Design of a Wearable Sensor System for Prevention of Fatigue-Induced Injuries in Baseball Pitching

Ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries are increasingly common in baseball pitchers of all levels and often are career ending. The aim of this project was to develop a wearable sensor system to quantify risk of UCL injury in baseball pitchers through correlation with fatigue indicated by deviations in forces and torques in the throwing arm during pitching. The outcome of this project was a wearable sensor and data analysis system which could be applicable to predicting risk of injury

Does concussion history affect softball pitch recognition, swing timing, and swing decision making in collegiate softball players?

Concussions can affect an athlete’s cognitive and physical performance. The negative effects of concussion can linger beyond symptom resolution and can result in reduced sport performance and increased risk of injury upon return to play. The effect of concussion history, including time since concussion and number of concussions, on sport performance is not well understood. The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of concussion history on softball batting measures, such as pitch recognition, swing timing, and swing decision making, and to compare a computerized reaction time (RT) test to a sport-specific RT test. A cross-sectional study design was used to evaluate softball batting measures among collegiate softball players. Eighteen collegiate softball players from across Ontario were recruited to participate. Participants were divided into two groups: those with previous concussion (n = 7; mean age, 20.7 years; mean time since last concussion, 3.9 years) and those without (n = 11; mean age, 20.4 years). Pitch recognition, swing timing, and swing decision making were based on participants responses to pre-recorded pitching videos. Pitch recognition, swing timing, and swing decision making were similar between groups. There was not a significant correlation between the computerized RT and swing RT. These results suggest that collegiate softball players with less than three concussions perform similarly to those without concussion for softball cognition and swing timing when tested an average of 3.9 years post-concussion

Preventing thoracic outlet syndrome in high school baseball and softball athletes: a model for occupational therapy clinical practice

Thesis (O.T.D.)--Boston UniversitySports participation is an important part of the high school experience for many adolescents. Psychosocial factors and the culture of team athletics can play a role in an athlete's motivation to continue to play or to fail to report signs ofinjury (Van Wilgen & Verhagen, 2012; Ward, 2004). Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (NTOS) is one consequence of this tendency. In recent years, NTOS in professional athletes has been highlighted in the media (Langosch, 2013). Since 2001, five pitchers from one major league team were diagnosed with NTOS. High school sport practices often fall short in preventing overuse injures such as NTOS, due to the concentration on skill building while neglecting to strengthen antagonist muscles. For high school level baseball and softball players this leads to imbalance in the muscles needed to produce a high velocity throw (Zaremski & Krabak, 2012), which can ultimately result in overuse injuries such as NTOS. This doctoral project will address the need for a preventative and educational program for high school varsity baseball and softball players who are at risk for thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) due to structural imbalance and overuse. The project will include the creation of educational material with exercise and strengthening guidelines to prevent NTOS in at risk high school varsity baseball and softball athletes while addressing the motivational factors that contribute to the problem. The target population of this program will be high school varsity baseball and softball athletes and their coaches

Laterality in the Power Five and Group of Five Conferences in Women\u27s College Softball

Females in sport are under-represented in data and analysis when compared to their male counterparts. This disparity also applies to women’s softball in comparison to men’s baseball. To help fill this gap, this study evaluated the extent and impact of laterality in women’s college softball’s Power Five and Group of Five conferences from 2015-2017. This study focused on the extent of a left-sided lateral preference in women’s college softball, possible interactions between throwing hand and batting preference, to what extent the platoon effect exists in the sport, and the extent of positional bias in the sport. As one of the largest studies on the laterality of women in sport, with a sample size of over 3,000 women’s college softball players, this study contributes to the understanding of the manual act of throwing and the bimanual act of batting by females. The results from this study indicated that a left-sided lateral preference occurred more often in women’s softball than in the public, with slap hitters a possible cause. However, without a method to identify which batters in softball are slap hitters, it was difficult to draw as rich of conclusions about laterality in women’s softball as those drawn for men’s professional baseball. The study also provided an assessment of performance variables that could impact the way the game is played and how coaches make recruiting decisions

Professional labor markets in the Journal of Sports Economics

This article summarises the research findings of papers published in Journal of Sports Economics on the workings of professional sports labor markets. The article covers three main themes: pay and performance, discrimination, and player mobility. The review shows what scholars have found so far and point out various gaps that researchers can fill in future work

Accelerating Expertise with Part-Task Training of Macrocognitive Skills in the Baseball Workplace

Accelerating expert performance has frustrated many researchers and trainers in human factors, naturalistic decision-making, sport science, and expertise studies – with insufficient application of expert performance theories, findings and methods to the training macrocognitive aspects of human performance. Video-occlusion methods perfected by sports expertise researchers can have great utility, in some cases offering an effective and inexpensive alternative to high-fidelity simulation. The problem seems to be that expertise research done in laboratory and field settings doesn’t get adequately translated into workplace training. So, this article presents a framework for better linkage of expertise research/training across laboratory, field, and workplace settings. It uses a field-based case study to trace the development and implementation of a macrocognitive training program in the very challenging workplace of the baseball batters’ box. This training embedded for a full season in a college baseball team targets the perceptual-cognitive skill of pitch recognition that allows expert batters to circumvent limitations of human reaction time to hit 90 mile-per-hour sliders. While baseball batting has few analogous skills outside of sports, the operational principle of the training program has wider applicability and implications. Its core operational principle, supported by information processing models but challenged by ecological models, de-couples the perception-action link for targeted part-task training of the perception component, much in the same way that motor components are routinely isolated to leverage instructional efficiencies. After targeted training, perception and action are recoupled via transfer-appropriate tasks that have been inspired by in situ research tasks. In the case reported here, and potentially in many domains beyond sports, part-task perceptual-cognitive training improved macrocognitive skills and full-skill performance

Accelerating Expertise with Part-Task Training of Macrocognitive Skills in the Baseball Workplace

Accelerating expert performance has frustrated many researchers and trainers in human factors, naturalistic decision-making, sport science, and expertise studies – with insufficient application of expert performance theories, findings and methods to the training macrocognitive aspects of human performance. Video-occlusion methods perfected by sports expertise researchers can have great utility, in some cases offering an effective and inexpensive alternative to high-fidelity simulation. The problem seems to be that expertise research done in laboratory and field settings doesn’t get adequately translated into workplace training. So, this article presents a framework for better linkage of expertise research/training across laboratory, field, and workplace settings. It uses a field-based case study to trace the development and implementation of a macrocognitive training program in the very challenging workplace of the baseball batters’ box. This training embedded for a full season in a college baseball team targets the perceptual-cognitive skill of pitch recognition that allows expert batters to circumvent limitations of human reaction time to hit 90 mile-per-hour sliders. While baseball batting has few analogous skills outside of sports, the operational principle of the training program has wider applicability and implications. Its core operational principle, supported by information processing models but challenged by ecological models, de-couples the perception-action link for targeted part-task training of the perception component, much in the same way that motor components are routinely isolated to leverage instructional efficiencies. After targeted training, perception and action are recoupled via transfer-appropriate tasks that have been inspired by in situ research tasks. In the case reported here, and potentially in many domains beyond sports, part-task perceptual-cognitive training improved macrocognitive skills and full-skill performance