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HIP MOBILITY EFFECTS ON BAT SPEED IN COLLEGIATE BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL

Abstract

Swing sports athletes must be capable of carrying out the motions required to hit a ball great distances. An athlete’s range of motion (ROM) in the hips is, therefore, essential for having a successful athletic career. In swing sports like baseball and softball, athletes rotate around the body’s center; thus, the hips must have an optimal ROM for force generation. The purpose of this experiment was to identify if hip mobility has an effect on bat speed in swing sports. Twenty-five swing sport athletes (20 male and 5 female) were sampled in this study. A goniometer measured the athlete's internal and external hip ROM in both the lead and launch hips. The participants took five swings from a tee with a sensor attached to the knob of the bat so that an average bat speed could be calculated. Pearson correlation tests showed no significant associations between lead hip internal (p = .88, r = .03), lead hip external (p = .15, r = .3), or launch hip external ROM (p = .44, r = .16) and average bat speed. However, a significant positive relationship was found between launch hip internal ROM and average bat speed (p=.01, r = .5). Therefore, the hip's range of motion has been shown to have moderate to no effect on the swing speed of baseball and softball players. However, as internal hip rotation ROM in the launch leg increases, bat speed increases. This research can be used in swing sport training to further develop athletes and allow them to make minute adjustments to be able to perform at the highest of their anatomical abilities.

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