What is the Conservation of Angular Momentum (CAM) and how does it relate to hitting and pitching and more.
Ice Skater
Have you ever noticed how an ice skater brings their arms in tight when they spin,
then they extend their arms to slow down?
This is an example of the Conservation of Angular Momentum in action.
Youtube-Prof. Richard Pogge at Ohio State
Let's use another example to measure the actual difference in rotation speed.
Notice how his spin with arms extended takes 13 frames (frames 8 to 21).
Then his spin with his arms tight to his body takes only 6 frames (frames 30 to 36).
His rotation is dramatically faster (over 50% faster - 6 frames vs. 13 frames) simply by bringing his arms closer to his body.
As he extends his arms, he gets much slower, very quickly.
He sped up his rotation simply by having a tight turn, and it did not require any strength or leverage. Think about this when you hear people say you must be stronger to swing faster.
From here on I will try to refer to CAM as simply as Tight Turn or a Loose turn
How is Conservation of Angular Momentum Used in Hitting?
If we take Conservation of Angular Momentum into account for a baseball or softball swing,
you realize that:
The further away the bathead and/or the hands and arms are from the body during the swing,
the slower the rotation of the body, the slower the turn, resulting in
much slower bat speed.
At the start of the swing forward phase (after toe touch),
the hands should be near the torso, near the back armpit.
Hands are too far away
Hands close to torso
1b. Alternately you can hold the hands slightly forward/down with the bat resting in the shoulders (essentially cutting the bat length in half)
Examples: George Brett
1c. The further away the hands are,
the more vertical the bat must be.
(The window of leverage gets smaller)
The hands must stay there (they should not push away from the body) until roughly 'hip slot'
when the upper arm and elbow take their place close to the torso.
Only then do you push the back forearm down directly toward the oncoming ball (while maintaining #2)
3b. From hip slot to contact, both biceps should be as close as possible to the torso.
3c. After hip slot, the rear elbow should stay with the hip and rotate together through to contact
(many MLB push forward which is not perfectly optinmal but is OK if the bat head gets ahead of the hands in time for contact.)
Loose Turns Kill Swings
Loose turns reduce your bat speed and batted ball distance.
They limit the weight of bat that you can swing. Simply by having a tighter turn,
you can swing a heavier bat, and swing it faster.
