Where to start?

Gags,

They are doing coach pitch rec ball. If they choose to practice and get better, shouldn't be hard they will have their own batting cage, then we will see about what level of play they will achieve. The situation is to not just living through fastpitch. They do other things as well.

The twins don't stride that much naturally. So I think the Pujols clips I have are great examples.

Only thing I’ll add for coach pitch is make sure the coach knows how to pitch. The arc should be flat, and the speed “quick”, but not a fastball. Young kids have much more trouble waiting and timing a slow pitch than a faster one.

Lastly, beware the unintentional drop ball if you’re the pitcher. I need to get a good side-angle video of my pitches to verify this, but in my attempt to be more accurate, I may be letting the ball roll too much off my finger tips, creating a more pronounced 6-12 rotation (pitcher perspective). I’ve been getting more swings and misses lately on pitches above the knees - the ball is either dying or dipping just under their bats.


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I too am going to be working with young girls, 7-9 y.o.
Fortunately I got to assist with the final session of a multi-week clinic and I think the #1 thing that kids need to learn is what is a GOOD ATHLETIC POSITION and how to get into one quickly. This helps with EVERYTHING!

They need to learn everything, so I will be concentrating on keeping the swing simple and focus on making contact. Our season is only 6 weeks long, so I'm going to plan out ahead of time what we are going to do each week. STATIONS with small groups are key in keeping their attention/focus at every practice.

Good luck!

I neglected to mention, that experience at the clinic reminded me of just how young these kids are and how foreign this is to them.
Keep your goals few and keep em simple. Getting the bat on the ball, learning to catch and throw. They have to crawl before they can walk.
One tool I forgot about that was very effective with young kids was using that thing that has a ball on the end of a flexible pole. They will want to rush thru swing after swing and The key here is to keep them from doing that. Slow down and re-set between swings. Another thing that's good is have them close their eyes, you position the "ball" and tell them "open", they see the ball and swing at it. Can be very effective at developing eye-bat coordination in young kids

Make sure you let them run the bases after and don't let their big siblings tag them out

Gags said:

Lastly, beware the unintentional drop ball if you’re the pitcher. I need to get a good side-angle video of my pitches to verify this, but in my attempt to be more accurate, I may be letting the ball roll too much off my finger tips, creating a more pronounced 6-12 rotation (pitcher perspective). I’ve been getting more swings and misses lately on pitches above the knees - the ball is either dying or dipping just under their bats.

Click to expand...

I hope you're keeping track of the number of children you've struck out. Post your stats!

So after filming the kids tonight. I feel I need to really adjust to their age. Most of my experience comes from working with older hitters.

What do you think of 100% working on TTB? , to eliminate all the slop of trying to swing a bat.

test

test, did my previous post show up?

Shawn said:

test, did my previous post show up?

Click to expand...

Both did......

What's TTB?
Stations with ACs- kids below 10yo, keep the stations to 10 minutes and rotate to the next station. Try to keep number of kids per station to 5 or less (less is best) leave time at the end for some kind of game or contest.

Something you can do with the whole team- have them form a circle around you and then back up so when they hold a bat out to the side with one hand and the xtend the other arm straight out (forming a "T") they aren't touching the players on either side. Then you can go thru the basics of swinging and have them all doing it at the same time.

Sample stations - the ball on the pole I mentioned previously (good thing about this is it can be done anywhere, anytime), tee work Into a screen, soft toss with baseball size whiffle balls, (when they get better, switch to golf ball whiffle balls) hitting light (cheap) "kickballs" off a tee (inverted plunger in a tee or traffic cone), tee work with a skinny bat (could start with a yellow whiffleball bat hitting baseball sized whiffleballs), tennis racket hitting tennis balls (backhand)against a wall.
When they're starting out, it's important that the bat is light so they dont have to wrestle it to get it near the ball.