High School

If you live in an area where winter forces baseball practice inside, you need quality indoor drills to improve as a player and infielder.

When I coached two of the top junior college programs in the country—one in Illinois and the other in Kentucky—we had only a very small indoor practice area. We played our first game in February, so we had to find creative ways to get our players ready.

Here are some of the drills I found to work well for our players.

Wall Ball

Kids love this game. It’s fun, but also quite effective. Players throw the ball against a wall from about 10 to 15 feet away. If someone touches the ball but does not field it cleanly, he must sprint to the wall and touch it before someone else throws the ball and hits the wall.

If the player who bobbled the ball cannot touch the wall before the next throw hits the wall, he has an out. After three outs, a player must sit. If you want more action, don’t worry about outs and let players stay in the game.

This game is very fast if played correctly. It works on quick reactions, soft hands, throwing and athletic ability.

This game works well with three to five players. If you have more than five, create a different game. Use a tennis ball and bare hands, not a glove.

Pre-Prep Drills

We ran these drills every day, and they had an immediate impact. They only take five to seven minutes. These drills improve focus on fundamentals and teach muscle memory.

Knee drills. Without a glove, sit up straight on both knees about 5 to 7 feet away from a partner. Roll the ball directly to the middle of your partner’s body. The fielders work on having their fingers down, their wrists loose and bringing the ball up quickly to the throwing area of the shoulder.

Progress to rolling the ball to the forehand side and then the backhand side. Keep the focus on loose hands and being athletic.

Standing drills. Do the same as the Knee Drills, but while standing. Back up to about 15 feet away from each other. Focus on footwork, staying low, holding your glove out, and keeping your head down on the ball while fielding. The focus should be on footwork and quickly getting into a good position to throw.

Quick Exchange Throwing. If you have enough room to throw, work on quick exchanges. Get the ball out of your glove as quickly as possible and get into a good throwing position, with your shoulders squared toward the target. Relax and set up for a normal throw. Focus on getting the ball out of your glove quickly and squaring your body to the target, not throwing back quickly. This helps with relays and turning double plays.

4-Corner Flips. Have four infielders stand in a square about 5 to 7 feet away from each other. Roll a ground ball to the fielder directly across from you. He fields it and flips the ball underhand to the player to his left.

Good footwork is integral to performing these drills. It will allow your players to field the ball consistently and make quality throws.

Original article featured on stack.com

For many baseball players, fall marks the end of a very long season. College players have been playing since February. High school and youth players, since March. Some players will not play competitively again until next spring, while others have three or four weeks off before fall teams or college fall practices start-up.

During this break, there are two things you can do to improve your recovery and set the stage for better performance and lower injury risk.

1. Take time away from baseball

As much as you love playing baseball, time away is essential, both mentally and physically. Physically, baseball is a frontal (side-to-side) and transverse (rotational) plane-dominated game. Throwing and hitting, the two most common activities in the game, are examples of frontal and transverse movements. In addition, almost every movement in baseball is an explosive, powerful movement. Over the course of a six- to the seven-month season, countless throws, swings and sprints can take a toll on the body and lead to injury.

Give the body time to recover from this volume of work.

• Avoid frontal plane movement such as Side Lunges, Heidens, Shuffles, etc.
• Avoid rotational work, such as Medicine Ball Throws, and limit hitting.
• Limit plyometrics and sprint work.
• Put the bat down and take a break from hitting.
• Take time away from throwing, especially pitchers.

Baseball pitching, especially, puts a tremendous amount of stress on the entire body, especially the shoulder and elbow.

The number one risk factor in a throwing-related injury is pitching too much. Among many other statistics, they state that pitching more than 8 months a year can lead to an increased risk of serious elbow or shoulder injury.

2. Restore your body

Given the repetitive nature of baseball, you risk overusing many areas of the body and losing mobility and stability over the course of the season. This is especially true of throwing.

In the pitching motion, the humerus internally rotates at over 6,000 degrees per second, and certain muscle groups work hard on every throw to slow the arm down. So by the end of the season, some parts of the body are pretty beat up, including the posterior (back), shoulder, biceps, and medial (inside) elbow.

In addition to the muscles that help slow down the arm, the muscles that help accelerate or internally rotate the arm—the lats and pecs—can show a loss of mobility over the course of the season. Restoring proper tissue quality in these areas can decrease injury risk in the throwing arm.

Finally, the lower body can take a beating during the season. Spend some time foam rolling the adductors (inner thighs) and quads to allow for proper lower-body function.

Use this foam-rolling circuit to restore normal tissue quality in these areas.

Spend 1-2 minutes on each area:

• Lats (foam roller)
• Quads (foam roller)
• Adductors (foam roller)
• Pecs (lacrosse ball under collar bone)
• Biceps (lacrosse ball along the length of muscle)
• Inside of Forearm (lacrosse ball on forearm)

Original story posted on stack.com