Rotational Hitting & Why It's Old News

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, nand you can see the beautiful rear hip absorption so nimportant in maximizing the rotational part of hitting.nn

I can't believe how much controversy there's been over the nbaseball 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 nwill. Yes, there are pull hitters such as Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and the late Ted Williams that teams tend to put an nextreme shift on when they're up to bat. The argument is, nthese players are successful with a seemingly pure nrotational style of hitting, so why can't I teach that to nmy young ballplayers? Well, because of probability that's why. Not all hitters nare made the same, AND most players will never be 1/1,000,000 as good as the poorest of Major Leaguers, so nall the other mortal ballplayers need to get down to earth nand address the rotational swing realistically. What we don't see is how these greats transfer power from ntheir 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, nnot how I like to hit or teach hitting, but I can respect it nbecause it works for some people.nnI believe the majority of ballplayers need to sit nsomewhere in the middle of linear hitting and rotational, I nlike to call it ROTATIONEAR. The hips supply the nrotational power, and the hands transfer potential energy ninto a linear or centrifugal motion. In The Making Of a Hitter, Jim Lefebvre, talks aboutn

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• Centripetal, and
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• Centrifugal Force
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Centripetal Force is when you tie a string to a small rock nand twirl it around and round...the rock exerts force toward nthe finger swinging it...nn

On the other hand, Centrifugal Force is imagining that nsame rock, but this time letting go of it in mid swing, and nthe energy is exerted AWAY from the finger. So, as this science jargon translates to rotational hitting, npurely rotational hitting is like the rock on a non-stop ntwirling string. The hybrid system, a ROTATIONEAR swing ntransfers the rotational energy of the hips to a linear path nwith the hands, resulting in a centrifugal force put on the nball 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 nexplaining it, but it was an eye opener for me at the time. Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT saying:n

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• Charlie Lau's style of hitting is wrong, or that
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• Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, and Jason Giambi suck.
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Depending on the type of hitter and role to the team, nballplayers can pick and choose any style or model to hitnwith, it really makes no difference. If you can hit .400 nstanding on your head, then nobody is going to change nyou, at least until you start slumping of course, and you nwill. And, here comes the BIG But, The majority of hitters out there will NOT do very well with npurely rotational hitting, or linear for that matter. The reason why?? There's too many weak-spots for pitchers to exploit. We'll nget into these more in the hitting philosophy article link nat the bottom of the Power Hitting tab page.