One of my favorite books on rotational hitting is The
Making Of A Hitter, by Jim Lefebvre. He put this picture of
Hank Aaron in the launch phase of the swing in the book,
and you can see the beautiful rear hip absorption so
important in maximizing the rotational part of hitting.
I can't believe how much controversy there's been over the
baseball swing...hitting is either rotational or linear, but
NOT both, is what I hear.
That's ludicrous!! Why can't it be both? A hybrid, if you
will.
Yes, there are pull hitters such as Barry Bonds, Jason
Giambi, and the late Ted Williams that teams tend to put an
extreme shift on when they're up to bat. The argument is,
these players are successful with a seemingly pure
rotational style of hitting, so why can't I teach that to
my young ballplayers?
Well, because of probability that's why. Not all hitters
are made the same, AND most players will never be
1/1,000,000 as good as the poorest of Major Leaguers, so
all the other mortal ballplayers need to get down to earth
and address the rotational swing realistically.
What we don't see is how these greats transfer power from
their rotational lower half into their linear upper half!
On this note...
There's a style of hitting made famous by Charlie Lau and
George Brett bookmarked "linear," in his book The Art Of
Hitting .300. I read it, and it's an interesting book,
not how I like to hit or teach hitting, but I can respect it
because it works for some people.
I believe the majority of ballplayers need to sit
somewhere in the middle of linear hitting and rotational, I
like to call it ROTATIONEAR. The hips supply the
rotational power, and the hands transfer potential energy
into a linear or centrifugal motion.
In The Making Of a Hitter, Jim Lefebvre, talks about
Centripetal Force is when you tie a string to a small rock
and twirl it around and round...the rock exerts force toward
the finger swinging it...
On the other hand, Centrifugal Force is imagining that
same rock, but this time letting go of it in mid swing, and
the energy is exerted AWAY from the finger.
So, as this science jargon translates to rotational hitting,
purely rotational hitting is like the rock on a non-stop
twirling string. The hybrid system, a ROTATIONEAR swing
transfers the rotational energy of the hips to a linear path
with the hands, resulting in a centrifugal force put on the
ball creating D&T DYNAMITE backspin (talked about in the
Vital Hitting Tips tab on the nav bar above).
Jim Lefebvre does a better job, I think, than yours truly in
explaining it, but it was an eye opener for me at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT saying:
Depending on the type of hitter and role to the team,
ballplayers can pick and choose any style or model to hit
with, it really makes no difference. If you can hit .400
standing on your head, then nobody is going to change
you, at least until you start slumping of course, and you
will.
And, here comes the BIG But,
The majority of hitters out there will NOT do very well with
purely rotational hitting, or linear for that matter.
The reason why??
There's too many weak-spots for pitchers to exploit. We'll
get into these more in the hitting philosophy article link
at the bottom of the Power Hitting tab page.
I played baseball at Fresno State (collegiate baseball's 2008 National Champions) from 1999-2003 under head coaches Bob Bennett and Mike Batesole. I'm currently a personal fitness trainer through NASM and Yoga certified through Yogafit, and have been giving baseball hitting instruction for the past 4 years, from ages 5 years old to 60+! I love baseball, and am continually updating my baseball hitting website located at: www.swing-smarter-baseball-hitting-drills.com/