Welcome to our hitting workout complete with baseball drills, fundamentals, and techniques that you need to become a better hitter.
Bat Behind the Back Baseball Drill
Hitting begins below the waist, and if we can get our lower half started and keep our upper body intact, we’ve got a great chance not only to take a level swing, but to hit the ball hard as well. Your player should start with a bat behind the back and with his feet spread at least shoulder-width apart.
We don’t want to put the bat in the elbow. I see this done a lot, with the bat in the elbow, and it really doesn’t help us because we can’t pull. I want one hand at one end of the bat and the other hand at the other end, and we’re going to pull hard in just an instant. This is going to ensure that we get good lower body rotation.
We’re going to do this in two parts. Part number one, we’re going to get a little bit of movement backward and we’re going to take our stride–we call this the inward turn and stride. Part two involves rotating the hips through, rolling the back foot up. We call that squishing a bug.
Part one and part two should b ekept separate. We need 15 repetitions of the bat behind the back before you begin anything else.
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Wiffle Bat Baseball Drill
A Wiffle bat is one of the best props you can use when working with hitters. It’s our opportunity to give our hitters a clue as to how fast their bat’s moving.
With this drill, ask your hitter to go ahead and get in his stance. You, the coach, should move out in front of him a little bit and hold the Wiffle bat. Now ask your hitter to go ahead and start into his swing. As he gets to the point where his hands have come forward, as he’s beginning to make his stroke, you can move the bat.
You want your hitter to be quick enough from his stance into his swing to be able to catch up to your Wiffle bat before you can move it. And if he can do that, he’s moving the bat in a hurry. This gives him a solid idea of how fast he has to move.
Have your hitters do 10-15 repetitions of the Wiffle bat drill per day based on age. If you’ve got a younger player, go about 10 repetitions; an older player, go for 15.
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Wiffle Ball Baseball Drill
What you have to do is work your technique, and we work out technique by swinging the bat.
This little Wiffle ball is a great alternate way to get extra swings. You can get these at a discount store for $2.50 for a dozen. Get yourself a couple dozen; it’s a very minimal investment for a whole lot of gain. The nice thing about the Wiffle balls is you or the pitcher can most likely throw a strike every time. If you want to work your hitter inside, you can pretty much get it there because you’re standing so close to him–only fifteen to twenty feet away. High, low, wherever he’s weak at, you can get it there and you can also vary it. So we have very little down time with regard to poor pitches.
The second thing is it’s very small, so it’s hard for your hitter to hit. If he doesn’t keep his head down and track the ball, he’s not going to make contact.
The third thing that’s nice about it is it doesn’t go very far, which means we don’t have to chase it two hundred and fifty feet; it’s only going to go thirty to forty feet.
I’m going to suggest you take, prior to your game situation batting, fifteen to twenty-five cuts. If you want to take more than that, great. If it’s an off-day for you where you’re not taking a lot of cuts, you can come out and in five minutes, you can get fifty cuts. And that’s also a great by-product; you can get a lot of swings in a short period of time.
WATCH THE VIDEO DEMONSTRATION…
With these few baseball drills, you can be sure to spend sufficient time with your hitters and get them ready for the next game. Which one of these hitting drills do you think your players will benefit from the most?