if its pinned to your hand? perhaps it is set to position and angle, just position should do fine.
give it a Boolean, when attack pressed, Boolean true
... you could use the rotate function, but use a separate event to stop rotation when it reaches a certain angle (like player angle +60), then reset it to player.angle and reset boolean.
If your sword has physics, it may be why its pushing the player.
else just give the sword an animation so it appears to rotate hope its useful,