- Oct 31, 2012
- 8
- 0
Hey! I am looking to try something new this winter. I want to have practices that are dedicated to theory. Teaching the game from a different angle. Have any of you done this before and what were some of your practice material?
I've done this a few times when the sky opens up in the middle of practice. We went into the dugout and simply discussed our positional responsibilities based on different scenarios...Situational hitting.
Pitch calling/sequencing.
Positional responsibilities.
Bunt coverages.
First and thirds
Divide the players into offense and defense and discuss their options, strategies, moves, and counter moves.
So this has a tendency to be boring and frankly in team practices I have fundamentals to work on as a higher priority... that is not to say not to do it, just that it gets boring quickly if you do it on the field or dedicate a lot of practice time to it.
We do it as homework. We present scenarios and ask them to come to the next practice with how they would handle them. We then discuss at the beginning of practice. No more than 10 minutes of practice time.
We also ask them to watch a game or part of a game on tv/on the internet. It is surprising how little softball or baseball our players watch which is why we do need to cover the simple scenarios for many of them. We ask them to concentrate on a couple of things they should pick up in an inning or two of watching.
In the end, a lot of what they learn strategically they learn in games. Best way to learn situational tactics and play. Lots of scrimmages and intra-squad scrimmages which we can pause and go through what happened and the best way to handle it.
(e.g. last week we had all 9 players in the infield to have a play at home in a tied game, runner on third, 1 out and bottom of the last and then moved them back on 2 outs - we discussed afterwards why we did what we did)