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posted by CoolHand on Saturday August 22 2015, @11:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-sports-interesting dept.

A wearable sensor that tracks strain on a pitcher's elbow is making waves in major league baseball (MLB). This season, 27 MLB teams and their minor league affiliates are trying out the device, called the mThrow, in the hope that it will help monitor pitchers' workloads, improve pitching mechanics, and prevent injuries. The device's maker, Motus Global, in Massapequa, N.Y., plans to officially launch a consumer version this month. Teams seem to like it, but some players might have reservations about sharing their data.

Injuries to professional pitchers in the United States have become epidemic. The reconstructive procedures known as Tommy John surgeries, which repair the elbow's ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), have increased among major league players from 14 performed in 2002 to 31 in 2014, according to the blog Baseball Heat Maps. Attempting to curb such injuries by arbitrarily limiting the number of throws or innings pitched hasn't been effective, says Thomas Karakolis, an expert on the subject at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. "Baseball managers should be figuring out the forces on muscles, tendons, and ligaments for each individual player and guiding them based on that," Karakolis says.

It's an article of faith among geeks that despite the travails of youth and high school, they shall triumph over jocks in the end. This is a rather more direct example.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:27PM (#226334)

    I'd like to see a bodysuit like this for regular people who just want to workout with good form. I want a suit that I can tell it which exercise I am doing and it will give me coaching about how to hold my body (angle of extension, etc) to maximize results and minimize risk of injury. It would probably kill the industry for personal trainers (good riddance, most personal trainers are a menace since they have no significant training in kinesiology, sports medicine, etc).

    I had hoped the xbox kinnect would be able to do that without a suit, just by watching the user's movements. But it seems like either it doesn't have resolution to do it, or nobody has made the effort to write the software for it. I have seen some 'games' that give you some amount of feedback, but you have to be watching the tv screen to look at their tiny little diagrams in the corner - nothing that comes close to useful coaching.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:47PM (#226338)

    I want a robot arm that brings my beer up to my mouth when I want a drink.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:16PM (#226377)

      > I want a robot arm that brings my beer up to my mouth when I want a drink.

      Already available. [engadget.com]