This drill teaches players to charge ground balls and cover them with two hands using a soft hands glove.
Equipment: bucket of balls, 4 soft hands gloves
1. Spread players out a few feet from each other on a line.
2. Roll a ball to a player and have them charge it using the soft hands glove (a glove that is flat — here’s a cheap example, there are lots of them: https://www.amazon.com/BaseGoal-Softhands-Fielding-Quikhands-Two-Hands/ — if the link doesn’t work just google “Soft hands glove baseball” — they are flat and so you have to COVER the ball with your free hand).
3. Have them charge the ball, bend knees, get low to the ground, cover the ball with the free hand, pop up and throw the ball back to the coach (you).
4. Do this so each player gets at least 10-15 reps. Do not take forever — if they miss a ball, just have another coach go pick up extra balls. They all want to go chase the ball and have a festival getting it back to you. Do not waste time — you are trying to get 60 of these done in 10 minutes for 4 players, so it’s gotta go fast and the reps have to be high quality. It’s hard work but will pay off if you do it EVERY practice and make it 10-15 minutes, not an hour.
5. When they master things with a soft hands glove, move up to a real glove — but a real glove is too forgiving and they can NOT cover the ball and it’ll still work — you don’t want that. You want the soft hands glove to do the job and force them to cover the baseball and build that mind-body connection.
6. Tell them to cover the ball like an ALLIGATOR!!! — big mouth opening and closing — and have them move their arms like an alligator — some of them get a kick out of it.
If your players are starting to field like they mean it, you’ll love what’s in the free Quick Start Guide — grab it and keep that two-handed habit going all season.
