Building great practices

[Ken Krause]

Practicing is about more than showing up for a couple of hours and running through drills. What you do needs to have a purpose, and each one should be leading to the next as well as an overall goal since you can practice to lose as easily as you practice to win.

With that in mind, where do you start, and how do you progress? What do you do to maximize the value of the time you're spending. Looking for answers both when you know the team well already, and when you are forming a new team.

I'm looking for ideas you're willing to share on evaluating your players, drills, conditioning, a progression or order, priorities and even the intangibles. I don't want to influence the discussion too early, so I will hold back for now. But I promise to contribute later on.

Have at it! If we do a good job, maybe this thread will become a sticky.

 

[Sparky Guy]

Ken,

Your question is a little too general. The answers depend on the age group you're working with, what time of year it is, team overall experience and player talent level.

Given that, I will give you my mindset when it comes to working with young kids. With young kids it all about drills and getting them into the travel ball mindset of seeing a challenge as something to overcome and not be afraid of. What I do during the fall and winter is hit the drills hard.

I have a list of about 80 individual skills a player needs to play the game. Each practice I take 3-4 that I want to cover in a practice. Some are learned quickly while others take multiple attempts to master them. I try and build one on top of another such as learn how to catch a ball properly and with confidence then moving on to learning how to throw a ball correctly. Then I move to advanced footwork followed by advance glove work. With any luck as spring nears they are ready to start working on game situations and flow.

The other thing I do is tell my kids I an not a honey, sweetie type of coach. I tell them I expect their best effort during practices as well as games. Then I back it up with absolute honesty. If they make a mistake during practice I will stop them and point it out to the entire team and use it as a teaching moment. When they do something right I will stop practice and use it as a praise and teaching moment to show them what I expect from them. I found that if I treat them with respect and show them how to correct their mistakes they respond in a very positive manner. The trick is to be consistent from the very first day at tryouts.

What I look for is the player who responds to failure with frustration and some anger over not doing something correctly. The player who listens and takes what I tell them and tries again doing what it takes to get it right. They may not be the best out there, but they have the never quit attitude. The other thing I look for is the natural leader. Not necessarily the kid with the biggest mouth. I want the one who encourages her team mates to be their best without being told to.

Evaluating young girls is very tough. With the younger girls there can be as much as a two year difference in physical and mental maturity for two kids the same age. What I try to look for is the overall fluidity of movement while doing something on the field, their ability to learn and adapt as well as their understanding of the game flow. Those are the intangibles I use a coach when you look at a player. You can't necessarily define them in black and white terms, but you know the good ones when you see them.

 

[quincy]

Might not be answering the question but that has never stopped me before.

I think most girls are over coached. I think repetition is great. I know “Practice does not make perfect, prefect practice makes perfect”, or whatever it is. I favor repetition over “perfect”.

1) Safe environment
2) Everyone is busy; my job is to setup practice/ drills so there is no opportunity for girls to be standing around.
3) Fun, enjoy practice might be a better term
4) Once a player steps on the practice field you are trying to accomplish something, there is no just warm-up.
5) Intangibles – how the players get along with each other is always a focus. Make an effort to switch the players around so practice to practice they are working with a different group of players in the drills.
6) Inform the players what you are trying to accomplish with a specific drill, at a Team level
7) Inform individual player what you want them to achieve, while still completing the Team goal, during a drill. Some players have the same individual goal, others do not.

My ideal practice, I am not running any of the drills. I get to wonder around talking to individual players working on the various drills.

 

[KevinC]

1. To avoid information overload pick a few skills per practice that you want to work on.
2. Work on basics first before introducing more advanced skills
3. Keep things fresh by switching to something new often
4. Start with a written practice plan but be flexible and add/subtract on the fly as needed
5. Use all the helpers you have and run multiple drills of small groups
6. If the kids aren't having fun stop what you are doing and figure out another way to teach the skill
7. Gather at the end of practice to review what was learned

P.S. I'm new here. Does DD = Dear Daughter

 

[Ade's Dad]

P.S. I'm new here. Does DD = Dear Daughter ?
Darling Daughter
Dear Daughter
Diamond Diva
Dollar Drainer
And more I can't think of.

 

[Carty]

For designing the practice I think a written outline is important. Know how many practices you have and where/what skills you want to have covered at any point in time. I have each practice outlined also - including stations and skills, and how much time is involved. It helps me keep on track. This year I am going to post it (used to just give it to the coaches) so the girls can walk up and read it and know what is coming up, or where they need to be. When I plan on working on multiple things at one time, I will draw out the area and figure the best directions to run things.

For the practice:
1) quick warm up (run or something similar)
2) stretching
3) if we are fielding, we have a standard set of warmup progressions
4) drills that we do for fundamentals - once again these are standard
*We have these standardized so they are quick and effective
5) individual drills
6) team oriented drills
*these are related to the individual skill
Batting are a combination of stations and hitting (either machine, front toss, or live) I try to mix them up to keep it fresh.

