Hitting Drills For Softball Practice
To maximize your batting practice with your team and develop proper swing mechanics is to develop proper muscle memory, you need to plan your practice to give the players the largest number of swings in the shortest amount of time. With a little organization, this is very easy do.
It is important to note that perfect practice makes perfect play. If the players are not swinging with correct fundamentals all they are doing is reinforcing bad muscle memory. Poor hitting mechanics means there will be "holes" in the swing that become easy offensive outs and increase player frustration. Perfect practice creates proper muscle memory that means more hard hit balls.
Here is what we do is set up six different batting stations around the field and divide the team into six groups (try to keep only two players per group). To get 400 swings in 60 minutes using six stations for one hour allocates 10 minutes per station. The pitching machine station can only provide about 40 swings in the allotted time. This leaves us with 360 swings for 5 stations; therefore, you must average 72 perfect swings per station per player.
Here are some example batting stations:
1. Underload and Overload practice swings: 5 sets of 10 underload and 10 overload = 100 swings concentrating on bat speed. Practice swings without a ball develops good balance and proper swing mechanics.
2. Circular soft toss drill: coach soft tosses 15 balls from behind, 15 balls from the side, and 20 balls from the front = 50 swings focused on hitting the middle of the ball. This drill adds the element of a slowly moving ball with the batter concentrating on hitting the middle of the ball at the ball-bat contact point for line drives into the outfield.
3. Ball location batting tee drill: 2 sets of 10 outside, 10 middle, and 10 inside = 60 swings concentrating on hitting location and driving the ball in all directions. Working with a tee adds the element of hitting the ball without ball movement so the batter can focus on another element, in this case driving the ball to all fields. By removing the ball movement a batter can develop good balance and contact point location to be able to hit to all fields.
4. Wiffle ball short toss: 3 sets of 10 outside, 10 middle, and 10 inside = 90 swings concentrating on getting the whole swing together but with the ball moving at a slower speed than during the game. With a short distance, the coach can position the pitch at different positions within the strike zone to provide additional batting practice for hitting to all fields.
5. One arm tee work: 3 sets of 10 back hand only and 10 front hand only = 60 swings focusing on hand movement through the strike zone. The front hand guides the bat through the strike zone and the back hand provides the power to the swing. This drill isolates the hand movement through the hitting zone.
6. Hitting practice off a pitching machine: 40 swings concentrating on timing the swing. By mixing up machine balls from different manufactures, provides variation in speed and pitch location to simulate a variety of ball movement. It is very difficult to teach batting mechanics with a machine, but is very effective with hitter timing.
By giving the players several hundered swings per practice and isolating the hitting mechanics, you give the player a lot of swings to develop their hitting mechanics. The most important aspect of the batting portion of practice is to allow your batters the maximum amount of swings to develop correct muscle memory so that when they are in the game they can focus on tracking the pitch and not their hitting form.
It is important to note that perfect practice makes perfect play. If the players are not swinging with correct fundamentals all they are doing is reinforcing bad muscle memory. Poor hitting mechanics means there will be "holes" in the swing that become easy offensive outs and increase player frustration. Perfect practice creates proper muscle memory that means more hard hit balls.
Here is what we do is set up six different batting stations around the field and divide the team into six groups (try to keep only two players per group). To get 400 swings in 60 minutes using six stations for one hour allocates 10 minutes per station. The pitching machine station can only provide about 40 swings in the allotted time. This leaves us with 360 swings for 5 stations; therefore, you must average 72 perfect swings per station per player.
Here are some example batting stations:
1. Underload and Overload practice swings: 5 sets of 10 underload and 10 overload = 100 swings concentrating on bat speed. Practice swings without a ball develops good balance and proper swing mechanics.
2. Circular soft toss drill: coach soft tosses 15 balls from behind, 15 balls from the side, and 20 balls from the front = 50 swings focused on hitting the middle of the ball. This drill adds the element of a slowly moving ball with the batter concentrating on hitting the middle of the ball at the ball-bat contact point for line drives into the outfield.
3. Ball location batting tee drill: 2 sets of 10 outside, 10 middle, and 10 inside = 60 swings concentrating on hitting location and driving the ball in all directions. Working with a tee adds the element of hitting the ball without ball movement so the batter can focus on another element, in this case driving the ball to all fields. By removing the ball movement a batter can develop good balance and contact point location to be able to hit to all fields.
4. Wiffle ball short toss: 3 sets of 10 outside, 10 middle, and 10 inside = 90 swings concentrating on getting the whole swing together but with the ball moving at a slower speed than during the game. With a short distance, the coach can position the pitch at different positions within the strike zone to provide additional batting practice for hitting to all fields.
5. One arm tee work: 3 sets of 10 back hand only and 10 front hand only = 60 swings focusing on hand movement through the strike zone. The front hand guides the bat through the strike zone and the back hand provides the power to the swing. This drill isolates the hand movement through the hitting zone.
6. Hitting practice off a pitching machine: 40 swings concentrating on timing the swing. By mixing up machine balls from different manufactures, provides variation in speed and pitch location to simulate a variety of ball movement. It is very difficult to teach batting mechanics with a machine, but is very effective with hitter timing.
By giving the players several hundered swings per practice and isolating the hitting mechanics, you give the player a lot of swings to develop their hitting mechanics. The most important aspect of the batting portion of practice is to allow your batters the maximum amount of swings to develop correct muscle memory so that when they are in the game they can focus on tracking the pitch and not their hitting form.
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