Biomechanics & AI: The Future of Mechanics Development

Dr. Michael Sonne is the VP of Research and Innovation for ProPlayAI, a company focused on measuring and describing human motion. Mike is also the research director for the Baseball Development Group in Toronto, Canada, as well as an adjunct professor at Brock University. At Brock, Mike and his graduate students focus their research on better understanding the measurement and analysis of pitching mechanics. Mike has also written about pitching biomechanics for The Athletic, Hardball Times, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. Mike’s workload metric, Fatigue Units, is widely used in the MLB as a better physiological representation of pitching workload, and the metric was recently included in the Motus Baseball app.

Dr. Sonne has a wealth of experience in the research world, receiving his PhD in Biomechanics in 2014 from McMaster University. There, the focus of his research was on the assessment and prevention of muscle fatigue and musculoskeletal injury in workplaces. Since that time, he has applied the findings from the field of ergonomics to the baseball world. In 2016, his paper on the implications of Pitch Clock implementation was published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, and received national media attention. Mike is currently an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at Brock University, and he writes for The Hardball Times, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus Toronto. Moreover, you may heard him as a regular on Pitch Talks or more recently as a ‘Baseball Sports Science Expert’ on the Fan 590. To learn more about Mike and to read some of his awesome content you can check out his website.

In the episode Sammy and Dr Sonne talk about:

The traditional biomechanics lab analysis
Where the future is headed with biomechanics and coaching
Some key metrics to look at in the biomechanics reports
ProPlayAI's Deception metric and why the MLB is excited by it.
Fascinating insights gained by his analysis of all the data collected

You can follow Dr. Sonne and ProPlayAI on Twitter.

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