I’m on a coaches’ forum where people ask questions and coaches give answers in a very amicable way, but I just had to share more about a question I saw recently. It was something like, “I have a 7-year-old and I wonder if my son needs a special hitting coach.”
I’m sorry, but what is the world coming to? Do we really think a special coach will fix things at age 7?
I had two boys and I taught them how to hit, and they had good swings. They weren’t super into baseball, as they had a lot of other interests, so maybe you could say I should have gotten them a hitting coach to take the whole father/son angst out of it. But I see plenty of dads doing a great job with the basics. The story is: if you set up a T and cover the basics, you’ll be fine.
If the child really is into it and wants to get better, I can see a hitting coach at age 10 or 11. I coached a 12-year-old all-star team, and a few kids had the same hitting coach. I gotta say, they really drilled the ball, and it did make me wonder if I should have hired the guy for my kids. So who knows, but it’s hard to think age 6-7 is the right age for this.
I feel like they need to grow a little bit. My experience has been that age 11-12 is about the first time a lot of coordination seems to come together where you can really talk about some things.
Sure, they pick up some bad habits when they are young, and the bat is too heavy for them. My advice for 7-year-olds is the same as what I did for my T-ball team: get a bunch of 11 or 12-ounce bats. They weigh almost nothing but prevent many bad habits. Using a heavy bat too soon is probably the worst thing you can do to a tiny kid who can barely pick up a bat.
That T-ball team had a bunch of kids who went on to play in college, so I feel pretty vindicated about how I did things. I had already been coaching for about 10 years, so I had enough perspective to avoid mistakes often made by T-ball teams.
So NO, you DO NOT NEED a HITTING COACH or a PITCHING COACH at age 7.
So what then, and when do you need coaching? Well, I think a good pitching coach at age 10 or 11 makes sense because a lot of coaches don’t teach proper pitching mechanics. Having someone who can film the player and really break down mechanics may protect their arm since bad mechanics often cause elbow, shoulder, or rotator cuff issues.
For hitting, I think you can wait. Hitting is much more self-correcting—if you set up a T and the kids hit enough, their swing will get better naturally.
Now for ages 13-15, I think it becomes a race to excellence. I have seen this before, and I think you really want to consider a strength and conditioning coach to make sure muscle development is done the right way. A coach can also help ensure the player is putting in the necessary work.
