Ryan,
I would be interested to hear why you would select each particular variation. What weakness or physical/physiological deficiency does each address. While psychological training staleness/boredom should be considered many coaches just use variety in exercise selection for the sake of variety without any consideration for the adaptations that a change in an exercise variable results in (I am not accusing you of this, I am just saying that it happens).And I have never programmed a diagonal or rotational power clean, and I don’t know what loads you use, but using a barbell for these lifts do you think the risks outweigh the potential rewards?
No problem! Specificlly when an athlete beings to hit the wall I often will put in a diagonal power clean for the simple reason muscles criss-cross, wrap around the body, up and down, back and forth. Often when moving the hips over it calls upon more overflow for the movement allowing for the normal power clean numbers to rise again when you go back to a new phase with a regular power clean. A rotational power clean is often used by linemen as we work on delivering power into their kick step. I hope you find this useful and these two lifts have worked nicely in our program. I use these frequently in terms of load. I often reduce the load as I do with any phase allowing for the athlete to learn the new lift and then as we progress through the phase we increase intensity.
"Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse." -Albert Einstein