One of the biggest areas that I receive requests for are [tag]baseball hitting drills[/tag]. Read below for a couple of great suggestions to help your young players.
Here are a couple of [tag]baseball drills[/tag] to try:
Young players can have fear of the ball and poor hand/eye coordination when facing live pitching. I have found that these players are not “seeing” the ball hit the bat, but swinging at where they think the ball is headed (or swinging at the same place/level each time regardless of the ball location).
Here is my fix: During live pitching, have the player at the plate hold the [tag]baseball bat[/tag] out over the plate (don’t swing) and simply let the ball hit it. Throw a few pitches (high and low) so that they need to move the bat up and down to make contact. Once they get focused on “seeing the ball contact the bat” you can move them on to a half swing. During the half swing, they should continue to focus on bat/ball contact. Once they have gained confidence that they can hit the [tag]baseball[/tag], let them swing away.
I have used this on my struggling young hitters with great success.
Here is a popular hitting drill to teach proper form (rotational hitting/compact swing):
Put a batter in their proper stance then soft toss balls well in front of the batter and have them hit balls with the knob of the bat (DO NOT TAKE A SWING). This will force them to use proper body positioning, wrist release, and improve eye coordination.