Groundballs with Tennis Rackets
Although basic, I can’t stress the importance of getting groundballs hit with the tennis racket. No matter if you are coaching a beginner or experienced team, getting hard hit groundballs is just so important when training a team to play well and competitively.
When I plan a practice almost always make it a default to include it into the warm up: Divide the team into pairs and then have one player hit the other player groundballs for 2-4 min. and then switch. It’s a great way to warm up as a fielder and then you know for sure that your fielders get at least 20-40 groundballs at every practice
Working on throwing mechanics
This I also believe should be a fixed part of the practice program: Working on throwing mechanics. You could incorporate it into the warm up, so you know that every time a player comes to practice, they have worked on their throwing mechanics.
The way I prefer to include throwing mechanics into practice is to have the players split into pairs, then have them begin with trowing in this specific sequence:
Step one: Throwing with the wrist only
The players are positioned in a short distance form each other and all they are doing is making a short throw where they can only use their wrists. The players should work on getting good spin on the ball. Throw back and forth until you’ve thrown around 10 balls.
Step two: Add the elbow
In step two the players take a step away from each other and now they do the same, but they add the elbow into the throw as well – still working on getting spin on the ball. Again, make a good 10 throws like this.
Step three: Adding the shoulder
We again have the players step back, this time a few steps. We now isolate the throw at the shoulder, meaning that this is now an arm only throw. We are working on getting a quick arm motion and still making sure that the ball gets good backspin. Again, we throw the ball a good 10 times.
Step four: Adding the upper body
In this step we again have the players increase the distance by a few steps. Now we isolate the throw at the hips. This means that feet and hips are fixed and pointing towards the person we are throwing to. We can only throw with the upper body now. We focus on coiling up the upper body by turning our left shoulder (for a righty thrower) towards the person we are throwing to, while keeping our hips straight with our feet, and then when release the stored energy in the upper body into a quick arm that snaps the wrist out far in front of the body. Again, throw the ball back and forth a good 10 times.
Step five: Changing arm slot
In Baseball5 we some times need to make quicker throws such as side arm our even from a “sub-marine” arm slot. Therefore, in this step we don’t increase the distance between the players, but we have them lower their arm slot just a bit for each throw. The players are still throwing with the hips and the feet pointing towards their throwing partner. After a good 10-20 throws the player would have lowered their arm slot into a sub-marine style throw.
Step six: Full motion throw with normal arm slot
Although you rarely have to make the full-motion long-motion throw in baseball5, it is actually very beneficial to still practice it, since it still teaches the muscle memory of a healthy throw. When you watch high-level Baseball5 players make fast throws in slow motion, it’s very clear that their mechanics were developed from a healthy normal baseball throw – even tough the throw they made in the baseball5-game looks to be short and maybe lacking a lot of the lower body movements – the slow motion recording often shows micro-movements in the lower body that clearly shows that energy is generated from the legs and up.
In step six we have the players move back a couple steps more and at this point we should be at a 21 m (69 feet) distance. The players will now throw with the entire body: stepping forward with the left leg (for a righty thrower) rotating their hips, upper body, then arm, then wrist and snapping on the ball to ensure the backspin on the ball. Let them throw a good 10 throws like this.
Working on Hitting mechanics
Likewise, you can make working on hitting mechanics a fixed part of your warm up routine and working on all the steps in the mechanics:
I show the steps in this video (in Danish)
Step one: working on timing
I like to just have the player stand with the side facing the direction you want them to hit, have the front foot open and the back foot to the side and simply just lay up the ball out in front of their belly button or a bit lower. But in terms of horizontal timing, lay up the ball centered to your body. Then have the player just make the hitting motion with the arm, but instead of slapping the ball, just catching the ball and finishing the arm motion.
This trains muscle memory of striking the ball to the center of your body
Step two: Stride into the slap
Adding a step just before what the player did in step one: where we have the player start with their feet closer together and simply have the player stride with their front foot and with the stride; lay up the ball and swing and catch it like in step one. We still have the timing of the ball as a focus point but now we have added a bit of forward movement to the drill.
Step three: Adding a step behind
We are adding another step to the drill before the things we did in step two; we are simply starting off with our feet shoulder width, stepping behind our front leg with our back leg and then going into the stride and then into the slap and catch-motion. This creates more forward motion that we need keep working on timing with the ball centered out in front of our body.
Step four: Full motion
In step four we are essentially just adding whatever extra forward motion we can get into the full motion within 3×3 meters of the batters box. We start with the player facing the direction they want to hit, then take at least one forward step and then transition into the step behind, followed by the stride, followed by the slapping motion and again just catching the ball.
These four steps are great for warming up for hitting and also for going through the mechanics progressively.
Including those three fundamental drills in your practice program; “Groundballs with tennis rackets”, “Working on throwing mechanics” and “Working on hitting mechanics”, will account for about 50% of the players development towards playing competitively. Fielding hard hit balls, Throwing well and being able to hit balls hard makes up the majority of the game of Baseball5 – so if your team works towards that at every single practice, you will be able to elevate their level extremely fast. The rest of the drills and mini-games in this book will help you get the last 50% for your team.