Here is a Drill for Generating a More Powerful Batting Swing for your Youth Baseball Player

If you have an old tire swing in your back yard you can go outside as soon as you read this article and give this drill a try.

The purpose of this article is to help youth baseball coaches and parents learn a fun and effective drill to help increase batting power for their youth baseball players. Being both a parent and a youth baseball coach I have utilized this drill to help my players develop a more powerful swing for my child and my players. I coach at the Little League level and also in a highly competitive youth Travel Baseball program and players at all levels of skill will benefit from this fun drill. This is a drill my father did with me many years ago and I now utilize it today to help my son and his teammates become better hitters. I am confident it will help your players as well.

As a youngster we always had an old tire swing in our backyard. My father would make me throw baseballs and footballs thru it to help develop my throwing accuracy. He would also make me swing a bat against it to help me develop swing power.

If you spend anytime at all around Little League fields I am sure you have seen the young player that seems to make contact consistently but just doesn’t generate enough power to really drive the ball. What should be line drives turnout to be weak infield outs. A great deal of the problem is the result of not generating the proper power needed to really drive a pitched ball and propel it off the bat head. Additional problem's are weight distribution and timing. This drill focuses on power and weight distribution. Now you might be saying "my son is only a little guy he really cant drive the ball yet". I say yes he can. Even the little guys can generate enough power to hit the line drives that create hits, with the proper technique. This drill will help to develop and reinforce that technique. 3 The first step is to set up a tire swing. If you have one already you are ready to go and give it a whack! 4 Properly position the player in front of the hanging tire swing so that they are hitting the THREAD side of a tire.
Do not allow them to get lazy when doing this drill and keep proper batting form at all times. If they do not it will minimize the effectiveness of this drill. Players will soon find that they must "swing thru" the tire if they are going to move it at all.
They will learn to keep their weigh back and turn their hips as the swing thru the tire. To get the tire to move with any authority they must do all of the proper swinging techniques that we always drill into them: stance, load, stride, swing, and the follow through. The drill will show the importance of having their weigh on the back foot and not on the front In addition, the drill forces the batter to end with a good follow through. 5 I have used this drill for years and kids of all ages have a great deal of fun trying to drive the tire as much as they can. As long as you are instructing them on proper stance and swing this drill will really enforce to the player the need to do each step with every swing. I have used this drill as well when I don't really have the time or area to devote to long batting practices.

One thing I can guarantee is that with consistent use of this drill you will see those weak infield dribblers become solid contact. Solid contact will become scorching line drives that will help gain confidence and help the team score runs.