Mobility, Flexibility & Stability Screening

Kenna is categorized as a “neutral” mover.  She sets up in a neutral spine position in her athletic stance.  In her pelvic tilt screen she was unable to create anterior or posterior tilt.  This is an indication of lower abdominal and lower back weakness and/or poor pelvic control.  In her pelvic disassociation screen she was limited but showed improvement with assistance.  This indicated a lack of rotary stability.  She passed her torso disassociation screen.  She was limited in her over head and hands behind the neck squat screens.  In her subsequent ankle dorsiflexion screen she had a 1 inch limitation in her right ankle.  She passed her toe touch screen.

Kenna created 60 degrees of thoracic rotation to the right and 70 degrees of thoracic rotation to the left.  In her thoracic side bend she created 30 degrees of tilt to the right and 30 degrees of tilt to the left.  In her scapular retraction screen she was able to pull her elbows rearward 5.5 inches. In her lower quarter rotation screen she created 45 degrees of right internal hip rotation and 40 degrees of right external hip rotation.  She created 45 degrees of left internal hip rotation and 35 degrees of left external hip rotation. 

Kenna showed adequate range of motion internally and externally in her right and left shoulder.  There was a note that she had less external rotation in each shoulder while in her athletic stance.  In her scapular palpation screen we were unable to get 4 fingers under her scapulas.  She was slightly limited in her lat length/shoulder flexion screen as she was able to raise her arms overhead to just past her nose.  She was also limited in her reach, roll, and lift screen as she had a hard time turning over her hand and also showed shaking while in the lift portion.  This indicates some scapular weakness in the upward rotated position.  She passed her impingement, wrist flexion/extension, forearm supination/pronation, and cervical screens.  She was limited in her left and right ulnar wrist deviations.

Kenna was able to balance for 12 seconds on her right leg in the single leg balance screen (eyes closed).  She was able to balance for 9 seconds on her left leg.  In her single leg glute bridge she was able to hold for 10 seconds on each leg independently, bust did show some core instability (hip tilt and shaking).  She noted she felt the majority of muscle activation coming from the hamstring.

Force Plate Swings

Below is video of the swing analysis. I will walk you through this matched up with video.

Kenna creates a ball of foot pressure load in her rear foot.  We would like to see her create a more heel centric load here.  She starts with her rear foot inwardly turned and with her limited dorsiflexion in that ankle and her small range of right internal hip rotation it would be more conducive to start with her foot square or even slightly outward.  This will allow for better heel pressure and for her to create more torque in the rear hip.  She currently produces only 13 N of torque and we’d like to see closer to 45 N.  Her rear leg vertical force was 102% and trails off early.  This is her pushing off her ball of foot in her advance.  We want to see her create 96-98% body weight and maintain it in the advance.  Her lead leg vertical force was excellent at 205% bodyweight (1766 N) and came with a good rate of force production.  Her lead leg horizontal force was 93% bodyweight (810 N) which is great and it was an average rate of force production.

KVEST Sequencing & Rotational Speeds

The 3d readings are on kinematic sequencing and rotational speeds.

Kenna presents as an in sequence swing pattern (pelvis, torso, upper arm, wrist).  She does have a considerable amount of inward pelvic and torso turn in her advance and first move.  Her pelvis at heel strike is -39.71 degrees and her torso is -37.17 degrees.  As she goes into first move her pelvis is inwardly rotated -21.39 degrees and her torso is inwardly rotated -41.23 degrees.  The fact that the torso is inwardly rotating further as she goes into first move is an indication she hasn’t taken out all the slack in her torso.  The inward turn also forces her to cut her swing off across her front side. Her pelvic speed is 678 deg/sec., which is good for her hip size. It shows a good deceleration pattern.  Her torso speed is 941 deg/sec, which is a good gain over her pelvis.  It also shows a good deceleration pattern.  Her upper arm speed is 1037 deg/sec., which is a small gain and likely due to her not taking the slack out of her torso with a scapular load and instead using over rotation.  Her wrist speed is 1961 deg/sec., but is being sped up across her body.

Bat Sensor Data

Kenna’s bat speed is 66-68 mph.  Her time to impact is good 140 milliseconds.  Her rotational acceleration is 15-19 G’s which indicates she has a tight turn.  Her attack angles are 17-19 degrees, which are in a good range.  Her vertical bat angles are -22 to -26 degrees which are on the low side and can cause more miss-hit balls in play.  We look for -20 to -30 degrees in the top of the strike zone and -30 to -40 degrees in the bottom of the strike zone. 

Summary & Recommendations

• Dead bug progression to improve lower abdominal strength and pelvic control. 

• Anti-rotational work to improve rotary stability.

• Heel pressure load in rear foot (square up or slightly turn out foot).

• Use a stabile torso to create a better scapular load to avoid creating stretch by overly rotating inward.

• Monitor vertical bat angles with Blast sensor to eliminate number of miss-hit balls that go into play.

