I've watched players do the same bat speed drills for an entire offseason and show up to spring ball moving exactly the same. Same feel. Same numbers. Nothing changed.
And I get it. They were doing something. They showed up. They put in the reps. But the drills they were doing weren't actually training bat speed. They were training habits.
There's a difference between drilling a pattern and actually increasing your ability to swing fast. Most players spend all their time on the first and wonder why the second doesn't come.
So let's talk about what actually builds bat speed, and what to cut.
The Two Things That Actually Drive Bat Speed
Before the drills, you need to understand what bat speed actually is. Bat speed comes from your entire kinetic chain firing in the right order at maximum intent. It starts in your legs and hips, not your arms or hands.
That means:
- Force from the ground up — your legs and hips produce the power, and the upper body delivers it.
- Hip-to-shoulder separation — your hips clear first, the shoulders stay back, and the hands come through last. The longer you can maintain that separation, the more energy loads into the swing.
Every drill worth doing should train one or both of these things. If a drill doesn't address force production or separation, it's a mechanics drill at best, not a bat speed drill.
Drill 1: Overload/Underload Bat Training
This is the most evidence-backed method for increasing bat speed. The idea is simple: swing something heavier than your game bat, then immediately swing something lighter.
Your nervous system responds to the contrast. After the heavy swing, the light bat feels like nothing, and you naturally produce more force to compensate. Over time, your top-end swing speed goes up.
How to do it:
- Use a bat that's about 20% heavier than your game bat for 5–6 swings
- Immediately follow with a bat 20% lighter for 5–6 swings
- Then grab your game bat for your final set
Do this on the tee or in front toss. Focus on being intentional with every rep, not mechanically perfect. Just violent. You should feel faster on the light bat. If you don't, you're not going heavy enough on the heavy bat.
Don't go overboard with the weight. 5–7 oz heavier is enough. More than that and your mechanics start to change, which defeats the purpose.
Drill 2: Med Ball Rotational Throws
I put this in every program I write because it's one of the most direct ways to train hip-to-shoulder separation outside of actually hitting.
The pattern of a rotational med ball throw against a wall is almost identical to the pattern of a good swing. Load the hips, hold the shoulder back, drive through, release. The difference is that you can move faster with a ball than a bat because the resistance is lower.
How to do it:
- Stand 3–4 feet from a concrete wall or rebounder
- Hold a 6–8 lb med ball at your hip like you're loading a swing
- Drive through with your hips first, let the shoulders follow, throw the ball into the wall
- Catch it and reload. 8–10 reps per side.
Do these before you hit, not after. They prime the nervous system. You'll notice your first few swings after a good med ball warm-up feel looser and faster.
Don't use a ball heavier than 10 lbs for this. Heavier than that and it starts to feel like a strength movement instead of a power movement.
Drill 3: High-Intent Tee Work With a Radar Gun (or Blast)
You cannot train bat speed without measuring bat speed. I know that sounds obvious, but most players have no idea what they're actually measuring in a given session.
If you don't know where you're starting from, you can't track progress. And if you can't track progress, you can't know if what you're doing is working.
Get a Blast Motion sensor, a Rapsodo, or just have someone film your swing and measure contact speed with free apps. The specific tool matters less than having consistent measurement.
How to use it:
- Set up on the tee and take 10 baseline swings. Note your average and peak.
- Run through your drills.
- Come back to the tee and take 10 more swings. If your bat speed didn't go up at least 1–2 mph after the session, you weren't swinging with enough intent.
The most common reason bat speed doesn't improve in the cage: players take comfortable swings. Not violent ones. You have to be willing to miss badly to swing as fast as you're capable of.
Drill 4: Single-Leg Posterior Chain Work
This one happens in the gym, not the cage, but it might be the most underrated bat speed builder on this list.
Your back leg is where the swing starts. Every bit of power you produce gets loaded through that hip. If your posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, single-leg stability) isn't strong and fast, your swing will leak power no matter how good your mechanics look.
What to add:
- Rear-foot elevated split squats (back leg focus) — 3x8, focus on driving through the back hip
- Single-leg RDLs — slow on the way down, explosive on the way up. These build the exact hip loading pattern your back leg uses in the swing
- Kettlebell swings — one of the best bang-for-your-buck movements for hip drive. 3x12 with intent
Do this twice a week. You'll feel the difference in the cage within a few weeks. The back leg will feel more loaded and more explosive.
