Word of the week...... What do you expect from your summer baseball program? When the high school baseball season ends and your team moves on to the long hot days of unmotivated baseball in June and July, what do you expect out of your players and how do you get it out of them? Summer baseball can be a time of growth and foundation building that leads into the next fall and spring seasons. Every summer you start with a new crop of upcoming players and the existing players that now have a full year or more of varsity baseball under their belts. Your players should feel excited about the new opportunities and summer should be a period of getting to know their abilities and competing for roles on the team. After watching many summer baseball games and coaches over my time as an assistant baseball coach here are three ideas that I have collected about getting the most out of your summer programs. 1. Have a weight training program or conditioning program that supports your team mission about commitment and sacrifice to the team. This commitment should reflect 2-3 mornings a week that are early enough to get them out of their comfort zones. Also the workouts should be difficult so that they feel a connection with their teammates that persevered through the tough workouts. Your players need to embrace working out with their teammates, relish the grind of workouts, and experience physical gains toward on the field success. 2. Make summer baseball games more competitive by demanding you players give a great effort. One idea that works is to treat the summer games like a basketball game in the sense of free subs. In summer baseball leagues most opposing coaches are open to the idea of free substitution in and out of the baseball game. Explain to your players that poor at bats and efforts in the fields will result in being substituted out of the game. In addition to this be committed to the players that are committed to you program. Take attendance and play the players most that are going to your strength workouts. 3 Create optional extra work sessions that help you find the committed vs. the uncommitted by who shows up. I think that during summer baseball the routine of organized practice needs to take a step down. Organized practice every few days can lead to monotony and a lack of effort. What I like to see is a series of optional extra works for batting practice, pens, or fielding. In these sessions your players can connect with you better, converse about topics that during the season time does not allow, and get more of a one on one situation. Do things that during your season you could not do. Try video sessions with your players, new drill that you have not tried, or any other creative insights that spark you mind. Article of the week... The article of the week comes from Brian Cain, mental conditioning coach. Brian is a master of the mental game and works with all levels of players in baseball and softball. I like goal setting and he wrote an article on his web page that gave 25 ways to set goals and actually attain them. Here is the list: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "25 GOAL-SMASHING STRATEGIES FROM MONDAY MESSAGE READERS Drill of the week..... The “W”
The “Triangle” Glove no Glove option.
3-Ball
Link: https://docs.google.com/a/tuhsd.k12.az.us/document/d/1mYiaPnqUfD-9uGscNGy-BT3mQAB-33HY4pqJI4xmPg8/edit?usp=docslist_api
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