Hitting Stations for practice
- Thread starter lynx
- Start date
Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch
Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.
Cannonball
Ex "Expert"
- Feb 25, 2009
- 4,881
- 113
You wouldn't understand most of ours without a lot of explanation and I don't think I could do so well enough on this site. I'll list a few. BTW, we rarely have less than 7 stations (14 players) and rarely use a machine.
Stork Drill - This drill is called many things but the hitter lifts the front leg and we have them lock their foot behind the back knee. Oh, you are hitting off of a tee. We have our hitter "get their front hip in the way" or get a sense of rotating their back hip like sticking the butt out. For some, this is natural. Then, as the hitter takes that front foot/leg and strides, they get that front hip, "out of the way."
Happy Gilmore. I think everyone does this. We stress momentum in this drill.
The Progression Drill is front toss. We take three balls and place them on the ground approximately where we think a hitter should make contact with the ball. So, one inside is in the river but out in front. One ball is on the front edge of the plate. One is in the river away and approximately where the plate angles back to the point. Now, the feeder throws the balls in a progression inside, middle, away. We have targets for the hitter to hit on those tosses.
Whip Hit Drill. We use a Whip Hit and stagger our tee work between a good strike and a borderline high pitch. We hit tennis balls off of the tee in this drill.
We do a lot of hitting off of tees and front toss with wood so we have a Cam Bat, an old wooden softball bat and the wood bat my dd grew up using. I like hitting with wood.
Two Feed Drill - We have our hitters stand with both feet together and they are hitting off of a tee. The lift their front leg up bending at the knee in a 90 degrees. At the same time, we have our hitter take the barrel of their bat and have it go parallel to the ground in front of them. As our hitter unloads, they have to turn the barrel of the bat quickly and hit the ball.
The other drills we do are more complicated and, to be honest, I want to avoid too many arguments about them that are sure to follow.
Finally, we take our hitters, show them video of what we want from top FP players and MLB Players, show them video of their swing and then give them drill work specific to what we think that they need to concentrate on. It is not uncommon for a player to come to me during practice and say that a certain tee is for XXX and should they do XXX instead. I hope you found some of this beneficial.
