Baseball Drills!Interactive PowerpointBrad RajED 205 Section 2

Baseball Drills!• Author’s Slide• Hitting Off a Tee• Batting Practice Rounds• Bunting• Soft Toss• Taking Ground Balls• Taking Fly Balls• Long Toss• Conditioning• Resource Slide

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Brad Raj

I am Brad Raj, I am a junior at Grand Valley State University. I am currently in my third year with the GVSU Baseball team. I am going in to Finance as far as school goes. I am from Southgate, Michigan, which is located on the east side approximately fifteen minutes south of Detroit. Today I am going to show you some tips about baseball. Some of the things that helped me grow into the player I am today.

If you have any questions you can email me at rajb@student.gvsu.edu.En

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Hitting Off a Tee• The first thing I do every day,

whether it be at the beginning of practice or before a game, is hit off a tee.

• Hitting off a tee helps you level out your swing before you get in the cage and take some live pitches.

• It also helps out with your hand-eye coordination.

• Another thing you should do is work on hitting outside and inside pitches as well, every pitch in the game isn’t going to be right down the middle. En

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Click the picture to see how to hit off a

tee!

Batting Practice Rounds• There is nothing better than

just getting a bat and having someone throw you some balls.

• But what you need to know is that you shouldn’t be up there just swinging for the fence or just trying to pull everything down the line.

• So here is what we do at Grand Valley as far as our Batting Practice rounds go before every game.

• 1st round:▫ 5 swings up the middle or opposite

field.• 2nd round:

▫ Situation Round – 1 hit and run 2 move the runner to second

base 2 score the runner from third

base• 3rd round:

▫ 3-1 counts – Work on hitting “Your” pitch.

• After that you should be ready for any pitch or any situation that comes your way!

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Bunting• You may be your team’s 3 or

4 hitter in the middle of the lineup, but you need to know how to bunt as well.

• Our entire roster knows how to bunt the ball and is ready to be called on to do so at any time.

• So don’t neglect working on your bunting, the longer you play baseball, the more and more you will have to bunt.

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Click on the picture to see a video on

bunting.

Soft Toss• Another cool drill that I did a

lot when I was younger was soft toss.

• It is so easy to do that I had my dad toss me balls in my basement.

• Soft toss is a drill where someone sits at a 45 degree angle from the hitter and tosses him or her balls and lets them swing away.

• The main purpose of soft tossing is to get your timing down and work on driving the ball up the middle of the ball diamond.

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Click the picture to see a video on how to soft

toss.

Ground Balls• If I had a penny for every

ground ball I have taken in my life I would have more money than Bill Gates.

• The best way to become the best fielder that you possibly can is by taking as many ground balls as you can.

• Get a bucket of balls and a partner and go to a ball field and take ground balls as much as possible.

• It is the only way to get used to bad hops and the unexpected things a baseball can do. En

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Click the picture to see a video on the proper groundball technique.

Fly Balls• Other than ground balls

another good drill is to take fly balls.

• Taking fly balls as an outfielder is a key to success just as much as taking ground balls as an infielder.

• Taking fly ball repetitions is good to do so that when it comes to game time you can get good jumps and read on the ball. En

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Click the picture to see how to do proper fly ball

technique.

Long Toss• A good exercise to do in order to

gain some arm strength is to do some long toss.

• Long toss is pretty much just like playing catch, but a little more intense.

• What you want to do is back up as far as you can to where you can still make the ball to your partner on a line, and throw about 15 times as hard as you can.

• As soon as your done ice your arm and do only 2x a week at the most, if you are a pitcher, you should do it 2 days after you pitch.

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This picture is a good example of two professional ball players

playing long toss.

Conditioning• Although baseball is not a

very tiring sport, you need to be in good athletic shape to play.

• Conditioning is a big part of baseball whether you are a pitcher or a position player.

• As a pitcher you want to do a lot of long distance running and as a position player you want to do more sprints so that you can have that quickness and explosiveness on the bases. En

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Resources• Hitting off a Tee

▫ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4xgAzwgNb8 (Picture and Video)• Bunting

▫ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naVqQ7kaDQY (Video)▫ http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/03jF49r8wv7og/610x.jpg (Picture)

• Soft Toss▫ http://www.buildschampions.com/images/Soft_Toss2.JPG (Picture)▫ http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEPgrDKAKKU&feature=PlayList&p=48A991ABD22258D5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6 (Video)

• Ground Balls▫ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VQnI4P-cws (Video)▫ http://z.about.com/d/baseball/1/0/i/B/-/-/vizquelfields2.jpg (Picture)

• Fly Balls▫ http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/06/24/1151187786_1467.jpg (Picture)▫ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NMnIlMUq5s (Video)

• Long Toss▫ http://farm1.static.flickr.com/130/412114728_c403061dff.jpg?v=0 (Picture)

• Conditioning▫ http://silentarchimedes.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/rickey_henderson.jpg (Picture)En

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