Baseball Drills & Coaching Tips

One of my subscribers actually sent me these free baseball coaching tips recently.  I’ve included them for you below.  Give them a try at your next baseball practice.

From Valara…
I have two baseball coaching tips for you.

1.  For pitchers to work on pivoting and stepping correctly I line them up and have them pretend they have a ball.  They start in their pitching stance and work on the pitching step and pivot from home plate to the fence and back.  If they are doing it correctly it will look like a snake in the ground.  If not it will be straight lines.  It is repetition for them and helpful to me as a baseball coach.

2.  Runner on 1st and 3rd.  If they catch on to us doing the fake throw to 2nd base, I have the short stop come up a little.  Then I have the catcher throw to short stop and then they can look at 3rd or throw back home to get the out there.  This works amazingly.  They think it is going to the pitcher because of shorter throw….sometimes we even get the out from home to 2nd as well.

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Looking for baseball hitting drills?  You’ve come to the right place!  Try out this idea below and let me know how it goes for you.

From Robert…
Here’s a baseball batting drill that I use:
Equipment:
3 different sizes of 1” PVC pipe (I coach 10U team so I have 26”, 28”, & a 30” pipes)
Bucket of golf ball size wiffle balls
Bucket of baseball size wiffle balls

Drill:
Using the pipes as bats, I have them start trying to hit the golf ball wiffle balls as many times as they can.  I vary from tossing it from the side, just behind them, and also from the front.

This can be a very frustrating baseball drill so I like to show them how much they are improving by first tossing a few of the baseball size wiffle balls to let them see how they are striking them and then again after the drill and they can usually see a substantial increase in not just the number of hits, but also how much more centered they are hitting them.

Then they end up wanting to do the drill more.

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Special thanks to Traci for sending this one in.  If you’re searching for fresh free youth baseball drills, you MUST try this out!

From Traci…
Don’t know where this baseball drill came from, but it is a great way to end baseball practice:  Seven Innings

Players are in their defensive positions.  You play a defensive game of seven innings with thebaseball coach Fungo batting.

Coach hits the baseball and the players play it as though it is a game.  Once the players get 3 outs, you move to the next inning.  You can create different situations and players must keep track of imaginary runners and know the situations.  Great for communication too, because they must call out situations, outs, etc.

If you have more than one player for different positions, they can switch each inning.  For each run scored against them, they jog the bases as a cool down to end practice.

Technorati Tags: free youth baseball drills, baseball drill, baseball practice, baseball coach, baseball

Take a look at this submission from Jewell,a tee ball coach.  These are excellent youth baseball coaching tips that you can use to get your tee ball team off to a great start.

From Jewell
Tee Ball Ages 4-5: Kids brand new to tee ball - who have never played and don’t have older siblings they watched play baseball  - don’t know the concept of the baseball field and/or bases.

To illustrate this, you can use poster board and a marker and draw a baseball diamond…and further illustrate home base (with a drawing of a house AND/or the tee, ball, bat, etc.).

Draw and label first base with “1.”
Draw and label second base with “2.”
Draw and label third base with “3.”

* Most 4-5 year-olds know their basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, DIAMOND, rectangle, oval, star, and heart).  Likewise most 4-5 year-olds know how to count and recognize the numbers 1-10.

After making the drawing and explaining it, you can physically walk the team around the field and show them each base.  You may also want to bring cones or some type of visual item labeled with a “1,” “2,” and “3″ (even an old small doll house for home base) to assist visual learners.

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I got the inspiration for this baseball coaching tip from Joe, one of my subscribers. It includes some fresh ideas on baseball fielding drills. Try it out and let me know what you think!

From Joe…
This is a baseball drill I use to get all my players to try out the infield positions:

Have a player at each infield position. The rest of the players line up down the third base line (hopefully not too many). Put an empty bucket in foul territory by third base.

I hit a ground ball to the shortstop and he turns two. The first baseman then makes the throw across the diamond to the third baseman. The third baseman must straddle the bag and make the “V” tag. He tosses the baseball into the bucket at third and hustles to short. The shortstop moves to second and the second baseman goes to first. The first baseman jogs behind the backstop and goes to the end of the line at third.

We make a game of it to see how many times we can be perfect. It gives everyone a taste of each position. We also can switch up how starts the double play (second to short, or first to second to first then the throw to third). Start slow and emphasize proper technique for each position.

Technorati Tags: baseball coaching, baseball fielding drills, baseball drill, baseball