Three ways to do every drill in baseball

I’ll get right to the point by saying that there are only three ways to do any drill in baseball. It doesn’t matter if you are a pitcher, fielder, base runner, or hitter, every drill known to man falls into one or more of the following ways on how to do it:

When performing any drill, a player does it because … 1) It REPLICATES the movement they need to do in the game. 2) It EXAGGERATES a movement they need to do in the game. Or, 3) It GETS THE PLAYER TO WHERE THEY NEED TO BE during the game.

In the future, I will have a lot more to say about the third one because the self-proclaimed “Drill Police” lose their minds whenever they see such a drill posted or explained on Twitter, YouTube, or some other media outlet. Their ridiculous comments make it clear that they have no understanding of the third reason for why a drill can be performed.

Let’s briefly look at each three and show an example.

REPLICATION: This one is obvious. “If a player is expected do it in a game, they should be doing the exact same thing in practice.” Nothing wrong there. Here’s an example of a basic tee drill from Albert Pujols.

Note: Replication drills DO NOT necessarily have to be done at game speed. Many players will slow down the movements in these kinds of drills to focus on the “muscle memory” (it’s actually ‘memorized’ by the nervous system, not muscles). They do this with the understanding that in a game, their bodies will naturally speed up due to the competition and pressure. There is no harm in replicating the exact game-speed as well but it is not always necessary. That is what Pujols is doing. Basic swings off a tee to maintain his swing, with some personalized flavor added.

EXAGGERATION: A lot of drills fall into this category. Here is a video I did on several exaggeration hitting drills.

If you want to develop a “feel” for a movement then it can be a good idea to exaggerate the movement until the player “feels” how to do it correctly. Will the player do it exactly like this in the game? No. Exaggerating the correct movement just gets the player to put more focus on it, usually because they are not engaging in the movement enough (or at all) during games.

THEY GET THE PLAYER TO WHERE THEY NEED TO BE: Sometimes doing a movement the wrong way in practice gets the player to where they need to be in games. Let me repeat that. Sometimes doing a movement THE WRONG WAY gets the player to where they need to be in games.

In this video, Mike Trout explains to Alex Rodriguez his tee routine. Start watching at the 9:30 minute mark and watch until the 11:15 minute mark.

Does any major league hitter, including Mike Trout, ever swing down to the ball? NEVER. Are they able to keep the barrel above the ball until contact like Trout tries to do in practice? NEVER. It is physically impossible to take an aggressive swing in a game and do those things. So why on earth would a hitter practice the wrong movement?!?!

Because doing it that way in practice gets them to where they need to be in the game. And that is all that matters to them.

As I said earlier, I will talk more about this in the future because nothing causes Keyboard Coaches to hit the ALL-CAPS button faster to rain down the hate when someone says to “stay on top of the ball.“

Any drill can be valuable to a particular player given the right circumstances, the right methods, and the right mindset.

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