Going rotational......advice on which instruction to purchase

I coach 14U.
I have been kicking this around for awhile and after talking to several coaches and players I truly think rotational hitting is the way to go.
Dilemma....when you look online as to get this type of instruction and how to learn it there at a few different ways to go.
Has anyone else used any of these or is there one someone could recommend?
I've seen chris O'Leary....the parker method..saturday hitting....etc
I need something that breaks it down from start to finish. I plan on mastering this over the next few months before I begin teaching it to my girls.
Any advice would be great..thx

I plan on mastering this over the next few months before I begin teaching it to my girls.

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I've been trying to 'master' hitting for years....wish you good luck.

Haha..maybe master was a bit strong.
I really want to understand it before I teach it.

I'd be curious to know how you are defining the terms linear and rotational. What are you seeing in your team now that you want to eradicate? What do you want to implement? Terms linear & rotational have lost meaning over the years.

If it were me, I wouldn't try to copy a particular hitting guru. I would get advice here on some of the most important elements in a good swing -- turning the barrel (vs. dragging it); stretch & fire; hip coil/forward with coil; proper sequence (ie, hips lead). If you could get a team of 14U players to grasp those 4 concepts and make headway on any of them, that would be good work for a 14U coach.

I also think that teaching a full team a hitting philosophy is difficult, and more so at that age. If it's a highly competitive team, many players may have their own hitting coaches or advisers (ie, bucket dads) who are guiding them, and they might be resistant to other ideas, even if they are good ideas. Honestly, I don't really want team coaches giving mechanical advice to my DD. Then on the flipside, if it's a less competitive team, they might be unwilling to put in the work necessary to develop the skills you're teaching, because some of them are very hard to teach.

That's not meant to discourage you. Curious to see how it works. I was head coach of a TB team for 4 years (10U to 12U), and I found it hard to get a whole team to buy into what I was teaching. But then, that was a few years ago, and I'm more knowledgeable now (although still not too knowledgeable, as there is so much to learn). Maybe one day I'll give it another shot.

Hitting is a complicated process. And although you will find a lot of agreement among the posters here, you will still find quite a few differences. Like rdbass, I have been studying for a few years now. I believe I understand the process a lot better now than I did then, but I am still learning. If you want to jump in the deep end, welcome aboard. If you are just looking for some things to review, I would suggest starting with google searches on East Bay Hitting and Justin Stone. You will not find 100% agreement with any one source, but these are two that I think are pretty good overall. Enjoy the trip!

Another potential idea is just by a Zepp and use that.

linear or rotational ??? what do you call this:

Hittin

Hitting is a combination of Rotational & Linear.

HYP described the swing as being rotational to linear ..... Centripetal and Centrifugal |

Thought he did a good job with his description.

CoogansBluff said:

I would get advice here on some of the most important elements in a good swing -- turning the barrel (vs. dragging it); stretch & fire; hip coil/forward with coil; proper sequence (ie, hips lead). If you could get a team of 14U players to grasp those 4 concepts and make headway on any of them, that would be good work for a 14U coach.

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^^^^ This is sound advice. ^^^^

I don't often get involved in this forum but what I think you may be saying is that you aren't seeing the girls using as much of the rotational mechanics as they should be if they want to get maximum performance out of their bodies.

While IMHO good hitting is indeed a combination of the old "linear" and "rotational" philosophies (Centripetal and Centrifugal), I often see younger girls losing out on a great deal of power by failing to use their lower half as well as they could.

Concentrating on the four concepts Coogan outlined would put you well on your way toward seeing improvement and would also give you a more condensed subset of information that you'd need to "master" before you could feel confident in teaching the girls.

I have been doing the same thing with my DD. She has some power, but was being taught more of a linear style with her upper body. Now that she's at a point where she can identify pitches and knows what to do with them we are adding rotation to her upper body with lower linear as described in previous posts. After watching the WCWS and seeing that almost every hitter (who wasn't a slapper) used a rotational upper body we decided to make the change. Getting a Zepp definitely helped, it gave some quantifiables to extra torque of upper body and showed DD immediate increased speed at contact without sacrificing hand speed. Rotational greatly improved her angles too. I found some excellent information on Hitting Performance Lab site. It's not really a formal program, but great information to build from and incorporate.

I was surprised at the push back I got from DD's hitting coach, team coach and others that rotational "show the numbers" hitting doesn't work in fastpitch and that "nobody hits like that". Obviously people who are just going by what they were told once upon a time and never really researched this even though its very evident watching college and pro players. We had to make a change in hitting coach as a result. Just to prove it, I went through each hitter in the WCWS championship game and took stills of their ready stance to load stance (all but one rotate upper body). I'd be happy to send you those images or post if you would like. Be prepared for push-back if you are going to try and implement team wide.