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I can assure you that Barry Bonds does not hit a ball with his upper 
body. Barry Bonds has one of the best swings in baseball. He is smooth 
and has extremely good timing with his hips. Where the extra mass form 
the drugs comes in is his the extra weight that goes into the ball, not 
arm strength. Hitting a baseball comes from hip rotation and timing of 
your weight shift.

Most of the great home run hitters in baseball were not big. Willy Mays 
was 5-10, 175 to 180. Hank Arron about the same as was Frank Robinson. 
Ted Williams was not much bigger. The Sultan of Swat was about 6-1 and 
200 pounds - not an exceptionally big man and all his upper body 
strength came from lifting a beer mug as did about 20 of his 200 pounds 
come from all the beer he drank. The one thing they shared in common was 
very keen eyesight (it is rumored that Williams could tell you the brand 
of ball the pitcher was pitching from reading it on the pitch), 
extraordinary eye-hand coordination and a very smooth coordinated 
flawless swing.

You probably got better hitting the ball because your lower body timing 
was better and you were just in better shape.

Truman

Diane Trefethen wrote:
> Maybe the problem that most observers have is that riding horses doesn't
> add much to upper body strength, you know, those big biceps. What they 
> are
> missing is the considerable strength it adds to our legs.
>
> When I got back into horses after the start-a-family thing, I was 
> playing B
> League softball at the Rec. Early on I met an Endurance rider and started
> conditioning with her (she didn't tell me we were conditioning; we were
> just riding for fun). After a few months I realized that my swing had
> improved and I was routinely hitting deep balls to the chagrin of the 
> other
> teams' outfielders who only saw a puny little woman at bat. When you 
> hit a
> baseball with your upper body, a la Barry Bonds, you are muscling it 
> and do
> indeed need a huge amount of muscle power to do well. But when you hit 
> the
> ball off your legs, you can get more consistent results with far better
> ball placement. Hmmm.. if that is true for Baseball, I bet it's true for
> Golf too.


--

“Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the 
axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.” Albert 
Einstein


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