SoloHitter for Hitting Drills
Well time for this week’s biog and I have to spend it on singing the praises of a thing called the SoloHitter. I get no commission, but my understanding is every MLB team has at least one. I have had one for over 15 years and I love it. What is the...
Fretting over Mechanics vs Letting Them Play
I love to coach mechanics. I have a series of drills that break down throwing and I think they translate quickly to pitching so once I have kids throwing I can turn them into serviceable pitchers. I’ll publish pictures and step by step for these very soon, but the...
Memories
As we continue our philosophical blogs — happens a lot when a real season isn’t going on. Our youth baseball season in Northern VA is in the state tournament now but for everyone else it's not much until the fall. I am running some practices to get some good pictures...
Reflections from Two Ballparks
This week I got to go to a Nats game with some glorious seats at Club Level and also a game at my hometown of Johnson City, TN, at what used to be Cardinals Park in the Appalachian League. I love watching the precision of the big leaguers — I will say the game...
Throwing Exercises
If you want your kid to throw farther and faster – and pitching is the thing all kids want to do we need CORE MUSCLES Shoulder muscles LEG muscles Most people think throwing is with your arms. It isn’t – if you throw right you are building all the force and momentum...
Fitness During a Pandemic–It Matters for Baseball
OK so your season is cancelled, your gym is closed ---so what to do? WORK OUT ANYWAY. So why talk fitness during a pandemic – because kids are SITTING around – build up some muscles and be ready for the SPRING. Also remind them about nutrition – NO SOFT DRINKS, NO...
Be Like Reggie
Anyone old enough to remember the A’s--Yankees playoffs 1977 Game 6 – I’ll never forget. I was 12. My parents told me to go to bed. I kept the TV on soft – I couldn’t turn it off. Reggie Jackson blasted a HR on a line shot early in the game. Later he faced a...
Hitting and the Strong Side
What follows now is a discussion that makes me feel like I’m giving away the nuclear codes. Getting the hang of this took me a LOT of time of watching videos of major leaguers, frame by frame analysis, talking to college hitting coaches. This is solid gold if you...
Welcome to T-ball in 2021!!!!
Recent analysis of traffic to the site suggests that our number one page these days is stuff on Coaching T-ball. Makes us think that a lot of you are just getting your first T-ball team around now. Maybe you’ve played high school ball, maybe your a dad whose league...
Throwing and Catching Drills
There is a section for catching drills. And there is an in-depth report about teaching kids how to throw. This section, however, is about drills where the focus is on both throwing and catching. Diamond Drill Have a player at P, C, 3B, 2B, and 1B. Pitcher throws to...
Getting Ready for Coaching a New Season and How to Teach Some Pitching
The number one query that brings folks to this site is PITCHING DRILLS. So I get it, you might be a new coach and you know baseball and you know how to hit and you figure how hard can it be to teach some kids to hit? You throw to them and eventually they’ll hits. Of...
Why This Site on Coaching Youth Baseball?
CoachingYouthBaseball.com was officially established in 2015, but I have been coaching since 1999. I even had a website for my team in 1999 but it was on some long-forgotten server. The world is full of baseball experts – former players – baseball schools – full of...
Building Muscle Memory
So what are we really doing with all these drills. We are trying to build muscle memory. When you pick up a ball and its in aplay you don’t thing, “Step 1, pick up ball to do that I have to bend my knees, reach down, grasp ball, open fingers, close fingers….” You...
Hitting During A Pandemic
OK this one is hard. You need space for real hitting. You can use nets, but most parents don’t have them and if a kid hits a ball they have to go chase it. Batting cages are nice if you have any that are open during the pandemic. If not hitting off a T is...
Fielding During A Pandemic
This one seems hard. I mean don’t you need a baseball field to work on fielding. Surely you need a dad to line the kid up at shortstop, get a bucket of balls, walk over to home plate and toss one up and hit a shot 6 feet to the kids left so he can show some agilty...
Throwing During a Pandemic
The key to defense is to throw to a target. If you can get to the ball, you usually have to throw to a target and the accuracy of that throw drives success or failure. Getting it close to the target is often not good enough. A throw that pulls the first baseman off...
Question I saw on a Parent’s Forum. The “one room schoolhouse”
Here's a question I just saw on a parents forum -- a friend of mine sent it and I think the answer is worthy of a blog post. The question: It's only the second game in on this team, with 8, 9, and 10 year old boys. One boy has expressed his disgust at "being on a...
Interview with Matt Kata, Manager of Youth Baseball Development for the Cleveland Indians
CYB spent a few hours recently with Matt Kata to reflect on what he learned running his Cleveland Indians Youth Baseball Camps this summer, and to also get his thoughts on tips for coaches this off-season to prepare for an even better 2016. CYB: Matt, could you please...
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