10 Youth Baseball Coaching Tips

Every spring, youth baseball programs welcome legions of first-time coaches. This is especially true at the lowest levels of the game, like tee ball and coach pitch. But even competitive travel clubs and some high schools use parents and volunteers as assistants.

While most rookie coaches have at least a little bit of playing experience, any coach with a few seasons under their belt can tell you there’s a big difference between playing the game and teaching it.

Many parents and rookie coaches feel lost on their first day of practice, and over the course of the season they struggle to build a program that keeps kids interested and having fun — not to mention one that helps them develop into better baseball players.

This article offers 10 easy-to-implement tips that will help you, your players, and their parents all have a better experience.

1. Make a practice plan
2. Keep players moving
3. Skip conditioning
4. Limit the number of throws
5. Throw BP underhand
6. Use a variety of equipment
7. Focus on movements, not mechanics
8. Coach all the players
9. Enforce a dress code
10. Keep it positive
11. Youth baseball FAQ

Coaching Youth Baseball (The Right Way)

Quality baseball coaching resources are few and far between. Most of the books and articles that are available either teach advanced mechanics (often based on questionable or nonexistent evidence) or are trying to sell you some gimmicky training tool or program that’s probably a waste of money.

On top of that, unlike most other major sports, baseball has a weak governing body that requires no certification for coaches at any level. Since no credentials are required, few training opportunities exist — and there’s no standardization across the ones that do.

The result of that combination of lack of information and lack of training can be seen at almost every amateur ballpark around the world. Baseball practices are often slow, boring and ineffective. You know the scene: a coach throws batting practice to one hitter while everyone else stands around in the field lazily waiting to shag balls.

Kids quit the game because practices like those are so boring. And the ones who don’t aren’t getting the high-quality experience they deserve.

I put together this list of 10 essential tips for new baseball coaches to help you run better practices that will leave your players feeling excited about the sport and eager to come back.

1. Make a Practice Plan

Effective coaches at all ages and skill levels prepare practice plans in advance, and then stick to them when they’re out on the field. Whether you’re coaching a competitive travel club, a local Little League team comprised of mostly casual players, or even a tee ball team, you should come to the ballpark with a minute-by-minute schedule that outlines (at least) the following:

• What time each part of practice starts and stops
• Which players will participate in which drills
• How many repetitions each player will get from each drill

Having a practice plan accomplishes a couple of different things.

It forces you to think about your practice design ahead of time. Most amateur baseball coaches just show up to the field and wing it. And more often than not, they run the exact same practice every time: stretch, warm up, team infield and outfield, then batting practice where one kid hits and everyone else stands around shagging balls (i.e., doing nothing). Developing a practice plan gives you an opportunity to be more thoughtful about your goals for your team.

It helps you use your practice time more efficiently. Youth baseball practices tend to devolve into either chaos or lethargy. Having a set schedule in your hands will help you keep your practice moving, but also provides a time constraint for each drill or station. Knowing how much time you have for each segment of practice will help you monitor your team’s progress and avoid situations where a drill that was supposed to take 15 minutes stretches to 30 because 25% of the team didn’t complete their reps in the allotted window.

There are many other reasons to use a practice plan, and many ways to design them. I’ll be writing about those topics more on this blog in the future. 

One important thing to keep in mind is that a practice plan doesn’t have to be written in stone. It’s perfectly fine to deviate from your plan when necessary, and you should do so any time you realize that your drills aren’t working or aren’t productive. The overarching point of using a practice plan at the youth level is to be thoughtful about the structure and goals of your training session.

Here’s an example of an actual practice plan I used for an indoor training session.

2. Keep Players Moving

One of the reasons many kids think of baseball as a boring sport is because practices usually involve lots of standing around doing nothing — either waiting in line to take a turn fielding a grounder or fly ball, or standing around in the field waiting for a play while a teammate hits BP.

When players finally get up to the plate themselves, they usually get 10-20 swings before heading back to the field.

It’s true that baseball games are slow, but baseball practices don’t need to be any less active than those of other sports. As noted above, one of the key reasons it’s crucial to have a practice plan is to eliminate unnecessary downtime and keep your players moving. Doing so will help them stay focused and engaged.

There are two key aspects to limiting downtime:

First, try to limit the amount of time spent in transition. It’s easy for a team to spend 10 or 15 minutes shifting from one drill to the next — especially if you have to pick up balls and move equipment around. Do your best to set up practice in a way that minimizes this time, and factor it into your schedule.

Second, design your drills so that all players have something to do at all times. Short rest breaks in between reps are fine, but in general all players should be actively engaged in training for 100% of the practice.

Here are a few tips for active drill design:

Keep groups as small as possible. If you have 10 players at practice, you only need to set up five hitting stations to have two-person teams.

Keep you drill duration short. Limiting the number of players in each group means they’re each getting more reps, so you don’t need to spend as long at each station. If you have five hitting stations with groups of two, you can easily rotate them every 10 minutes. In this practice design, each player would get 20 to 25 minutes of actual swings ⁠— which is more than sufficient for youth players.

Use a whistle. Your voice is going to get hoarse from constantly calling out station changes. Using a whistle will save your voice for actual instruction. Plus, it’s easy for every player to hear no matter where they are on the field.

