- Dec 11, 2010
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The answer is “it depends”.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.
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.