The batting tee gets treated like a beginner's toy, which is a shame, because it might be the most honest teacher in the whole sport. The best hitters in the world take tee swings every single day. The tee doesn't move, doesn't get fooled, and doesn't lie — it just sits there and shows you exactly what your swing does to a ball in a fixed spot. If you learn to use it well, it will teach you more than a bucket of live BP.
Set it up right
Height: start with the ball at about belt-to-thigh height, the middle of the strike zone. Move it up or down later to work different pitches, but middle is home base.
Position: this is the part beginners get wrong. The tee's spot changes with the pitch you're pretending to hit. For a middle pitch, set the tee even with your front hip. For an inside pitch, move it forward, out toward the pitcher — you hit inside pitches out front. For an outside pitch, move it back, deeper in your stance — you let outside pitches travel. The contact point moves with the location, and the tee lets you rehearse each one.
Work the whole plate — the Tee Ladder
Don't hammer the same middle ball fifty times. Work the Tee Ladder: five balls inside, five middle, five outside, moving the tee each time. Inside balls out front, middle balls even, outside balls deep — line drives to all fields. This one drill teaches your swing to find the short, direct path to every location and to extend through the ball at each one. It's the single best use of a tee there is.
The cue for every location: drive through the ball toward center field, not around it. Extension through the ball is where line drives come from, and the tee makes it obvious — a swing that cuts off leaves the ball dribbling, while a swing that drives through rockets it into the net.
Film it — the tee's honesty plus a measured read
Here's where the tee gets even better. Because it removes timing entirely, a tee swing shows your pure mechanics — no pitch to react to, just your load, stride, turn and extension. That makes it the perfect swing to film and measure.
Set your phone at chest height, 12 to 15 feet away, open side (facing your chest), whole body and the bat in frame. Take a few tee cuts and let CoachVision read one: your load depth, your stride, your hip-shoulder separation, your extension through the ball, and the one thing to fix next. One honest note — the tracker sees your body, not your bat or the ball, so "contact" is measured as your hands' peak speed, which is exactly why a tee swing scores just like a live one. You may even see the tee's stem in the freeze-frames; keeping your eyes on it after contact is the oldest quiet-head cue in the book.
Fifteen tee-ladder balls a session, filmed once a week off the same angle. The tee never lies, and now you've got a measured record of everything it's telling you.