Video Analysis of Baseball Hitting

The only way to win in Baseball is to get some hits. Looking at the statistics of Major League Baseball, where most of the best players and hitters in the world play, we can see that hitting is more difficult than it looks. Babe Ruth for example had a career hitting average of .342, while this 2009 season Albert Pujols leads the MLB on hitting average of .333.

This means that Babe Ruth only hit a base hit or home run 34.2% of the times he was up for bat, while the best hitter in the MLB this season, Pujols has only hit 33.3% of the times he has been at bat. These hitting averages for the best players seem low, but we should also consider the challenges of hitting a baseball pitch and understand that hitting averages over 30% are in truth very good.

Here are some of the challenges:

1. The pitcher can throw a fast ball, slider, curve ball and many other variation. The hitter needs to read the pitch correctly to get a good hit.
2. As a strike will only be called if the ball is pitched in the strike zone, this is the best zone to swing the bat through. However the pitcher can try to fool the batter by pitching a ball that looks like it will go through the strike zone but then fades away or drops out of the zone.
3. Once the batter is able to make contact with the ball, he still needs to find a gap in the outfield so that he can run to first base and score his hit. This requires timing and control to get the ball into the gap.
4. Of course the ultimate is to hit a home run. This requires timing and power to hit the ball far enough and high enough to clear the outfielders and the fence.

Improving hitting mechanics can help a player improve his hitting average. Here we will take a look at some video of a young hitter at practice and discuss some of the important aspects of hitting.

Our hitter here is practising by hitting balls that are tossed up to him and therefore may not be falling in the strike zone but we can still examine his hitting technique.

The video camera in this instance has been set up so that we get a side on view of the hitter, this allows us to examine his stance, hips and shoulder rotation as well as take a look at his bat swing plane. Another aspect of this video that we like is that it is high definition. Unfortunately because the capture rate was around 30 frames per second it can be difficult to see the bat swinging through to track the swing plane but we have made our best effort to track this.

Taking a look at the swing itself, we can break it down as follows.

1. Our hitter loads up on energy for his swing by rocking back onto his back foot. This allows him to get ready to swing his bat at the ball.
2. He steps forward a little with his front foot. He does this to get good position on the pitch (or in this case toss) and to open up his stance and allow his hips to rotate through.
3. He rotates his hips and shoulders through to make contact with the ball.

Steps 1 and 2 in this case look good. Our hitter has setup well to hit, and he has moved his front leg toward the ball to open up his stance to get a good hit.

In order to create power though, we want to remind you about the kinematic sequence. We discussed the kinematic sequence when we talked about Tiger Woods' golf swing. The kinematic sequence is the sequence of events that creates the bat speed. To create good bat speed the hitter needs to rotate his hips, shoulders, hands and bat in that order, with each following segment moving faster than the previous segment.

Here is how it works. The hitter loads up to hit as can be seen in step 1. He then steps forward to open his stance. His hips now need to rotate through toward the ball, but his shoulders should remain behind. By rotating his hips and leaving his shoulders behind he creates potential energy. The shoulders then follow the hips, as the hands and bat are now left slightly behind and with potential energy. Finally with perfect timing the hands follow and then the bat, to hit the ball in the strike zone and with power and control.

In golf, the ball is not moving and so it is easier to practice the kinematic sequence. In baseball hitting the ball can be pitched with much variation and it can be much harder to get this timing correct. However in baseball we once again have a smallish strike zone as well as a a hitting angle of only 90 degrees (between 1st and 4th base), therefore the kinematic sequence must be employed in the same way.

We took some snap shots of our hitter at key moments to examine his hip and shoulder rotation more closely.In the first image we can see our player setup correctly. His weight has been moved to the back foot and his bat is nicely positioned


His pelvis alignment can be seen with the blue line, while his shoulder alignment is represented by the red line. At this point, prior to loading and before the actual swing starts, his pelvis and shoulders are aligned.



