What's Your Favorite Drill?

[yocoach]

Please share your favorite drill or drills and why. I'll start...

I'm a huge fan of drills that work on multiple fundamentals simultaneously. One of my favorite fielding drills is what I call 4 corners. The drill consists of 4 rounds and each round starts and finishes at home plate. Line up 2-3 players per base. Round 1. The player at home plate rolls the ball to first base. The player at 1 fields the ball, turns glove side and rolls it to second. The player at second fields the ball, turns glove side and rolls the ball to third. This continues all the way around the bases. After each player releases the ball, they sprint to the next base so they will rotate throughout all 4 bases. When the original player who started the round finally reaches home and fields the ball, the round ends. Round 2 consists of rolling to one, fielding, turning glove side throwing to 2, fielding, turning glove side, rolling to 3, fielding...well you get the idea. Roll, throw, roll, throw...again, with every player sprinting to the next base following the ball upon release. Round 3 consists of throwing the ball all the way around, turning gloves side, throw and run. Round 4 seems to be all of my teams favorite. It's a double play round. Player at home starts by rolling to 1 and immediately sprints after the ball. Player at 1 fields the ball and either glove flips or hand flips (depending on the age of the team and skill level) the ball to the player charging from home. That player receives the ball, crossover steps and fires to 2. Player at 2 rolls to 3, charges, receives, crossover steps and shoots home. After handling the ball, each player sprints to the next base. Again, when the player that started the round from home gets back and fields it, the round is over. As the team gets more proficient at the drill, they should get faster with harder rolls, throws, glove side turns etc.

As you can see, this drill works on conditioning, fielding, throwing, turning glove side, quick target acquisition, ball flips, crossover steps, double plays and communication if done properly.

So what's yours?

 

[DanMaz]

here is a very easy drill that i used many times with the younger kids because they love to compete! ITs very easy. we call it elimination drill

2 lines standing next to eachother within 5 feet apart about 20 yrd from the coach. coach has a bucket of balls and there are 2 coaches acting as catchers with empty bucket about 15 yrds behind the coach with the bucket of balls.

drill is roll 2 balls simultaneously to the first 2 in line..... the player who makes a good throw and gets it to the coach with empty bucket 1st, wins, stays in and the other player goes sits down. if its a bad throw, and the other players has a good throw but wasnt as fast... the good throw wins. We need good throws! winner goes to back of line and continue this same thing until there are only 2 players left.... then the last one standing wins. this makes them very aggressive to approaching the balls as the coach rolls them. they dont want to lose! They teach themselves how to attack balls and get it to the coach with the empty buckets fast. its a race.... just like softball is a "race to the base" have fun with it!