The Relationship Between the Push Off Ground Reaction Force and Ball Speed in High School Baseball Pitchers

Oyama, S and Myers, JB. The relationship between the push off ground reaction force and ball speed in high school baseball pitchers. J Strength Cond Res 32(5): 1324–1328, 2018—Baseball pitching is a sequential movement that requires transfer of momentum from the lower extremity to the throwing arm. Therefore, the ground reaction force (GRF) during push off is suggested to play a role in production of ball speed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between GRF characteristics during push off and ball speed in high school baseball pitchers. A total of 52 pitchers performed fast pitches from an indoor pitching mound. A force plate embedded in an indoor mound was used to capture the push off GRF. The GRF characteristics (peak anterior, vertical, and resultant forces, vertical and resultant forces at the time of peak anterior GRF, and impulse produced by the anterior GRF) from the 3 fastest strike pitches from each pitcher were used for analyses. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were used to describe the relationships between ball speed and the GRF characteristics. Ball speed was only weakly correlated with peak resultant force (ρ = 0.32, p = 0.02) and vertical (ρ = 0.45, p

Source: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research - April 25, 2018 Category: Sports Medicine Tags: Original Research Source Type: research