Outfield Depth Perception

Cannonball said:

Are you using cones to give direction on the drop steps/angles and then standing at a decent distance to throw the fly balls so that OFs can work efficiently and get good reps?

Click to expand...

Dabears17 said:

I stumbled across this by accident when coaching a 10u team. We were throwing fly balls with a pitching machine and did one practice where we had the players concentrate on catching the ball on one bounce. It worked pretty well on improving tracking.

Click to expand...

Mudita12 said:

Yes! We use a lot of cones. We warm up our hips and flipping our feet for over the shoulder or settling under the ball.

Click to expand...

Cannonball said:

I've never taught "flipping feet." Instead, we teach driving the opposite shoulder so that the OF never breaks stride to get to the ball. I am assuming you are using the term "flipping feet" to describe what you do on a ball hit over the OF head and the OF has to change their direction to catch the ball.

Click to expand...

Mudita12 said:

Yeah, flipping hips or flipping feet. We want to teach our players to flip their bodies to reduce stress on their knees when “turning” to run to a ball hit over their head or to get to a point of settling under the ball. Something Alabama teaches.

Click to expand...

Batman8 said:

I’ve taught many beginners over the years. The one thing most beginners have problems with is judging how deep the ball will fly.
With young players I tell them the ball goes up about twice as far as it travels coming down. So if the ball reaches its peak to your front it will be short, if its above you it will land behind.
After they learn to judge then we toss a small football to catch barehanded, then progress to a tennis ball and finally softball. With glove

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...