Baseball’s often a game filled with spills and tumbles. And one thing we want to try and help our players with is teaching them how to get out of what could be a bad situation and resulting injury by teaching them how to tumble both forward and backward, on the right shoulder and left shoulder. So in today’s video blog post, we are going to talk about some tumbling drills and techniques for rolling and tumbling safely.
Tumbling Drills for Rolling and Tumbling Safely
What we’re after is some technique. We want to make sure that we keep our hands inside our body, and keep our legs up and underneath us. It’s your job as the coach to focus on the technique to make sure that they’re doing it properly. Make sure they’ve got the feet underneath, and good coordination and agility. You want to make sure they’re not out of control.
You see an outfielder periodically in a situation where they’ll go back on a ball and maybe backpedal a little more than he should and end up going head over heels. Again, we’re just trying to help ourselves get out of what could be a bad situation with regard to an injury.
A right shoulder roll is a little more along the lines of what you’d see in the outfield if an outfielder actually dove for a ball. Depending on which way the ball went, to his left, to his right, he’d dive on the shoulder. Again, we’re just trying to avoid injury and making sure that we know how to tumble and know how to roll, and roll right out of a problem situation. Notice how he tucks his shoulder down, nice and smooth. Again, you can work on coordination and athleticism, and at the same time, we’re helping our players prevent injury.
For a right-handed player, a left shoulder roll is going to be a little more difficult. Just like a right shoulder roll would be a little more difficult for a left-handed player. But if you work at it just a little bit, and get about three repetitions every workout, it won’t be long until you’ll be equally adept at both.
Another type of roll is the dive roll. The feet go up, but you want to make sure he’s still got the nice tight tuck right at the end, so his feet come underneath him so he can get back on his feet in a hurry.
Be sure to check out the Baseball Inner Circle, which includes video demonstrations of many excellent drills, as well as invaluable tips and techniques! And don’t forget to Join Us on Facebook!