Coaching baseball can be extremely rewarding. Helping young baseball players improve their skills by playing the game they love is a fun way to spend your time. Ensuring that practices are run efficiently is the easiest way to help your players improve.
Have Different Stations
If you have only one practice drill going on at a time, 90 percent of players will be standing there waiting for their turn to participate. If you utilize this strategy, your players will not be getting the correct amount of practice time needed to improve their skills. By having different stations throughout the field during practice, you can ensure every player will be doing something for every minute of practice. Make sure the players spend an equal amount of time at each station to ensure proper skill enhancement.
General Coaching Tips
Have a couple assistant coaches or volunteers help run the drills at practice. Since the coach can only be in one place at once, players need to be watched over by other people to ensure they are doing the drills correctly. Be sure to emphasize quality over quantity. If the players understand that it is more important to field one ball correctly than five balls incorrectly, they will improve much quicker and refine their skills more effectively. Keep practice fun. Baseball is a fun game, and the No. 1 reason that players quit is because the game becomes work for them. By having some fun games going on during practice, you can keep the players' interest and ensure that they will look forward to coming to practice.
Colored Ball Drill
Paint a bunch baseballs different colors and place them in a bucket at the pitchers' mound. Put one in your glove without telling the batter, then yell a color as you throw the ball toward the plate. The player is only allowed to hit the ball if the color you yell matches the color of the ball thrown. This drill helps improve a players' decision-making and reaction time at the plate. Allow each player to go through at least 10 to 15 pitches before switching.
Power Bat Drill
Take a batting tee and a toilet plunger, then slip the plunger into the tee with the rubber part sticking up. Take a flat soccer ball or basketball and place it on the tee, with the tee placed about 10 to 15 feet from a wall or fence. Have a player line up next to the tee and swing, hitting the ball toward the wall. Make sure the player is concentrating on his technique and mechanics of his swing in order to improve his method of hitting the ball. According to Baseballcorner.com, this drill helps improve batting strength and technique, as if a player can hit a ball weighing a couple pounds more than baseball, they will learn to drive the baseball much further.
Fence Drill
This drill can be a fun game or contest for the players. Have a player stand 10 feet in front of the fence and hit a ball from about 40 feet away. Hit grounders, fly balls and line drives toward the player, keeping track of how many they catch and how many make it past them and hit the fence. Hit 10 balls at the player before switching. The fielder who stops the most of the 10 balls hit at them wins the round.
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