Rotational Acceleration: The Key to Consistent Power in the Baseball Athlete
Baseball, especially at the Major League level is rife with irony. There have been so many advancements in the knowledge and understanding of the skills involved in playing the game at an elite level, yet there has been less advancement in the training work that is required to build those skills at an elite level. This is still evident when looking through Twitter (so weird to call it X) discussions on a variety of training means for the baseball athlete.
It could be argued that over the last decade or so, the majority of the increased detail regarding high level performance has occurred specifically within the skill and art of pitching. Driveline Baseball has been a major driver of this and must be commended on being different in a sport that doesn’t take very kindly to those with outside the box views. Driveline has also been a positive voice for actually training pitchers with the intent of acquiring levels and behaviours of strength that translate into increased performance, rather than simply under stimulating them for the fear of injury.
The motor skill of hitting a baseball has lagged behind. I know that Driveline does have a hitting department, but I am currently unaware of the details surrounding their means and methods. There are others in the social media sphere who have carved a niche with respect to training hitters, focussing primarily on the nuance of motor skill, technique and how to specifically train the “pieces” of an efficient swing such as bat path, swing plane and proper sequencing of the body.
One of the consequences of the deeper study of hitting and hitters is a new focus on available technology that aids in mining appropriate and relevant data of the athlete and their motion, as well as where their weaknesses may lie. Blast Baseball is one of these technologies. It is a sensor that attaches to the athlete’s bat and is synced with an app that can display a variety of different metrics ranging from bat speed to kinetic efficiency.
Power Metrics of an Elite Hitter
To be an elite hitter in the game of baseball, there are definitely some metrics that are important. The ability to generate force (from the ground) and use that force appropriately though the correct sequencing of body regions is extremely important. The metrics that relate to force generation are bat speed, rotational acceleration and swing sequencing that starts from the pelvis (hips), to the trunk to the lead shoulder/arm to the bat.
Bat speed is pretty straight forward - it is the speed with which the athlete can move the bat through the hitting zone. Rotational acceleration is a relatively new metric, that is linked to bat speed, but is not a measurement of the speed of the bat, but rather the speed of acceleration of the bat into the hitting zone. Simply speaking, bat speed is how fast you can go; rotational acceleration is how quickly you can get there. All cars can go 60mph, however some of those that can get to that speed a lot faster.
It should be obvious that the third power metric, related to kinetic sequencing is what allows for faster speeds and improved acceleration. if a hitter can use the ground effectively and efficiently transfer the kinetic potential through a synchronous linking of body regions it will ultimately lead to greater bat speed as well as improved rotational acceleration. In the same vein those athletes that have higher acceleration and top end bat speed are those athletes that can effectively and efficiently link all body components together in a highly coordinated fashion.
Why is Rotational Acceleration Important?
Rotational acceleration, or the ability of any athlete in a rotational sport to generate power into rotation, is a measure of the rate at which work can be done. Obviously those athletes that can produce work at a faster rate will have a supreme advantage when it comes to acceleration and speed. This is a highly trainable quality and one that if trained appropriately can lead to large Matthew Effects for any hitter.
One of the baseball specific accounts to follow on X is Joe Tourville, who originally made the concept of rotational acceleration and its measurement known for us at Absolute. His description of rotational acceleration sheds light on the practical applications of understanding this metric and why there should be a consideration to improving it in a baseball athletes training regimen.
When RA is analyzed it gives an indication of how dynamic a player can be at the plate and allows the hitter to have specific characteristics that contribute to success at the Level of Competition. Raw power and the ability to hit the ball hard is the most obvious consequence of having faster acceleration. More importantly according to Tourville is the adjustability it provides to the hitter. At the Major League level, pitchers are dangerous. The average fastball velocity approaches 94 mph, a foundation upon which other pitches are thrown that change speeds dramatically, and can move due to spin up to 24 inches, makes the ability to hit a baseball extremely difficult. One of the major effects of having a high RA score (measured in G’s) is that it provides the hitter with the ability to make the decision to swing on a pitch later than a hitter with lower RA scores. Having the extra milliseconds this physical capacity provides gives the hitter the ability to “wait and see” if the pitch is in the zone and is one they can hit hard because they can still accelerate the bat into the zone quickly enough to make that contact. A hitter with lower RA will have to make that decision on the pitch earlier for fear of missing the pitch, which makes this hitter far less adaptable at the plate.
Look at this graphic by Joe Tourville. In it he shows, that those that possess less physical capacity to produce RA will have to make their swing decisions very early (circle 1), whereas those that possess high RA will be able to make that decision in circle 3, effectively creating a huge advantage at the Level of Competition.
Point B for High Rotational Acceleration
The Major League average score for rotational acceleration is 17.2 G’s, with many of the leagues most powerful hitters exhibiting much higher numbers.
For every motor skill that must be accomplished by an athlete, there will be necessary physical capacities as defined by Point B.
For rotational acceleration it is obvious that those with higher outputs are much more effective at generating force and subsequently using that force to generate power rotationally. This is highly dependent on having a large active neural net of absolute strength and the athlete being able to synthesize all of the nodes in the net rapidly to generate force, otherwise known as speed strength. (RFD), another fundamental component of Point B.
Since this process is highly correlated to swing sequencing there are going to be large contributions from the joints involved. This is built on a foundation of joint function. Training to acquire the necessary function by improving workspace or adding movement characteristics to that workspace through the feet, knees, hips, pelvis, spine, shoulders would contribute to improving RA in the athlete.
In a future article, we will discuss the specifics as to the capacities of Point B and the training work required to achieve them.