Southampton Baseball Practice Plan It is cumbersome as coaches to create practice plans on a daily basis. Showing up to practice without a defined plan will lead to less productive practices and frankly, it wastes everyone s time. There is a lot that goes into creating a practice plan, especially for youth teams. You want to make sure that you're spending your limited time on the areas that are going to give you the most significant results during actual game play. The real secret to creating a productive practice plan is to come up with a system where you, your coaches, and your players have a template and an expectation of what is about to happen every day at any given practice. This puts your players in a routine. If you can get your kids on a routine and they have a general expectation of what is going to happen every day, you'll see them start to be a lot more efficient and get more done in a smaller amount of time. The first thing coaches should do at practice is a dynamic stretch. The biggest mistake I see at many youth practices, is to throw a baseball first, THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN! *The purpose of a pre-game/practice routine is to get a player both physically and mentally ready for the upcoming game or practice. It is based on human physiological characteristics and should be tailored specifically toward preparing a baseball player for all of the demands and sport specific movements within their sport. It takes about 30 minutes (15 minutes stretch and 15 minutes throwing routine) to complete, so plan accordingly. DO NOT JUST SHOW UP AND IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TO THROW/PLAY CATCH, YOU MUST GET YOUR BODY READY AND WARMED UP FIRST BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO THROW!! Dynamic Stretch (15 min) The stretch and throw routine should be exactly the same every single day and should be able to be done without the supervision of a coach, once the plan is instilled. You need to be very detailed with what you want and exactly the way you want it done. We want to take the kids through a dynamic warmup where they are always moving. Avoid having your players go out there and sit in a circle to do a less productive static stretch. Throw/Catch (15 min) Different coaches like to implement different throwing programs. The progression of the throwing portion should be the same every day. If you have a player with a sore arm, modifications should be made accordingly. Have a predetermined arm rehab program is a good thing to have in your back pocket. Player s arms will be sore throughout a season. Having a sore arm and an injured arm are two very different things. Be proactive and have an arm rehab program in place prior to the season. This prevents having players have to sit out or not be productive during the catch play segment. ALL PLAYERS, NOT JUST PITHERS, SHOULD ICE THEIR ARM AND ELBOW FOR 20 MINUTES AFTER EACH GAME/PRACTICE!
It s all about the start, have all the players start the same at the same distance. Some coaches like to start the players on their knees, some like them to start on their feet. We re just advising you to have everyone start the same to reinforce that routine element to practice. Especially as kids get older, it is important to have kids throw/catch routine done with the same position groups, catchers with catchers, infielders with infielders, and so forth. The reason is that you can incorporate the different catching/throwing elements, based on positions, into this period. Important Keys for Throw/Catch Play Catch Play is neglected like no other skill in baseball. Spend more time on it and emphasize how important it is to actually catch the ball and throw the ball accurately. Catch Play tends to get worse as players get more comfortable. Stay on your players to stay focused (adding some sort of incentive can help keep focus). Give each player certain things to work on during catch play. This could be a wide variety of things. The key is that coaches are watching the kids play catch and giving them things to work on. If players have a specific focus it can help keep them more engaged. Defensive Maintenance (30 min) This portion of time is more focused on developing individual defensive ability. Players are working on their individual technique and position technique...as they improve the team improves. The defensive maintenance portion of practice will be something that is done every day. It is in this portion where you can start to plug and play a bit more. You will add or subtract drills depending on the certain aspects of defensive play that your players need to work on. It's important to note that each of these drill sets can be done with a partner throwing the ball or a coach hitting a fungo. You will split the players up into 4 separate groups: infielders, outfielders, pitchers, and catchers. Each group will have base drills they do every day to improve basic fielding and throwing techniques. These base drills warm up the hands and the feet. Defensive Team Integration (30 min) After the first portion of defensive maintenance (individual defensive skill progressions) you will implement a team defensive portion. Basically, this portion focuses on defensive schemes and strategies more so than individual skill set. Although, it should be noted that simply participating in the defensive team integration segments will help players improve their individual defensive skills. This is a 30minute time block where the whole team is on the field together. This is where teaching essential team defensive schemes will take place.
