What’s up nerds?! Welcome to The Anatomy Nerd Podcast. I am your host, Hillary, and today I will be nerding out about the anatomy and kinesiology of a baseball swing. As you all know, I am a huge baseball fan and will forever be a San Francisco Giants fan. But to be honest I would probably watch any baseball game no matter who is playing, I just enjoy the sport that much. One of the things I enjoy is analyzing the baseball player’s body movements, or their biomechanics. My background is in kinesiology, so it's natural and fun for me to apply my knowledge about how the body moves to my favorite sport. In this mini episode, I'm going to dive into one of my favorite things to analyze while watching baseball, the swing.
So for those of you who are unfamiliar with baseball, let me first begin by telling you what I am talking about. When a batter is up and has the baseball bat in their hands, they have to watch where the ball is being thrown and decide if it is worth swinging the bat at the ball or not. This all happens in a split second, so they have to act quick. If they do decide to swing at the ball, almost every single muscle in their body fires up and moves to get that bat moving and hopefully BLAMO hit that ball! One of the most satisfying sounds to me is hearing the crack of the bat against the ball!
So what goes into a baseball swing? Let’s nerd out about it! Batters use the kinetic chain (which is the the groups of body segments, connecting joints, and muscles working together to perform movements) to transfer energy from the lower body, to the upper body, and finally to the bat, in an attempt to impart a massive amount of energy into the ball.
The swing can be divided into seven phases, loading your arms, stepping forward with the front foot, back hip explosion, knob of the baseball bat moves towards the ball, contact, extension, and follow through.
So let’s break all of that down. The batter steps up to home plate and stands on the box drawn on the ground. One leg is back, the other is forward, he is standing sideways and is holding the bat firmly in his hands. The first movements begin at the hands and the front foot. Pretty much simultaneously, the batter's hands are pulled back, loading the arms with the initial movement energy, and at the same time he takes a small step forward with the front foot to get in position. The next phase is the back hip explosion towards the ball. When this happens, the entire posterior chain of the back leg engages and fires to initiate the rotation in the body and move energy into the arms, which are also moving forward towards the ball at the same time. The glutes and hamstrings are the muscles that are the big movers we are talking about to rotate the hip forward.
The next phase of the swing is when the hands and the knob of the baseball bat move toward the ball. The arms have just rotated forward following the hips, and immediately after the arms rotate, the hands thrust forward toward the ball. The next step is hopefully contact. The batter makes his best attempt to watch the ball come towards him and move the bat towards the ball in an attempt to make contact. The next phase is extension. On contact, the triceps explode the arms into extension and all of the power initiated in the legs, channeled up through the hips and out the arms is then transferred to the ball and BLAMO that ball is flying! This is when you hope to hear the sports announcers say “and it is out of here!! Home run!!” So in this example we may have hit the ball, but the swing isn’t over. The next and final phase of the swing is the follow through, which is simply the latter part of the arms extending and then flexing again to swing the bat around.
So that’s it! That is the anatomy and kinesiology of a baseball swing. I would say “simple as that” but it definitely is not. Batters practice the swing their entire career. The pitch and the swing are the two hardest moves in baseball to master. Baseball teams have several hitting and pitching coaches to help players work on and improve them.
I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you want to nerd out or learn more about the anatomy and biomechanics of a baseball swing, I have attached the links to the articles I referenced in the show notes. Or you can always reach me via instagram at the anatomy nerd podcast or feel free to send me an email at the anatomy nerd podcast at gmail.com. I would be more than happy to hear from you and nerd out with you.
Thank you so much for tuning in! Until next time, hasta luego!