Sustainable Development Goals
Abstract/Objectives
Exercise is a fundamental element of maintaining health. However, inappropriate posture not only fails to improve health but also causes physical harm. For the sake of baseball batting, motor coordination, from preparing, striking to restoring balance, plays a crucial role. Striking performances may be significantly affected by the ability of whole-body coordination. Athletes with good motor coordination can make appropriate adjustments to achieve significant performance. The difficulties of striking are to track the ball and move each part of the body simultaneously. The participants were twenty healthy males, ten professional and ten amateur batters, aged between 20 and 30. A baseball pitching machine was used to throw balls. A few parameters were recorded, including eye gaze angle, head, shoulder, trunk, pelvic rotation angle, and ground reaction force shifting. The swing process is divided into a few stages by characteristic events; further, each stage’s time and the batters’ action mode can be investigated due to the above analysis. This project aims to evaluate the strategies of visual and motor coordination of baseball batter during the swing. Overall, this study assessed two batters levels, according to ground reaction force, and the rotation of gaze, head, shoulder, trunk pelvic. The research period was comprehensively from batters receiving information, processing motor coordination to swing to hit the ball finally. The project provides a better learning model and background knowledge for the general public to improve overall sports performance.
Results/Contributions

The research compared the strategic differences between professional and amateur baseball batters in terms of visual-motor and motor coordination. Besides, this project was mainly implemented by a female researcher to increase interest in baseball and female sports. Professional batters made the bat touch ball earlier, reducing energy loss and forming a more robust kinetic chain. Professional batters also had better dynamic balance. After striking the ball, they allocated more proportion of time to restore balance steadily.

 

Professional batters could master swing strategies in advance, rotate their head, and bat consistently when bat and ball contacted. They had better capabilities of agility, temporal awareness, and control in proprioception. The baseball swing movement requires high torque of the trunk. The broad rotation of the pelvis helps adjust the lower torso movement. Also, high-speed swing in the contest makes fielding more difficult. In this study, the maximum rotation speed of professional batters in each parameter was significantly more extensive than that of amateur batters.

 

Professional batters had better visual-motor coordination. They concentrated on overall movement, perception, and cognition; moreover, transferring energy in a rhythmic, consistent, and short-term pattern to achieve better performance. In contrast, amateur batters split the attention on each stage of motion. Due to the difference in visual-motor integration ability, even though the two groups’ performance was similar in receiving information, tracking the ball, there was a gap in implementing the movement and task performance. This study is the first to analyze and integrate the above parameters during baseball swing and compare two batters’ levels. Our findings provide a clear understand to the public the strategic information of baseball batters’ strike.

Keywords
baseball swingmotor coordinationvisual strategymotion analysis
References
Contact Information
李昀儒
yunjulee@ie.nthu.edu.tw