3 Strength Building Drills to Make Your Baseball Bat the Most Powerful in Your Baseball League

By Nick Dixon

These 3 batting drills should be a part of every serious baseball players daily batting practice routine. These hitting drills are well known and recognized for increasing bat speed and power. These drills should be done regularly during the off season.

Batting Drill #1 - Top Hand Drill

Purpose: To increase the coordination and skill of the top hand on the bat. The top hand is the hand that guides and controls the bat. Building strength in the top hand can make it take a stronger role in the swing thus, improving bat accuracy and bat speed.

Procedure: You can do this drill with tossed balls, a hitting stick device or a batting machine. The most common way to do this drill is to have the player assume a position with the back knee down and the front leg extended. This body position makes the batter use only the forearm and arm to control the bat. The batting aid or target should be held above the head of the batter. The batter should be instructed to take the barrel above the ball and hit the top of the ball to drive the ball unit downward.

Reps: It is recommended that a better do at least 30 to 45 top hand reps a day divided into 3 sets.

Coaching Point - The heavier the bat is the better. These are strength building exercises. We want to limit the number of reps to less than 50 three times a week. We do not want to do these during the season. We would only do these until 2 weeks before the season begins. You should also incorporate some quick hands or speed hands workouts into your daily routine as well.

Batting Drill #2 - Power Hand Drill

Purpose: To increase the muscle strength and power of the bottom hand on the bat. The bottom hand is the hand that generated bat speed and power. Building strength in the bottom hand can make it stronger and increase bat speed and power.

Procedure: You can do this drill with tossed balls, a hitting stick device or a batting machine. The most common way to do this drill is to have the player assume his normal stance. The batter should have his feet shoulder width apart. The batter will turn the hips and pivot on the back foot to do each swing. Special emphasis should be given the batter to grip the bat near the knob. The batting aid or target should be held above the belly button of the batter. The batter should be instructed to take the barrel and drive the barrel through the ball. The bat should be moving parallel to the ground.

Reps: It is recommended that a better do at least 30 to 45 top hand reps a day divided 3 sets.

Coaching Point - The heavier the bat is the better. The batter must keep the bat higher enough to be parallel to the ground or higher. The movement of the bat should never be downward. Therefore the target to hit must be kept high. The reason for this is that the batter can not be aided by gravity if the bat moves parallel to the ground and level. Any downward movement by the bat reduces the work of the muscles and reduces the effectiveness of the drill.

Batting Drill #3 - Bat Power Resistance Drill

Purpose: Use strength building resistance exercises to increase the strength and power of the muscles in the hands, forearms, and shoulders that are vital in generating bat speed and power. The stronger these muscles are the more bat speed and power the batter will be able to generate.

Procedure: This weight resistance exercise requires a stationary object like a pole, corner of a wall, or tree to give resistance to the bat during this exercise. The bat will not move. The batter will do these 3 exercises.

Exercise - Knob Drive Resistance Weight Exercise

The batter when flex the muscles of the forearms. The batter will put place the knob against the resisting object. The batter will flex the muscles 10 times at two locations. The two locations are:
Pressing downward
Pressing toward the pitcher
Exercise - Bat Barrel Resistance Weight Exercise
The batter when flex the muscles of the hands, fingers, forearms and biceps. The batter will put place the bat barrel against the resisting object. The batter will flex the muscles 10 times at two locations. The two locations are:
6 Inches behind the belly button - belt high - (toward catcher)
6 Inches in front of the belly button - belt high - (toward pitcher)
12 Inches in front of the belly button - belt high - (toward pitcher)
Coaching Point - Each exercise is done with the batter keeping the barrel level, belt high, and pressing toward the pitcher.

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Nick Dixon is the President and founder of Nedco Sports, a sports training company established in 1999. Dixon is also an active and full time high school baseball coach with over 25 years experience. Coach Dixon is better known as the inventor of the BatAction Hitting Machine, the SKLZ Derek Jeter Hurricane Hitting Machine, the SKLZ Target Trainer, the SKLZ Derek Jeter ZipnHit Pro, and the SKLZ Strikeback Trainer. Dixon is also a contributing writer for BaseballCoachingDigest, the Youth Baseball Digest, the Baseball Parent Guide, the Baseball 2Day Coaches Journal, and Blog4Coaches.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nick_Dixon

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Baseball Swing Secrets to Learning the Right Mechanics Quickly!

By Joey Myers

The perfect baseball swing is like poetry in motion...watching Joe Mauer, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriquez, or Manny Ramirez hit leaves anyone with an awe that is indescribable. They've taken hundreds of thousands of cuts to create such a beautiful swing with such devastating impact on pitchers.

But, do you really have that kind of time with:


The new season coming up?
A big tournament being a week from now? or maybe you
Have to get ready for a big scouting showcase?

What you need is to SUPER-learn the baseball swing, like, yesterday!

Well, this article will go into what it's going to take to do just that. Doing the following will not make your swing perfect , it never will be, but you'll be able to take the information from the Smart Hitting Tips tab on the navigation bar, do what's prescribed here, and have a helluva showing.