What to Stop Doing
A few things I see constantly that are not bat speed drills, no matter how much they get talked about:
Tee work with light intentional swings — if you're not swinging hard, you're drilling mechanics, not bat speed. That's fine if that's the goal, but don't confuse it with speed work.
Wrist and forearm exercises — bat speed is not an arm sport. Wrist curls and forearm rollers won't change your numbers. Put that time into hip work and you'll see results much faster.
Hitting the same pitch at the same speed over and over — repetition without variation trains comfort, not speed. Vary the pitch type, the speed, the location. Challenge your reaction time.
Holding back to "keep the bat in the zone longer" — I hear this one a lot. Staying in the zone longer is a side effect of a good swing, not a goal to train toward. Train to be fast, and the barrel path will take care of itself.
Why These Drills Actually Work: The Neuromuscular Side
Most players do drills because someone told them to. Understanding why a drill works makes you better at executing it, and helps you know when to push harder and when you're just going through the motions.
Overspeed/underload training works because of something called post-activation potentiation (PAP). When you fire your muscles hard against heavy resistance, your nervous system gets "activated." It recruits more motor units and fires them faster. When you immediately switch to something lighter, your body produces the same high level of neural output, but with less resistance. The result is faster movement. Your swing speed goes up not because your muscles got stronger in that moment, but because your nervous system is firing at a higher level than it normally would.
This is why the contrast has to be immediate. If you take five minutes between the heavy bat and the light bat, the effect fades. The potentiation window is short, under two minutes. Heavy swings, light swings, right away. That's the sequence.
Med ball throws work because they let you train the movement pattern at higher velocities than a bat allows. A 6 lb med ball has less inertia than a 30 oz bat. Less inertia means you can accelerate it faster, which means you're training the neuromuscular pattern of explosive rotation at higher speeds than the bat would normally allow. Over time, your body learns to rotate faster, and that transfers directly to swing speed.
The research on this is pretty clear. Overspeed training increases the ceiling of what the nervous system thinks is "fast." Players who consistently train with underload implements raise their peak bat speed more than players who only train with game bats, even with the same number of reps. The ceiling goes up because the brain gets re-calibrated to what fast actually feels like.
High-intent tee work works because bat speed is a skill. Like any skill, it degrades without practice at the top end. If you only swing at 85% in the cage, your nervous system calibrates 85% as your normal. Regularly training at 100% intent keeps your ceiling accessible and teaches your body what it feels like to swing at max effort. That's why the measurement matters. Without feedback, you can't know if you're actually at 100% or just think you are.
Sample Weekly Drill Sequence
This is how I'd structure bat speed training across three hitting sessions in a week. This isn't a full hitting program, just the bat speed component layered in.
Monday (Speed Focus)
- Med ball rotational throws: 3x8 each side (before touching a bat)
- Overload/underload sequence: 2 rounds (heavy bat 5 swings / light bat 5 swings / game bat 5 swings)
- High-intent tee work: 15 swings, measuring bat speed. No mechanic focus. Just be as fast as possible.
- Total swings: ~45. Session time: 25 minutes.
Wednesday (Transfer + Intent)
- Med ball throws: 2x8 each side
- Front toss with game bat: 3x8 high-intent swings, focus on hip-to-shoulder separation
- High-intent tee: 10 swings, measure and compare to Monday's numbers
- Posterior chain gym work (RDLs, split squats) if doing same-day lifting
- Total swings: ~40. Session time: 20–25 minutes.
Friday (Volume + Contrast)
- Overload/underload: 3 full rounds (this is the most you should do in a week)
- High-intent tee: 20 swings. Try to match or beat your peak from Monday.
- Mix in front toss at the end for game-speed feel
- Total swings: ~60. Session time: 30–35 minutes.
Keep gym work (posterior chain, rotational strength) on the same days or the day before hitting sessions, not the day after. You want your nervous system primed, not recovering.
If you want these drills structured into a full program with progressive overload built in, that's exactly what the free six-week bat speed program is. Free, no catch.
How to Know It's Working
"It felt good" is not a metric. These are the things I actually track when measuring bat speed development.
Bat speed numbers off the tee — this is your baseline. Set up the same way every time: tee at the same height, same ball, same spot relative to the plate. Take 10 swings and log peak and average. Do this at the start of every week. Over 4–6 weeks of consistent training, you should see 1–3 mph gain in peak bat speed. If you're not seeing that, the issue is either intent, programming, or recovery.
Time to contact — if you have a Blast Motion, track this alongside bat speed. Faster time to contact with the same or higher bat speed means your swing is getting more efficient. That's good. If bat speed goes up but time to contact also increases, you're getting faster but looser, and the path might be getting longer.
