Hitting Tips – Baseball Swing Advice & How to Play Baseball by Jack Perconte

Most hitters have natural swing tendencies that may not be fundamentally correct and therfore may be hard to overcome. The key is finding that one hitting drill that “fights” against that negative natural tendency. Players should use that hitting drill often to overcome the bad habit and go back to it when they begin to [...]

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Never Fail to Analyze Results
Very simple hitting tips for quick fixes – when hitters are hitting to many ground balls hitters should set the batting tee at their knees and hit till they start to hit line drives.
Similarly, when they are popping everything up they should work on chest high pitches [...]

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Don’t Neglect the Baseball Drills
If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times – players begin the season hitting up a storm and gradually fall off as the season goes on. Did the pitching improve that much? Probably not. What is missing is that players stop [...]

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In Need of a Quick Hitting Fix?
An often made statement I make in my hitting lessons is, “Maybe we should make you a one handed hitter.” This is said facetiously, of course, but there is merit to it. Most kids actually have better swings when they hit with one hand or [...]

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Many young hitters have trouble firming up their front leg when they hit and/or have trouble rotating their hips correctly into the ball. When their front leg collapses (bends) at contact they generally lose bat speed and drop their head and bat causing them to mishit the ball. When hitters fail [...]

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I have taught baseball players the art of hitting for over 21 years now. One thing I’ve leaned is that unlike, pitching and fielding, it is important to work on a hitters upper body (bat position and 1st move) before addressing their lower body issues. “A long swing” creates lower body issues that [...]

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There are many hitting aides on the market but I believe the batting tee is still the best batting aide to assist hitters in their swing development. Unfortunately, most players, coaches and parents do not know how to use the batting tee correctly. Because of that, the tee does not do them much [...]

I have talked many times of the value of having hitters hit on a self-made balance beam. I realize many people are not going to make one,
so here is a possible solution to helping hitters with balance and overstriding issues. Look around the house for a small table or bench that is as wide or [...]

Good article at http://baseballcoachesdigest.blogspot.com/2009/12/minimizing-head-movement-and-rotational.html on the importance of the head (which controls the eyes of course). A few baseball hitting drills that will help hitters with this idea are the following:
1. Place hitter on their back knee for some tee work or soft toss flips.
2. Have hitters stand straight with their feet together and don’t have [...]

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Bad habits are often formed at the beginning of the season and hitters may not ever recover. Here are 5 baseball hitting tips that will help prevent bad habits  from forming.
1. Do not head out to the batting cages as the way to begin preseason- practice. Trying to gain timing before the swing [...]

It is a beautiful sight to see a hitter who appears to not even swing hard and see the ball jump off their bat. That is the groove Chase Utley of the Phillies was in. Obviously, he is swinging hard but because of his compact swing and overall balance, there appears to be so little effort exerted. [...]

Excerpt of Jack’s Ezine Article – There are very few coaches of young baseball players who can look at a baseball swing and know it is a good fundamental swing. Even many high school coaches are not experienced enough to do this. There are some fine technical ingredients that are hard to notice by an [...]

Head down at contact

Throwing Numbers

  Often when hitters have trouble timing the ball, the problem is that they are not seeing the ball the whole way from the pitchers hand to the contact area. Sometimes they are concentrating on “waiting” for the ball, which is usually a good thing, but they may forget to concentrate [...]

Knob pointing out, not down – barrel falling back

 
 
 
 
 
 
When working with hitters, the most common mistake I would encounter were hitters who would not begin their swing from the correct hitting position. Instead of keeping the knob of the bat down before swinging, they would push the knob of the bat up and allow the [...]

The 3rd drill coaches can use when there is only time for three drills would be the 1,2,3,4 drill. This drill will allow the coach to check the hitters swing positions every step of the way.
Execution of baseball swing drill 1,2,3,4:

 
The second hitting drill to use to start the season or when there is only time for a few drills, which often is the case, with the amount of practice time available, is the back knee fire drill. I would also call this the “check the swing” drill because this is usually what happens when [...]

Often, I get the question “If you could only teach 3 hitting drills to hitters, which ones would they be? This is obviously a tough question when there are so many good hitting drills that address hitting fundamentals. To answer the question I usually go with these 3 and I will explain why.

It is very common for hitters to just grab a bat and begin hitting at the beginning of the season or before a game. Hitting a pitched ball will help hitters to develop their timing, which of course is important. However, it is unlikely that those hitters will be able to change their hitting fundmentals [...]

photo credit: Matt Vorwald
Baseball Hitting – Power
Everybody wants to hit with more power. This is easier said than done. Smaller and weaker hitters are at an obvious disadvantage but their are still steps that can be done.