Here are just some of the Team Integration Drills you can run during this segment: Bunt Plays (Outfielders running bases) 1st and 3rd Situations (Outfielders running bases) Pick Plays (Outfielders running bases) PFP's (Outfielders running bases) Back Up Situations and Scenarios (Pitchers rotating between running bases and backing up) Fly Ball Priority (Pitchers running bases) Double Cuts (Pitchers running bases) Fungo Situations (Simulating in game situations) Rundowns (Outfielders running bases) Splitting Runners (Pitchers running bases) If you can play defense you will be in every game with a chance to win. Offensive Maintenance & Team Integration: Here are your basic Segments: Offensive Maintenance (15 per or 30 min combined) Offensive Team Integration (15 per or 30 min total) First let us explain the difference between offensive maintenance and offensive integration. Offensive maintenance is focused on developing and honing individual players stance and swing. Offensive integration is emphasizing team offensive schemes (your strategy). To increase efficiency, integrate different activities in an effort to mimic game like situations. You will notice that some of the offensive team integration bullet points are simply the offensive side of several of the defensive team integration bullet points from earlier. This means you can have players actually practicing and performing the offensive skill set while the other players are practicing how to correctly defend against that particular play. Offensive maintenance drills should always be done in and around the cages. If you are doing batting practice on the field of play you are wasting everyone s time and making practice extremely boring! Players should be split into small groups with each coach/group focusing on specific drills and techniques. Examples of offensive maintenance: Batting Tee Drills (expansive amounts of these) Dry Swings (practicing techniques but not hitting a ball) Soft Toss Drills Front Toss Batting Practice (Live Arm coach throwing)
Bunting Practice Vision Drills Off Speed Hitting Two Strike Hitting Weighted Ball Drill Wiffle Ball Batting Practice WE CAN PROVIDE YOU DRILSS AND PROPER TECHNIQUES IF NEEDED, JUST ASK! Examples of offensive integration: 1st and 3rd Offense Steals and Double Steals (Batter taking a pitch, safety steal with batter swinging) Bunt Plays include Suicide Squeeze o Live with base runners & defenders Slash Plays (older teams) On field Batting Practice o Execution Rounds (2 strikes, 2 outs) o Hit and Run o Move em (0 outs move runner from 2nd to 3rd) o Score em INF in (Less than 2 outs runner on 3rd) o Score em INF back (Less than 2 outs runner on 3rd) Hustle Ball Controlled Scrimmage (situational plays) Coach Pitch Scrimmage Efficient Conditioning (15 min or dispersed throughout segments) We are interested in functional conditioning that will help improve performance. It is vitally important to recognize that we have a finite amount of time. Therefore, that time must be spent on the most important things...running poles or laps is not one of the important things. You want to connect conditioning to baseball specific activities. First off, when you connect your conditioning with specific baseball movements it reinforces skills that were learned earlier in practice. Second, it helps manifest a level of mental toughness to fight through the physical strain and practice the skill in an effective way every time. Lastly, it mimics a game because there will be instances during a season where a player will just get done running the bases and be winded and not have enough time to recover before they have to make a defensive play in the following inning.
Offensive Conditioning Drills: Straight steal (older groups work on proper leads) Hit and run Delayed steal Running first to third Running out a double with a slide and jog back to plate Running out of the box and running out a base hit, a double, a triple, or an inside the park HR. Defensive Conditioning Drills: Fly ball communication without rest Playing balls in the gap and hitting the correct cut man without rest Backup assignments without rest Side to side, rapid fire ground balls Fly ball tracking Double cut positioning General Baseball Conditioning Drills: One of the false pieces of coaching baseball folklore is running long distances is helpful, again this is false! Fact is there is substantial research that argues against running long distances and lap running. Some of the key research shows that lap running decreases hip mobility, trains the incorrect type of muscle fibers, and it trains the incorrect energy system. I encourage you to look at the science and research. Instead consider more explosive movement/conditioning drills, such as: Short distance wind sprints Agility ladders Agility hurdles Box jumps Lateral explosions