Baseball Player Magazine

Softball is a game of repetition, you can never take too many swings. I believe that the best way to perfect your swing is doing tee work every day. There are so many different drills you can do on a tee. Each drill you do can help a part of your swing whether it’s your weight transfer or bat extension, there’s a drill for it.

My top five hitting drills to help you improve your swing:

1.  Walk-Through

2.  Top Hand

3.  Bottom Hand

4.  Elevation

5.  Long Tee

Walk-Through

The walk-through drill is for your rhythm and timing. Set yourself back from the tee so you are able to have room to walk through. There are three ways you can do this drill: step behind, step in front, or step in to out. Make sure separation occurs as your front foot gets to toe touch, go slow to fast and hit through a long zone.

Top & Bottom Hand

For the top & bottom hand drills you can use a regular bat, or a smaller bat for more control. For my older students and college players, I prefer they use their regular bat to get a realistic feel through the zone. Make sure when you do these drills you are in a strong position and do everything the same as if you had two hands on the bat. The goal of the top hand is to make sure you create space between your elbow and back hip. This swinging motion would be comparable to skipping a stone across a pond. How you throw a frisbee is the same way you want your bottom hand to go through the swing. You want to lead with your front elbow and stay inside the ball, having your hands go through a long zone.

Elevation

During this drill you want to use something that will elevate your back foot, like a piece of wood or a workout platform. You want to be in your normal hitting stance, the only thing that changes is that your back foot is on the platform giving you a strong attacking posture through the ball. Make sure you do your negative move?

ment and feel the weight on the inside of your leg.

Long Tee

This drill can be done on a field or in a batting cage, you want to set yourself up in the batter’s box with the tee in front of home plate. Long tee is great because it gives you instant feedback. You want to focus on driving the ball up the middle, if you roll your top hand you are going to see yourself pull the ball.