7 Youth Baseball Hitting Drills – Hit To Stars Like A Pro!

Last Updated on July 24, 2022

Hitting drills in baseball is more like a strategic approach to improve your visual and wrist ability as a batter. There are countless drills in the baseball world. However, I’m gonna share insights about mainly youth baseball hitting drills in this article.

As a coach of a bunch of high-school daredevils, I should admit, drills can add great value to your baseball skills. These develop your muscle memories of hands, shoulders and lower body. All of them coordinate to make a perfect shot on the ground. 

If you’re bored of conventional training and want to try a scientific solution to polish up your batting, add drills in your training chart. 

Whether you’re a beginner or trying to teach your kids how to improve hitting, this discussion covers all you need to know. Let’s dive directly in the first drill.

7 Youth Baseball Hitting Drills for Beginners and Intermediate Players 

The below seven hitting drills are mainly designed and focused to improve hitting skills of youth players just starting out. Each has their own benefits. Experiment with different drills until you find what works best for you.

1. Controlled Fall Hitting Drill

Let’s start with one of my favorite youth baseball hitting drills. A little league batter gets an adequate launch position with this fall drill strategy. Particularly, this style gives you a well-balanced  stride. 

Rule of Thumb 

Just like other youth baseball hitting drills, timing is the most vital factor to make a successful controlled fall drilling. Keeping a rhythm between hands and legs movement is crucial in this. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t collapse your back body during the move, yet you’ll get a good stride. As a result, you can achieve a stronger foundation to hit the ball with more strength. 

How to Do a Controlled Fall Hitting Drill?

The best way to start this drill is either positioning the bat on the shoulder or stance. If you’re left-handed, stand on your left leg and change the leg if you’re right-handed. Try to keep the balance in this position. 

Next, you’ve to shift to the launching position. So, move your front leg (left for lefties, right for righties) downward and forward simultaneously. It’s more like a 45-degree forwarding leg movement.  

“In Baseball, launch position is the step you take prior to making the point of solid contact or more specifically, hitting the ball”

During this stride, you will get your body weight distributed to both legs and your body will get a better balance. 

That was the leg part. In this style, hand gestures are more necessary than legs. You should load the hands towards the catcher. 

Make sure to unlock your front arm. Also, don’t extend them. Now shift your hands towards the launch position as well. 

Advantages

• Allows hitters to make stronger foundation
• Regular practice enables faster striding 
• Can be learned at on-deck circle or small room
• Improves both balance and timing skill level

2. One-Handed Hitting Drills

It was a hot summer day, I was at the batting order when suddenly I felt my right shoulder off. But instead of going back to the pavilion, I decided to hold and play with one hand. 

No home runs were in luck, but I got tons of doubles-triples, mate and stayed there strong till my team won the match!

Wondering the secret? It’s the one-hand batting technique that helped me out. Feeling tired or numb-hand is common on the ground. And surely, learning this drilling in early days can add a lot of value to your batting career. 

Rule of Thumb 

Because of its complexities, I advise you to add this in your regular batting practice. Choosing the right baseball bat for practice is also a mandatory factor to get friendly to this drilling skill fast. 

For young baseball hitters, the standard bat weight is 20 ounces or 1.25 lbs. If talking about length, pick something that’s 2-inch shorter than the bat you use for the main game (example; if the game bat is 33.5 inches long, the practice bat should be 31-31.5 inches). 

How to Do a One-Hand Hitting Drill?

There are two types of single-hand hitting drill for youth players, bottom hand and top hand. Let ‘s take a look at them one by one. Both are quite similar, but grasping these methods with proper technique is pretty tricky. 

Bottom hand: Start in the normal batting stance while leaving the bottom hand on the bat. When taking your stride, don’t go over the batting tee. Instead, stride to it. 

While loading your injured or unused hand, make sure to align the position with the other hand as shown in the image. It’s more like not holding the bat, still, moving with the hand movement. 

Don’t drag your bat through the zone. You should use the shoulder and hip to drive the hands towards the point of contact. Complete the entire swing at once. 

Top hand: It’s quite similar to the bottom-hand style. You’ve to start again in your normal batting stance. Then start loading towards the catcher’s feet. While loading, make sure to keep it against your leg and backside hip. 

Then move the action hand through the ball. Following the gesture, complete a perfect swing plane.

“Tips: You should isolate your both hands while practicing this drill. In that way, you can if there is mistake a mistake in the gesture”

Advantages

• Enables batters to hit with one hand when injured 
• Level up the strength of each striking hand 

3. Two-Ball Soft Toss Drill 

It’s actually an advanced drill technique of the soft toss. As the name suggests, in this two-ball soft toss drill for youth players, you’ve to practice with 2 balls. 

However,  you just need to focus and hit any of the balls thrown to you. Unlike other drills, the purpose of this drill is to improve your concentration. 

