Mobility Screen

Chandler showed a “neutral” posture during athletic movements, which is good. Her thoracic mobility falls in the “neutral” category, approaching “loose”.  During the t-spine rotation test, she turned 65 degrees to her right side, and 60 degrees to her left side.  She struggled getting to anterior tilt during the pelvic tilt test, which should be a focus of her movement prep plan.  She also vibrated during the test, which indicates an imbalance of strength between her lower abdominals and lower back. This should be addressed in her strength plan.  She passed the pelvic rotation and torso rotation tests, showing good motor control during disassociation of her pelvis and torso, as well as good stability throughout the tests.

During the overhead squat test, the bar rotated heavily, possibly indicating a previous injury or an imbalance.  This may require further testing to find the underlying issue here.  She did fail to get to full depth, and upon further testing, her left ankle was limited in dorsiflexion.  This should be a focus of her movement prep plan.

Her muscles in her scapular region were under-developed, which should be a major focus of her strength plan. During her reach, roll and lift test, she showed a good ability to stabilize the scapula during overhead movements with both arms. She showed adequate mobility in external and internal rotation of the shoulder, but a lack of strength kept her from holding external rotation in her right arm when she was in athletic posture. This could cause her to have a steep barrel path and late entry into the hitting zone, as well as possible throwing issues. Her scap retraction mobility falls in the “loose” category on the both sides, so she will require a bigger move with her upper body during the loading mechanism to remove the slack.

Her hip mobility falls in the “tight” category. She turned 45 degrees internally on the right side, 45 degrees externally on the right side, 45 degrees internally on the left side and 45 degrees externally on the left side. She will require minimal pelvis rotation during the gather and forward advance portions of her loading mechanism. She struggled with the single leg balance on both legs, failing to get past 5 seconds on either leg.  She should not spend a significant amount of time on one leg during her loading mechanism. She could also benefit from some unilateral lower body work in the weight room.  Her hamstring flexibility was good. During her glute bridge test she showed good stability in her core and lower body, but could likely benefit from some glute activation during her movement prep plan.

All wrist, forearm, and cervical screens were passed showing no limitations.  She also showed greater than 30 degrees of range to each side during the side bend test, which shows no thoracic limitation when bending side to side.

Force Plate Swings

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

Chandler loads into her toe instead of her heel, with a heel load being ideal.  As she shifts her weight to the front leg, her front leg force is low.  If we can improve the violence of her interaction of the ground here, and drive through her front heel, her overall turn speeds would increase.

KVEST Sequencing & Rotational Speeds

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

Chandler definitely has room for improvement from an efficiency standpoint.  Her pelvis speeds are “good”, peaking at 672 deg/sec, which is a real speed of 24.19, which falls under the “good” category on our scale.  Her torso peaks at 860 deg/sec, which at 40.42 on our real speed scale factors as “poor”.  This lack of speed gain is likely due to a massive inward turn of her torso at heel strike, as her torso is turned towards the catcher 47.9 degrees.  The inward turn increases as she gets to first move to 52.8 degrees.  She gets a good speed gain from her torso to lead arm, which peaks at 1221 deg/sec and she reaches an overall kinematic speed of 1573 deg/sec, which is well below average.  If she decreased her inward turn and added some rotary stability, we would see the good pelvis speeds multiply throughout the swing and increase her overall kinematic speed.

Bat Sensor Data

Her bat speeds were between 56 mph and 62 mph, which is “below average”.  Her exit velocity was between 67-70 mph, which “above average”.  Her attack angles fell between -7 and 11 degrees (4 to 12 degrees is ideal), so she was inconsistent here, and likely getting disconnected early in her swing. Her time to contact was 0.16 seconds which is “average” and her rotational acceleration was 6-8 Gs, which is “below average”, which further supports early disconnection. With added rotary stability and cleaning the loading mechanism up, TTC and RA should be the areas that show the most improvement. Her vertical bat angles fell between -29 and -45 degrees, which is a good range for a variety of pitches.  We generally like to see between -20 and -30 degrees on pitches up in the zone, and between -30 and -40 on pitches down in the zone.

Summary & Recommendations

• She needs to create a proper scap load, and decrease the amount of inward torso turn.  This will decrease her time to contact.
• A back heel load and more forceful front leg interaction with the ground will help stabilize her lower body and allow her pelvis (and the segments above) to move faster, also decreasing her time to impact.
• The med ball series would be appropriate for Chandler.