| Baseball Hitting Drills to Improve Your Bat Speed - Part 3 |
Baseball Hitting Drills to Improve Your Bat Speed - Part 3This is the third and final article in the three part series entitled, Baseball Hitting Drills to Improve Your Bat Speed. If you havent had a chance yet to review the first two articles in this series, do so before reading on. This last one will make far better sense with some background knowledge.Once a hitter first begins to generate momentum with his back side and his hips begin to rotate, its important that the hands remain back as long as possible. As explained in the second article, this will allow a hitter to gain the most bat speed by creating torque. There are a couple good baseball hitting drills that isolate this action I mentioned in the previous article.
The last of the three core movements the hitter makes is to bring the hands to the ball. There are essentially two ways of doing this. One will create what is called, bat drag, and the other which is called, bat lag. All good hitters looking to get some serious bat speed work on creating the most bat lag as possible.
 What is the difference? Bat drag (what poor or inexperienced hitters do) occurs when a hitters hands drop downward and his front shoulder opens much before the knob of the bat begins moving towards the pitch. This downward falling makes it difficult to generate much bat speed since most leverage has been lost in the swing. Instead, the front of the body drags the bat through the zone. Its important when youre working on your baseball hitting drills to make sure you understand the difference between drag and lag. The picture on the right demonstrates bat drag.
 Bat lag, on the other hand, is when forward momentum begins almost immediately once the hips have begun to open. The knob of the bat will lead the way to the contact zone, and the barrel of the bat will drop and significantly lag behind the hands. The picture on the left demonstrates a swing that has produced great bat lag. Youll notice that in the example above (bat drag) that the left shoulder of the hitter has completely opened and thus he has to pull that bat through the zone. Whereas, in the example of bat lag, you will notice that the front shoulder of the hitter has not opened to the pitch which has allowed the hands to do the work in creating bat speed.
To create bat lag in your baseball hitting drills, there one good technique to use. I will set hitters in the position of the hitter in the picture demonstrating bat lag. I will pull the bat back slightly, but the lower body will be about the same as in the picture. Using a hitting tee, I will then have the hitter hit the baseball driving the knob of the bat as long as possible towards the baseball. This technique will get the hitter used to lagging the barrel behind the hands.
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