Teaching a Baseball Team How to Bat Effectively

Batting is one of the most important concepts in Baseball; after all it's going to be how you score points in order to win the game. Batting is and easy concept, but can be a hard skill to teach. You have to have good hand eye coordination, be able to keep your eye on the ball, and of course use a good stance and have a solid grip on the bat.

There are some really simple yet effective ways to improve you or your teams batting skills and here are a few I have learned over the years.

Hand Eye Coordination: This will be a major skill that is required for batting effectively, and the best practice for this is to simply play video games! Yes it's true that playing video games will improve your hand eye coordination, especially games that require a lot of complex button mashing. Countless studies have proven that anyone who plays video games will have better hand eye coordination then those who don't so make sure your teams players play at least 30 minuets of games a day. Also typing on a keyboard is another good method for developing hand eye coordination as an alternative.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball: This is probably the hardest skill to teach, but there is an exercise that can make it simple. Use a skinny plastic bat and have a lot of small plastic golf balls on hand. Now have the batter stand as if he or she is going to be hitting from a pitcher, and then the coach or other player stands off to the side of the batter. The coach should then lob the small plastic golf balls gently into the batters strike zone. The small golf balls will teach the batters eye to focus on the ball, and the skinny plastic bat will make them have to become more accurate. Of all bating drills teaching to keep an eye on the ball this is the most effective, showing vast improvements in a very short amount of time.

Good Stance: A batter will typically have their own preferred stance, but as a coach you need to instill the basics. The batters feet should be shoulders width apart, and squared up, the bat resting on or just above the batters shoulder. When the batter swings they should raise one foot then plant it back firmly on the ground a few inches from where it left then they should swing their waist into the ball, snapping the wrists upon impact for maximum effect. The power of a good swing will come from the rotation of the body and the power behind snapping the wrists.

Grip: Having a good solid grip on the bat is going to also help a batter achieve maximum performance. The biggest part of holding the bat in the correct manner is lining up the knuckles. Make sure your knuckles when gripping the bat line up correctly in a straight line. This position is the optimum grip that you want when holding a bat.

These tips will improve an individual player or a team by leads and bounds, and it only takes a few practices to learn. With these simple tips and tricks a team could possibly improve in batting within a week's time and just before their next game. The basics are simple and easy to teach, obviously that's why they are called basics and once a team has them down you'll see a vast improvement from that team.