Good tball drills for coaching?

[bmags]

I’m coaching my sons tball team and it is the very young 3-5 instructional league.

YouTube is such an amazing help here, but would love if anyone has some favorite drills. 
 

Of biggest interest to me - designing drills that keep these kids all engaged at once. So hard to provide good instruction where half the kids aren’t standing around.

[Chisoxfn]

On 7/14/2021 at 6:58 AM, bmags said:

I’m coaching my sons tball team and it is the very young 3-5 instructional league.

YouTube is such an amazing help here, but would love if anyone has some favorite drills. 
 

Of biggest interest to me - designing drills that keep these kids all engaged at once. So hard to provide good instruction where half the kids aren’t standing around.

So one thing that is huge - if you have a few coaches (hopefully you do) - pair the kids down.  So if you have 9 kids and 3 coaches - get 3 drills set-up with each coach handling a drill and each coach having 3 kids (this keeps the engagement levels higher and also gets them more reps). 

I'll have to go back and look through past youtube videos at that age - obviously just a tee station where they learn to swing and just get better is important and there are some techniques to make sure they step into it etc (its hard cause kids are so different).  From a throwing perspective - some basics just to work on their mechanics - kind of like the raise your hand drill to kind of start showing how you throw).  From a fielding perspective - we used the alligator technique to show the ball going into the glove and than the hand coming down (and also working the kids to get the grounder in the middle of their body (from a fundamentals perspective).  If they are more advanced - you can start to work them on slow grounders where they shuffle their feet (in particular - slow grounders are also good cause you can teach those that are a bit better to attack the ball instead of wait on the ball (in the future that is huge - goes back to playing the ball and potentially minimizing the bad hop, etc).  

But the biggest thing - divide and conquer with coaches and often times - it helps to do show and tell - i.e., show them what you are doing (cause just explaining with words is obviously challenging). You can also use points and other techniques depending just to keep things fun (have bubble gum or random things at the end of practice, etc).  We used to give a listen / hustle award at younger ages (couple baseball cards or piece of gum (gum probably too young at your age).  And obviously keep it moving and fun.

Oh and I almost forgot - baserunning is another good drill and something you can do to keep things loose.  On throwing - you can do target practice - where you stick cones like on a bucket - so they work on accuracy - and its fun cause its kind of a challenge. We would tell the kids - if you hit x cones in 3 minutes than coaches will run to x and back; if you don't - than you run to x and back.  

[bmags]

7 hours ago, Chisoxfn said:

So one thing that is huge - if you have a few coaches (hopefully you do) - pair the kids down.  So if you have 9 kids and 3 coaches - get 3 drills set-up with each coach handling a drill and each coach having 3 kids (this keeps the engagement levels higher and also gets them more reps). 

I'll have to go back and look through past youtube videos at that age - obviously just a tee station where they learn to swing and just get better is important and there are some techniques to make sure they step into it etc (its hard cause kids are so different).  From a throwing perspective - some basics just to work on their mechanics - kind of like the raise your hand drill to kind of start showing how you throw).  From a fielding perspective - we used the alligator technique to show the ball going into the glove and than the hand coming down (and also working the kids to get the grounder in the middle of their body (from a fundamentals perspective).  If they are more advanced - you can start to work them on slow grounders where they shuffle their feet (in particular - slow grounders are also good cause you can teach those that are a bit better to attack the ball instead of wait on the ball (in the future that is huge - goes back to playing the ball and potentially minimizing the bad hop, etc).  

But the biggest thing - divide and conquer with coaches and often times - it helps to do show and tell - i.e., show them what you are doing (cause just explaining with words is obviously challenging). You can also use points and other techniques depending just to keep things fun (have bubble gum or random things at the end of practice, etc).  We used to give a listen / hustle award at younger ages (couple baseball cards or piece of gum (gum probably too young at your age).  And obviously keep it moving and fun.

Oh and I almost forgot - baserunning is another good drill and something you can do to keep things loose.  On throwing - you can do target practice - where you stick cones like on a bucket - so they work on accuracy - and its fun cause its kind of a challenge. We would tell the kids - if you hit x cones in 3 minutes than coaches will run to x and back; if you don't - than you run to x and back.  

Definitely my big struggle. We have just 2 coaches for 11 kids, and it just feels like everyone standing for hitting drills (and we only had one tee)

This week I went to play it again and bought two more tees to bring.

[fathom]

Best thing you can teach them is just where to stand in the field and more importantly, at the plate. So many kids stand too close to the tee and too far up and don’t get real swings on the ball.  I’m sure you deal with this often, but getting everyone on the field to not go after every ball no matter where it goes is important as well. Way too many future Luis Robert-clones in t-ball

Edited July 16, 2021 by fathom

[T R U]

I have been coaching my son since he could first play, from T-Ball all the way to now Kid pitch

The best advice I can give you for coaching that young is to get them to understand where the bases are and where you need to go with the ball. Too many times I see kids out here that don't understand what they are supposed to do with the ball.

Throwing fundamentals and hitting fundamentals will come as they get older and get those reps.. just a basic understanding of what you need to do with the ball seems to be the biggest obstacle I see with kids out in little league. Running through first base, not slowing down and stopping on the base. Pretty much, teaching them HOW to play the game will make the biggest impact as they move up.

 

[bmags]

Had a great practice today, thanks all!

 

[Chisoxfn]

One other point - cause I've seen it happen to much - older age, younger ages - but really set good guidelines to limit who has a bat in there hands.  Bats can just do so much damage to another kid and really easy for a few people to be swinging bats warming up and someone else is doing something else not realizing other kids are swinging and results don't end well. 

We had an incident happen at our tourney yesterday - made me think of this thread - and at least getting a PSA out there.