Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine whether glove arm kinematics during a windmill
softball pitch impact pelvic and trunk kinematics as well as pitching arm shoulder
kinetics. Thirty-Nine college softball pitchers (20.0±1.4 yrs.; 174.7±6.1 cm; 82.0±13.0 kg;
10.7±2.7 yrs. of experience) threw 3 pitches to a catcher while kinematic and kinetic
data were collected. Pearson product moment correlations were run, and significant
correlations found with glove arm kinematics, occurring before pelvis kinematics,
trunk kinematics, and shoulder kinetics, were then put through a linear regression
to identify whether there was any potential cause and effect. Results revealed that
glove arm elbow flexion during phase 1 significantly predicted normalized shoulder
rotation moment during phase 4 (t=2.60, p=0.013). Additionally, glove arm shoulder horizontal abduction during phase 1 significantly
predicted normalized shoulder moment in phase 3 (t=− 2.40, p=0.021) and pelvic angular velocity during phase 3 (t=− 3.20, p=0.003). In conclusion, an active glove arm was predictive of a more efficient kinetic
chain later in the windmill pitching motion and could possibly play a role in preventing
injury by lessening pitching shoulder joint loads.
Key words
kinematics - kinetics - pitching - shoulder injury - shoulder internal rotation -
softball
