Flexing its muscle

Football has always boasted the power running game. Baseball has seen its top hitters blast tape-measure home runs. Basketball has become popular behind thunderous slam dunks.

Other sports have followed with power philosophies of their own.

Golf displayed its version with the arrival of John Daly in the early 1990s and later that decade a golfer named Tiger. Around the same time, tennis joined in the power movement with the likes of Pete Sampras and Serena Williams, moving the sport into an era with 100-plus MPH serves.

Now, there's a new kid on the power bloc: College softball.

In the 1990s, college softball was primarily a "manufacture-a-run" game. Although there were a few programs across the nation that used the long ball, most college teams used a basic scoring plan: get the lead-off hitter on base, "slap-hit" or bunt her over to second base and then attempt to plate her home with a hit.

Oh my, the times, they are a-changin'.

"To put it in context, golf is a sport that's evolved, changing into a power game," said Dr. Daniel Greenwood, Director of the Human Performance Center in the UofM's School of Health Studies. "Baseball's also evolved into a power game with hitting the ball harder and farther. Hitting more home runs is the what baseball is doing now.

"Softball is going to that revolution as well, where the days of dinking and dunking people around the diamond are gone. It's much more about power. It's a power game, and the players need to hit the ball harder."

The University of Memphis began competing in collegiate softball in 2006. The year before, the sport had only nine programs in the nation with 90 or more doubles and just five with 70-plus home runs. Fast-forward 16 seasons later and the number of teams with those numbers have exploded. In the final national statistics of 2019, 22 programs had 90-plus doubles and 20 teams bombed 70-plus dingers.

Memphis head coach Natalie Poole and her staff were well aware of this trend, too, and looked for ways to improve the Tigers' power numbers. Enter Dr. Greenwood and his staff, who were introduced to the Memphis coaches in the 2018-19 athletics year.

"Dr. Greenwood's staff dove into some areas where we needed assistance, and we didn't have the capabilities of doing ourselves," said Poole, who wrapped her ninth season at the helm of the UofM program in 2020. "Financially, if each sport was trying to pursue each of these types of studies and finding ways to make us better, it would cost each program a lot of money.

"This is a department that has advanced greatly. For us, being able to partner with them was a win-win for both of us. I immediately reached out to him and started the process of what can we do to see if we are being efficient as athletes."

The area Poole wanted to explore was the players making better contact and the team's power hitting. Dr. Greenwood responded with a study on sequencing.

"With hitting, you generate power initially from your hips which transfers to your shoulders which transfers to the upper arm and then lower arm and then the bat," Dr. Greenwood said. "We call it the kinetic sequential principle, transferring weight from segment to segment in a sequential order."

Poole added, "We wanted to look into the sequence of the swing to make sure our players were properly using their bodies, to utilize them in the best way to get the most force out of them and to be able to generate really good strong swings.

"That's our philosophy. We want hard contact, and the hard contact may mean we hit the ball out of the yard if we hit the back of the ball well, at a certain force with a good sequence in our swing. But can we still miss-hit the ball and hit the ball hard? Whether we get a little bit under it and are still able to hit the ball deep? Or whether we get a little bit over it and hit the ball on line? Or even some hard ground balls that get through?"

So, off players went to a lab. Not a batting cage (at least not yet). Not with a pitching machine or hitting instructor. A lab inside the School of Health Studies located in the Elma Roane Fieldhouse.

"I feel like most of the team was open to it," said Sara Ann Davidson, who recently graduated with a degree in Exercise Sport Science and had worked on other research projects with Dr. Greenwood. "At the same time, if someone has never been to a lab before, it can be intimidating at first because of the uncertainty. Most of our team was open to the idea of it (the study) and trying to find out more information that could help us get better."

Freshman Brady Rowland added, "When I went into the study, I was more nervous than anything. I was like 'am I not going to do something right?' I was hesitant in that way. But I learned it wasn't like doing it right or wrong, it was just showing you how you were hitting and how you were going into your sequence compared to way we should be doing it."

