Kinesthetic aftereffects induced by a weighted tool on movement correction in baseball batting

Abstract

We investigated the kinesthetic aftereffects of a weighted tool on interceptive performance. Eight college baseball players performed three warm-ups before the interceptive task: a normal warm-up, a recalibrated warm-up with a standard 850-g bat and a 1200-g weighted bat, and a weighted warm-up with a 1200-g bat. For the interceptive task, subjects were asked to swing the standard bat coincident with the arrival and position of a moving target. After the warm-ups with the weighted bat, participants felt that the bat was lighter and swung faster. When participants needed to correct their swings to the target’s velocity change, larger timing errors were produced in the weighted than in the normal practice condition. These results indicate that warm-ups with a weighted tool create adverse effects for the movement (re)programming processes in interceptive action. This suggests that warm-ups with a weighted tool for an interceptive task affect the central nervous system and not the peripheral system.