Baseball or Fastpitch Softball Hitting Drill - Hands to the Ball

Baseball or Fastpitch Softball Hitting Drill - Hands to the Ball
By guest author: Jim Moyer


The dreaded Golf Swing is a common problem for Softball players. You know what I'm talking about, the player consistently misses below the ball by four or five inches. You have talked to them about taking their hands straight to the ball and about swinging level, yet time after time they are underneath the ball. You finally decide the girl is a complete moron and is unable to process the valuable information you are giving her or you determine that she must enjoy bringing you pain and misery.

Your Hitter is probably into the pain and misery he/she is causing you, but on the outside chance that's it's just a bad batting habit you should try this Hands to the Ball drill.

During your next batting practice, place your hitting tee directly behind home plate (touching the back corner of the plate) and pull the tee up to about mid-thigh. Now when the girl swings she must take her hands and bat over the tee without hitting the tee. Now break out the pitching machine and start throwing batting practice. If she drops her hands or the bat head she will hit the tee. Aaaahhhhh, success! Now she can process what you have been telling her for so long. It really won't take too many swings for her to correct the problem, however you may need to do this hitting drill at several batting practices.

This same procedure can be used in soft toss or in hitting from a tee. Just place a hitting tee behind the home plate so he/she can't drop her hands without hitting the back tee.

I have to admit, the first few swings are hysterical. The player thinks the coach is crazy for putting a tee behind her. In her mind you are NUTS thinking she is going to hit the tee. Then on that first pitch when she sends the tee tumbling forward the hitter will have a look of complete astonishment and disbelief. By the third or fourth swing a look of total disgust will have replaced the disbelief. By the sixth or seventh swing the player will finally own up to having poor hitting mechanics. Now, she is making real progress. Just like any 10 Step corrective plan, the first step is to admit there is a problem.

If you have a player with a great golf swing, it may take several sessions to re-train her muscles to swing correctly. Just stick with this drill. The player will absolutely hate hitting that tee and will be working very hard to correct the problem. In all of my years of coaching fastpitch softball and baseball, I have found this to be the single best drill for correcting the "golf swing" strikeouts.

Should she continue to hit the tee, she may very well just enjoy watching you pull your hair out. :-) Then again, you may be ruining the next Tiger Woods. But this isn't a golf team, it's Baseball or Fastpitch Softball and you need hitters, not golfers.

Jim Moyer is the author of http://www.mysoftballcoach.com Having coached over 500 youth fastpitch softball games, Jim decided to put the information online to allow parent/coaches to draw on his unique experience. See http://www.mysoftballcoach.com/play-softball.html for more fastpitch softball tips, drills and essential coaching strategies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Moyer

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Fastpitch Softball Hitting Lesson - Shoulder Rotation - SoftballHittingOnline.com

Fastpitch Softball Hitting Lesson - Shoulder Rotation - SoftballHittingOnline.com
This lesson covers proper shoulder rotation and tilt. Visit www.SoftballHittingOnline.com for instructional videos, drills etc.

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Check out these coaching articles at the Softball Coaching Digest:
SoftballCoachingDigest.com
• Articles from the Youth Softball Coaching Clinic Blog
• Articles from the Coaching Fastpitch Softball Pitchers Blog
• Articles from the Coaching Fastpitch Softball Hitters Blog
• Articles from the Tips for Fastpitch Softball Coaches Blog
• The Fastpitch Softball Training Equipment Blog
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SoftballrUs.com/FastpitchSoftballSupply.com is the ultimate online fastpitch softball online store. SoftballrUs.com has Batting Trainers,Pitching Training, Training Bats,Defensive Training Equipment

Softball Drills - Bunting

Softball Drills - Bunting
By guest author: Marc Dagenais


Although it may not look as cool as a homerun, or as exciting a fastpitch, you should also work on developing your team's bunting skills.

As you probably know already, bunting is important in certain game situations wherein you have to keep the ball away from fielders while hitting it inside fair territory. This includes plays where in you have to sacrifice your batter to let a baserunner proceed to the next base or the home plate.

So here are some drills that will help improve your team's bunting skills.

Practicing Different Bunting Types

If you want your players to practice basic bunting or several types of bunting all at once, here's a drill that would do it:

There should be two players in this drill, a hitter and a tosser. The tosser should position herself 25 ft. from the batter. The tosser throws ten balls at the hitter, one at a time. Each ball could be hit with a specific type of bunt or hit with different types, depending on the goal of the practice.

The tosser and hitter would then trade places after ten balls are thrown. You can also choose to group your players in several groups so all of them can practice bunting at once.

Practicing Bunting Accuracy

You should also develop your team's bunting accuracy to a specific area in the field. That way, they would be trained to bunt the ball towards a safe zone, out of the foul line and out of reach of the fielders.

