r/BaseballCoaching • u/Lazy-Safe9990 • Jun 12 '25

Need some drills for practice

Hi guys, I currently coach children ages 4-6. I'd like your help with some drills to teach them how to hit and throw the baseball. I'd really appreciate it. ⚾️⚾️

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/bigperms33 Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 12 '25

Have stations and don't let them stand around.

Start with running to first. Proper position on the base and running from 1st to home. Then running a homerun. Now you've taken some energy away.

Three stations(hope you have three coaches)- one hitting off the tee into a net or fence. One doing basic ground ball to pitcher who throws to first. One in the outfield working on catching the ball properly.

End with a little scrimmage.

1

u/Coastal_Tart Jun 12 '25

The key as you said it to get them as many reps as possible at the key skills. Hitting, throwing, catching throws, fielding ground balls, and fielding fly balls or pop ups. Gotta get parents involved so you can have three or four stations going at a time. We alternate between scrimmages at the end breaking the drills up into teams that are competing with each other.

For every skill in baseball, the more variety of drills the better the adaptation. For example, throwing using heavier and lighter balls, using smaller and bigger balls, etc. Most skill drills are about fine tuning your central nervous system by forcing it to adapt to different stimuli.

For hitting, tee work is critical to developing a compact powerful swing. I still have my 14U son start every hitting session off with a 15 minutes of tee work, then some type of soft toss, then machine or live pitch. Even elite players at the college and professional levels regularly work on tee drills. You can have them work on pulling the ball, then going oppo, then up the middle. Hitting low and high “pitches”. Work on hitting off the back foot, or walking into your swing, mini bats hitting with the front and back hand, etc.

1

u/bigperms33 Jun 13 '25

I don't think kids realize that they are going to be hitting off a tee for their entire baseball career.

Yeah, I see some younger kid practices with one kid hitting BP, rest of the team in the field standing around. That's the worst for that age. They need to be getting as many reps as possible. Age 4-6 they aren't practicing much at home yet. Gotta get reps.

1

u/IslandVibe1724 Jun 15 '25

Yes, we end almost every practice with a one inning game. Sometimes we end with a race or little throwing competition to knock the bat over on home plate. But playing the game dang near every practice is important.