His output amounts to a great intellectual challenge in understanding "how the body works" in the specific context of swinging a bat.

For me , the "trick" is to try to figure out how his info might be effectively applied to swinging a bat.

One key thing he argues--which I think CAN be applied--is that of his arguments regarding the concepts of "ground reaction forces."

Here's some of his thoughts about this concept/application:

"In recent years, there has been a new fad among golf instructors, who now use force-plate measurement devices (eg. Swing Catalyst or Boditrak) to measure the ground reaction forces being exerted under the feet during the downswing."

"These devices measure the magnitude of ground reaction forces being exerted under the feet in both the vertical and horizontal planes. Golf instructors believe that they can use these measurements to instruct a student-golfer on how to improve his downswing's pelvic motion."

" I personally believe that this golf instructional approach represents pseudo-science because they incorrectly presume that the ground reaction forces being generated under the feet are primarily responsible for causing the pelvis to rotate and shift during the downswing action.

"However, they totally fail to take into account the role of the pelvic girdle muscles in producing a pelvic rotary motion. "

"I have studied their golf instructional teaching, which is based on different patterns of ground reaction force measurements, and I personally find their teaching approach to be of no practical value."

I thoroughly agree with this ---either in the context of swinging a golf club or bat.

Both my and Jeff's argument is simple: Neither torques at the feet, nor center of pressure shifts, have "explanatory power" [my term]. They most certainly do NOT explain the ACTUAL more proximal actions happening in the pelvic region that are actually CAUSING movement.

Most certainly Paul Nyman agrees with this. As well as as guys like biomechanist Patrick Cherveny. See ,for ex. his article on ...."Move the Middle": bestperformancegroup.com/?page_id=475

And though I cannot be sure of this, I think that Mel Siff----arguably the finest sports scientist in our life time [who died all too early some yrs. back] would agree!!

@threadreaderapp unroll