Hitting Workouts

[okava]

We start Hitting next week and I'm looking for new ideas.
We are 10u, 9 boys, 4 coaches, in 2 cages for 1 hour the next 5 weeks.
Past we would have 1 tee, 1 or 2 soft toss, 1 full cage coach live pitching.
Thanks

[AltaLomaStorm]

I would only add a couple things: incorporate bunting at the beginning of each kid's live pitching (even make it a game or competition to see who can get it down 1st or 3rd and without bunting back to the pitcher) and you might want to run two groups of 1/2 hour each instead of all the kids at one time. They are, after all, ten year old boys...four stations for nine boys, which leaves five of em standing around with bats in their hands and nothing to do :D

[callyjr]

agree with the bunting for sure.

Keep in mind at any level that once you go pass a certain amount of reps with game bats then your no longer building muscle memory. Think about it, when you lift weights you only do so many reps for so many sets. We only do 7 swings in a station before the kids rest/wait for the next kids in line. I like each kid to get about 100 swings each in practice.

we use 3 or 4 stations depending on coaches for that day.

we use the small wiffles with a swift stick, always front toss.

we have a bunting station

we have live balls we call 7-7-7, kid gets 7 pitches and on the 7th pitch no matter if its a strike or ball he runs out the play. they get 3 to 4 times through. Usually 4 kids per station so by the time the get back from picking up their balls they are up again.

and also regular wiffles with regular bat, always front toss.

notice we don't use a tee, everything we do has the kid seeing a live pitch with the head looking up for the ball.

not sure how you work that into a cage but that's what we do.

[LAball]

Have 2 cages about 15-18 mph difference. Its real hard to go back and forth betweent the two

[GetYourBestSwing]

Split the 2 cages up.

1 Cage do FRONT TOSS, put something as the backstop.... and behind that do T-Work.

So the 1 cage in one direction you are doing short toss.... the other direction hitting off a tee. I always like doing longer tee work, not just the tee set up next to the net.... I want them to see where the flight of the ball is going.

In Cage #2 you can throw live, or BP, whatever you want to call it. So 3 stations really.

You could also split up the 5 weeks and emphasize certain teaching points.
Week 1- Balance, Hitting Position
Week 2- Hitting Position, what starts the swing
Week 3- Start of Swing, Point of Contact
Week 4- Point of Contact, Power-V
Week 5- Power V, Finish

make the kids understand every aspect of the swing... be able to show you what their body should look like at point of contact, or after they load, hitting position, Power-V... etc... do this while they do the drills off the Tee.

In short Toss and LIVE... work on the approach. Taking the ball the other way, pitch recognition, difference between a ball and strike, what pitch is their best pitch to swing at... Working on Counts....