3 Hitting Drills for Accuracy & Timing

In today’s blog post, we have put together 3 hitting drills for accuracy and timing that you should add to your practice plan and work on everyday!

The Fence Drill

This hitting drill forces you to stay in a good box and make sure that you maintain good hand quickness and good drive through the ball.

1. Set up your hitter about a foot and a half away from the fence so that there’s no way he can extend his bat without making contact with the fence. If you feel like you’re not close enough or you’re too far away, this is a good check point. When you place your feet, you should have a bend in your elbow. If your arm’s straight, you’re too far away, and you need to move up some.
2. This is the technique that you want to emphasize: Take the foot, get a little bit of movement backward, and take a stride with the front foot. Start with the hips first and let the upper body follow, which is something that most hitters don’t do.
3. The bat should be above the shoulder. The bat knob should be pointed at the ball, then let that bat ride right down alongside the shoulder, finishing the swing.
4. You’re standing close to the fence, yet you don’t make contact. Initially if you do make contact, it’s telling you that you’re extending the arms, pushing the bat away, and pulling it through. We don’t want that. We want the arms to stay in. We want the hitter to stay in what we call a good box.

You should do at least 10 of these a day, and then back off the fence and do 10 more so you don’t have to worry about the fence and making contact. But every time you swing, consider doing the exact same technique as if you were standing right up on top of that fence.

3-Ball Front Toss Drill

This hitting drill is a variation of the front toss drill.   In this drill, as we toss, we are going to work on pitches inside, down the middle, and outside.   And the hitter, with using these reference points, can tell if he’s hitting that particular pitch in the right position.

1. We have three baseballs placed on the ground in relationship to home plate. Each ball represents where a particular hitter would like to hit that ball in relationship to its position.
2. They pitch down the middle off the front edge of the plate and an outside pitch off the back corner.
3. As we’re trying to hit the ball in the inside part of the plate, we are working very hard on making sure that we have the proper sequence, a real strong hip turn so that we can get our hands inside the ball. We are trying to hit the ball with our hands inside the ball, and pulling our hands inside when we’re working on that inside pitch.

In a team setting, we would like each hitter to hit three pitches from each of the three areas. That would be nine repetitions. We would like them to do that two times during a practice session.

Fungo Drill

With this hitting drill, your player will toss the ball up, go through his swing, and try to hit line drives and ground balls. This is a really good rhythm and timing drill.

1. Your player’s trying to work through the sequence of his swing and make sure that his swing is in the proper sequence.
2. In order to make contact in the proper place, you must toss the ball out in front of your body just slightly.
3. The hitter is trying to work on keeping his hands above the ball. If his hands are going below the ball at contact, then you will see him popping the ball up.
4. He will hit ground balls and line drives when he has his hands above the ball. It’s a very important point in hitting-that you want your hands above or over the ball at contact.

A variation of this drill is to use a tee ball or a Little League bat. We would do this because it’s easier to control, a little lighter to handle, and it allows your hitter to get that through the hitting zone just a little quicker.