preseason indoor drills

I am so not the guy to do this, from CA, but I will do my best.

Defense

All done with incrediballs.  We try to simulate the 90 foot bases for infielders.  OF is a tad bit difficult because obviously we can get great height on Flyballs.  We do a lot of ground ball loads and we also do line relay work.  Catchers will go through there normal drills.

 

Pitchers

We throw flat ground pens with hard balls.

 

Hitting

We use lite flight balls for hitting.  Look like a ball with laces and everything but is like sponge.  Flies, maybe 30 ft.  We also use the heavy balls.  We usually also end with some type of scrimmage, obviously with the lite flight balls and smaller bases.

 

Being in a northern climate we spend most of our practice time inside.  So here is my $.02:

 

We focus a lot on hitting, as it is the easiest think to do indoors. Use your cage.  Get another if possible.  Nothing like hitting a real ball. 

 

If you want to go with wiffle balls, then the total control balls are pretty good.  www.totalcontrolsports.com.  They cost a lot more than regular wiffles, but are much more robust and heavier -- provide better feedback.   

 

You can still throw in a gym, so we do that.  And A LOT of conditioning -- especially core work. 

 

Pitchers and catcher's can do most of their normal stuff. 

 

For infield, we work a lot on fielding with the hands.  Its all short stuff, but really works the hands.  We also work a lot on the double play toss/transfer between the SS and 2b. 

 

We once played dodge ball.  Broke up the monotony of being indoors. 

Here is something I made that you might find useful.  Good luck!

http://www.baseballbytheyard.c...er-indoor-practices/

 

BaseballByTheYard.com

I am not a HS coach but was a coach of a HS aged travel team for many years (hung it up this year).  We faced the same issues.  Most of our HS around here have large field houses so we had no problems finding a gym with lots of room.  Lots of hitting and throwing for the pitchers.  We had enough space to do some decent long toss as well.  Spent lots of time working on fielding situations (ie who covers what in certain situations).  We were fortunate enough to layout a diamond with 90' base paths.  Also, lot of grounders to the infielders.  As well as some base running situations. 

Thanks everyone! 

 

Those total control balls are way to costly for me. I'd be willing to pick up a bucket of the lite flights. I think those will work out for some things. Do they take a beating pretty well? I was thinking i could have like 2-3 stations of a pair of kids doing soft toss against the wall with those, 2 kids in the batting cage. a pitcher and catcher throwing a pen, and then that would leave me with just 4-5 kids and enough room to be doing some grounders and other stuff in the meantime while rotating kids in and out of each station. I like the idea of ending with a scrimmage too, would give us a chance to work on some situations, even if our basepaths are much smaller than 90 haha. 

 

couple more things:

 

What do you guys think of pitching machines vs. a live person in the cage? I always hated the machine as a kid and felt like i couldnt get the timing with a ball dropping into the machine vs. an actual person winding up. I abandoned the machine last year and just threw from behind an L screen from about 20-30 ft. away, but I'd be willing to go back to the machine if experience shows an advantage. thoughts?

 

Also, I understand that preseason should be when we spend more time on conditioning. in a 1 1/2- 2 hour indoor practice, how much time would you guys typically spend on conditioning vs. skills and stuff? And what are some ways that you motivate during conditioning exercises to really get kids to push it? I tried last year doing things like wall torture, or planks and whoever lasts the longest doesn't have to do sprints...that type of thing. But I always felt like i could have been getting more out of them. a few kids would really rise to the occasion and a lot would just fold out early and rest up for their sprints while the other kids really pushed it... pretty disappointing, but its the culture of the school thats gotta be turned around...doesnt happen overnight.

 

Thanks again everyone!

Personally I am a fan of hitting machine and out of hand.  I believe the hitting machine is great for grooving your swing working on your mechanics while gaining confidence.  In the out of hand cage I am a fan of pitchers pitching to hitters.  Bring the portable mound and an L screen right in the cage.  Have catchers catch and now you are working on three phases of the game in one cage.  Then along the side of the cage or into that tarp do your tee work and flips.  I personally hate working with any kind of ball thats not a regular size and weight.  The safety balls they make that are regulation size and weight are fine.  But wiffle balls I hate.  Just not a realistic look for batter.  Then there is always some space left over for throwing and ground balls.  By doing your work in stat Ions nobody is standing around or at worst you have partners.  I think standing around is the worst element of any practice indoor or outdoor.

agree on the standing around thing jolietboy! the other big thing is motivation. Last year, when the snow was almost gone (early April) we had a random huge blizzard dump about a foot of snow on us. One day I was saying "we might be on the field next week" the next, a foot of fresh snow. At this point it had been a few weeks already and we were feeling pretty cooped up. Looking back, that would have been a good time to break it up a bit by doing some sort of team outing, or a whiffle ball game or something. Being stuck in the gym for over a month can be a real morale buster. 

Agreed that inside stuff will wear on you after a while.  But I always tell kids one of the big obstacles to becoming a great player is that it takes an adult commitment and mental approach out of a kid.  Just got to keep plugging.  But I am totally with you on the almost depression really of being in that gym/fieldhouse often times right up to your first game.  Many seasons we went straight from the gym to game 1.

yeah, that was pretty much the situation for us last season. our scrimmage was snowed out. our first 2 games rescheduled. and then i think we got 2 days on the field before our first game, the other team had not been on their field yet at all, but looked surprisingly good considering. 

Coach Z-

 

We have an hour and half every day, one gym, on batting cage.  We use 0% of the time on conditioning.  Our gym time is just too valuable at that point.  

 

We do baserunning where we are teaching skills, techniques, and mental approach on the bases, but we don't ever get on the line and just condition.  We also have medballs, agilities and Yoga worked into our 12 minute warm-up, so guys get core and flexibility every day.  

 

Additionally, if I set up the practice correctly, there will be no need for conditioning because my guys will have been moving the entire hour and a half with very little break. 

 

 

Amen to the above.

Here in good ol' New Lenox, IL there is some awful winter/spring weather.  I echo BCRocket's advice to plan, plan, plan everything out first.  Stations, timing, you name it.  Be constantly moving from one thing to the next. Everyone once in awhile throw in a hitting game or fielding game to add some fun and competition. 

I am a fan of pitching machines. It is a great machine for grooving your swing working on your mechanics while getting confidence. I regularly use the Heater Baseball Pitching Machine which pitches regulation real baseballs.

I have found we can work on everything we work on at an outside practice except for fly balls.  

 

If you have one cage, limited space, and few coaches, this can also be used as time to get a ton of individual work done.  I am currently in this situation. Some days I will bring in the players in groups instead of the whole team. I may bring pitcher/catchers, then infield, then outfield, or whatever groups and rotation you want.

 

A couple of years ago I had the opposite, several cages, huge indoor facility, several coaches...... Anyway, scrimmage got cancelled so I invited the other team over to workout with us. I got together with the other coach and turned some of our drills into competitions and we kept score and totaled them all up at the end and declared a winner. Competing against team mates at practice will up the intensity, but competing at practice against another team took it to another level.