The whip effect can be seen in the baseball swing. To transfer energy from the whip’s tip, you must decelerate when cracking a whip. Cracking a whip requires that the arm decelerate.
In order to correct the current rotational obsession taught in the baseball swing, it is important to learn how energy flows to the bathead in a swing. To illustrate the proper transfer of energy, you could take a bucket and pour the water into a bowl. My arms should be rotated with the rest, so that the water doesn’t stop rotating (or slow down the arms), and it would most likely miss its target. It would then fly along a circle around my target. I would have not been able to direct the water from the bucket and hit the target directly. Rotational throws did not result in energy transfer from thrower to bucket.
My goal is to remove the water from the bucket. I must brace (decelerate) my arms in order to reach my target. The water then flows from me to my bucket and my body, creating a bracing effect.
You will see the difference between what I have taught and what your brain sees in biomechanists in other sports. But you won’t learn much in baseball about this cracking idea. We don’t want to turn. The goal of our team is to give energy to bat heads to get to the ball. Rotation is not the goal.
You should hit the ball with your legs, creating forward momentum. The energy will then transfer to the front leg. Your body must brace for the transfer of energy from the back leg to the front leg during your baseball swing.
The water in the bucket is equivalent to the amount of water that the hands and bat hold. Both the arms and hands are removed. Our goal is not to strike the ball with our bodies by striking the ball. Our bodies should not spin through the contact with the baseball. Although it doesn’t look very good, many coaches talk about hips, hips hips, hips, spin your backfoot and give that kind of instruction.
Whip effect is a way to understand how natural movements, such as the natural swing and natural moves, occur in other sporting activities that involve throwing. It is possible to think of another sport in which you want your back foot to turn. Numerous baseball coaches teach their players to use their backfoot to rotate through their hips. This type of instruction and throwing technique is common in other sports.
We transfer our energy straight to our goal in tennis, golf and shot put. These sports do not allow for spinning, and none of them involve the backfoot. The rotational panic is taking over in baseball. However, it doesn’t exist in other sports. The last ten years have seen a lot of batting, and coaches are now teaching. We also see an epidemic in spinners.
In the swing, rotation does occur. It is a fact that can be disputed. But it is still part of an oblique move of the back foot. This is called a lateral drive of energy that moves in a straight line towards your target. How would my back leg spin if I throw a ball and then how does that affect the power of my leg and the direction the ball is going? Rotating your back leg while throwing a baseball would affect your drive, and would cause the ball to fly in the opposite direction from where it was intended.
If you throw a baseball in straight lines towards your target, then your hips will automatically rotate. Throwing a baseball in a straight line will cause your hips to move much quicker than if you try to turn.
It is an interesting concept to get water from a bucket. The idea of moving in straight lines and decelerating energy is important. The natural process of rotation is occurring. Rotation will occur naturally by the hips pulling on the upper body. It will occur without the need to spin.
To hit a baseball we need to work straight. To prevent the transfer, the front leg should be in line with the ball. The hips will then open at the front. After the straight line shift our body parts start to rotate in sequence and naturally. Once we can decelerate just before contact, the massive force of energy will flow into our hands and the bat.
You hear professional hitters talking a lot more about hands. Although they might not be able to explain biomechanically what they are talking about, they do talk about their hands as they only feel the ball contact with them.
Great hitters have all their energy directed to their hands at the moment when the ball touches the ground.