26 Jun Stop Hitting Ground Balls
Overview
Discover simple ground ball buster hitting drills and tips to improve your approach, pitch selection, barrel control, core mechanics, rotation, and fix pulling off the ball.
Page Menu
Part 1
Hitting Approach
Part 2
Hitting Mechanics And Drills
Part 1. Hitting Approach
Tee For OneTee For One Approach, Self-Learning, Adjustments. hitlasers.com
Posted by Hit Lasers on Saturday, February 23, 2019
Pitch Selection
Seeing the ball early improves pitch selection, reducing your season’s ground ball tally.
- Focus on a small window, anticipating the pitcher’s release point.
- After the ball releases, track it with confidence letting the baseball travel and trusting your bat speed.
- Early in the batting count look for a pitch you can handle, higher in the zone. Opposingly, swinging at a pitch below your knees, and on the outside of home plate, generally, results in hitting a grounder; excluding bottom hand dominant hitters with excellent barrel control, in this case, a low ball is your preferred pitch.
- Standing in on a pitcher warming up the bullpen improves your game day vision skills.
- Study the movement of a pitch, for example, slider, sinker, curve, change, knuckle, split-finger, two and four-seam fastballs.
- Focus on tracking the ball out of the pitcher’s hand, and down the hitting funnel; past home plate, landing in the catcher’s glove.
Pulling Off An Outside Pitch
- Lacking discipline in your hitting approach increases strikeouts and grounders.
- To prevent pulling off an outside pitch allocate seventy percent of your batting practice swings “up the middle” to the “opposite field.”
- Focus on a target area during batting practice, aiming for your location; developing the correct hitting approach to fix a ground ball swing.
Part 2. Hitting Mechanics And Drills
Barrel Control
HOW CAN I CUT DOWN ON HITTING GROUNDERS?
CONTROL YOUR BAT BARREL FOR POWERFUL CONTACT
- Training one-hand isolation drills, improve power mechanics, and forearm strength; working to control the level of your barrel at contact.
- Top hand drill improves mechanics, and strength critical for contact closer to your body.
- Bottom hand drill improves mechanics, and strength critical for contact farther away from your body.
- Lacking critical top hand skills, causes you to roll your forearms too soon; the action of rolling over raises your bat’s barrel; hitting the top of the ball, defining a ground ball swing.
Key Benefits of Isolation Drills
- Swinging your game-day bat with one hand improves performance when returning to both hands.
- Exposing a weakness in your swing, for example, hitting inside, outside, high, or low pitches.
- Helps players who are rolling over, pulling off, dipping the back shoulder and barrel, or failing to stay through the ball.
- Balances strength for a complete power swing, as opposed to one hand dominating the other; making you a one-dimensional hitter.
- Improves core mechanics, connecting the upper and lower body parts of your swing.
SWING ISOLATION
DRILLS AND TIPS FOR FIXING A GROUND BALL SWING
- Top hand, drills work on the ball higher in the strike zone, lower for bottom hand drills.
- Isolate your core by lowering your hands and elbows close to your torso.
- Stay relaxed with your grip, swing tension reduces bat speed.
- Turn your back leg using your core, more specifically your hip joint, while keeping your hands back.
- Whip the bat to the ball using your core.
- Control your barrel at contact.
- Roll the barrel on your follow through, before your back-side shoulder overextends.
- We recommend advanced players swing a heavy training bat (the same length as your game day bat) to improve mechanics, bat speed, strength, and power; critical for the next level.