I like to have speed and agility right after the stretching, but indoors it uses too much time for the space available. This year I am going to try to get more creative here and move it to whatever time and space I can.

 

[SnocatzDad]

First I like to outline the practice and define the length. I like to run practices 1:30 to 2:00 hrs. Too long and you can lose intensity, too short and your really just warming up, not working on skill development.

To me there are three main segments to each practice
1. Warm-ups

2. Individual Activity. Skills or Drills you do at for each players individual benefit.

3. Team Activity. Things you need to do that require mutiple positions i.e. Cut off's, bunt coverages, 1st and 3rd's, continuation.

For each of those segments you should have staples (expected at every practice), and specials (which occur less frequently and help keep the practices fresh). You also would have Offensive and Defensive drills for both the individual and team segments. IMO it's important to have staple drills because they ensure a certain amount of effeciency to practice. If every practice you did 100% new drills, you would end up spending more time explaining drills than getting reps.

I try to balance time between offensive and defensive work close to 50-50 on average, but will have practices that are more one than the other dependent on what we need to work on. My biggest complaint when critquing other coaches practices is that the balance seems to be about 90% defensive time to 10% offensive time and then they wonder why they hit so poorly. It seems to me that many coaches would be happy to lose a game where they commit no defensive errors rather than win a game where they commit several defensive errors, so their practices reflect this. There was a period when my daughter was working in the preseason where they did not touch a bat for an entire week of daily practice. No softtoss, no tee work, no fronttoss, no machines, nothing. We ended up going to hit 3 times a week on our own for the first month of that season just to keep her reasonably sharp.

I noticed the same thing about pre-game warm up imbalance, I used to note that if we were ever short on warm up time, the first thing to get dropped was the hitting warm up. I always found it strange that we would practice turning double plays prior to every game without fail, but swinging a bat was an optional activity.

 

[Sparky Guy]

I try to balance time between offensive and defensive work close to 50-50 on average, but will have practices that are more one than the other dependent on what we need to work on. My biggest complaint when critquing other coaches practices is that the balance seems to be about 90% defensive time to 10% offensive time and then they wonder why they hit so poorly.

What I do with my practices is they either 100% defensive or 100% offensive. If you try and split them up there's not enough time spend on either to get the proper work in. Pre-game warm-ups are usually 50/50.

 

[Ken Krause]

P.S. I'm new here. Does DD = Dear Daughter ?
Darling Daughter
Dear Daughter
Diamond Diva
Dollar Drainer
And more I can't think of.

Generally accepted to be Darling Daughter. Although Dollar Drainer is probably more accurate.

 

[LongBall]

When we set mini goals for our athletes in our first 1 on 1 meeting we have had several practices. First is live pitching! nothing shows what a player needs to work on for offense then live pitching and working like it is a game situation. Next we put the girls into a bunch of activities on defense and make them game like or mini competitions. From slow rollers, to hard hit balls. This tells us first who can compete under pressure because in some of the drills we use consequences and speed. During this time we have people in who no the game but don't know the athletes filling out our selection matrix almost like the one we use in tryouts. We put percentages on the most important to least important to us. We the coaches also do a form and then all the coaches get together do decide what the team needs to work on most and what is a priority. This also gives us what they each need to work on individually and we give them drills to work on in practice but also outside of practice. We try and work with them at where they are at individually and not where we want them to be! So then we take the # of practices we have until our first game and if we can not fit everything in we pick the most important and some stuff we add into practices as the season progresses a long with what we need to work on after evaluating our notes from the game. We also add in mini competitions like long tee at a target for a gumball machine! and the rest get a pack of gum. Gotta keep it fun.

To find our best choices for IF we use a two ball game. Two receivers on either side of the coach. Team starts 10 feet away facing the coach in two lines. The first two up put their feet together and assume a fielding position. Coach rolls two ball from one had slowly. The completion is to get the ball to your receiver first using whatever technique the rolled ball calls for. Now we tell them before they begin that at close range they need to use fitness and throw the ball in as hard and fast as they can but it must be manageable by the receiver. Then after the first throw they become the receivers. After two rounds move them back 10 feet and so on. Each time you move back it takes a different throw. Get way back and you see who can do and all or nothing and a proper crow hop with a long arm. You can also throw at angles to see who has a good first step for hard hit balls at angles (range). and on and on. Great because they learn friendly competition between themselves.

At the beginning to get them comfortable with each other we got to the dollar store and the small high bounce balls. We are in the gym at the beginning so if we have 12 players we throw 11 balls. Don't be the one without a ball or you get consequences. Pick something they really do not like (burpees) work for us. One player out and throw only 10 and so on until you crown a winner. They get comfortable with each other, get aggressive and end up having a blast!

For trust and communication! We have 12 on our team so we do 4 teams of three. Pick one and blind fold them. The 2nd athlete is the voice and the 3rd athlete sets up the coarse. they take as much team gear as possible and set up a start line, finish line and out of bounds. With the other gear they continuously move it into the path of the blindfolded athlete as the 2nd athlete verbally guides them through. Trust and communication is learned here.

Sorry gotta go!