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Outfielder Drills
by Dave
Friday, January 22, 2010
If you came here to grab some outfielder drills, you may have come to the wrong place. What I mean is, I don't like to just list out and describe a bunch of drills so that you can quickly grab them for your practices. Rather, it is always my goal to make you think about things and understand an approach rather than merely provide a handy cheat sheet. It is more important and useful to understand the approach than it is to have a pocket full of drills for a particular part of the game.
I often get questions e-mailed to me like "can you give me some drills for (outfield, infield, catcher, pitcher)?" Sure, I can give you those drills but I don't need to - you don't need me to. That's because, if I give you some drills without explaining their objectives, you are not going to use them properly. If instead, I spur your mind to consider the goals of drills, you can adapt practices to cover goals instead of merely having a series of drills with nobody thinking about the goals.
For example, if we consider what we might do for a pitcher in terms of defense, I could say have her throw pitches and then hit balls at her. That's simple enough. But what we want to consider is the sort of defensive plays a pitcher might make, the skills needed to successfully complete such plays, and what we can do to instill the skills while correcting errors. If we do that, we first develop a list of situations, then we think about how we would like to see the desired outcome accomplished, then we develop the skill set required, and the drills just come to us. We might decide that balls would be bounced back to the circle with: 1) nobody on, 2) a force play at second or third, 3) no force play on but a runner on second or third, etc. We might then decide that the pitcher needs to be able to move left and right, make good throws to each of the bases, etc. We then can see that she must do these things after making a pitch. The drills we would use become obvious at this point. The same is true for other defensive plays made by the pitcher as well as every other position on the field. The drills we can use become obvious once we consider the various plays and skills needed to accomplish each.
Many times when a coach has a mere list of drills, he or she runs them as he or she believes they should be run but with several mistakes. Further, the drills are run without explaining the objective(s), without describing the manner in which the play should be made, and without adequate correction when fundamental mistakes take place. This is not just a less efficient way to run drills but also a great way to reinforce bad habits and to make sure the player(s) in the drills will never develop the desired skills.
What's worse is when a coach has a particular drill, doesn't understand the goals of it, and then tries to modify it to make it their own. Many times I have observed coaches take a very good drill, teach it badly, and then later try to adapt it to make it more meaningful or harder without ever considering what the goal of the original drill was in the first place. I'm not going to give you specific examples because it angers me when I contemplate this. Let's just say that I have coached many times when someone has either taken a drill from someone else and then run it almost completely wrong, or has taken the drill and tried to change it in order to accomplish some totally different skill unrelated to the objectives of the original drill. The result is a pile of mud and practice sessions which merely fill time and accomplish less than optimal skill development.
A common mistake is to combine several drills into one and thereby proceed with the mistaken assumption that you are covering all skills needed in the shortest possible amount of time. It is often OK to combine drills in certain situations but when you try to accomplish 4 goals in one drill that should be four, you often don't get the desired result. For example, let's say that you have a drill which teaches infielders to deal with short hops the way a corner infielder often must. You also have an ordinary ground ball drill. You have a quick release throwing drill and yet another drill for dealing with slow rolling balls on the ground. You could run four discreet drills, each taking 5 plus minutes, or you might combine all of them into a single one and do it for ten minutes. You saved 10 minutes by combining them and that means you get to do an additional ten minutes of batting practice later. But in the course of combining the drills, chances are pretty good that you will miss one of the goals of one of these drills, fail to teach one or more of the skills properly, and give your players too few iterations of the drill to instill the skills.
Many, many times, I have coached with someone who really liked my drills one year and the next decided that, in order to save time, they would rather combine things. The result is a single drill covering four or more skills which the other coach does not really understand or teach to the kids. The kids practice but they do not develop the skills. Everybody is happy until game time when those players can't make a good play on a ball stopped on the ground. The coach says, "but we practice that all the time." But the kid has not been taught the skill and has not had enough practice iterations working it to have made it part of her game.
Further, the logical extrapolation of combining various skills and drills into a single element of practice is to simply line up the kids in the field and then hit balls at them while expecting them to make the plays. That saves time, doesn't it? You hit the ball to a player while telling them to make the play to X base. They throw it in and then you hit another. Each kid gets five balls hit to them and every practice involves a different set of five such plays. That's just great! This approach is to be avoided. That's why we conduct drills in the first place. If you want to merely line the kids up in the field and hit balls to them for a half an hour or so, go ahead. See what the results are.
