Try This Simple Drill To Fix Your Bat Path

Hey, what's up fellas? How you doing? Manettinelli here. Okay. So I want to talk about a simple fix or simple way to think about your bat path when it comes to your lead arm. And if you've watched our videos in the past, you know that we talk about how the lead arm has to work up, right? So we talk about this triangle. If you think about this triangle that's made right here, right arm, arm and across the chest. All right. So that triangle right there, that's got to feel like it's turning, right? And so when this triangle starts to turn, the rear arm is going to go under, but the lead arm is going to work up. Okay. And so a simple thing to think about is that your barrel is going to be an extension of your lead arm. So if you think about your lead arm and then the barrel being extended from there, wherever this lead arm goes, the barrel should be in line, right? So no matter where the pitch is that arm right there, the barrels and extension of it. Okay. And so we do a couple of different drills to work on the lead arm, being able to work up and notice again, no matter where I go, where I go with this lead arm up lead arm up lead arm up. So see how it didn't extension, but the lead arm is always up. Right. And so if my lead arm doesn't work up, if it works down, right? So here it goes. It's working down this way, right? Now my barrel is above my hands. My barrel always has to work below my hand. If I want the barrel to work slightly up through the ball. Right. And so if my arm does this and goes down, well now my barrel is working down through the ball. My lead arm works up. Now my barrel is working slightly up and there's that barrel being an extension of my arm. Okay. So let's talk about a couple of different ways that we can do that. One easy way is we'll take a plyo ball and we like to use typically just a little bit of a heavier plyo ball. It depends on how old the player is. I don't want it to be really, really heavy, but I want them to be able to feel this action, right? So we don't want to use a light baseball. Right now, I've got not a super heavy plyo ball. This is one that we'll use with some of the younger players. All I'm going to do is I'm going to get into my stance and I'm going to think about my, my lead arm right here, right? And I'm going to want to feel my lead arm working up. And so I'm going to take this ball. I'm going to throw it the other way, actually. So I don't have to keep chasing it. So I'm going to get into my stance. I'm going to make my move. Like I'm going to hit and all I'm going to do is I'm going to take this arm and I'm going to start to feel like that triangle is starting to turn. My lead arm is going to work up and I'm going to throw the ball up. All right. And so wherever the ball goes, that'll tell you what your lead arm is doing. So if my lead arm works down this way, the ball goes into the ground. If my lead arm works up, right? So I turn that triangle, the ball goes up. All right. So the ball will tell me what my arm is doing. The other thing that I try to do when I'm doing this is we've talked a lot about being from the inside. So I want to be from the inside out. I don't want to get out here and be out to in. So if you're doing this drill and you're throwing the ball and it's going this way, that might've been a little bit of an exaggeration. That would be a very poor swing. But if you feel like the ball is always coming over here, that means I'm going out to in, right? And again, I want to be from in to out. So when I throw this ball, I want it to go either straight or I want it to go slightly towards right center field if I'm a right-handed hitter. All right. And so I want to work that ball again from here over. And again, if you think about that extension of the lead arm, right? My lead arm works up. And now as I continue to go, that ball's got to go that way, right? It has to go up. My lead arm works down. Well, that ball's got to go down. There's no way I can throw that ball up from that position. So really, really easy drill to do. That'll kind of give you that feel of the lead arm, but just a quick easy thing to think about the barrel being an extension of the lead arm and needing to work the lead arm up by turning the triangle. And that'll really help out your path. The paddle right here, the reason, I'm sure someone's going to ask why, why the paddle, the paddle for me, when I make that move where I turn the triangle and get the lead arm up and now you see that extension again of the lead arm, the barrel, that flat part, we're trying to keep that flat part on the ball as long as we can until we turn left as a right-handed hitter. As a left-handed hitter, I'm trying to turn the triangle. I'm trying to keep that flat part on the ball as long as I can before it turns right. So get that shot. Hopefully it helps you out. That's an easy drill that we'll do just again, the work on that lead arm working up as we turn the triangle. So subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, give a thumbs up, all that good stuff. We'll talk to you later. If you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about building the elite swing, check out our new course. We have over two hours of content, almost 30 hitting drills. We break down the exact mechanics that you're going to want to implement into your swing. I've put the link in the description if you want to go check it out.