Determining ideal baseball bat weights using muscle force-velocity relationships
✍ Scribed by A. T. Bahill; W. J. Karnavas
- Publisher
- Springer-Verlag
- Year
- 1989
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 827 KB
- Volume
- 62
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0340-1200
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The equations of physics for bat-baU collisions were coupled to the physiology of the muscle force-velocity relationship to compute the ideal bat weight for individual baseball players. The results of this coupling suggest that some batters use bats that are too heavy for them, and some batters use bats that are too light, but most experienced batters use bats that are just right. However, ideal bat weight is not correlated with height, weight, or age. Decades of prior physiological research on force-velocity relationships of isolated muscle have shown that hyperbolic curves usually fit the data best. However, for the present data, the hyperbolic curves fit only one class of subjects best: for the others a straight line provides the best fit. We hypothesize that these two classes of players use different control strategies.