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What is Ideal Impact?

Ideal Impact as defined by Ted Williams is “when the bat and ball meet at a 90 degree angle and your wrists are square and unbroken at contact”. He also states that fifteen degrees either side of 90 degrees from the direction of the pitch is a reasonable tolerance area. Hands and forearms supply direction. The wrists do not roll. Action at the point of contact is comparable to that of the hard, unbroken swing of an ax (41). If you’re right‐handed, your chief power source is your right hand, the hand nearer the club head. Try this for yourself. Get a bat and swing it against a telephone pole. Where is the wrist position at point of contact? Square and unbroken, that’s where, just as when you hit a tree with an ax. Conclusion? The baseball swing is a hard push‐swing.

The Ax analogy has been around a long time, but the problem is that coaches alot of the time speak on it as a down chop. The down chop into the tree is only used as the wedge cutter and the slight up stroke into a tree is the power stroke. I never really grasped the concept thoroughly until I put the pieces altogether. The swing path to the ball, Ideal Impact and square unbroken wrists are all intertwined together.

Ted Williams also said “Most young hitters and 50% of the big league players I’ve talked to have never considered that the impact of the bat on ball is reached not with the wrists rolling, or a “wrist” swing, but with the wrists square and unbroken, as they would be at impact when an ax is swung on a tree. The power is always applied before the wrists roll. Even when you are pulling? Yes, because the hips bring the bat around, not the wrists” (58).

 The ability to get to Ideal Impact is vitally important to be a more consistent and powerful hitter.

Many coaches use terminology that disrupts a hitters ability to achieve Ideal Impact. Things like “throw your hands” or ” drive the knob to the ball”. When a player does these things, the led arm starts to prematurely extend. When you look at high level hitters at the point of contact, their lead arm maintains its original angle (from launch) to the point of contact.

Take a look at these pictures and ask yourself the question “are they throwing their hands to the ball or rotating the barrel to the ball?”. Look at the connection of the arms! In order to get to Ideal Impact with square wrists, the front elbow has to work up and around the body. Players that lead with their knob of the bat will extend the lead arm and their wrists will roll through contact. They dont throw their hands nor do they drive the knob to the pitcher. They simply use their arms and hands to hold on to the bat as they rotate around to contact. Let me state that these are the looks of great hitters when they are on time with the pitch. If they are a bit early on the pitch the led arm will be more extended out front. We train to be on time with pitches and let our natural tendencies take over when we are not, but we have to train our players to understand how to get to Ideal Impact!

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We believe that weight transfer is an essential element of great hitting mechanics. We do not believe it is a hitting technique, but rather an element of great hitting, and a major one at that. There has to be back to front movement of the body in the hitters stride process in order to hit with any kind of consistency and power. The transfer of the weight occurs against a rigid front leg (not over it) creating a front side axis. Sitting, squishing the bug is simply poor hitting mechanics.  At the proffesional ranks, a hitters back foot is in one of two places at the point of contact. Its either completelyoff the ground or there toe is barely touching the ground. Either way, the back foot does not bare any weight once the front foot lands. In many cases you will see the back foot travel foreward. This foreward movement is usually equal to or slightly less than there stride. This is not a thought process of the hitter, rather, it is a natural reaction of the body when the hitters weight is placed in the right place at the point of launch. This is a sign that the hitter is using there entire body to create power and has complete leverage against there front side.

I feel that many young hitters never get a good weight transfer due to what they have been taught. One key phrase in baseball and softball is “stay back” and without a full understanding of when “stay back” happens, the hitter gets caught with his weight stuck in his back leg. When you look at a high level swing, you will see the hitter’s first move is back (loading against his back leg). Once back, the hitter will move the entire body (including the head) forward   (in a controlled manner) maintaining dynamic balance throughout until the front foot plants(creating forces against the front leg not over).  Now, at this point the head stops forward movement along with the rest of the body, and rotation occurs in a natural motion. Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. Which should explain why some amatures swings looked forced and  a high level swing looks effortless. So to tell players to stay back just isnt enough. We as coaches must explain when this happens and what it really means.

So with all this said, the transfer of weight is a vital element of  high level swing mechanics, not a particular technique.

Taylor Bales

“If you expect to hit everyday: you better hit everyday”