The purpose of the bottom-hand, short-bat drill is to isolate your bottom hand so you can have an understanding how it should work in your swing.

Using the bottom hand independently will make it stronger and will make your two hand swing more efficient and powerful.

If you have difficulty with this drill at first, it means this is exactly the drill you should be working on.

Strengthening your bottom hand can help to fix problems like rolling your wrists over too early (which causes you to hit ground balls or pull foul too often) and too many swings-and-misses (caused an over-active top hand pulling the bat out of the zone too soon ).

Purpose

As I talked about in the previous drill, when you lift weights it is important to isolate individual limbs so they can independently get strong. The same idea is true with the baseball swing.

When you develop the proper feel for your bottom hand and can hit line drives, it will be easier to do with two hands. The pulling action of your bottom hand is what starts your pull to the baseball. Since most people are top hand dominant (since it is usually the throwing hand), we tend to take over our swing too early with that top hand.

Being familiar with the role of your bottom hand will help you better understand your swing as a whole, and will help you recognize when adjustments are needed.

This drill takes out all the unnecessary movements of your swing. With one hand you are not strong enough to be anything but efficient, so it will help shorten your swing. Once you can feel  strong with one hand, swinging with two should be no problem.

• Batting Tee
• Short Bat

How to Execute this Drill:

1.) Set up the tee for a pitch down the middle of the plate. Place a ball on the tee. Start with both hands on the bat and get in your stance.

2.) Take your top hand off the bat and keep it close to your body positioned against your chest bone.

3.) Swing using your bottom hand and legs. Keep your top hand still. The tendency is to swing your  arm to get some momentum. Avoid this tendency and be deliberate about making your bottom hand do all the work.

Checkpoints:

1.) Swing down through the ball . Make sure you don’t dip your backside and swing up through the baseball.

2.) Don’t lift your front elbow dragging your barrel trying to get lift ). You will feel the difference. Remember you need to swing down in the game, so swinging up during this drill will do nothing for your two handed swing.

3.) Feel the front side pulling to start your swing and feel the torque you can create with your front side.

4.) As I said before, the biggest indicator of doing this drill properly is RESULTS, so an important checkpoint is to hit line drives back up the middle.