staying inside the ball

Spine angle and proper connection with the hands and upper body should set your hands in the correct spot. Then, you have to work on "letting the ball get to you." This means that a pitch on the outer half of the plate will have to reach and cover a portion of that plate at contact. JMHO!

Stand as close to a batting tee as you can and try to drive the ball into fair territory and as close to up the middle as possible. It is only possible if you keep your hands in.

Teach them to have bat lag, no matter what location the ball is in. By that I mean tell them to concentrate on bringing the hands or knob through the zone as long as possible then use a strong top hand to push the barrel through. Of course they don't want to overexaggerate this and inside out everything, but if they concentrate on having bat lag, then that helps their hands stay inside the baseball.

larry, one of the things we would teach our guys was about (for lack of a better term) "slap the midget". We would throw wiffle balls to them nice and slow, and tell them to wait back and give it a little "love slap" at about 50%. Then with each toss we would have them get a little "angrier" and slap a little bit harder, until they were slapping the ball at 100%. There is a big difference between slapping and swinging. It's quicker. If a big guy comes at you about to take a swing, you have time to get out of the way because it takes him forever to get his hand to your face. But have you ever been able to avoid a slap from a female? Me neither. It comes so quick and often leaves more of a mark than that swing would if it had connected with you!

Hope I didn't lose you in my wordiness. We taught to "slap" the ball instead of "swing" at the ball. The "slap" theory allowed us to have a team batting average in the .320's with more extra base hits than any normal team should have hoped for.

Another good thing to use is to teach palm up palm down at contact. (right handed hitter) Teach them that their right palm must be facing the sky and left is facing down at contact. This keeps them inside the baseball. If their right palm is facing forward at contact, then they have brought the barrel of the bat through too soon and have most likely hit the ball farther out in front of their stride foot than you want them to.

one of the best things i heard on this was to keep a close relationship between the bathead and your back shoulder for as long as possible. keep the bat head close to the back shoulder. this keeps from getting out and around the ball. heard this from the coach at kentucky. had used knob down and all the other teaching points, but this one seem to click in for my guys.

We do back toss and use video.

Also, when hitting off the tee, the main coaching point is to be striking the inside of the ball...even when you pull it, that way you don't hook the ball when you hit it down the line.