Exercise Number 7 - Rotational Skills

Here's the anatomy on rotational work. It's tremendously important to teach how athletes should develop rotational mechanics. Our rotational drive as softball players is vastly important to our playing. In fact we can't play this game without it. We rotate when we hit, throw, turn, drop step, change direction, turn a double play. I hope I've painted a clear picture for you. Rotational work is responsible not only for a rotation movement but it's also a tremendous power source. So when teaching rotation, make sure players allow to open up their hips and drive through them.

There's a lot of various exercises to teach rotational skills. I like to start with a rotational medicine ball toss. It allows players to learn how to open up their hips and pop them through the plane of rotation. I have Aubrey standing in a wide stance with the boxes in between so she's not tempted to just pivot on her back leg and use all upper body. I also like to use this as a progressive movement. Once a player masters this movement we can add a low box hop to it after release point and then land and catch.

Here's some things to consider with this exercise.

- teach the movement first without weight. The med ball should not cause a break down in form.

- if players can't understand how to fire their hips, start in a low kneeling position so they can learn how to use their hips.

- don't waste your time with exercises that don't teach rotation that involves your hips. You get so much power from them and your missing the bus if you don't use them.