Most of the following tips are hard rooted in research based on state-of-the-art Neuroscience and Exercise Science practice & theory...

This isn't a get hits quick scheme either, and will take A LOT of work, 2,000+ reps a week to be exact, but you'll train your brain and body to harmonize, building to successful baseball swing execution.

Ready?? Hold your horses...First,

You must create a time-line...when do you want to accomplish this? In a week (recommended, at least)? or 2? A month? Decide that first, then move on to the following Steps...

STEP 1: Make Small Circles

Start off slow with one concept, two at most, a day and breakdown each and every movement by going in extremely slow motion. You're brain is like a record...the more you do a movement, the more the needle wears the grooves on the surface of the vinyl... the more reps you do, the deeper and more solid the grooves.

Be careful because it can also work against you, by doing the movement wrong, so start off slow the right way, then speed up.

STEP 2: Balancing Act

Using the Balance & Reach Drill a foot or two off the ground will cause your brain to engage more muscles to stabilize the whole body, and the more you engage the Central Nervous System, the more muscles get recruited, and the faster your body picks up the technique.

Also, doing regular swings on an unstable surface, like on a narrow cushiony weight bench, diving board, exercise bose ball, or with eyes closed, the better off you'll be in record time.

STEP 3: Reps Before Bed

Studies have shown going through the motions before bedtime helps to burn them into your brain better. It has to do with the Four Stages of REM Sleep ...major repairs, both physically and cerebrally, go on in the 3rd and 4th Stages of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. If you don't get to the last two stages, then your body doesn't repair itself, which leads us to the next Step...

STEP 4: Set Alarm for 4.5 Hours

In order to speed up the learning process for developing an effective baseball swing, you have to take advantage of two sets of REM sleep. Do your swing repetitions before bed, set your alarm clock for 4.5 hours, wake up and do more reps, then finish off your sleep or the next REM cycle.

What this does is complete one cycle of REM (all 4 stages), then reset your body (by waking up) for another round, deepening those grooves in the brain. By doing this you're 50% more likely to make "stick" the desired technique.

All this can be possible if you...

STEP 5: Do NOT Eat Carbohydrates Past 6pm

Eating enough Carbs to spike your insulin, anytime past 6pm will keep you from getting to Stage 3 & 4 of REM sleep. Our natural occurring human growth hormones (HGH) get released in those stages of sleep ONLY, to repair the body. To allow that to happen, we have to chill out on the Carbs after hours.

And most importantly for your baseball swing, not only will you not repair and heal, but learning is dampened and your immune system crashes.

Last but not least,

STEP 6: Hyper-Computing for Cadence

Once we get a handle on all of the above baseball swing hyper-learning points, now we can speed up our micro processors. By doing this, we train the Central Nervous system by speeding up our motion to get the proper tempo or cadence.

Key point: do NOT attempt this until you have a solid handle on the proper form and movement first.

Speeding up the process of a particular part of the swing helps to deepen the specific movement groove in the brain, so when you engage the correct tempo, the movement is more natural.

You have to exaggerate a technique (in this case, speeding up the cadence), to get the right motion.

This is also great training for combating fast tempo pitchers, who when you step in the batter's box and look up, the pitch is already on its way.

The bottom line about HYPER-learning the baseball swing?

For these 6 Steps to be effective, you have to take between 1,200 to 2,000 repetitions a week...the RIGHT reps. Remember, wearing grooves in your brain can work for OR against you. Keep in mind, with that amount of swings in a small time-frame, you're going to develop blisters and sore muscles. Try and work through them, but if it comes to the sacrifice of good form, then stop, let them heal, and get back on the horse.

To Hyper-Heal sore muscles, do what the Soviet athletes did in the 80-90's, ice the sore spots for 5 minutes, then plunge into a hot bath or spa for 15 minutes, and repeat the process a couple times. This sequence also helps your body release melatonin, which will aid in putting you to sleep.

For blisters, drain them, but don't cut away the whole dead skin blister layer for a couple days...put antibiotic ointment between the dead and raw skin, and cover with a band-aid & athletic tape. They also have blister spray skin toughener, which you may want to look into...it burns like hell for a moment, but makes it so you can hit again with virtually no pain.

We hope you enjoyed this baseball swing article, remember we're always adding content, so please subscribe to the RSS feed, blog, and/or The Dugout Newsletter to stay up-to-date with the latest baseball hitting information.

My name is Joey Myers, and I played 18 total years of baseball finishing my career after my fourth year of college (2000-2003) as a Fresno State Bulldog (the 2008 College World Series Champions). I'm very grateful for the success I had at Bullard High School, and getting a scholarship to play at a Division I university, Fresno State, where I started 110 out of the 178 games I played, in the outfield. Now I devote most of my life to baseball swing coaching and personal fitness training. My websites are http://www.swing-smarter-baseball-hitting-drills.com/ and http://www.corecreationsonline.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joey_Myers

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