Tony Lema

Public Forum—Concepts in Advanced Ball Striking
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tony lema

sweetswinger » Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:09 pm
Sorry but I have only now looked at these photos of Tony Lema who I remember quite well. One thing no one (as far as I can tell) has pointed out yet is that he clearly maintains the flex in his left knee through impact and well beyond which contributes I take it to his post impact rotation which looks pretty impressive to me.

sweetswinger

Re: TONY LEMA

Postby aiguille » Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:17 pm

As this sequence of the swing clearly shows, head and upper body recoil noticeably as we build up a surge of power which explodes against a braced left side.The recoiling torso follows in behind the 'flow of force' as we carry through to a smooth, high finish.

We don’t need to re-invent the wheel.

aiguille

Re: TONY LEMA

Postby sweetswinger » Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:00 pm
found this post a bit confusing. As someone who came to ABS from TGM, there is much talk there of straightening the left knee, and one of the points I recall Lag making was that in fact the left knee stays a bit flexed all the way through to PP4. The point I was making was that as far back as Lema (and no doubt before) there was no identification of a braced left side with a straightened left leg! And all I was pointing out was that here we have in Lema someone who is describing his action as hitting into a braced left side without that meaning a straight left leg thus, I take it, lending further support to Lag’s view while raising doubts about the plausibility of the basic TGM theory which in effect invites the pivot stall – for if the braced left side is a straight left leg then the pivot action slows and stops a good deal earlier than Lag indicates it should. I was simply reinforcing Lag’s view and using Lema to illustrate it. I certainly wasn’t after reinventing the wheel. but perhaps I misunderstood your comment.

sweetswinger

aiguille » Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:43 pm
OK, first of all, delighted to meet you Jules.

What this means to me is how Lema understood the necessity to provide a braced or closed left side which creates a snapping away of the right foot as the rotating upper torso overwhelms the traction of the feet. Check out Twomaster’s seminal post on this matter in the module 2 forum.

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Sweetswinger
The ABS high objective is once you get down into a deep 0430 position as much of the movment should come from Torso (spine) rotation as your flexibility can allow. A lot of great ball strikers come into a flexed but firm L knee like Knudson, Moe etc. It is simple because straightening the knees means an upward shifting of the plane which will have to be compensated by something e.g increasing the forward spine tilt (still good) but for most people swaying away from the ball with resultant toe hits.
But most of ABS objectives even when clearly understood, need a lot of body conditioning. Its not like tomorrow I can decide to swing into a flexed L knee. It is an incremental increase in the strength of out module 3 against the resistance of module 2.