Why Movement Quality Matters: Motor Patterning of Movements & Active vs Passive Range of Motion
Developing and improving players is (or should be) at the forefront of every training environment for baseball players when trying to improve on field performance. There can be many ways to approach this; drill work, the weight room, the mental side/psyche of players and even nutrition. There’s a lot of good information out there on how to improve each of those areas, many of which are free and should be utilized.
A lot of times when trying to improve a players hitting or pitching mechanics we will try to reshape their movements to a more efficient pattern that ideally sets them up for better on field success. In this process it’s very common to come across an individual who is having trouble learning or grasping a new movement or technique. Sometimes no matter how much we try the player just doesn’t seem to grasp the concept or find the correct way to fix the movement to what we see as ideal. Unfortunately sometimes these players get written off as not coachable ,“too stubborn” to change or just “don’t get it”; I myself have been guilty of this in the past too. This also pegs the question of, are these players really that “uncoachable” or do we just not understand them and their body on the deepest levels?
This is where player assessments come into play and why they are so important. Assessments can mean a multitude of things; tracking bat speed, pitching velocity, sprint times, sleeping patterns, overall mental well-being, or even their learning styles. Essentially their entire body. For this I will be discussing the reasons why we should be assessing not only their mobility efficiencies and deficiencies, but also their ability to control their body’s during movement patterns.
There’s essentially two ways to measure a players mobility; active and passive range of motion tests. These are great for identifying if a player has the proper flexibility and range of motion (ROM) to perform what we are asking of their body’s when trying to make changes to their overall mechanics. The main difference between the two tests is the individuals control over their body to perform the movements. Active ROM tests are performed by the individual to see if they can complete the task being given to them; i.e. having a player perform a lying active single leg raise. Passive ROM tests are performed by the tester in order to discover an individuals actual movement capacity. By removing the individuals ability to actively move their body you are able to see what the limits of their body is, not the limits that the body has placed upon itself. This gets down to the very root of a lot of movement problems; is it actually a movement deficiency/limitation or motor patterning problem?
Active ROM tests are great for seeing if the individual has the ability to perform the movements on their own. These are great for looking at how they move their body’s, and if it is in an effective/efficient manner. Passive ROM tests look to see if the individual’s body is actually limiting them from performing what we are asking of the player. This is why it’s so important to know your players on the deepest levels. Are they actually capable of doing what we are asking and do they have the proper motor control to perform those tasks?
You might be thinking to yourself; but baseball players rotate all the time, they throw constantly and brace on their front side in pitching all the time, how do they not know how to control these movements? Just because an individual rotates, throws or braces on a consistent basis does not mean that they do it correctly. They are simply working with what their body has learned over years of playing, practicing and have been previously taught. Quality of movement is key. What does this mean or even look like?
Baseball occurs in all three planes of movement; frontal (side to side), sagittal (front to back) and transverse (rotation based movements). The human body is essentially made up of joints and levers; which would be your bones. Just like any lever system their is an efficient way to perform the task and there is definitely an inefficient way to perform it. The key in these movements is making them efficient to produce as much force as possible and set the body up to work in a way that gives the player the best chance for success.
Using rotation as an example, you might think that all rotation is the same so long as the pelvis is completing the task. Unfortunately this is not the case. A player could be very knee dominant in leading the rotation of the pelvis. An easy way to test for this by using the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) rotation test. With this test it can be easy to see if a player leads their rotation with the knee by performing a valgus movement (caving in of knee towards mid-line of body) and then rotating the hips. Understanding how a movement should be performed efficiently is the first step in understanding where the root problem lays.
Below is good example of how a knee dominant rotation pattern affects overall pelvic movement. In this particular players swing, his bat path was very steep to the ball and had negative attack angles when testing on the Blast Motion swing sensor. Using 4D motion capture sensors and basic movement screening tests we were able to discover the root causes for the players steep bat path.
The two images show the players hip movement graph on the 4D system. The graph looks at three measurements; hip sway (red line), hip thrust (green line) and hip lift (blue line). You can also see the player does not get good separation between his upper and lower half, in addition to going into early spine extension. This could cause a multitude of problems; in this case the player’s lower body movements were not allowing him to create adequate spacing in the upper body to get on plane with the pitch early. The compensation move here was the early spine extension which led to a very steep hand path to the ball.
*original testing done on 10/10 with three sensors (hip, torso & front arm)
*re-testing done on 11/11 with six sensors (hip, torso, front arm, front wrist, back arm & bat)
Six sensors were used during the re-testing to get a more holistic view of the players swing. The first graph shows the hip sway line peaking before hip thrust; essentially this means that there is a lot of lateral movement happening while rotating. This is not ideal when trying to rotate around an axis. The players knee dominant rotation caused a lot of unnecessary lateral movement, which led to further problems working up the swing.
Upon re-testing the player’s hip movement graph had actually changed. The order in which the sway, thrust and lift movements peaked had now changed. The player was now also able to attain greater separation in the lower and upper half; an added benefit too was an improved posture (no longer going into early spine extension). The result of all these helped improve the players bat path and the attack angle numbers on the Blast Motion.
Cleaning up the players movement pattern of rotation and strengthening the muscles responsible for such rotation changed the efficiency of the movement. This is why it is so important to understand the players body when trying to make changes in their delivery or swing mechanics.
Now had this player simply hit plyo balls and worked through many different hitting drills, it may or may not have cleaned up the bat path. But by getting down to the root cause we were able to fix the problem at the source, rather than putting a band-aid over it. Movement quality is very important.