In this second image, we can see that our player has now rotated through and is ready to make contact with the ball. In this case we can see that his hips (blue line), shoulders (red line) and bat (white dot on yellow trajectory) are all already lined up. The timing of his kinematic sequence is a little too fast, his shoulders, hands and bat have caught up with his hips too early. To create optimal power, his shoulder rotation should be following his hips, his hands should be following his shoulders and his bat following his hands. The result of this mistiming is that our hitter will strike the ball early and with less power.

Our player though does swing through a nice arc with his bat (yellow trajectory). We can see that he keeps his arms extended through the swing. This allows him to increase his bat speed and follow through with the hit.

In a final thought, our player has a good swing. He loads up nicely, steps toward the pitch and swings his bat through well. His sequence timing may be a little too quick, but this may also be because the ball is being tossed up to him rather than pitched and he has to reach for it outside the strike zone.

Baseball hitting and pitching lends itself well to video analysis, because the athlete is standing in one spot and hitting or throwing. So get your cameras out and make sure to follow the rules for setting up to capture good video for analysis and you will be able to analyze your hitting or pitching in much the same way as we have done here.

We would like to thank Mike and Aaron Kocourek for this video.

Video Analysis of a Soccer Penalty Kick

This weekend was full of sporting action, Boston Marathon, NBA playoffs and much more. We also enjoyed watching some major upsets in the FA cup soccer semifinal games played at Wembley stadium in England. For those of you not aware the FA cup is the premier soccer cup competition in England and is watched throughout most of the world.
In this years semifinals, we saw Chelsea defeat Arsenal on an unforgivable goalkeeping error, but in The Video Analysis of Sports this week we want to look at the other game where Everton upset the favorites Manchester United on penalty kicks.

Penalty kicks sound easy. The striker takes a shot at the goal with only the goalkeeper to save it and all the measurements are in the strikers favor. The international goal is 24 feet wide by 8 feet high, the penalty spot is 36 feet from the goal and the goalkeeper cannot move forward off his line before the penalty kick is taken. This means that he cannot close the angle.

Penalty kicks however are not as simple as they sound, especially at the end of a game in order to break a tie. There is a lot of pressure on the striker, he or she is expected to score the penalty and if he misses his team may be eliminated from the competition. In international and pro level soccer we see strikers often trying to fool the goalkeeper into diving in one direction and then try to shoot to the other side of the goal. When they score this way we all admire their skill and deception, but if you want to make sure of scoring then there are some specific techniques to use and we will discuss them here.

Below is some video of the penalty shootout between Manchester United and Everton on April 19, 2009. You can see evidence of much of what we will discuss today.


Berbatov (the 2nd penalty taker) and Ferdinand (the 4th penalty taker) both of Manchester United try to deceive the goalkeeper but do not use good technique to shoot and see their penalties saved.

We see some examples of good penalty kicks in this game too. Vaughan of Everton takes the best penalty of this particular shootout as you will see in the video. So what makes this a good penalty. Vaughan does everything right here. He wants to place the ball in the top corner of the goal net with as much power as possible. By aiming for the top corner with power he reduces the chances of the goalkeeper making a save even if he does pick to dive in the correct direction (which he does in this case).

What about technique? Well Vaughan does that correctly too. Here are some of the points to look out for as you watch the video above. Pause the video if you can and look closer at some of these points.

1. He picks the direction he is going to kick the ball and does not change his mind. Changing his mind might cause a miss kick and as he is going for the top right corner with power he is not concerned about the goalkeepers decision.
2. He runs up and plants his support leg (left leg) on the side of the ball with the toes of his left foot pointing in the direction he is going to shoot. This gives him the support base he needs so that..
3. He keeps his head down looking at the ball as he strikes it. This will keep the ball from flying to high. If he lifts his head, he is likely to get his foot under the ball and may lift it over the top of the goals.
4. He kicks the ball with the inside toe part of his boot (see time 4:28 in the video). He does this in order to create spin on the ball. He actually aims at the goal post but uses the spin to turn the ball back into the goal net. If he kicks the ball with his laces he may be able to create more power, but he will not be able to create spin and therefore he would need to aim more directly into the goal, giving the goalkeeper a chance to save or running the risk of missing wide.
5. He follows through with his kicking leg, bringing it up to waist height while keeping his head down. This allows him to produce the power he needs to ensure the goalkeeper has no chance of saving this penalty.

