Golf/Baseball Fans...

[noel]

Have any of you ever seen any information about what kind of wattage a professional golfer/baseball player generates during a golf swing/or at-bat swing?

I've never really looked for that kind of information, but I'm curious if anyone else has ever seen it or recalls it.

[Pherr the Dorf]

From what it takes to hit a splash hit in pac bell

If the program can be believed, a hitter must get the baseball moving at least 105 mph off the bat straight down the right-field line, imparting a strong 1,800 rpm backspin, lifting the ball somewhere between about 30 to 45 degrees, in order to have any real chance of making the water. And that assumes no wind blowing the ball back toward home plate or toward the deepest part of the outfield, which often seems to be the case at SBC Park.

Sharply hit line drives -- a speed of 130 mph and a 15 degree angle -- smash into the outfield bricks. Lofty fly balls hit steeper than 45 degrees can reach an impressive 150-200 feet in elevation above the outfield, but unless they are hit at maximum velocity, which seems unrealistic for such a steep angle, they tend to fall back well short of the cove.

Practically any ball hit toward the gap in right-center, where the wall stands 365 feet from home plate, is doomed to stay dry. Even a 120-mph screamer hit an optimum angle of 42 degrees won't make it without a near- maximum boost from backspin.

Bonds clearly has the mechanics and bat speed, as his career numbers attest, but he also has a strong preference for hitting with power down the right-field line, even compared with other left-handed pull hitters.

The computer model starts with the ball leaving the bat, and so no one had to guess what sort of swing Bonds has to put on the ball, or how fast the bat would have to be moving given a specified pitch and contact point. Most experts say bats are moving about 70 mph at the prime hitting zone in the major leagues.

Robinson figures Bonds must be reaching speeds in excess of 80 mph for some of his Splash Hits. But he concedes that's just a guess -- and, if he can get hold of the high-speed digital cameras necessary to do the job, the focus of some future study.

"It's kind of a fantasy of mine," he said. "The two big loves of my life, other than my family, are physics and baseball. So now I am trying to combine the two."

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I have never heard of anyone ever using wattage and golf swing in the same sentence before.

[noel]

That's kind of what I was afraid of, Kilmoll. Make no mistake though, there is a wattage number that is generated for a golf or baseball swing. Too bad really.

[Voronwë]

W = J/s = (kg*m^2)/s^3

if you think about either swing, they take less than a second, and if executed properly, involves most of the body.

So...in comparison to a cyclist or whatever, i'm sure it is substantially more "watts". The difference is, a cyclist is continually moving his legs for hours. as opposed to a half second. I'm assuming you were using a cyclist as sort of a reference point since it is easy to measure wattage output, since you can measure wheel revolutions.

[noel]

Right. Lance can put out 500 watts for an hour straight. I'd totally agree that a baseball or golf swing peaks MUCH higher than that. What I wanted to do was equate the number of 'swings' over a given period of time to what a cyclist could do for a period of time to try and draw a better comparison.

As an example, in Daniel Coyle's book, he points out that it takes 500watts of power to lift two 5gallon jugs of water from the floor to waist level in one second. If you put it in those terms, perhaps it's easier to draw a comparison.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Well....golf is not really what one would label an endurance sport....therefore no one really could care about energy involved doing it. The only thing golfers care about are launch angles, bounce, lie angles, spin, and clubhead speed.

With the clbhead speeds being highly variable, I am not sure you could really put out any kind of accurate numbers.

[Pherr the Dorf]

That I searched for this for you is wrong... but here ya go

These are some reflections based on research in The Physics of Golf by T. Jorgensen and and article in Sports Engineering (2002) 5, 23-32 by E. Sprigings and S. Mackenzie. It is called Examining the delayed release in the golf swing, but it has a lot of other good information.

It had been thought that 3040 watts was necessary to hit long drives. This is about 4 horsepower to generate a club head speed of 100 mph. But, it turns out a lot less than 2040 watts is required; it is more like 1650 watts. And this is because linear reaction forces at the joint centers transfer energy to the club head by joint-force power.

Consider power generation at the shoulder, the wrist and the torso (this is shoulder rotation about the spine, with some hip rotation too). The powers generated at these points are: shoulder 800 W, wrist joint 600 W, torso 390 W. The shoulder joint transfer point generates the highest power, followed by the wrist joint. No wonder Annicka can hit 300 yard drives; she has the best wrist release in golf and her arm-torso separation is excellent. That is, her arms speed up relative to her torso as she almost "walks" through the swing. The slow tempo of her torso is a key; this segment only contributes 390 W, so keep it smooth and it serves as a point for absorbing the torque reactions from the arms and wrists. As the shoulder rotates, the torque reaction transfers to the torso and tends to slow it down. Walking through the rotation absorbs the torque reaction. As the wrists release, the arms slow down as they absorb the torque reactions.

The way the segments slow as the power is transferred to the next one down the chain from torso to shoulder to wrist to club makes a well-synchronized swing look slow. Even when the club head speed is 120 mph.

Annicka's wrist release (unhinging of the wrists, forearm rotation and extension of the bent right arm at impact) must be one of the best ever seen. Her release and shoulder-arm acceleration are more than 3/4 of her power and her smooth torso rotation absorbs these forces. Thus, she looks so smooth and yet generates high power. So does Ernie Els. Both of them look like they are swinging so slowly because their torso rotation is slow, but continuous and supporting to the higher power generated in their shoulder and wrists.

[noel]

Well....golf is not really what one would label an endurance sport....therefore no one really could care about energy involved doing it. The only thing golfers care about are launch angles, bounce, lie angles, spin, and clubhead speed.

With the clbhead speeds being highly variable, I am not sure you could really put out any kind of accurate numbers.

Wattage is not in any way a measurement of endurace or energy. Wattage is a measurement of power. I guarantee that there is a wattage number that can be derived for a golf swing, and I guarantee that Tiger, or some of the longer driving golfers have a higher peak wattage for their swing than some of the poorer golfers. Same goes for baseball, though the difficulty of the baseball swing is magnified greatly by the fact that the ball that the hitter is trying to contact isn't stationary.

Also, I'm not talking about chip shots, or putts or whatever, I'm talking about the drives.

Edit: That's fantastic, Pherr. If it makes you feel any better, I was searching for it too.

[Pherr the Dorf]

I figured, but damn if that didn't take 40 minutes to find... slow wakeup day!

[Lynks]

Interesting stuff. Thanks.

[Pherr the Dorf]

And yes, just take the article I posted earlier... I can't find it but they actually did the work, a powerhitters baseball swing is around 72 mph average, regular hitters average 68, 2nd highest was adam dunn at 76 average, Bonds was, when he was playing, pushing slightly higher then 81 mph on his swing, which gives him that split extra second to determine what kind of pitch, that's his real advantage, say what you want about roids, (juiced hitters hitting off juiced pitchers... it's a push imo, look at Gagne, Shmitt, and the plethora of other pitchers who have either lost velocity of about 3-4 mph or who simply are breaking down faster then the cheap plastic crap from walmart) it's all about batspeed and your eye... different pitches simply spin different out of the pithers hand... if you can take an extra moment to figure out that it's a slider... because your batspeed can catch you up... then you are simply going to be a better hitter. They went thru old videos as well... nearest they could determine, Ted Williams had the quickest bat in history, bonds was 3rd, with his godfather in front of him.