It wasn’t too long ago that I was doing some baseball instruction with a Little League team and couldn't help but notice the frazzle in which the players were working on their baseball drills.  It was like I was viewing a DVD playing in fast forward.  Young athletes were scrambling (sometimes out of control) everywhere, harried coaches were issuing directives like it was a battle scenario and his "troops" were under fire.  I was amazed by this and caught myself just standing there with my bat, watching.  I am a big proponent of hustle on the field; however, there is a fine line between efficient up-tempo practice and aerobic practice.  Here is a look at both.

Efficient Practice: Organization, Fluidity, Precision

Great coaches understand and employ efficient practice techniques as they understand that it is the best option for building a successful team.  This practice style is a balanced approach between speed of movement around the field or practice area, and precision of movements.  To give you an idea of this style, I’ll provide a brief illustration of how practice style was run by my college baseball coach. 

Practice would begin promptly on the time scheduled, and I can’t remember him ever being late. The term “beginning on time” did not mean that’s what time we got to the ball park, but the time in which we met as a team off to the side and then got down to the business of improvement.  For each day of practice, the game plan and time frames were posted in the locker room for us to see prior to getting out to the field.  They were complete with times and additional notes for directing the focus of the day.  This helped everyone out in that we all had a basic idea of our individual and team responsibilities.  We knew who was in charge of taking care of equipment, cleaning up the field, putting away the protective screens, etc.

Everything was done with a stop watch.  Coach followed time closely based upon prior allotment of time for the baseball drills on his practice plan.  After a twenty minute slot we might move from our defensive skill work as a team to our infield or outfield groups and break down fundamental at a more specific level.  This type of scheduled work would continue for the remainder of the practice.  At first I thought that this type of scheduled work was a little overboard, however, we soon realized that during these timed pockets of practice time we had to work with focused intensity to learn the skill as efficiently as possible. And because the focus was on precision and not speed, we got a ton accomplished.

If you are reading this and are a coach, I would strongly encourage you to work on an efficient and well-oiled practice plan that is consistent.  Your athletes and parents will love you for it.

Aerobic Practice: Speed and Quantity over Quality

This form of practice, which parallels the example in the opening paragraph, is put in place most of the time because a coach or coaches feel it's most important to keep athletes moving from station to station or drill to drill getting the most reps possible in a window of time.  This type of practice promotes hurried youth baseball drills with little focus on precision and self-betterment.  While I agree that many times there are giant chunks of time wasted and unused in many baseball practices, an aerobic type of practice is not the answer.

One of the worst things that can happen for a young athlete is if the strategy of learning and development is replaced by speed and rapid and often less than precise movements.  Little effective baseball instruction can occur at this pace.