Winter workouts

[CoachAl]

Hello gang,
Just looking for some friendly advice and ideas on how to structure a decent winter program for a 2nd year 10u comp. team. Although I am an experienced coach, this will be my first time taking the lead on the indoor stuff over the winter.

We will have 90 min in a facility that has two tunnels and enough turf space where we can do a few other drills -not quite as big as a full infield.

I would like to work some speed and agility drills in somehow - especially early on. I was thinking of just splitting our time up in 30 min blocks for speed and agility, throwing/catching/technique drills and then hitting drills. We will have 9 players to it's a manageable number, plus 2-3 asst. coaches helping out.

If anyone has any good winter practice "templates" or something similar they would be willing to share, much appreciated!

Alan

 

[Coach Lia]

Have you done conditioning to strengthen your athlete's legs like body weight squats, calf raises, or adductor/abductor exercises plus core training which will help them with your sprint and agility drills?

You can start first on strengthening then go on to speed and agility drills to have a progressive program.

 

[starsnuffer]

Alternativly, shoveling snow, snowball fights, and pulling sleds up hills are all great ways to do the above exercises while enjoying the winter as a team ;P

-W

 

[mrslug01]

in 90 minutes I don't see how you have time to hit, do conditioning and teach the game. I'm coaching U14. Our team has a one hour hitting lesson on Thursday. Then we have a two hour indoor practice on Sunday. We spend one hour hitting again. We break the girls into 4 groups of three. 4 Stations. Live pitch (I do it from 20 feet behind a screen), bunting off lite flight machine, 2 sets of tees for things like hit, low, in or out or any combo of them all. Then we have another hour to work on infield/of skills/plays. It takes 15 minutes to get warmed up stretching/throwing. So we have 45 minutes left. We end it with some running but can't let that be a focus of the practice. In my opinon, as much as strength and conditioning is a great concept, the primary focus should be to teach the girls how to play the game and play it well.

 

[obbay]

Do stations, maybe (4) 15 minute stations for the first hour (or 3 15's for the first 45) and then you can do stuff that involves the whole team at once. One thing I would suggest is have one coach doing hitting one at a time while other stuff is going on. Usually if the whole team is doing some kind of field practice you can cycle them thru the tunnels one at a time so each has good quality time hitting and it doesn't disrupt the field practice.