According to Dr. Greenwood, each player stood in a makeshift batting cage with a tee ball stand. Sensors were placed on the players' hips, shoulders, upper arms, wrists and bats and tracked how fast each of those segments were moving and the timing relative to one another.

The findings?

"What we found was what should be hips, shoulders, arms and wrists was that most of our players were going arms, shoulders, hips and wrists," said Dr. Greenwood. "The phrase they use in softball is they want 'bat lag.' We want to hold up, hold our bat still as long as possible. But what our players were doing was starting with the bat first, almost like a safety precaution."

Poole stated, "Dr. Greenwood analyzed each of our players to see if their bodies were in proper sequence. A lot of times hitters are out of sequence. Their hands may lead their hips, and because of that, they're not connecting all the pieces together in the strongest way."

A week after the study, Dr. Greenwood took the results back to the players at the Tigers Softball Complex. According to Dr. Greenwood, the revelations were, well, revealing.

"Naturally, the players thought they were doing this right anyway," Dr. Greenwood said. "And when we told them they weren't, they were like, 'oh, weird.'"

For the players, the data they saw on paper was both eye-opening and helpful.

"I didn't realize what my sequence was until I got the results back," Rowland said. "In the study, I saw that I was starting with my upper body. I was starting with my shoulders when I should be starting more with my hips and lower body. That was surprising to me because when you're hitting rep after rep after rep, you tend to look more at the output instead of what you're doing yourself."

Sophomore Sam Ibison commented, "It (study) was helpful. Even though our coaches see certain things with our swings, we don't get actual data and analytics from our swings like we did with Dr. Greenwood. It was good seeing the 'facts' of our swings. It was good to get a perspective from someone who's not looking at a swing every single day."

Immediately after the results were revealed, Dr. Greenwood had the players walk to the team's "lab," the batting cages. The next step was to fix their sequencing. But, he wasn't going to tell them how to fix it. Neither were the coaches. The players were going to figure it out for themselves.

"A swing is personal and means a lot to a player. So, if I came in and said, 'you need to change this by doing this,' and we probably end up at a roadblock," said Dr. Greenwood. "Whereas, we gave them the data and a safe space to explore what is going wrong or what their bodies were feeling and see if they can change it themselves.

"Some picked up a lighter bat, some a heavier bat. Some picked up the elastic bands to help hold their bodies in place. Some used rope to keep their arms from moving early. The challenge was to feel what their body was doing now that they know what their body is doing. Feel it and now change it. That was one of the key reasons we succeeded."

The goal, according to Dr. Greenwood, was for each player to figure her sequencing out for herself. The team divided into groups of twos and threes, and their job was to use different drills, implements, objects to teach themselves how to proper sequence.

"That was my favorite part of the study because he wanted us to figure out how to fix it," said Ibison, who was hitting a team-best .396 when the 2020 season stopped. "He put us in situations where we had to get out of comfort zones and do it ourselves instead of depending on our coaches. Instead of the coaches telling us, 'move your hips more,' we had to figure out how to feel it on our own."

Davidson stated, "It gave us an idea of somebody else's perspective. Sometimes we think we know what's going on. But if some hardcore science is telling you what you think is right is not, it can be an eye-opener.

"Forcing us to be on our own, we had to find a way to fix it ourselves. That was good because it makes you think about what you're doing and how your body works."

Although primarily focused on players increasing their power, the study also shined the light on how proper sequencing allows batters more time in their decision-making on whether or not to swing at pitches.

"The coolest thing about swinging correctly for power is it also buys you more time to select the pitches that you hit," Dr. Greenwood said. "You actually give your body and your eyes more time to decide if you're going to swing at a pitch. The players found out they had more time to do this, not less time. They found they could be more powerful and also have more time to swing."

