The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [183]
Historical CSRs: Contrasted with CSR, SLG is essentially a measurement of a player’s power and OPS is a measurement of both a player’s power and consistency.
AREA OF IMPACT (AOI)
Big AOI—good.
Small AOI—bad.
It is possible to achieve a high CSR while doing something that reduces power, such as having your front arm away from your chest (à la Derek Jeter). Much more mass, and therefore force, can be transferred to the ball if the front arm is tight to the chest, because the mass of the torso is transferred through the arm directly into the bat. It should be one unit.
Advanced Concepts (Important for live pitches)
See the illustrations of good and bad Areas of Impact (AOI) on the previous pages. AOI is an indication of a hitter’s level of consistency. It indicates how long the bat is square enough to the pitch to supply adequate force to the oncoming ball. You will notice that the Slot position and good CSR produce a long AOI. The longer the AOI, the higher the likelihood of hitting the ball, even if the hitter misjudges pitch speed.
Angle L measures bat-lag: how late your bat comes through the strike zone. Lag is achieved with a slight wrist “twitch” of the top of the bat toward your spine while the bat is still well behind you. The smaller the angle L, the more bat speed will ultimately be generated. The key is to achieve a small angle L early in the Slot position. If you achieve bat-lag too late in the swing, as the bat is traveling through the hitting zone, it will shrink your AOI.
Angle L
Practicing Your Angles
The best drill for honing a new Impact position is hitting the impact bag (usually a heavybag), pausing at impact, and checking your position. Do this for 10 minutes, then practice hitting balls off of a tee, duplicating the same movement.
This was the single exercise I performed while with Jaime. It works like gangbusters.
Hacking CSR and related biomechanics is a force multiplier (figuratively and literally) that can be used to transform mediocre hitters into MVP hitters.
God might create great hitters, but science also gives you the tools to build them.
The Exercise That Increased My Distance 35%
Note that the toes and knees aim forward when the front leg steps forward. For a right-handed batter, the toes are now pointed at approximately 10 A.M. if 12:00 noon is where they were pointing in the second picture. This opens up the hips and allows greater torque.
On the left: To prevent backward lean and ensure that my spine was perpendicular to the ground, I focused on keeping my left shoulder away from my left ear.
On the right: For the final impact, the largest speed increases (and sound increases) were achieved when I focused on driving the right hip forward by forcefully extending the front left leg. If you drill this forceful extension, expect better speeds—and intense soreness the next day—to follow.
TOOLS AND TRICKS
Impact Bag Drill in Motion (www.fourhourbody.com/impact) This is the actual training video of the Impact bag drill Jaime and I did together. The progress is clearly visible from start to finish, and Jaime’s coaching is audible.
Jaime Cevallos Business Case (www.fourhourbody.com/cevallos) How did Jaime go from making $7 an hour to coaching MLB MVPs? He used The 4-Hour Workweek as a step-by-step manual. This blog post explains how he got access to the majors and landed in major media, including ESPN: The Magazine, among others.
The MP30 Training Bat (http://www.theswingmechanic.com/) Increasingly common in the majors, the MP30 Training Bat trains hitters to swing using the ideal Slot position to generate more power.
Sports Radar Gun (www.fourhourbody.com/radar) This radar gun will measure everything, whether pitches, swings, or cars.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
(www.fourhourbody.com/moneyball) In Moneyball, master storyteller Michael Lewis describes how the Oakland Athletics achieved an astonishing winning record in 2002, despite the lowest player payroll of any major