The Effect of Different Warm-up Procedures on Bat Speed in Baseball

The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of a new warm-up condition, overloaded arm weights (721 g each arm, [OA]), on the bat speed during warm-up and immediately after warm-up with traditional warm-up conditions such as no-extra mass warm-up (control condition, [CO]) and overloaded bat warm-up (885 g donut on a bat, [OB]) conditions. Twenty male sub-jects who had competitive baseball experience participated in this study. Electromagnetic motion capture system was used to cap-ture body segment motions. Results indicated that the OB showed significantly slower bat speed than the CO and OA did during warm-up (p<.05) and the bat speeds of OA and OB were similar. There was no main effect of different types of warm-up con-dition on the bat speed at post-warm-up swings. However, the first trial immediately after the OA and OB showed significant slower than the later trials (p<.05). Conclusively, the overloaded arm weights and overloaded bat did not show statistical supe-riority than the standard warm-up conditions in the deck circle and recovery time more than 3 minutes after loaded warm-up is recommended