A lot of youth baseball practices look like this: one athlete is performing the skill while the other 11 are standing around watching. This is a problem for several reasons; first, only one athlete is getting better. Second, youth athletes will start goofing off and loose focus if you let them. Third, it’s not any fun for the athletes! And finally, it really limits how much you can work on in any practice which limits your team’s development.
The way around this is to work on several stations simultaneously. For example, I like to break practices up into three parts;
Skills
Situations
Hitting/pitching
Each part (except the last) has 2-3 stations. We run a station for 10-15 minutes then rotate. Everyone works and everyone learns. Hitting and pitching is generally pitchers pitching and hitters hitting and we try to make this competitive to simulate game stressors and to build competitiveness.
Future posts are going to talk about things you can do in each part of a station practice.
Now, for this to work you need help to run those stations. The way that I like to do this is for me to take the entire team to each station and then spend a minute of two explaining and teaching the skill. Then, the parents that are helping me run each station can reinforce what I just taught. This means that you are going to have to give up some control, but it is a much better experience for your young athletes. It also means accepting that young athletes are not going to master skills in a practice, it takes a lot of exposure for them to do so!
