Favorite Hitting Drills

The Best For Short Time !!

T-Work is the best teaches the player to stay in the plain of the ball !!!

guru

 

Forgot about this one. Think it also helps with reaction time. We have used it from time to time. Probably not as much as we should...

G2G, do you set up different stations when you have the team hit? What we would do is reserve an entire practice (2 hours) for hitting and set up 4 stations. We had soft toss with the batter on one knee, drop drill, hit stick (still and moving), and then they got up against the machine. We had two girls at every station (the rest shagging balls until they rotated into hitting) so they would get a break between stations. Is that too much?

 

Stations

It sounds like you are setting up a productive hitting practice. As long as you give them rest and they are not swinging tired. Tired swings equal bad mechanics. I set my hitting practice very similar, it takes about an hour to get through it, and the girls get a lot of quality swings. An example of one of my practices, if I have 15 girls then I put them in groups of three and set up five stations. 1. Tee work, doing progression. 2. Soft-toss 3. bunting station (using a machine) 4. Hitting head on, with a coach pitching 5. Shagging. We rotate every 10-12 minutes. To me the worst thing at a practice is having girls standing around.
Scott Miller
www.gaptogapsoftball.com

 

Hammer Drill

Two of the biggest problems I see with my players and students is the rolling of the wrists/hands much to early and casting of the bat.

To correct the casting and early wrist roll, I have a drill I stole from my pitching coach friend, Chief, who used a variation to teach wrist snap to his pitchers.

The drill is done with just a hammer and a ball on a tee. This drill is just like like the one handed bat drill, but instead of using a bat, use a hammer.

This drill can be done on one knee or standing, but to start, it should be done 1/2 speed or in slow motion. About 95% of the girls I have worked with on this drill miss the ball completely on the first several tries, even at half speed or slower. Each hand should be used with about 25 reps for each.

They key to this drill is to have the player to take the hammer from her shoulder to the ball while keeping her hand close to her chest and wrist cocked. At contact, the elbow should be bent, she should she fire her wrist and take her hand straight towards the net without rolling her wrist. Point the hammer towards the net. You want the ball to pop off the hammer in a straight line. If the ball goes anywhere but straight, you know the wrist rolled too soon or the hand was to far away from the body (casting) or BOTH.

A good visual key in this drill is to set up another tee and ball about 5-8 ft. directly in front of the first tee and have the batter try to hit one ball into the other, or at least try to take the hammer towards the second ball. The follow through should be long and straight ahead, not low and around to the side.

Coaching points on this drill are looking for the hand to stay close to the body as the hammer approaches the ball, elbows bent and wrist cocked at contact, then wrist snap at the ball and a long straight follow through.

I feel this drill really breaks down the bat lag and connection parts of the swing and teaches players not to cast and release their hands/wrists to soon.

 

The hammer drill is a drill that Coach Candrea uses, also. Bmac I think we could get along great I do not hear many people talk about bat lag, and connection, but they are so important within the swing. I am going to be on the road for a couple of days, filming some videos in Phoenix, or on the sun itself not sure the sun maybe coller, but when I get back I want to start a thread on linear VS rotaional. It sounds like I have someone on my side on this one, also softball guru talking about staying on plane I think would be a linear guy. Which bat lag and connection is what allows you to stay on plane. I am getting ahead of myself on that discussion.
Scott Miller
www.gaptogapsoftball.com

 

This will be fun. There are certainly many opinions about this topic.

 

Opinions

I am looking forward to getting home and starting the thread to see what people have to say. I think it is a must sometimes to have your thoughts about hitting challenged. I think sometimes we feel there is no other way to do things but ours. That is one reason why I joined this forum is to learn from and be challenged by other coaches or players. Lets spend some time this weekend thinking of what are our core beliefs in hitting and discuss it next week. Also, if you have more drills put them on this thread, I think there is a lot more people that can give there input. Also if you are a player lets hear which drills you like and why?
Scott Miller
www.gaptogapsoftball.com

 

We had a pretty lively thread on linear vs. rotational a few months back but I can't find it as I can only see 5 pages of threads.

Mods, can you find that thread and give it da bump?

 

I would love to read it, I guess there no reason to do the thread if it was just done.

 

I would rather start a new one...get fresh ideas.

The only concern I have with those kind of threads is we have a lot of youngsters that read this site and they get very confused reading about Linear vs Rotational. The advocates from both sides hold very strong views of which is better.

I think it's a very good topic, but one has to be very careful. One really needs to know what they are talking about or it can hurt some of the people reading it. It can become confusing, technical and it really comes down to what one prefers.

Many times, after this kind of discussion, one goes back to basics....See it, hit it.

When we have the time and we start this thread again. I'll post some videos showing the different swings as well as some of the hybrid swings combining both. I would like the thread to be informational vs confrontational