Poole agreed, "Being able to generate our energy from our hips and our trunk and not lead with our hands, it allows the ball (pitch) to travel a little more so we can make later decisions. It allows us to see the ball a little bit deeper and recognize whether we do want to respond. Then, by having an efficient swing, our ability to get to the ball quick should be happening from training that swing sequence."

The results are in the numbers. Or at least the 25-game statistics between 2019 and 2020 due to the shortened 2020 campaign.

Statistics (through 25 games)	2019	2020
Doubles	31	46
Triples	9	10
Home runs	15	12
Walks	57	87
On-base percentage	.329	.392
Stolen bases	35	53
Runs (per game)	93 (3.7)	155 (6.2)

"The players were doing a great job of getting extra-base hits, and those things come because of our contact," Poole said of the team's improvement from 2019. "The home runs probably were not exactly where we needed them to be, but that may change over time.

"We're clearly finding gaps. We're hitting the ball and we're hitting it deep to make it difficult for our opponents to get to. We were showing some good tendencies. In addition to that we were able to find some walks from that strike zone recognition. We were making progress."

Indeed, the Tigers used sequencing to improve in both power and selectivity. On the power side, Memphis' 68 extra-base hits were third in the American Athletic Conference. The Tigers led the league in triples and were second in doubles. Nationally, Memphis was 14^th in triples and 17^th in doubles.

Proper sequencing – because of being more selective of their pitches – also helped the Tigers get on base more via walks. In only 25 games, Memphis drew 87 walks and were more than halfway to last season's 127 walks (55 games). The walks – in addition to better contact – led to what was on pace to be a record-setting .392 on-base percentage (school record was .379 in 2018).

The Tigers' on-base percentage was nearly .070 higher than 2019 (.325) and had the Tigers ranked fourth in The American and in the top 50 nationally. That high on-base percentage gave Memphis more opportunities on the basepaths where the Tigers swiped 53 bases. The steals, along with the extra-base hits, led to Memphis averaging 6.2 runs a game which were 2.5 more than last season (3.7). The Tigers ranked in the top 35 in scoring in the NCAA rankings (31^st) when the season came to a halt.

"Our on-base percentage was just under .400, which helped contribute to what we wanted to do on the bases," said Poole. "There are a lot of other offensive pieces that we can still help us do some damage and find some ways to get on base.

"Sequencing too eliminates some check-swings we might have had in the past because once the hands were leading, we couldn't hold our barrel back. Being able to draw some walks in those instances and not get check-swings can make a difference, too."

The players were quick to notice this even though the primary intent of the study focused on power.

"It (sequencing) definitely helps with that," said Rowland, who led the Tigers in walks (19) and on-base percentage (.471). "When you're looking at pitches and you want to throw your hands at it, the majority of the time you're early. That's a big negative.

"But whenever you're able to see the pitch longer, you can see the different speeds. You're able to attack the pitch depending on if it's a fastball or change-up. Also, being able to pick up on the different speeds, that allows you sit back a little longer and say, 'is this coming inside, or is it down the middle and is it high or low?' You get to see the pitch a little longer (and make a decision) instead of guessing."

The lone guessing is what a full season's numbers would have been. However, with the pace they were on, the 2020 Tigers would have shattered the school record for doubles with close to 100 and also set two other season marks for walks (nearly 200) and triples.

The good thing, though, is Memphis returns a majority of its roster in 2021. And, along with that, the knowledge gleaned from the sequencing study will continue in the fall.

"Coach Poole and I used this (study) as a catalyst for thought and change (for 2020) and then we left the players alone during the season," said Dr. Greenwood. "Our plan was to revisit at the end of the year, and as in the off-season, add another level of detail.

"We really wanted to get them thinking, get them feeling this year and continue to build on that in the future."

Poole said, "I believe that we will get better at what we're doing because our philosophy will stay. We return a lot of really good athletes, and there is potential for them to see themselves grow and do better."

University of Memphis Athletics

Related News

Players Mentioned

Sara Ann Davidson

Sam Ibison

Brady Rowland

Related Videos