How much running does you team do?

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Jun 8, 2016
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In college we had a fitness test before the season and if you didn't pass you couldn't play. Part of it was running a mile in under 6 minutes. After that we didn't do any running..lol. That said somehow the big captain catcher who hit bombs and always finished way behind everybody else passed every time.. :ROFLMAO:
 
Feb 21, 2017
198
28
Pitchers can run (but not at practice) and everybody else sprints.
"

  • STOP running slow: You cannot get faster by running endless SLOW laps around a track. Softball requires very SHORT bursts of speed, and rarely will a player ever have to sprint more than 8-10 seconds at a time.
And remember don't lift weights because it will slow your swing down. Just kidding but there are coaches stuck in the stone age that believe this too.

Clearly we drink the same Kool-Aid...totally agree.


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Strike2

Allergic to BS
Nov 14, 2014
2,044
113
Short of college where the coach pretty much controls a player's life, running should be done outside of team practice. Run for cardio health, run for game conditioning, run for speed & agility....do it all...but do it outside of practice. That time is too precious.
 
Dec 5, 2017
514
63
What if somebody hits a home run? Do you have an oxygen station at 2nd base?
If they consistently run sprints-60/120', they will be able to run home just fine. Maybe occasionally throw in the team base running competition everyone always does in 8&10u.
 
Jan 24, 2020
70
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DD's SB practice running consists of several short sprints in warmups and some base running drills. Girls are expected to spend time conditioning on their own. DD runs HS XC in the fall for conditioning (HS SB mostly does run-slow conditioning in the fall anyway), and continues with the offseason XC workouts throughout the year. We find the hill work for XC has the most payoff especially since she is a solidly built 1B. She is among best conditioned for her club SB team all year. We find that she is able to maximize her reps through a long SB practice with a maintained focus that she didn't have a couple of years ago. All of this is to say that a SB team running the girls into the ground doesn't achieve anything significant because they are not running coaches.
 
Sep 17, 2009
1,637
83
We used to do off-season indoor practices that would kill kids cardio-wise, but everything was with a ball and glove. Agility ladders and hurdles with plays on balls in and out of them. Quarterback throws of all types with inside/outside turns, etc. etc. Round and round in an indoor gym, high intensity a good hour and they'd be dead but also would have worked very athletic softball skills. We'd also do lead-offs-back, lead-offs-to steals, home-to-2b, 1b-to-3b with good base turns, etc. etc. But even that said, it wasn't for 'conditioning' because we only had them in that setting once a week maybe twice. No one is getting in condition like that but hopefully they were getting more athletic defensively and burning in base-running skills.

BTW, OP. What are the coaches doing when those girls are running for half an hour? Running with them? I bet not :)

What bothers me more is when high school coaches DO get girls every day for three months and spend time conditioning when they have groups of girls from freshman to varsity many of whom are not 'A' travel players and they could use that everyday time to work on softball skills.

Finally, and this went way too long, bets are off in college where conditioning but weights and cardio ARE likely every day and athletes should be/are elite and coaching livelihoods are on the line...
 

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