In this drill, a rope is placed 15 ft. from the home plate and in a semicircle stretching from one sideline to the other. A pitcher and a catcher should be in their defensive positions. With the pitcher should be a full bucket of balls while the catcher with an empty one.

The hitters are positioned at the home plate where they get two chances at bunting the ball inside the rope. A successful bunt means the hitter will go to the 1st base. But missing two bunts means she will have to run to all bases and return to the home plate.

Runner on Second Base

This is the most common game situation wherein bunting is used. A hitter bunts the ball to give the runner on the 2nd base enough time to run to the 3rd

In this drill, this situation is simulated with a hitter, a baserunner on the 2nd and basemen on all bases. You should then position yourself on the mound behind the L-shaped screen to throw the ball or feed the pitching machine. The hitter would then bunt the ball to the right side of the field to allow the baserunner to advance to the 3rd base.

Want more softball drills to practice your team's bunting? Well, why don't you check out my website at www.Softballperformance.com/? I've got tons of drills on bunting, hitting, throwing, plus coaching tips for you. See you there!

Marc Dagenais is a Softball Peak Performance Coach that helps softball players turn their athletic talent into extraordinary performances and help coaches get more out of their players, turn their struggling team around or get an edge over their opponents. Visit us to sign-up to get our FREE softball pitching tips!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marc_Dagenais

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How to Improve Your Bat Speed in Fastpitch Softball

How to Improve Your Bat Speed in Fastpitch Softball

By Jim Bain

There's little doubt there are men reading this who are either macho, muscle bound jocks, or beer bellied wanna be athletes, who will scoff at the idea a player, most likely female, needs to know how to increase their bat speed for fastpitch softball.

All I can say is that just shows their ignorance of the sport. Obviously, they don't realize that female fastpitch hurlers, such as Jenny Finch, have struck major league batters out in pitching exhibitions. They don't have a clue that a softball pitcher can throw a rise, drop and curve ball, as well as a screaming fastball which rival any baseball pitcher when pitching distance is factored in.

So we won't bother addressing issues with these types of people, let's address methods of increasing our bat speed through the hitting zone. In actuality producing bat speed for softball hitters differs very little for the same desired goal in baseball.

Physical strength, like it or not, is the initial step in increasing our bat speed through the hitting zone. The Core of the body, the legs, hips, fingers and arms are the muscles of the body directly utilized to create the explosive energy required to swing the bat. Weak core strength equals a slow bat.

Therefore, the initial building block to increasing bat speed is increasing core body strength, of which the legs are first. Squats and lunges are old fashioned, yet still the undisputed best and quickest method to increase leg strength. The squats can be performed with or without weights. Should you decide to use weights, reps are more important than the amount of weight lifted, as reps builds endurance as well as muscle mass.

Lunges are an excellent method for not only increasing leg strength, but hip strength as well, which is imperative to being able to quickly open the body and create the explosive speed required to effectively hit the ball hard.

The fingers are the next body part we strengthen. No, I did not say hands, I said fingers. The hands essentially consists of two parts, the fingers and the palms. Palms have no strength, they are only there to affect holding an object, while the fingers squeeze the object. Squeezing a tennis or racquetball will increase the finger strength and there are balls designed for specifically squeezing which will also work.

Now that we have strengthened our core body, let's look at some drills you can perform which will also help increase bat speed as well as hitting in general.

Balance is a huge factor in maintaining body control which is essential to a good quick bat swing.

Here's a very simple drill for training hitters to not over stride. A rule of thumb is the hitter's stride should not exceed the length of his bat. Have two players working together, each with the same length bat.

The hitter takes a stride and swing as if he were hitting a pitch. He stops before his follow through. The second player lays his bat down between the hitters feet. If the stride is @ the same length, the stride is good.

If it's over extended the hitter is over striding and off balance. If the stride is much shorter than the bat, the hitter is losing most of his power.

This drill may seem extremely simple, but the redundancy of taking the correct stride provides memory retention for all the muscles required to stride. After a while the hitter will immediately feel the difference if he unconsciously develops an issue with his stride and can quickly correct it.

Another simple drill is what I call the Walking the Plank Drill.

Use a 2x10 or 2x12 wooden board, the longer the better. The hitter stands on the board in his hitting stance. He takes an imaginarily stride, swing and follow through.

He then crosses his legs (right leg over left if right handed) and again takes his stance and repeats the procedure. This drill is simple yet effective in training the hitter to always step forward towards the pitch while maintaining his balance.

These drills used in conjunction with other hitting drills, strength training and flexibility will have a huge impact on increasing the speed of your bat swing.

Jim Bain - Former Minor league baseball player, who since retiring has dedicated his life to teaching baseball to youth. Visit his exciting info packed website: http://www.Learn-Youth-Baseball-Coaching.com
http://www.Learn-Youth-Baseball-Coaching.com/BatSpeed.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Bain

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