When you line kids up in the field and hit ball after ball, invariably something gets missed and you bore the kids to tears. I once talked with a girl whose team practiced this way. She told me that she would often get so bored after 15 minutes of just standing there that when her turn came, she wasn't paying attention or had gotten so cold that she couldn't make the plays the way she was supposed to. She noted that during many practices, the coach would forget about her and get so distracted that he actually forgot to hit her any balls at all! She suggested that this happened during more than half the practices. She came to think of practice as a time during which she had to stand in the outfield for half an hour before being sent to the batting cage to take some swings. That's an absolutely dreadful way to run a practice. By contrast, this girl who was then on our travel team would get completely exhausted at our practices while having to do 25 of this, 25 of that, 25 of some other skill, etc., etc. The two practices were so completely different that she could not contemplate the two as both being practices. One was practice, the other was a joke. And I hate to tell you what she thought of her coach as a result of the poor manner in which he conducted practice.
Today, we want to consider drills for the oufielder. So first let's consider the various plays she might make. Obviously, grounders, line drives, and fly balls might be hit directly at her, to her left, to her right, and over her head (at her, to the left, to the right). If the outfielder is RF, we must consider balls hit to the line that are fading - spinning away from her towards the line. If she is LF, we have the same issue but in the other direction.
RFs have to consider hard hit line drives which strike the ground in front of them on which they can make a play at first. LFs should consider the same play when runners are on first and second when there may be a play at third. They should also consider making a play with a runner on third when the ball is hit hard enough that the runner freezes and then heads for home right as the ball hits the ground.
In the case of both corner outfielders, we have the issue of flies into foul territory with runners on base tagging up. Tag ups are important to consider whether the ball is hit fair or foul but we want to make sure the OF considers and makes her throws on fly balls hit into foul ground. It is a fairly common mistake for OFs to forget about tag ups on foul balls. Obviously, we have to consider tag ups in general as well as those where the ball is hit into foul ground.
CFs have slightly different plays to make though many of them are very similar. Let's not forget that all OFs need to be able to vector a ball off the bat - from home plate - and that they must track balls while running over grass covered ground. Sometimes they must take their eyes off balls, run to a spot and then pick the ball up again.
With all the possible balls on which a play is made, we have to consider the various throws to bases. Each one requires different footwork. Each, arguably involves a different sort of throw. Each kind of play involves slightly different skills that need to be worked on. So the next element of coming up with some drills involves creating lists of the various plays and the skills we need to develop. Then we ought to be able to design drills for our practices and even come up with new ones on the fly in order to make practice more interesting and, therefore, meaningful.
I want to emphasize this point. When a practice involves everyone moving and being kept interested at almost all times, it is more fun, interesting for the players, and accomplishes more. If you have 12 girls standing in various places in the field waiting for their turn while each play involves just two of them, you have at least 10 bored girls at any given moment. If, instead, you provide just enough time for each kid to get her wind back before having to do something, you are running a better practice.
Many times, the OFs get the least amount of real consideration when their skills are contemplated. Some coach takes them all out to the outfield and hits fly ball after fly ball from one of the sidelines while the infielders work many and various complicated plays over and over again. There is a value to hitting fly balls to the outfield but they need more than that. A worse kind of "drill" occurs when all 8 or 9 defensive players are put into the field and each one gets a few balls hit at them. This is an OK pre-game warm-up but each and every practice cannot be conducted this way.
It would be better to design drills and keep all OFs moving for most of your practice time and then hit some flies towards thje end of a workout. For example, you might form a line in left and throw balls to the fence which after trying to catch them, they must retrieve quickly from the fence and then throw to a cutoff standing near the infield. In another drill, you might want the OFs to run with their backs to you and then pick up a ball hit or thrown high into the air. You may want to work hard hit balls hit right at them which will strike the ground before they get there and on which you want them to make a quick release throw to a base.
One of my pet peeves is when OFs are lined up in one place and a series of balls is hit to each in turn and the only emphasis is on the OF performing the loopy crow hop before throwing the ball back. Yes OFs need to learn the crow hop in relevant situations but that is not the only relevant footwork. How many times have you seen a RF make a play when she could get the runner at first but she does that OF crowhop and gets the ball there too slowly. Contrast that with those times when an infielder plays right and the same situation occurs. More often than not, the IF will get the out which the crow-hopping-trained OF cannot. In other words, your OFs need to do some short quick throws in their drills. In other words, you need to have a drill which teaches, emphasizes and reinforces making those short throws.
So I strongly suggest that rather than reading this and copying a set of drills to use in your practice, you step away from the computer with a couple sheets of paper and a pencil. Then jot down a list of plays you can come up with on your own. Now spend more time thinking about the skills need for each one. &nb sp; Then jot some short notes for some drills you would like to do. Now I'll do the same thing and here is a specimen workout for the OFs that I come up with:
1) Take all your OFs aaway from the IFs. Have them warm-up throwing balls back and forth from 40 feet, move back to 60 after 5 minutes, and then move back to 80 after another five minutes. Once they are reasonably warmed up at 40 feet, work in the footwork needed to make quick release throws. Correct players not doing it right.
