Master the first 20 minutes of practice

Every good coach looks for ideas to better manage their practices. Getting more done in a shorter period of time is something they always strive to do. This is especially true early in the season when a team has so much to cover. On top of that, if you coach in a state like Pennsylvania (where I am), you probably are going to be pushed indoors quite often because of the early season brutal weather and field conditions. At the high school level, that means sharing gym space with all the other spring sports teams. Very often, an hour long practice might be all you get. Sometimes less.

When these situations occur, it becomes imperative that a team master the first 10-20 minutes of their practices. Start an hour long practice the same way you would start a 2-hour practice and you will probably spend the first third of that hour warming up by stretching, running, and throwing, all done separately. Not ideal if all you have is 60 minutes.

Last year I conducted a series of six coaching clinic sessions for a local youth organization. The video below is a portion of one of those sessions where I explained what I call “Compound Drills.” As you will see, these kinds of drills can be the perfect remedy for those first 10-20 minutes to maximize that time instead of wasting it.

Below are the six session titles I did last year for the organization. Each session lasted around 40-50 minutes with a Q&A afterwards. Here was the topic sequence:

1-Conducting a good tryout

2-Progression drills for throwing and fielding

3-Developing catchers

4-Developing pitchers

5-The basics of hitting and hitting drills

6-Practice organization

If you think this might be of value to your organization, contact me at BaseballByTheYard@gmail.com. I can tailor the topic(s) and time(s) to fit whatever needs you have.

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