Practice Planning

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Dec 11, 2010
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Team hitting is one of the worst ROI in all of sports practices that I can think of. Spend more time on baserunning and defending baserunning if you want to win at a high level.
The answer is “it depends”.

Depends on the type of team. Depends on how many coaches you have, depends if you have parents available who can help, it depends on what equipment you have available, it depends on how many times per week you practice.

I’m never going to do the “one kid hits off of one of my pitchers” practice, ever. It will also never have a “station” where all player’s do is shag. I’m also going to work on defense and base running every practice.

Also, I’m not going to train hitters in practice. Thats where it goes wrong. I’m going to have players practice hitting at practice. When the do something good, I’m going to notice it but mostly I’m going to keep my mouth shut about their swings.

A typical indoor practice I ran had a cage of machine, a cage of seated front toss, a cage of me pitching from behind a screen and a coach pitching bunts. Depending on numbers, I usually had a station of tee into a net with approx 18-28* trajectory marked into it and sometimes a training bat tee station.

This was an 18u team and we had open practices, players from other teams and little sisters were welcome so we were anywhere from 10-15 players per practice, we never knew until they showed up. Depending on how many showed up we could spend 30-60 minutes of a 2.5 hour practice hitting.

One of DD’s played for a 10u coach that practiced 2x a week, ran 3-4 outdoor hitting stations with a generator and machines and used parents to shag. They ran infield pitching and defense while the machines were humming. He got a lot done every practice. He worked on base running and sliding as it got dark, looking back that was the safest thing he could do in twilight.

Both DD’s were on teams at times that couldn’t practice due to geography. They also both played hs ball where there was a different practice dynamic. 3 sets of coaches in 8 years. Only one had any idea how to set up a practice. The other two wasted so much time it drove me and DD’s crazy.
 

sluggers

Super Moderator
Staff member
May 26, 2008
7,132
113
Dallas, Texas
A few questions for the group:
1) Do you use small groups across stations to reduce wait time? Or move as a team?
Small groups...

2) How long do you stick with an activity?
Keep an eye on the girls. When their attention starts wandering, move to the next drill. Of course, that means you have to know lots and lots of different drills.

3) How consistent are you with drills? Do you change a lot or stay consistent practice to practice?

The areas of emphasis are the same. The drills may change. That is, we're going to work on ground balls for 20 minutes, and I might use two different drills for that.

4) What is the right mix between fundamentals and applied skills for intermediate players?
Everything is fundamentals. I don't know what you mean by "applied skills".

HITTING:

You need 100 wiffle balls of different colors and size--softball size, baseball size, golf ball size.

Divide the team into three groups. Group 1 batted. Group 2 would get on one knee and did dart throws to the batters. Group 3 picked up the balls and put them into buckets. Groups changed every 5 to 10 minutes.

Because Group 2 is throwing to Group 1, they are practicing an important skill.
 
Aug 1, 2019
962
93
MN
...-Coaches talk too much at practice. Shut up and practice. If you have something to say, say it and move on. They aren’t listening if you are talking in paragraph size sound bites.
Agreed. I like to get the girls thinking about what they're doing by asking questions of them, rather than just telling them what to do. "How can you/we do this better?" comes out of my mouth a lot.
 

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