How Different Practice Balls Can Improve Your Hitting

Weighted Balls and Small Practice Balls Can Help All Aspects of your player’s swing

You don’t always need a full cage, bucket of practice balls or a lot of room to improve your hitting. By using other types of practice balls, teams and players alike can get in more quality reps while improving several aspects of their swings.

Weighted Balls

Incorporating weighted balls into your hitting training can help your hitters in a number of ways. When a hitter hits a heavy ball, it forces them to stay strong and powerful through the contact zone. Heavy balls are a great way to warm-up before games and you can use them in a small space as they don't go far when you hit them. Using heavy balls will give players the feel they need to hit "through" the ball rather than just hitting the ball! And you don't need a full bucket of them…having just 3 weighted balls in your bag is all you need!

Range in weight - usually from 12oz - 20oz.
We recommend using a practice bat or non-game bat for these drills as repeated use with weighted balls can damage the bat.
Promote proper swing path and promote strength. If a youth hitter “pulls off” the ball, these weighted balls will only go a few feet.
Great for smaller spaces (such as pre-game hitting warmups) as the ball’s flight is usually limited to less than 50 feet.
Typically sold in 6-12 per pack. For your youth team, we recommend getting 12-18 balls and you can break your team into 2-3 groups for practice or pre-game hitting.
Great for front toss and short batting practice (think coach on a knee throwing to players)

Small ball training

Small balls are a great training aid for hitters of all ages. Incorporating small balls into your hitting routine will develop fine hand-eye coordination and force players to "keep their eye on the ball" and see it all the way in. If your hitters are getting good at squaring up the small balls, you can challenge them even more by incorporating a smaller bat as well (can be a Thunderstick or even a broom stick/PVC pipe). Once hitters get good at this drill, it will make it much easier when transitioning back to a normal sized ball and bat, and players will see their contact rate rise and will square balls up more often!

A variety of baseball and softball-specific training balls are on the market
Golf wiffle balls work perfect for this
These balls will travel further (and faster) than the weighted balls above, but still not quite as far as a normal baseball and softball
Great for soft toss drills as well

Using these types of training balls in your batting practice will not only mix it up for your hitters, but continue to build their swing path, strength and hand-eye coordination as they get more swing reps.

Check out this video of Jared Walsh of the Los Angeles Angels taking some swings with weighted balls…