Rotational Power: The Fundamentals
This is the First Article of the Athlete's Guide to Rotational Power
Welcome to the first article of The Athlete's Guide to Rotational Power! This is the first of a multi-part series that will focus on rotational power, including what it is and how it important in sports, the different ways that it can be trained, and the most effective ways to go about developing it for yourself.
This first article is focused on the fundamentals of the concept of rotational power. In this article, we will cover the following topics: What rotational power is and when it is used, various training aspects of explosiveness and rotational power, and the role of nutrition and recovery. Let’s get into it.
What is it and When is it used?
Firstly, let’s define exactly what rotational power is in the context of athletic performance. Rotational power is the ability to generate and effectively use force while rotating your body. This type of power is crucial in sports and activities that involve twisting or turning movements, which is involved in nearly every sport.
Rotational power is a combination of strength, flexibility, and coordination, particularly in the muscles and joints associated with rotational movements. Athletes who excel in rotational power can generate a significant amount of force as they rotate their body, allowing them to perform dynamic actions.
The athletic movements that involve Rotational Power include:
Swinging: The majority of strength in swinging movements such as those used in baseball, golf, lacrosse, hockey, volleyball, or even swinging your leg to kick a soccer ball or football comes from rotational power. Swinging movements are a combination of many components of the body working together to create one fluid motion. Effective, efficient, and powerful swings come from building the necessary rotational power through strength, coordination, and flexibility.
Throwing: Throwing motions are extremely similar to swinging movements in regards to the mechanics of the movement. A throw is essentially a swing with a release, meaning that rotational power is, again, extremely important. Throwing motions that would fall under rotational power are movements such as throwing a baseball, a football, a shotput, or any other throwing movement. Deceleration is another major aspect of developing safe, effective power in rotational movement.
Directional Movement: Any movement that involves a shift in direction will also involve rotational power. Examples of these movements include but are not limited to: crossing over into a sprint, changing directions to go get a volleyball, or taking a first step towards a soccer ball or a fly ball in baseball. Any movement that involves a change of direction will be influenced by rotational power. Being able to generate force through the ground in a movement where your body is rotating is crucial to success in any sport that this movement is involved in.
Training Aspects
There are 3 main training aspects that I will be focusing on throughout this series, each of them providing their own way of improving your ability to generate force through rotation. Each of them has completely separate training from the other, but if any one of them is neglected it will take away from the effectiveness of the other two. Throughout this series, I will go into much more detail on each of these, but here I will provide a basic overview on the uses and importance of each of the three aspects.
The first and most important way to train your rotational power as an athlete is direct training. This simply means focusing on training the specific movement of rotation. Without direct training, you will not be able to translate the strength that you build through hypertrophy (weightlifting) training into your actual sport. Effective direct training involves not only acceleration but also deceleration, something that we will be going into much more detail on later in this series.
That leads into the second aspect of effectively building rotational power, which is hypertrophy and strength training. The importance of simply putting on muscle and getting stronger is often overlooked, as too much of the focus is put onto direct training. The truth is, building strength and muscle through weight training is the foundation of all explosive strength. Without that base of muscle, you will not be able to develop sport-specific movements nearly as effectively.
The third and final aspect of rotational power training is mobility, which is another neglected aspect by many athletes and coaches. Building strength is great, but if your mobility is lacking and you do not have the ability to get into positions for your body to use that strength, you are taking away from your body’s ability to produce power.
Nutrition and Recovery
Like anything else, in order to progress in the most effective way it is essential to lock in not only on your training but also on what you eat and how you allow your body to recover.
Firstly, Nutrition. Now, depending on your goals, one person’s food intake could look significantly different than another. The main factor that would influence this is whether you are trying to maintain your bodyweight or to put on or lose weight. However, no matter what that goal is, there are a few key parts about your food intake that should stay the same.
You should be eating 1 gram of protein per pound of your body weight daily.
You should be drinking at least 2-3 liters of water daily.
You should be eating a clean source of carbohydrates both before and after your workouts.
The last one is not exactly traditional advice, but here is why it is so important for athletes trying to build power. Rotational power training is not a replacement for strength training but rather it is a compliment, meaning that both should be done on the same schedule, and likely sometimes on the same day. In order to maximize performance, your body needs the fuel to be able to push yourself. When you do a workout and stress your muscles, it depletes your body of glycogen, which is a form of glucose that fuels your muscles and allows them to work in the most effective way that they can. Eating carbohydrates will before your workout will ensure that your body has the necessary fuel to push yourself, then eating carbs after a workout will replenish the glycogen that you lost during the workout and allow you to be properly fueled for your next training session.
The next important part of recovery is Sleep. Allowing your body adequate time to rest, recover, and grow is essential to keeping your body healthy and ready to safely push yourself in your next training session. Your body uses this rest to rebuild broken down muscle, and the more you allow your body to rebuild, the stronger and more powerful your muscle will be. For a high-performance athlete, 8-9 hours should be the minimum.
The last aspect of proper recovery is blood flow through Active Recovery. When you are pushing your body to the limit through your training, your body will get tired and sore, that is just a simple fact. This is where you take advantage of rest days, or as I like to call them “Active Recovery Days”. These days should be focused on getting blood flow to tired and sore muscle groups. This can be done through band work, mobility work, or forms of low-intensity cardio such as walking or light biking. Keeping your body active and moving is essential to proper recovery. Your body will get plenty of sedentary time while you are sleeping, so rest days should not just be you sitting around on a couch all day.
Thank you for reading! That concludes the first article of The Athlete’s Guide to Rotational Power. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. If you found this article useful or helpful and worthy of sharing, please share this article to anyone you think could find value in it.
The Athlete’s Guide to Rotational Power—Article 2—Coming Next Week