Top hand-bottom hand isolation are common drills for hitters, but are you doing them or teaching them correctly?
Are you teaching how to turn the barrel or instilling the bad habit of pushing the hands to the ball?
Coach Lisle teaches you what your intent should be behind doing top hand and bottom hand drills and how to do them effectively.
The Hitting Vault does talk a little bit about top hand and bottom hand when it comes to hitting drills for baseball and softball. I would tell you it’s more so about learning how to turn and control the bat, make it more of a strength issue, than it is an actual hand and controlling the bat.
What is the Goal of One-Handed Drills?
What I really want them to do is just to be able to turn and control the barrel. And in my experience, that’s usually a strength issue.
So I like to do top hand-bottom hand drills in the sense of understanding how their bodies are working, and how they have strength. Can they control the barrel here, if I just add this top hand, can they control the barrel by doing this?
If you have hitters that need to work on their strength, I would recommend checking out SwingFit from The Hitting Vault.
Turns and Bat Control vs Hand Control
You’ll see that if I have a hitter that drops the barrel a lot, they lose the barrel a lot, their first move is to lose the barrel, that might be a drill that I would focus on. I’ll call it top-hand drill because it’s the top hand holding the bat, but it’s really a shoulder-turn drill more so than a hand drill. I’m trying to teach them how to turn and have bat control, versus trying to have good hand control.
The Hitting Vault is the most popular, most trusted and highest rated online hitting community.
It was created to teach athletes how to move their body to unlock their most powerful swing. It’s designed to help coaches get optimal results from their athletes. Join and get access to over 100+ exclusive videos for members and step-by-step instruction so you’ll know exactly what to do next to unlock your power at the plate.
