The Catch and Crush Hitting Drill is one of the best baseball hitting drills because it fixes so many of the common problems that I see with young hitters. By catching the baseball and keeping it over the tee, the hitter will learn how to keep his upper body closed, while his lower body starts to open.
Soft toss is a foundational training activity that can help athletes improve their swing. “It’s good for your time. It’s good for bat speed and it’s also good for getting your hips around and really extending and getting that power into every time you swing on the ball,” Pezzelle says.
The overall concept is simple, lower body before upper body. In a perfect baseball swing, the back elbow should pull back against the leg pushing forward. This tug of war is how we can optimize our swing speed. The lower body turns forward, upper body resists for as long as possible, and then BOOM.
In baseball, the four steps to hitting are the stance, stride, toe touch, and the swing. Each batter may have a different variation for how they approach each step, but all batters must go through each of these steps to successfully hit a baseball.
By age 7 or 8, young baseball players have a bit more coordination, and coaches can start to go beyond the basics of how to catch, throw, field, hit and run the bases. Game-like situations help young players think on their feet, and to communicate and collaborate with each other. Baseball is a team sport, after all.
In general, players should take batting practice 3 times a week. The more advanced the baseball league, the more times players should be taking batting practice. Little League players usually take batting practice 2-3 times per week while Major League players take batting practice 7 times per week.
#3: Overweight Baseballs Help Condition the Arm
Weighted (overload) baseballs will decrease the kinematics of the throwing motion while likely increasing the kinetics on the shoulder and elbow joint.
We are using similar muscles that we used in the swing such as the hip flexors, hip rotators, rotator cuff musculature, deltoids, lats, and wrist pronators, pectoral muscles, quads, glutes, hamstrings, and the muscles responsible for flexion in your back.
A few great exercises to improve core strength include:- Planks.
Sit ups/crunches.
Push ups.
Bench press.
Medicine ball rotations.
Bat Speed - Speed of the Bat
10U | 13-14 |
---|---|
Baseball (e) non-wood (elite) | 40-50 (45-55) |
Baseball wood (elite) | |
Fastpitch (b) (elite) | () |
Having good mechanics obviously helps a hitter be successful! Having a good controlled load and stride. Then getting to a good launch position where they have hand and hip separation and good torso tilt will set them up to be able to unleash with increased bat speed!