Slow Pitch Softball Batting Practice Drills – Basketballs & Bunting

Try these [tag]slow pitch softball batting practice drills[/tag] with your team to improve your teams hitting skills.   The effects are immediate!

My girls were stopping their swings during games recently and this reminded me that I hadn’t done this batting “basketball” drill in awhile.   We broke out this drill and after only 4 hits with the bb drill the girls were hitting doubles and triples in the next game.

Take half deflated basketballs and place them on a tee. Have the girls set up in a normal batting stance. When they swing it forces them to follow through and shows them whether the stopped the swing or not.

PURPOSE:   This increases the power of the swing but also stops that half swing that causes the ball to just drop on the dirt.   It insures that they remember to follow-through on the swing.

Bunting-
I teach my [tag]softball[/tag] team that [tag]bunting[/tag] is as simple as “catching the ball with the bat”.

To show this, I have the athlete stand in the batters box in sacrifice bunting position squared up to the pitching machine without a bat.   We use lite-flite foam balls and pitch to the batter.   The right handed batter then literally catches the ball with her right hand; a left handed batter catches the ball with her left hand.   Those are the hands that control the location of the bat.

This works really well when trying to teach a right handed hitter to bunt from the left side, because in most cases she usually catches the ball with her left hand anyway.   You could also use a harder ball and have the batter wear a mitt on her catching hand. After a few successful catches or deflections (it is sometimes difficult to squeeze the foam ball with a bare hand), put a bat in her hand.

You should find improvement in eye-hand-bat-ball coordination resulting in improved bunting skills which should carry over to improved hitting as well.