So thank James Vaughan of Everton for that real situation clinic in taking a penalty kick in soccer. We are looking forward to a fantastic FA cup Final on May 30, 2009 between Chelsea and Everton. Hopefully there will be no penalty kicks to decide the champions, but if there are you know what to look for.

Let us know what you think of this particular penalty shootout or if you have any tips or tricks of your own for penalty taking. Comment on this blog or send an email to dudley@sadakallc.com or dennis@sadakallc.com .

Why Tiger Woods has a Perfect Golf Swing

This last weekend, we once again had the pleasure of watching Tiger Woods playing in a Major Golf Tournament, the 2009 Masters. He injured his knee prior to the 2008 US Open, and the last we saw of him was winning that tournament in a lot of pain.

He may not have won this year's Masters tournament, but his swing truly is exceptional and it is always worth taking a look at some video and snapshots of his swing to do some video analysis. So why does Tiger Woods have a perfect golf swing? The answer is TIMING.

Tiger shows an almost perfect example of a concept we discussed in our last post with Andy Murray's serve. Tiger creates club head speed by perfectly sequencing and timing the movement of his knees, hips, shoulders, wrists and club. In golf, this is known as the kinematic sequence. The kinematic sequence in a golf swing is a little different to that of a tennis serve, but in the end the idea for both is to create club head speed or racquet head speed by storing and then transferring energy from hips to shoulders to club or racquet, with perfect timing.

Let's have a look at Tiger Woods' swing in slow motion. We have seen this video before, but it is a really good one. In this video we have a side-on view of Tiger's swing (side-on to the direction he will hit) and we can see the club throughout the swing. This makes it a great video to analyze. The video was also filmed with a high speed camera with a high shutter speed, which is why we can see the club so clearly in each frame, even through ball impact.



OK lets analyse this swing by looking at the way Tiger stores and transfers energy to the ball through the golf club. If you stop the video at 0:33 seconds, you will see that Tiger is now at the top of his back swing. During his back swing he turned his hips and his shoulders away from the direction in which he will be hitting in order to store up energy for his swing.

Play the video from here and we will see how his hips start to move earlier and quicker than his upper body and that his shoulders are left behind. Tiger is starting his kinematic sequence by unwinding his back swing. The timing is important and he leads with his hips in order to create more separation between his hips and shoulders and therefore create more energy to be transferred.

His shoulders then follow and at ball strike we see that Tiger's hips are now facing the target while his shoulders are almost facing directly at the camera. This perfect timing has allowed him to transfer all the energy from his back swing, first to his hips and then from his hips to his shoulders.

Here are two images of Tiger at the top of his back swing and at ball strike, created with some free video analysis software and images of Tiger's swing.

Although these are 2 different swings, we can see how Tiger creates separation between his hips and shoulders in the image on the left and how his hips are turned toward the target at ball strike in the image on the right. The shoulders have rotated quickly as they follow in sequence from the hips, in fact they have caught up with the hips as energy was transferred from hips to shoulders and the hip rotation has slowed while the shoulder rotation has sped up. The angle between the hips and shoulders at ball strike is now much less than at the start of the down swing and we can see this in the images above.

Of course the golf swing does not end with the shoulders and there are still numerous places where the timing can be off and the golfer can lose club head speed. In the video above we can look at time 00:41 seconds and we can see that Tiger's wrists are still cocked. As we play forward from this point we will see the wrists release, transferring the energy from the shoulders and arms to the wrists and on to the club and club head at ball strike.

This last sequence happens very quickly and the golfer's timing has to be perfect. Tiger Woods is the master of this timing and we look forward to seeing more video of his swing now that he is back from injury.

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