Helping baseball players develop skills faster by focusing on specific fundamentals

Helping baseball players develop skills faster by focusing on specific fundamentals
By: Joel

Many coaches’ approach to baseball practice is frenetic. They cram hitting, catching, pitching and fitness into every baseball session, dedicating at most a sliver of time to each. While using stations can be an effective way to develop athletes’ skills when the exercises do not complement or elaborate on each other, the message can be lost in the noise.

To help your players develop and retain skills, the best way to run practices is to focus on a particular technique at a time. Rotate the activities among whole practices rather than trying to get a bit of them all into each. A focused practice will be much more likely to teach your players a skill, and provide them with additional time to practice the new skill. Be sure to always stay focused on the fundamentals of the game and keep it interested.

This is a lot like looking at the big picture, which during a season coaches do all the time – one loss, or even a losing streak, does not mean a failed year, after all. The important thing is that you develope young players into kids that enjoy playing baseball. To often coaches will overwork their players in attempt to win, but instead the kids lose interest and get burned out. Keep the drills fun and moving and your kids will enjoy learning the game.

If your league, for example, trains three days a week, you can drill hitting one day, catching/throwing the next, and fitness the third. Every coach knows there are hundreds of youth baseball drills for each baseball skill out there, so change up the players’ activities. If they are struggling in a particular area, incorporate a quick recap or use it as a warm up during a follow-up session. The next week, repeat until they’ve mastered it.

In this way, you are building on skills through practices and over time, by forcing the athletes to recall what they learned a week ago. As they improve, you can either incorporate more difficult activities or new techniques entirely.

Your players will put it all together during games and fit the puzzle pieces themselves, providing an organic incorporation that can be a huge benefit. Rather than having a rote mentality about when to use certain skills, these athletes can develop an instinct about the sport.

If you’re going to work on the intricacies of your teams’ swings, make sure you have the right baseball equipment, like batting tees, plenty of baseballs and at least one L-screen.

Learn Baseball Fundamentals

There is no doubt that baseball is currently among the most watched and followed games in the United States. It is slowly but steadily strengthening its foothold in many other countries around the world. If you want to learn baseball and know everything about this popular game, it is advisable that you first go through the fundamentals of the ballgame. You would surely realize that baseball is truly interesting and engaging.

The fundamentals of the game are known by everyone who regularly catches any of the televised baseball games. It has really become more like a religion to many suburban and urban American families. If you do not want to get left behind or if you want to get into lively conversations with your family and friends about the sport, you should first know about these baseball basics.

The players

Each baseball team should consist of nine players. One of them should be designated as the pitcher. As a bat and ball game, a team is intended to bat while the other fields or pitches the ball. The team in the pitching side should have all its nine players out across the field. The team in the batting side could have any number of its players in the field, usually about one to four, at any moment. The pitching team should also assign one of its members to serve as the catcher, who would crouch behind the batter so that any pitched ball that is missed by the batter could be easily caught.

The field

There are four bases scattered in a square-shaped playing field, which is called the ‘diamond.’ At the center of the field is where the pitchers mound. The batter stands opposite at the home plate. After hitting the ball, the batter goes to the first, second, and third bases that are designated to follow a clockwise direction. About 45 degrees of the batter’s both sides are foul lines. The inside area of foul lines is the fair territory, which is where all players are. The rest of the field is called the foul territory. Infield is the area enclosed within bases. The outfield is the other area.

The objective

The main objective is to outscore the opposing team. Each of the teams would take turn to pitch and to bat. As usual, the one that scores greater is the winner at the end of the game. One inning is counted per batting turn of a team. Technically, there should be up to nine innings in every game. The pitching team could prevent the batting team from scoring through catching the ball before it could touch the ground, touching base before a runner gets there, or touching the runner using the ball before he gets to any base.

The scoring system

It is important to learn baseball scoring. A score is earned when a batter hits the ball and he is able to go to first, second, and third bases without being touched by the ball. The score is completed when he is able to go back to the home base after going the round with all bases.