Baseball Hitting Aids

Baseball Hitting Aids  

Baseball Hitting Aids are very useful in improving your hitting.  They can help remove holes in your swing or make your existing swing better.  Baseball Hitting Aids come in four different varieties: (1) to improve hand and eye coordination, (2) to refine your batting swing, (3) to improve hitting power, and (4) to increase swinging speed.   

To improve hand and eye coordination 

There are a number of different products on the market that work on improving this area.  Common products include soft toss using various sizes of wiffle balls and thinner broom handle bats.  These are geared towards either reducing the size of the ball or the bat to force you to watch the ball more closely to hit it properly. 

Another popular device are the wrap around products that have a ball that is attached to a pull.  Once the ball is hit, it swings around the tree and the hitter must prepare to hit again once the ball comes back around like a tether ball.  There is some dispute over the overall effectiveness of these products, but they do allow for hand and eye coordination practice without a partner.  For this reason, they should be given some consideration.   

To refine your batting swing 

Refinement of your batting swing can take on different forms.  However, the most common example is using a basic batting tee.  These work great for helping you learn to hit to the opposite field, but can also improve your ability to hit low pitches and all others.  Another useful tool used to improve the batting swing is to use a bat that has a sliding weight in it.  These are designed to make sure have that nice click when you swing the bat forward.  This nice click translates into a strong swing that brings all your power at the right time.   

To improve hitting power 

Hitting power can be improved by either getting stronger in your swing or improving your power at the point of contact.  The most common ways to get stronger are to use strength training programs and to swing weighted bats.  These teach your muscles to carry a heavier load resulting in you having a stronger swing when shifting to the lighter bat.  To improve power at the point of contact, there are mainly two ways to do this.  One is to use a rubber tire and swing a bat into it to develop more explosion and the other is to use the flat basketball drill.  This is where you get a basketball that is flat and hit it off a batting tee.  This unique hitting will force you to hit with more power when hitting the basketball.   

To increase batting speed 

Batting speed can be improved by developing your fast twitch muscles in your arms.  One of the best ways to do this is to apply the science of plyometrics.  This is best done by swinging lighter bats that cause your muscles to swing faster than they are used to.  Once you switch over to your regular bats, the muscles will still remember the faster swing resulting in giving you an improved bat speed. 

As you can see, all baseball hitting aids will fall into these four categories.  Although we have not covered all hitting products here, you will find it to your benefit if your hitting routines have tools that focus on all four skills.

*To learn how to make the most out of your next at-bat, take a look at Baseball Hitting Tips.