Mobility, Flexibility & Stability Screening

Kenna is on the “tight” side of the “neutral” mover category. Wilkey’s thoracic mobility is “tight” on both sides (45 degrees in both directions). She will require a smaller loading mechanism in her upper body. She failed to disassociate properly during the torso rotation and pelvic rotation tests. This should be addressed in her movement prep, so she can disassociate properly which leads to quicker transfer of energy. This also can point to lack of lower body and upper body stability, which should be a focus of her strength plan. She also struggled to round her back during the pelvic tilt test, which shows lack of core stability and strength.

Failed to pass the overhead squat test, as she lacked proper thoracic flexion and extension. She was able to pass the arms behind head squat test, showing adequate ankle, knee, and hip mobility here.

She has an underdeveloped scapular region, which needs to be a focus of her strength plan. Her scaps showed a slight wing, which needs to be addressed. Her scapular retraction was 5 1/2” on the right side (“neutral”), and 5 1/2” on the left side (“neutral”). This gives her some freedom in her upper body loading mechanism, as long as her scaps become strong enough to hold a proper scap load. She showed limited shoulder flexion during the lat length test (hands could not go above her nose). Until this is addressed during stretching and foam rolling, she may benefit from a lower hand set. Her internal and external rotation of her shoulders was good. During her reach, roll, and lift test, she shook during testing which may further indicate weakness in scapular region.

Her right hip showed “neutral” mobility internally (70 degrees), which is approaching “loose”, and “neutral” mobility externally (50 degrees, although this is approaching “tight” mobility. Her left hip showed “neutral” mobility internally (50 degrees, approaching “tight”) and “neutral” mobility externally (60 degrees). She showed good balance on her right leg, so this gives her loading mechanism some flexibility here in terms of length. Her left leg balance was poor, which may affect her ability to post at foot strike.

During her glute bridge test, she showed low glute strength as she was quad-dominated. Glute strength needs to be a major focus of her strength plan, as they are crucial to the transfer of energy from the legs to the core.

All wrist and cervical screens were a pass.

Force Plate Jumps

Kenna has a small left leg bias of 5-6%. Her counter movement jump had a much higher rate of force production at 118% BW vs 100% BW in the squat-pause jump. This would indicate she would need a smaller loading mechanism as a hitter.

Force Plate Swings

Below is video of the swing analysis. I will walk you through this matched up with video.

Kenna has a knee lift that holds energy well into her load/stride mechanism.  She’s a whole foot loader, that gets 102% of BW into her back leg load.  She topped out in front leg production at 186% BW – 189% BW which is excellent – just short of the 200% we strive for. Back leg torque number is low at 28 Nm. She has tight hips, so we should be able to get much more out of that. She rolls to the outside of her shoe in her knee lift instead of firming up the back leg more during the lift. Need to experiment and retest

Leg to leg transfer speeds were good in her well-timed swings, ranging from 31-46 milliseconds. This has a direct correlation to TTI. Her best TTI numbers were 190 milliseconds which is outstanding.

KVEST Sequencing & Rotational Speeds

The 3d readings are on kinematic sequencing and rotational speeds.

The biggest issue in her sequencing was her over-rotation of her torso in the load/stride. She was at 29 degrees which usually forces the upper body to have to start early to clear the obstruction of the front shoulder. Her leg speed is awesome at 776-805 deg/sec which ranks in the “Elite” category in our real-speed metric. However, due to the lack of sequencing her torso ranged from 1033-1036 deg/sec which in the average category. You can see how we lose speed transfer with lack of sequencing. Lead arm values only climbed 175 deg/sec instead of the desired 300 deg/sec. Wrist values were good at 1706-1793 but could still be higher with better sequencing.

Bat Sensor Data

Average barrel speed was 64.5 MPH, and peaked at 68 MPH, which is above average, approaching elite. Her hand speed peaked at 23, with an average of 20.7, which is above average. Her average attack angle was 8 degrees, which is ideal. Ideal range is 5-12 degrees.

Summary & Recommendations

• Try to post back leg better during load, loading “against it” rather than “through it.”

• Use the scap load to create upper body stretch instead of torso rotation. This will allow her to sequence better instead of leading with upper body early. Bat speed will thus, increase.

• Scapular strength will need to be improved to obtain Recommendation #2.

Retest 3/21/19

Kenna has unchanged, but still good, leg force data. The leg data is of no concern for me.

There is nothing in the sequencing data that is alarming to me. Energy output is the same as the last test and turn speeds are good. Sequencing on the x-axis is slightly better which means she’s not committing her hands as early as she was in January.

Bat speed is unchanged and still very good at 68 mph. Time to impact is also outstanding at 145 milliseconds. Attack angles to the ball are solid at 10-12 degrees.

Her lack of production is not a body issue in any way – which is puzzling. There’s no correlation to any metric that says she shouldn’t hit well.   Which leads me to believe there is some anxiety of some sort that is affecting her central nervous system. Would be interested as your thoughts on that.