How do you make pitching practice fun for a kid?

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Mar 8, 2017
78
8
My DD is 9. We pitch about 4-5 days per week.

She really likes to pitch, she's taken to it really well, but as with any kid, it's not the most exciting time practicing a repetitious motion for days/weeks/months at a time. A lot of our drills involve K position, really working on cementing the muscle memory for a proper foundation and focusing on one correction at a time until it's no longer an issue.

Any games you use, strategy to keep it fresh, fun, exciting?

I use a reward system, try to mix up the drills we do, try to add something new to give her a challenge.

I'll also challenge her with location drills to see if she can hit the spots (while at the same time drilling the motions she needs to have engrained).

I think the key might be finding a friend to catch her, she loves to pitch at practice to her catcher, but just looking for any little thing to use during the 45 minutes we practice at home.
 
Jun 19, 2013
753
28
I don't have any tricks or games as our time is usually limited and if it's just me and her she tends to just want to do her work and get on to something else. I just try to keep the mood generally light as much as possible, talk about other things to break the tension, tease and laugh with her. Find things to praise that is going well like "really like the way you're being persistent about getting the right spin on this drop ball" (even though I know she is annoyed with herself). The one thing that almost always works for mine is to bring music. If she has her music playing she goes much longer and is dancing around and singing in between pitches.
 
Apr 12, 2015
792
93
At young ages you have at most 1 minute per year of age of attention span. So anything takes longer than 10 minutes, with instruction included, and you've lost her. She keep things short and simple. 3 5 minute sessions of different drills will be far more effective than 1 15 minute session trying to hammer a perfect k drill down.

Another key is to disguise what she is doing so it seems more like play than a practice. Do the good old basketball on a tee and see if she can hit it. See how far she can pitch the ball into the outfield. Hit grounders to her at third and have her pitch the ball to first base for the out. Things like that.

Lastly, she is 9. If she is drilling 4 or 5 times a week it is probably too much. At that age I would only do a drill focused practice once or twice a week. The rest of the time would be spent either just playing catch underhanded or short games and challenges that reinforce whatever drills we have worked on.
 
Mar 8, 2017
78
8
Lastly, she is 9. If she is drilling 4 or 5 times a week it is probably too much. At that age I would only do a drill focused practice once or twice a week. The rest of the time would be spent either just playing catch underhanded or short games and challenges that reinforce whatever drills we have worked on.

On that part, I think she's ok, I don't drag her outside, she wants to practice. She'll be starting on TB in spring, I know the coach and am pretty sure he's planning on using her as one of the main pitchers. Some of the 10U teams in this area are insane, there's a team we've seen play several times, the Power Surge, they have a 10U pitcher throwing 60mph. She knows if she's going to be successful she has to work on her craft, and much like I was as a kid, she's not happy with the idea of losing to better teams. I'd be perfectly fine watching her strike out the girls in our rec league, but this is what she wants to do and I'll support her as long as she wants me to.

As far as making the practice more fun, it's not because she's miserable, I just know from experience that to be successful in a sport, you need to enjoy it, so if I can keep it from getting monotonous, then I think she'll benefit more, I'd never want to get into what I call "zombie mode", just doing drills without thought because that's the routine.

On the other stuff, I appreciate the tips, and will work on ways of adding some of those ideas to our sessions.
 
Mar 8, 2017
78
8
I don't have any tricks or games as our time is usually limited and if it's just me and her she tends to just want to do her work and get on to something else. I just try to keep the mood generally light as much as possible, talk about other things to break the tension, tease and laugh with her. Find things to praise that is going well like "really like the way you're being persistent about getting the right spin on this drop ball" (even though I know she is annoyed with herself). The one thing that almost always works for mine is to bring music. If she has her music playing she goes much longer and is dancing around and singing in between pitches.

Yeah, nobody likes constant negativity, that's a great technique to focus on positives, even if they're not quite doing it how you'd like. Also agree on the music, I try to always bring a speaker out with us.
 
Jun 17, 2009
15,105
0
Portland, OR
I don't have any tricks or games as our time is usually limited and if it's just me and her she tends to just want to do her work and get on to something else. I just try to keep the mood generally light as much as possible, talk about other things to break the tension, tease and laugh with her. Find things to praise that is going well like "really like the way you're being persistent about getting the right spin on this drop ball" (even though I know she is annoyed with herself). The one thing that almost always works for mine is to bring music. If she has her music playing she goes much longer and is dancing around and singing in between pitches.

I often give my hitters a choice of what to listen to. They get to chose between 'country' or 'western'.
 
Jul 16, 2013
4,659
113
Pennsylvania
Another key is to disguise what she is doing so it seems more like play than a practice. Do the good old basketball on a tee and see if she can hit it. See how far she can pitch the ball into the outfield. Hit grounders to her at third and have her pitch the ball to first base for the out. Things like that.

When DD was younger I would place a stuffed animal on top of the tee. The distance of the tee would depend on her ability to hit it. As she became more accurate, I would move the tee further away or use a smaller stuffed animal.
 

JAD

Feb 20, 2012
8,231
38
Georgia
The promise of a trip to Brusters for ice cream if DD gave me 110% worked wonders when DD was younger. As she got older it became more of a positive/negative reinforcement technique, like "drop and give me 20 for every drop ball that hits me in the shin", "you are running home from here if you shank one more pitch over my head", "your boyfriend can come over for an hour after practice if you give me 110%", "I will give you $20 for gas for 60 minutes of pitching".
 

Cannonball

Ex "Expert"
Feb 25, 2009
4,854
113
We got old construction cones of various sizes and set a balls on them. Knock the cone down and you get a point. Take the ball off of the cone without hitting the cone, you get 3 points. Then, we played a game. X amount of balls in the bucket and then, set a target number. We had an old ATEC screen that had a small slot in the middle of the net. So, we played a game of throwing balls through the hole.
 

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