Frequently Asked Questions

8ctane is built by former MLB players, licensed physical therapists, and sports scientists based in Raleigh, NC. Our sister facility — 8ctane Baseball — uses Trackman, force plates, Proteus, and 3D motion analysis to inform the AI models that power our platform. We partner with BYoung Physical Therapy and The Running PTs to keep long-term arm health at the center of every plan.

Just a smartphone. No sensors, motion capture suits, or special cameras required. Record in portrait mode from about 6–10 feet away.

Upload your two videos and select the contact frames. Once uploaded, analysis can take a minute or two, and sometimes longer. You can leave the page and find the result in your assessments.

Two angles: a side view and a back view. For hitting, capture your swing from the side and from behind the batter. For pitching, from the side and behind the mound. 1–10 seconds per clip; aim for 3–6 seconds with one complete swing or pitch, including setup and follow-through.

No. Standard frame rate from any modern smartphone is fine. No special camera settings needed.

8ctane's AI vision model evaluates 10 hitting or 7 pitching checkpoints across your entire movement sequence. For hitting (10 checkpoints): hip-shoulder separation, pelvis tilt, torso rotation, head position at foot contact and ball contact, pelvis rotation, lead leg block, bat-to-spine angle at load and contact, and stride length. For pitching (7 checkpoints): max external rotation, horizontal abduction/scap load, pelvis orientation, trunk-pelvis separation, back leg action, trunk position, and lead leg block.

Yes — youth, high school, college, and professional. Assessments are graded against age-appropriate expectations, so a 12-year-old isn’t held to a college hitter’s standard, and training plans are matched to your level: youth or club, high school, college, or professional.

Each checkpoint receives a classification: Plus (green), Developing (blue), or Focus (yellow). Each comes with a plain-language explanation, severity rating, and frame reference — no jargon, no angle measurements. Your Focus and Developing checkpoints are what your training plan is built to address.

It's not a replacement for in-person work — it's a powerful complement. Key advantages: accessibility (do it from anywhere), cost (a fraction of lab pricing), repeatability (reassess every training cycle and rebuild your plan), and the plan itself — most assessments end with a report; 8ctane ends with four weeks of training.

On team plans, yes. Coaches can view every athlete’s assessments, build or edit their training plans day by day, and launch programming to many athletes at once. Individual Pro plans are for one athlete; you can always share your report with your coach. Contact sales@8ctane.ai about team plans.

With Pro, you answer six quick questions after your assessment: what you want to improve, where you are in your season, your level, whether and when you pitch in games, how many days a week you can train, and any days you can’t. 8ctane matches your assessment’s focus areas to programming developed by our coaches, adapts it to your answers, and checks the result against our training rules. You review the full four weeks, pick a start date, and it goes on your calendar. The whole thing takes about two minutes.

Every plan starts from programming our coaches developed and refined with athletes from youth through professional, then is matched and adapted to your assessment’s focus areas, your goals, your season, and your schedule. If your report flags lead leg block and hip-shoulder separation, that’s what your plan is built around. The AI can only draw from that coach-built library — it never invents an exercise — and every plan is validated before you see it.

Every training day includes a warm-up, movement drills, your main work — strength, plyos, hitting or throwing, depending on your assessment and the day — and arm care to finish. Each exercise has a video demo, and you log sets, weights, and bar speed as you go, with your previous numbers right there.

Tell us whether you start or relieve and which days. Your plan keeps game days clear of extra lifting, hitting, and plyos, avoids heavy upper-body lifting the day before a start, and spaces out high-intent throwing days. Starters and relievers get different weeks.

You choose your start date, your training days, and your days off, and you can move sessions to different days unless you pitch in games on set days. Change your answers and rebuild anytime, or undo a plan update with one click. On team plans, your coach can edit any day and any exercise.

Your original videos stay on your device. Selected image frames are uploaded, analyzed, and stored with your assessment so you can review them alongside your results.

Parents and guardians should review the privacy policy and account consent requirements before submitting a youth athlete’s information. Contact support@8ctane.ai with questions about youth accounts.

Yes. Create an account and run your first full assessment at no cost. No credit card required. Your report stays in your account. Training plan generation requires a paid subscription.

A personalized four-week training plan built from your assessment, with a video demo on every exercise and set-by-set logging; up to 4 assessments every 4 weeks, each of which can rebuild your next four weeks; and the Virtual Coach to explain every finding. $59/month or $499/year, cancel anytime.

Yes. Cancel anytime and you'll revert to the free tier at the end of your billing cycle. Your existing reports and data are preserved.

Yes — the hitting analysis applies fully to softball. Softball hitting mechanics and baseball hitting mechanics are governed by the same biomechanical principles: hip-shoulder separation, lead leg block, stride length, head position, and bat-to-spine angle are evaluated identically from the same two camera angles. The overhand pitching analysis also applies to softball position players (outfielders, infielders, catchers) making overhand throws. It does not apply to windmill pitching, which is a fundamentally different movement pattern.