Rule of Thumb 

To perform a two-ball soft toss drill, you’ll need a pitcher. While you prepare for a shot, the pitcher will call out the pitching styles like how he’ll pitch the ball. 

And you’ve to follow his lead to make the shot. It’s better if you can practice outside of the home or in an indoor baseball playground.

“It’s not about how powerfully you can hit the ball. The goal of this batting exercise is to improve your focus and eye contact with the ball.” 

How to Do a Two-Ball Soft Toss Hitting Drill?

Get your position on the home plate. Ask your pitching partner to sit at a 45-angle on his or her knees.

Now, your mate will pitch two balls at the same time and as decided by the gravitational force and throwing angle, one ball is supposed to be pitched at higher, another one should be lower. 

When he’s pitching, he should call out the ball with “high” or “low” and you need to hit according to his calls. That’s it. 

Advantage

• Helps in improving your aim 
• Enhance your focus on the pitching, from deliver to the hit 

4. Flamingo Hitting Drill

To make a great hit, every aspect of swing synchronization is more important than the strength. If you can build good hand-eye coordination, there is less chance of duck shot or mistakes on the main game. 

Whether it’s about the swings, the control on the bat, balance and lower body rotation, each of them is a vital measure. Flamingo is a fun drill and a complete package of them all. 

Rule of Thumb 

You need to get on your back foot in order to perform this drill. There should be momentum through the ball also. 

How to Do a Flamingo Hitting Drill?

In the first step, you should load on your back leg. Raise your front leg when moving the body backward. Reach a 90-angle here. 

Try to keep your stride control stable to the tree. In the meantime, load your hands and start the normal swing action. Move forward to the point of contact, leading with the lower half of your body. 

You should continue the movement flow after hitting the baseball. Following the rotation, your hitting hand should be at backward, pointing towards the catchers.

If you’re a right-handed hitter, point your shoulder towards the 2nd basement. On the flip side, if you’re lefty, keep it towards the shortstop. 

Advantages

• Good strategy for hitters to practice swing action
• Helps to improve load ability 
• Quite effective drill to generate more power from the back body 
• Fixes the stability or balancing issue of the back leg 

5. Medicine Ball Toss Hitting Drill

Batting average score is essential, but to get a stadium full of baseball chants crave for a home run. So, it’s better to prepare yourself for those powerful shots.

The name may sound a little off-beat, but to enhance your hitting power, there is nothing that can defeat this drilling style. To hit a home run, achieving an explosive movement power is the core. 

The drilling strategy helps build the strength of both hands. Alongside the strength, it can improve the response of your muscle memories. This simple drill is also quite easy to adapt. 

Rule of Thumb 

Every lifted heavy objects for some moments? And then trying to lift a lightweight object becomes easier, right?

The following drill exactly works like that. You’ll need a medicine ball. For kids starters, the ball shouldn’t weigh more than 6 lbs. However, you can go for a heavier ball over time. 

How to Do a Medicine Ball Toss Drill?

Stand beside a wall and load up the ball with both hands. Here, consider the wall as the pitcher. Keep a little space between both feet while standing. You may want to reach the normal stance, but due to the ball weight and size, you can’t. But don’t stress out. 

Rotate to the opposite direction of the wall. Then go forward with the swing action and fire the ball to the wall. When throwing the ball, make sure your hip also rotates following your hands. It’s just like emulating the same hip actions you do when hitting with a bat. 

The ball will then hit the wall and fall back towards you. Catch it and repeat the exercise in 10-15 reps. 

You can also improvise this in multiple ways. For example, bending your knees a little, tossing the ball a bit upward instead of parallel. Throwing the ball upward can develop required strength that you’ll need for a home run. 

Advantages

• Develop the muscle memory of hands, hips, shoulder
• Helps significantly to build hands’ strength 
• Easy to start practicing at home 

6. K Posture Hitting Drill

I’ve seen pretty much all amateurs make this mistake on the practice ground – they always try to lower their back shoulder to match the same level of the pitch. This happens especially when you witness a heavier ball or pitch. 

It’s a subconscious movement, especially by a youth baseball player. As our brain stares something incoming towards us, it drives us to drop the back shoulder to defend the attack. 

To solve this issue, this “K” hitting drill can be the best approach. This drill forces players to maintain a solid position of the back body and leg through a support. 

This drill is one of the tough youth baseball drills. In the hitting drill dictionary, K posture falls at the intermediate stage to professional level. Hence, it’s a bit challenging for a novice player to adapt.

Rule of Thumb

The key to this drilling is maintaining a similar posture throughout the swing. You need a slant board to practice this hitting drill. 

Instead, you can also place any stable object under your back foot if you don’t have one. The main goal is to use this object to elevate your back foot during the swing action. 

How to Do a K Posture Hitting Drill?

Place the slant board in your room or ground or inside the cage. Set the position of the board at a 45-degree angle. Put your back leg on it and front leg on the ground. 

