Practice plans and specifically batting practice

[Greenmonsters]

T - Depends on your kids, but at 10U I don't trust anybody swinging a bat without close supervision (x10 for 8U). With the primary objective being BP and assuming you have 3 coaches, I'd do the following: Station A = 2 girls and a coach along the OF foul line doing swing work - front toss w/ TCB weighted balls (prefered) or wiffles w/ a hitting stick and/or tee work into a net; Station B = BP from the plate w/ 2 helmeted hitters and the rest of the players in position - head coach pitch/fast front toss from close up (behind a screen) w/ live fielding - 2 sets of 10 swings each. 3rd coach periodically (i.e., every 5th pitch or batter change) can call situations and hit balls to the IF and OF to be played out. If you've got another coach, set up a bunting station against the opposite side of the backstop (or somewhere else out of the way w/ net/fence).

 

[Momo'sDad]

There is a big backstop at the field I will get next year. I also have tees. Batting practice just seems to be a black hole in terms of field usage and time. If you give each kid maybe 5 minutes that can take a long time. I am wondering if others just do it in the outfield? I have a lot of help Amy, so in the past I've done stations like you say. The issues I've run into are usually along these lines:

* Impossible to sync batter with all the stations, just relax and realize everyone won't do all stations

* Helpers tend to over-coach and give extra BP to kids. It's critical to stay on time or BP devolves into endless time hole

* field usage

* girl pitch can start to have too many balls (and occasionally hit batters), coach pitch perhaps not realistic enough but we ended up going with coaches throwing fairly fast pitches

* BP for say 12 girls 5 min each can obviously run a whole hour, sometimes limiting possibility of doing things with everyone

If there's only 1 coach who can do hitting work with your players, then it's going to take an hour. There's no getting around it. You could set up 2-3 tees and run small groups, but at the start of your season, you need to get all your players on the same page with respect to the basics.

My AC and I both know how to teach hitting, so we did separate tee work with all the players yesterday. After we'd done about half the team, though, I noticed that another group of our girls were struggling with their overhand throws during their fielding drills that a couple of the dads were running, so I left her to work 1-on-1 with the hitters while I went to break down those throws.

Every coach has a different philosophy on how a rec team should be managed, but we have a very wide range of player experience and talent, so our goal is to provide individual or small-group instruction at each player's level. We don't dumb down anything for the stronger players and we don't give the weaker players anything too advanced for them to handle. During throwing warm-ups, little things like making sure each player is paired with someone of similar ability does make a difference.

One hitting game we like to do at the end of every other practice involves giving each player 1 or 2 pitches. If they don't swing at a strike, they're out. If they hit the 1st pitch foul, they get 1 more, but if the 2nd 1 is foul, they're out. The game moves quickly, and they love it. I incorporate an appropriate level of trash talk to challenge them to get those bats moving more quickly.

I know practices can seem tedious when working with younger players on their fundamentals, but focusing on mechanics and technique and giving them hundreds and hundreds of repetitions is going to make all the difference for them at game time. I don't know if this is your first time at 10u, but if you can be patient with your players and stick to your program, it'll be totally worth it at the end.

 

[Greenmonsters]

Unless they're advanced at an early age, the primary 10U objective is teach them the right way to do things in practice and encourage them (and their parents) to do reps at home w/ mom, dad, sis, bro, friend, pitchback, stoop, dog etc. And emphasize that reps are good only if they're quality reps! Games should be for fun and to see what actually has or has not been carried over from practice. Things get ingrained and become muscle memory somewhere after 5,000-10,000 reps. How many reps can you do in practice? While a handfull might have the attention span to focus on say 100+ reps during practice, the others likely will end up bored in la la land and the net effect for the team is a negative. Until they have hitting and throwing mechanics down reasonably well, this is what practice needs to be focused on IMO. The trick is to keep it varied and fun. Mix in enough situational teaching so that they can be competitive in games, but that part of the game is much easier to pick up later (e.g., 8-10U positioning and coverages are not the same as 12U+) than it is to re-learn proper fundamentals.

 

[Mr T]

Good post green. It took me a frustrating while before realizing the rec schedule is such that improvement won't happen unless they do stuff at home.

 

[joemcq51]

A practice drill that we would use seemed to work pretty good. I would put the girls in groups of 3. If you have 12 girls you get 4 groups. One group is infield, one outfield, one outside fence with AC working bunting, one group hitting. Then we rotate the hitters very quickly. I give each girl 3 pitches, then rotate within the group. They have to run in and out of the box. If you have a couple buckets of balls, you just keep pitching. They go in and out as many times as they can. I usually let each girl get about 25 pitches before we rotate and bring in the next group. If you are moving fast, its about 10 minutes a rotation.

 

[Mr T]

Good ideas thanks. Some of them involve players on the field. That can get slow, but hopefully not as I like the rapid fire Joe talks about and could try the mixed in coach hit to fielders that was mentioned.

I like some of the station ideas, then it just becomes about rotation. So... let's say I have various other stations. I might want to keep kids at a tee station for 5-10 minutes max, but say there are 3 kids there and 3 up to bat. That's where I get sort of stuck trying to think how to get each batter 5 minutes of BP say, while still keeping other stations moving along. Maybe I just need to design it so that there are more stations, less kids at each one, or less BP, so that it evens out and I don't have to have kids lagging at sub-stations while the BP kids are taking swings.

 

[SBdad]

Good ideas thanks. Some of them involve players on the field. That can get slow, but hopefully not as I like the rapid fire Joe talks about and could try the mixed in coach hit to fielders that was mentioned.

I like some of the station ideas, then it just becomes about rotation. So... let's say I have various other stations. I might want to keep kids at a tee station for 5-10 minutes max, but say there are 3 kids there and 3 up to bat. That's where I get sort of stuck trying to think how to get each batter 5 minutes of BP say, while still keeping other stations moving along. Maybe I just need to design it so that there are more stations, less kids at each one, or less BP, so that it evens out and I don't have to have kids lagging at sub-stations while the BP kids are taking swings.

The Ultimate Hitting Machine ( Ultimate Soft Toss Hitting Machine) is a good soft toss machine to use as a hitting station in practice. (hitting into a net or a back stop) Young kids can operate it by them selves, but you might want to have a parent/coach with them to help keep balls gathered from the net and keep rack loaded to help things move along more smoothly/quickly. Have multiple hitting stations set up that they can move on to. Batting tees first to teach swing machanics, then soft toss or soft toss machine to get some swing reps in, before they move on to live bp.
Kids love to hit off this machine and can get a lot of swing reps in daily by them self.....at practice or at home. This hitting aid is small and compact, and can be set up quickly and is easy to use. Softballs, baseballs, whiffle balls can be used with this machine. Haven't seen the TCB balls used with this machine, but I would imagine the lighter ones could be used. This machine is spring loaded, no electricty or batteries are needed to operate.

 

[RookKev]

Not sure if you have all you need... but it gives you some ideas. If you are serious about the team, and longevity, the investment now would pay off i'm sure...

Jugs Sports Offensive Softball Practice Plan

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

This Slingpitcher is excellent FAQs Baseball Pitching Machines Softball Pitching Machine. I thought that it looked like a joke, but 2 of my students have one and it is going strong, 3 years later. It will toss any ball into the outfield, so you would need a grassy area - but any mom or dad can sit there and do it.

You would need the net, to use it for hitting.