Yes. Arm timing, scap load, layback, hip-shoulder separation, trunk position through release, and lead leg block all describe biomechanical principles present in any overhand throw — not just pitching deliveries. For position players, evaluations work best on standard mechanics: crow-hop throws for outfielders, set-foot throws for catchers and infielders. The arm health connection is the same: a catcher or middle infielder with a collapsing lead leg and late arm timing is accumulating the same medial elbow stress as a pitcher with those patterns, just spread differently across a season.

Hip-shoulder separation is the angular difference between where your pelvis is pointing and where your torso is pointing at front foot contact. An optimal pattern shows the pelvis rotating 40+ degrees open toward the pitcher while the torso remains closed — creating a visible twist through the midsection. When the pelvis opens first while the torso stays back, the swing direction stays neutral until the decision is made. This gives the hitter more time to read pitch speed and location before committing the upper body. When pelvis and torso rotate together as one unit, swing adjustability to off-speed pitches decreases.

The four most common youth hitting patterns we see: (1) Over-stride — stepping too far forward causes the back leg to fully extend and limits pelvic rotation. (2) Collapsing lead leg — the front knee bending inward at or after foot contact instead of extending toward a firm block. (3) Early torso rotation — the front shoulder opening before the front foot lands, eliminating the separation between lower and upper half. (4) Bat too steep relative to spine — the barrel pointing toward the ceiling while the spine is hinged forward, which lengthens the path to the hitting zone.

Bat path problems are usually downstream of other mechanical issues. The most common root patterns: a bat that is too steep relative to the spine angle at load (barrel pointing toward the ceiling while the spine is hinged forward), early torso rotation that pulls the arms through a different plane, or a lead leg that collapses and changes the hitter's spine angle through contact. Evaluating bat path in isolation often misses the upstream cause.

The lead leg block is the extension pattern of the front leg from when the foot lands through ball contact. An optimal pattern shows the front knee bent at foot contact and then progressively extending toward a near-straight or locked position. When the front knee extends firmly, it creates a stable post that the hips and torso rotate around, preventing hip slide. A lead leg that stays bent or collapses inward after landing allows the hips to continue sliding toward the pitcher, which bleeds rotational energy instead of transferring it upward.

Pelvis rotation is the first link in the kinetic chain that produces bat speed. When the pelvis rotates first while the torso remains closed (hip-shoulder separation), it creates a rotational load in the trunk that is then released as the torso unwinds. The separation between pelvis and torso at foot contact determines how much stored rotational potential is available for the swing. Without separation — when pelvis and torso rotate together — the system skips this loading phase and generates rotation from the upper body alone.

A few observable patterns are worth watching without video: (1) Arm timing — from behind the pitcher, where is the throwing hand when the front foot lands? It should be in front of the elbow with a diagonal angle. If the hand is at or past vertical (above or behind the elbow), the arm is early. (2) Lead leg block — does the front knee extend toward near-straight by release, or does it stay deeply bent? A bent front leg through release is a common youth pattern. (3) Rotation sequence — do the hips visibly open before the chest, or does everything rotate at once?

Layback refers to how far the throwing arm rotates backward after front foot contact. In the frames following footplant, the hand should progressively move behind the head and the forearm should approach a near-horizontal position. This is not the same as early layback — the key is that this rotation happens after footplant as part of the arm's sequential path through the delivery. When layback is minimal (hand staying in front of the head through this window), the arm's path through the delivery may not be completing its full range.

Scap load refers to the position of the throwing elbow relative to the torso midline at front foot contact. When the elbow is positioned behind the midline (behind the center of the spine when viewed from behind), the scapula has been drawn back toward the spine — a loaded position. When the elbow has already crossed in front of the midline at footplant, this scapular loading is reduced or absent. Scap load at footplant is part of the arm's preparation sequence that precedes the acceleration phase through release.

Trunk-pelvis separation in pitching (also called hip-shoulder separation) works similarly to hitting: the pelvis should be substantially open toward home plate at footplant while the torso remains closed. Optimal separation is 30 or more degrees. When the lower half has rotated well ahead of the upper half at footplant, the torso is loaded for the rotational acceleration that follows into release. When pelvis and trunk arrive at footplant already rotated together, this loading phase is absent and the delivery relies more on arm-only acceleration.

A mechanical pattern is observable across the full movement sequence regardless of outcome. A bad pitch or at-bat produces a poor result; a mechanical flaw produces a consistent pattern that deviates from optimal mechanics. The same flaw can produce both good and bad outcomes in the short term — a hitter with minimal hip-shoulder separation can still get hits, and a pitcher with late arm timing can still throw strikes. The difference is that mechanical patterns predict performance ceilings and injury risk over time, independent of any single result.