Practice Plan

Tips for Making the Most Out of Practice Time

In our daily lives, we all have to budget our time. Baseball / Softball practice is no exception to this. Coaches have a finite amount of time. In order to provide quality instruction, try sketching out a practice plan for your athletes.

Take Notes

You know what you need to work on from the previous game. You’ve thought about it. You made a “mental note.” Take it one step further and write it down. You’ll be surprised by what you discover. I always had a note pad with me in my back pocket during games. You can be as specific as you’d like. Having a list of 20 things to work on and prioritize is better than maybe five mental notes on which you may not recall all the details. You can narrow the list down to the “big three” and focus on those for one day, and maybe three more on another.

Post the Practice Plan

Posting the plan in the dugout does a few different things. First of all, it shows your players you care and you have put a lot of effort into helping them get better. Doing this will also reduce the amount of questions you receive. “Are we doing PFP today, coach?” If it’s not on the plan, Timmy, then the answer is no. Having durations of time on the sheet (e.g. On field BP - 2:30-3:00) will help the athletes gauge how long certain aspects may take, which I believe helps them prepare mentally. Last, and perhaps the most important piece, having a practice plan pushes athletes to be independent and on time. Obviously T Ball aged kids aren’t going to benefit from this. Use your God given discretion here as far as what age you can implement.

Conditioning

If you have some type of conditioning as a part of your plan, move it to the beginning of your practice. You’ll get more out of your athletes when you have done so because, for most of them, conditioning is the least favorite part of the practice. This is also a great addition to any warm up you’ve implemented for them. Once the blood is flowing and they’ve broken a little sweat, you can move into the meat and potatoes of what you’d like to accomplish with focused, loose, and determined athletes.

“Daily Duty”

Every one of my practices, from ages 10 and up, started off with baserunning while catchers blocked balls. We’d have three lines on first base going up the foul line and a coach throwing from the mound. Depending on the age group we would practice taking leads, secondary leads, straight steals, delayed steals, and reading balls in the dirt. Catchers could practice their blocking and throwing footwork, and runners could work on various details of baserunning. Putting pressure on a defense was the heart of my philosophy as a coach. We hit, we run aggressively, we score. I wanted to make sure my kids understood baserunning so we did it everyday at the beginning. You’ll be surprised how far ten minutes a day goes with this. The catchers get better too. You have to find ways to get them into the baserunning as well, but it is a very manageable situation.

Build in a Youth Period

This is probably more important at the varsity level, but take ten minutes at the end of practices, especially on days when you practice together as a program, to connect with the freshmen. Answer questions they may have about drills they’re doing. A lot of times younger players do not want to ask questions in front of the older kids out of fear of ridicule. You can also do a little extra work with the details (baserunning / hitting for me) and help get them more comfortable. I was surprised by how well parents received this! Players got a chance to be with a varsity coach, as a freshman, learning specific things to help them get better. All wolves of the same pack, right? Although I’ve never had the opportunity to do so, I’d imagine this would be helpful for any new additions to your travel teams as well.

Practice plans are more art than science in my opinion. Get the heartbeat of your team. What makes them tick? How can you make them better? How can you engage them? How can we effectively help correct some mistakes that we’re seeing on the field? The goal of the practice plan is organization, transparency, and detail.