How your game bat feels after overload/underload sessions — this one's subjective but real. After a proper overload/underload session, your game bat should feel noticeably lighter. If it doesn't, you're either not going heavy enough on the overload or the contrast isn't sharp enough. The "light" sensation isn't in your head. It's your nervous system running hot.
Exit velocity — bat speed should translate to harder contact. If your bat speed is going up but your exit velo isn't moving, something is getting lost between the swing and contact. That's usually a timing issue or a path issue, not a speed issue.
Track at minimum once a week. Don't change your drills week to week based on day-to-day feel. Give a block 4 weeks before evaluating.
Drill Progressions: How to Advance Each Category
Once you've built a base with these drills, you need to know when and how to push further.
Overload/Underload Progressions
Start with 3–4 rounds per week, 5–6 swings per bat per round. After 4 weeks, you can increase to 4–5 rounds per week. You can also widen the weight gap slightly, going from 5 oz over/under to 6–7 oz, but don't go past 8 oz heavier or your mechanics start compensating. The goal is to expand the contrast, not add so much weight that you're grinding through each heavy swing.
Advanced version: add a "chaos" element by alternating between heavy and light mid-set without a full reset. Instead of 6 heavy, 6 light, do 2 heavy, 2 light, 2 heavy, 2 light, back to game bat. Your nervous system has to recalibrate faster.
Med Ball Throw Progressions
Start at 6 lbs, 8 reps each side. After 3–4 weeks, move to 8 lbs for the same reps. After another 3–4 weeks, move to 10 lbs. Don't go past 10–12 lbs for rotational throws. Past that weight, the movement becomes more strength-based than power-based and you lose the speed benefit.
Advanced version: do the throws from a step or shuffle to simulate a stride while throwing. This adds hip loading to the pattern and makes it more swing-specific.
High-Intent Tee Progressions
Start by just measuring your peak and average. After a few weeks, add a constraint: your goal each session is to beat your previous week's average by at least 0.5 mph. That target keeps you honest. If you're consistently plateaued at the same number, you're either coasting or you need more off-field work to build capacity.
Advanced version: add a reaction element. Instead of hitting a stationary tee, use a front flip or soft toss from a short distance. Your body has to react to the ball, which more closely mirrors game timing and tends to produce higher bat speed in trained players.
Common Errors and How to Fix Them
Overload/Underload: Swinging slow with the heavy bat
This defeats the entire point. If you're grinding through the heavy bat like it's a slow strength lift, you're not getting any potentiation benefit. The heavy bat should still be swung with maximum intent. It'll naturally be slower, but your effort and intent need to stay high. Think: same aggression, heavier resistance.
Fix: drop the weight down until you can swing the heavy bat fast. Speed of intent matters more than the actual weight on the bat.
Med Ball Throws: Throwing with your arms instead of your hips
I see this constantly. The player stands sideways, loads minimally, and throws by yanking with their arm. You get no hip-to-shoulder separation and zero transfer to your swing.
Fix: slow the throw way down and exaggerate the hip load. Feel your weight shift into your back hip before the ball moves at all. The throw should feel like it starts in your back foot. Once you feel that, add speed back in.
High-Intent Tee Work: Comfort swings that feel "violent"
Players self-report that they're swinging as hard as they can, but the numbers tell a different story. This is normal. Your body self-limits. You've been trained your whole career to have some control. Max intent swings feel uncomfortable. Some of them will miss the tee entirely.
Fix: give yourself permission to miss. Take a set of 5 swings where you have zero concern about where the ball goes. Just swing as fast as you possibly can. Your numbers will almost always be higher than your "controlled max effort" swings. That gap is what you're trying to close over time.
The Bottom Line
Bat speed is trainable. But it only gets trained when you're doing drills with the right intent, and building the physical capacity off the field to actually swing fast.
The drills in this post work because they target the neuromuscular system directly. They teach your nervous system to fire faster, load harder, and transfer force more efficiently. But you have to actually execute them with intent: measurement, consistency, and a willingness to swing uncomfortably hard.
For a full breakdown of the physical training that backs all of this up, read How to Increase Exit Velocity.
For guys who want something fully custom, drills, lifting, and hitting routine all built around your specific swing and schedule, that's what 1-on-1 coaching looks like.
If you want a program that puts all of this together, the gym work, the transfer movements, the swing training sequenced into something you can actually follow, grab the free Axis program below. It's built for the player who's serious about getting faster, stronger, and actually seeing it show up in the box.
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