RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN HIP AND SHOULDER ROTATION DURING BASEBALL PITCHING

Abstract

Baseball pitching is one of the most dynamic movements in sports. Due to the violent nature of the pitching motion, baseball pitchers experience an extremely high rate of injury, particularly to the shoulder. One factor thought to be related to overuse injury at the shoulder is the high magnitude of shoulder external rotation. Because the pitching motion can be viewed as a kinematic chain in which the actions of individual segments have a direct impact on the actions of other segments, angles of internal/external rotation observed for the hip may be related to internal/external rotation observed at the shoulder. Thus, the purpose of the current project is to analyze internal/external rotation for both the shoulder and the hip in an attempt to identify a relationship between these two parameters. It is hypothesized that hip rotation will positively correlate with shoulder rotation.