“Keep the slant board height as high as possible in the beginning. When you start feeling comfortable, gradually lower the height. And at a certain point don’t use it. The goal is to learn to maintain the posture on the flat surface.”

You’ll feel it hard to collapse backward now. If you see your position, it already achieved a “K” letter-like posture and it’ll be kept that way throughout the hitting action. 

While performing this drill, never distribute your weight 50:50 percentage ratio of back and forth body. Otherwise, you’ll lose the expected posture. 

Stride forward to hit the baseball. By the time you hit the ball, your back leg should be off the slant board. Release the tension you built up during the launch position. There won’t be any position changes of the front leg. 

The level of difficulty is higher in K posture drill in the beginning. Don’t lose hope and keep pushing yourself. 

Advantage

• Builds more confidence in hitters
• Improves strides balance and full turns
• Pretty helpful to enhance timing sense  
• Allows generating more force in shots
• Develop muscle memory of lower body, back leg

7. Track and Catch Hitting Drill

If you’re facing a hard time to keep your contact with the pitch, this drill can surely help. And don’t be sad, it’s a very common issue that every early stage baseball hitter goes through. 

With this track and catch hitting drill, you can effectively resolve the problem in less than a month.

Rule of Thumb

Although the T&C drill is quite easy when looking, performing it a bit though. Basically what you’re doing is emphasizing tracking action first and then catching. 

You’ll need a baseball and a partner to practice this drill. If you’re alone, a pitching machine can be helpful too.

How to Do a Track and Catch Batting Drill?

Ask him or her to stand 10 ft. away from your position. And position yourself on the home plate or anywhere if performing indoors. 

You don’t need a bat for this drill. Just mimic like you’re holding one. Get in position with your basic hitting drill posture. 

Now tell your partner to throw the ball. You’ll then follow the hitting posture, striding from launch position to the hitting point to make a solid contact. 

Remember, despite not using a bit to hit the ball, you should act in the same manner. Instead of batting, you’re gonna catch it. Try to catch it exactly where you’re supposed to hit the ball with your bat. That’s it. 

Advantage 

• Good for polishing up visual from pitch location to the contact point 
• Make palm stronger and adaptive to catch ball

Frequently Asked Questions 

1. How to improve my hitting in baseball?

There are many things that can be done in order to improve one’s hitting ability as a youth baseball player. Some of these things may include practicing frequently, working on different hitting techniques, and being consistent with your practice routine. 

Additionally, it’s important to adapt good batting mechanics in order to hit the ball squarely.

2. How to teach my 7-year old kid to hit a baseball?

Let them enjoy swings! It may sound funny, but that’s what it boils down to. Besides, while helping your kid learn hitting, follow these suggestions-

• Let them use a lightweight baseball bat in the beginning
• Instead of baseball, give them flight ball to play 
• When he/she starts to enjoy, make the game exciting through offering new challenges. For example, throwing the ball upward or downward so the little guy get the rage to hit ball
• Remember, before admitting to the school club, it’s you who’s gonna be the coach. And make sure to never force them to play if they don’t find the interest after you try. 

3. How to improve 10-year old kids’ hitting?

If your kid reached the 10 years old benchmark, it’s time to get his or her hands dirty with some additional techniques. You should help the kid to improve balancing, strides, normal swing action and timing gradually. These are the fundamentals to polish up batting skills. 

For kids, choosing the right bat matters a lot. Check out the best baseball bat for 10 year old players in this article. 

4. How to help a struggling hitter in baseball?

If someone is struggling with his or her batting skills, they need both mental and physical discipline to get rid of the problem. Like any skill on earth, to conquer baseball hitting techniques or to improve oneself, practice is the only aid. 

Besides disciplinary advice, the most important support you can share is to be with the fellow. It’s the mental breakdown that made many athletes give up. Listen to their pain points and discuss together how he can get over it. 

5. What are the hitting drills pro baseball players do?

Well, if you check the practice plan of most MLB baseball players, they merely do any batting drill. Their muscle memories are already built up because of the years of practice. 

Even their swings are also locked in according to their playing style. Instead of drills, they focus on the ongoing issues or injuries on the practice ground.

6. What are youth baseball drills for hitting a curveball in baseball?

The best drills for hitting curveballs in baseball are Angled Toss and the Jose Lobaton hitting drills. These are also great for tackling off-speed pitches. 

7. Is it necessary to do hitting practice before playing the game?

Both yes and no. Hitting practices can help you get prepared for the match both in mental and physical states. 

And optimal hitting drills can be good for warming up. But excessive hitting practice just before the match can lower your energy. So, practice but limit yourself within a few sets. 

Wrapping Up 

In conclusion, the above youth baseball hitting drills can help improve your batting skills. By practicing regularly with specific drills, you can develop consistency and a sound swing. 

After my years of grinding as both pro and working coach, my thought is pretty transparent about drills. These can also help a youth baseball player to stay focused and minimize mistakes in the field. In brief, these drills provide a blueprint for success.

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