Padres Team Practice Tips
These tips are unofficial but intend to give an idea of what
can be done even by yourself. As always any practice taken to
an extreme is not good, a daily lite practice is much better
than a bone crunch once a week.
- Fearless: Use a wiffle or tennis ball initially for catching
this builds the confidence needed to be fearless of the soft base ball
we use for t-ball.
- Wall Practice: just bounce a tennis ball against an outdoor
wall. This develops hand-eye-coordination and arm strength.
- Shadow Batting: set up on a home plate and swing at an
imaginary ball, try to use a real bat like the size we use
in the games.
- Base Running: Mark off about 60ft, time yourself in
sprinting that distance (distance between two bases).
- The Look: Practice just picking up a ball or catching it out
of the air and looking like your going to throw it, e.g.
hand on the ball in your mit, elbows up, looking around with
your head up. Most runners will hold back thinking you are
about to make a spectacular play. Also practice the run and
tag play, i.e. have the ball in your mit and chase someone
and tag them with the mit.
- The Pitch: it is best to have a catcher but not critical if
you can set up a target, like an old tire or box. The
mound is about 12 big paces from the home plate, try to use
that distance when practicing your pitches.
- Catch: if your lucky enough to have a partner, just play
catch, try to work upto a 60ft through (distance between
two bases). Work on running to the short throws. Avoid
the overthrow, a bounced ball can be caught, a ball over
the head cannot.
- Throwing: while catching gives you the in-field skills there is
still the art out-field throwing, here you simply try to
throw as far as you can, and put the ball where you want it.
- Fence Batting: Have the ball just tossed up (like we did with
the wiffle balls at practice) and hit them into a fence. This
gives you bat control and hand-eye-coordination.
- Batting Cages: The Family Fun Center (just near
Brodway and Hwy 67 and the place behind the 7-11 at Lakeside
Ave. and Riverford both have batting cages, this is the
busy season but it is a lot of fun, they provide the bat and
helmet (at the Family Fun Center) all you need is ID and
a few dollars.
For more clarification or more information contact
sccz@yahoo.com.