I forgot to mention that you want to make sure you have ample room in which to work. The outfield while infielders are doing their own drills is probably insufficient. If you have two adjacent fields, take the OFs over to the vacant field. If your field does not have fences and instead has a large open grassy area, use that by moving far away from the IFs. If you are stuck in the OF of the only field your whole team has to practice on, there's nothing you can do so adapt accordingly.
When the girls are moved back to 60 feet while throwing, have players on one side throw line drives at their feet and have the other side field them like sharply hit balls on which they need to make a quick throw to the infield. Have them charge, scoop and quickly get into throwing position to throw the ball back to their partner. Then, obviously switch sides.
When the girls are 80 feet apart, have one side not throw the ball to the other player and instead have her bounce it to her partner. The retrieving side should make a play on the ball, crow hop, and throw strongly to the other side. Then switch sides. You now have fin ished 15 to 20 minutes of your OF workout.
After this throwing, you want to make the examples more extreme. You want girls to really run before retrieving balls and making throws. Line up girls at one spot and then move to a place 80 to 100 feet away from them. Cones would be useful to establish the line and a target point to which to run. each girl in succession runs at the target point and then when they get to a certain point, throw a ball into the air which requires the fielder to run hard in order to make the catch. Do this in each direction causing the fielder to make plays requiring a forward and backhand catch. This can be accomplished by you moving to another point after each girl has a turn in one direction. Emphasize hard running, not mere jogs. Make the plays somewhat difficult to make.
After this is done, you have another 10 minutes more of practice completed, bringing you to about the half hour mark. The next drill might be to keep the girls right where they are and move to a point from which you can throw pop flies in front of them which require a long run to catch. In each drill, you want to make sure that things move along quickly. You, the coach, should break a sweat. If you aren't sweating, you probably are not moving fast enough. RTe minutes more has passed and we are 40 minutes into the overall practice.
The next drill will involve less distance. Give each player a ball and have them each in turn throw it to you and then start running. You will throw it after about one or two seconds and then have them run the flies down. Do a turn throwing the balls to their right, another to their left, another directly over head, and several more varying where you throw the ball. This is another 10 minute workout and you should probably give them a couple minute break for water.
Once they are back, work some outfield fence plays. if you have a fence, try tossing the balls back to it and having the OFs make plays while finding the fence and catching the flies. Then work an outfield retrieval drill where they can't possibly make the catch and instead must race to the fence and then make a throw to another player. You are probably about an hour into practice and now you can liune the girls up to hit a series of fly balls.
If you are on a free field with nothing else going on, hit balls from home. Keep those girls who are likely to play corners in the corners and those likely to play center in center. Alternatively, you can have each rotate to the various fields after say 5 balls. Also, have some of your Ofs take turns covering bases and have your OFs make attempts at throwing to each. Do this sequentially so that each OF gets the opportunity to throw to each base except you don't really need to have CF and LF throw to first and your RF really should work on making a cutoffable throw when her turn to go to third comes. Hit the balls hard and then hit some soft ones. Hit balls directly at them and, if you are able into the gaps. Make sure that on every ball a girl is yelling for it. It is most common in this softball world for college and high school coaches to want their players to yell "ball, ball, ball" when calling for it. I suggest you use that. I don't really care for that - I'd prefer I got it. But when we coach,m we prep for the next level so use ball, ball, ball and don't try to fight city hall.
I suppose I forgot to work a drill into the early sequence which does nothing more than have OFs in two locations judge whether they should make a play or allow the other OF to make it. We do want to have such a drill and make sure that one girl is going for it and calling it while the other is backing up properly. If you forgot too, work it into your next practice. Don't just assume you will cover it when you hit to the whole field.
I suppose that when I go back and read this, I will realize that I forgot several drills. I don;t have time to list out every possible play, skill, and a drill for each. That is yet another reason I want you to use your own brains to develop drills. I doubt I have offered up anything here that you couldn't have come up with on your own no matter what your experience level is. So your takeaway from this piece is, sit down and make your own list of drills. If you have taken sufficient time and put in the effort, you will cover all the skills your OFs need. And if at some game or other situation, you realize that you have forgotten something, just add to your list and make sure you cover it in the next several practices.
As a final note, if you live in a cold region and are now working indoors, you should still take this approach. Works out the skills and design your own drills. You will do much better this way than you would by copying someone else's drills without understanding the objectives of each.
Have a good practice!Labels: coaching, outfield, practice
 
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