You’ll be surprised by just how much this simple tool improves the efficiency of your practice — just be ready to get some snickers and teasing from your fellow coaches, who aren’t used to seeing their colleagues do anything out of the ordinary.

3. Skip Conditioning

If you’ve designed a practice plan that keeps players moving and actively engaged throughout the session, there’s no need to spend time doing conditioning work — they’ll be tired at the end of practice.

Here are two specific reasons why having a separate conditioning component in your baseball practices is a misguided idea.

First, improving the physical conditioning of athletes requires a consistent, systematic approach implemented over time. Running wind sprints and laps a few times a week will have zero meaningful impact on your players’ conditioning or athletic performance.

Second, as noted above, it’s unnecessary because it can be integrated directly into practice. Sprinting, agility and endurance training can and should be a part of your drill design. It’s better to have your player expend their energy on baseball-specific activities than on a few random exercises.

4. Limit the Total Number of Throws

Youth baseball players have always complained about sore arms, dead arms, and the dreaded “Little League elbow,” but arm injuries among pitchers have skyrocketed in recent years, and the evidence for the cause of the epidemic is building towards the following consensus:

The primary culprit is overuse, coupled with better data and training methods that have helped players throw harder more consistently and at younger ages.

Let’s be clear about one thing: throwing a ball at half effort is not the same as throwing a ball at max effort. The latter puts substantially more strain on the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the arm (particularly in the shoulder and elbow). That’s not surprising when you think about the basic physics of throwing an object: more velocity requires more energy, which requires more exertion.

Still, elite baseball programs closely monitor their players’ total number of throws — from warmups to the end of practice. You probably already know that pitchers’ throwing sessions are planned on a pitch-by-pitch basis, but the same holds true (albeit to a lesser extent) for position players. College programs in particular often map out a specific number of throws per drill, or specify exactly how many throws players will make from certain distances on a given day. And the numbers are lower than most people expect. We’re talking dozens, not hundreds, of throws per day.

Youth and Little League coaches rarely exercise caution when it comes to their players’ aggregate throwing loads, with many believing that throwing as much as possible is beneficial rather than detrimental to arm health. Unfortunately, there’s no empirical evidence to support that position.

As a result, youth baseball players often make way too many throws in a given practice. If warmups last for 15 minutes, chances are they’ll make 50-75 throws before practice even starts. If you then have them make throws to finish plays during infield/outfield, throw BP to their teammates in the cage, etc., their total per-practice loan can easily clock in at 200 or 300 by the end of the session.

To avoid this, build throwing load into your practice plan. Determine how many throws you want your players to make, and then design practices with that goal in mind.

5. Throw BP Underhand

Most coaches will never admit it, but their arms are just as susceptible to overuse as players’ arms. It’s a matter of pride to be able to throw 250 BP pitches, but it’s not healthy over the course of a season.

Arm health issues aside, the most compelling reason to throw BP underhand is this: most coaches are terrible at throwing BP and waste time feeding players bad pitches.

Here are some of the problems with bad overhand BP:

You throw too many bad pitches, which wastes time.

Your lack of control encourages hitters to swing at bad pitches, which leads to bad swing mechanics and teaches them the wrong hitting approach.

Your pitches have an unrealistic downward trajectory. Most of the time, you’re standing too close to the plate, which can significantly change the path of the ball and its angle at the point of contact. Plus, if you’re throwing to young kids, you’re much taller than them, which just exacerbates the problem.

You don’t throw the ball hard enough to simulate actual pitching. If you’re standing 35 feet away from an 11 year old who is 12 inches shorter than you, you’re going to be inclined to dial it back so as not to hurt or intimidate them. That results in loopy, unrealistic pitches.

Underhand BP shouldn’t equate to soft BP.

Throwing underhand doesn’t mean throwing soft. To the contrary, utilizing this approach (sometimes referred to as front toss) will allow you to feed your players a consistent stream of fast, hittable strikes that have a relatively accurate similar downward trajectory to actual pitches.

Just move an L-screen to about halfway (or a little bit less) between the mound and the plate, and feed firm, straight pitches around the hitting zone. You’ll save your arm and your hitters will have a better experience.

6. Use a Variety of Equipment

It’s OK if you don’t have access to all the latest training gear — you can run a fun and efficient practice with cheap, easy to find objects. Here are some of the essentials that should be in your coaching toolbox:

Small plastic cones: use them for showing the proper routes to fly balls and grounders, and as place markers for drills. These cones, which cost a couple of dollars each on Amazon, will help keep your players where they’re supposed to be and your training session properly spaced.

Tennis balls: use them for bare-hands fielding drills, and hitting drills where limited space is available. At about $45 for a bag of 60, it’s a small investment that will significantly expand your ability to run a dynamic practice.

Practice golf balls (about $10 for 30) and an Easton Thunder Stick (about $50): a go-to drill, especially for young players, is simply hitting plastic golf balls with thin bats. It’s essentially stickball, and it’s great for developing hand-eye coordination. There’s a number of commercial options on the market, but you can also use basic dowel rods from Amazon or a local hardware store.

7. Focus on Movements, Not Mechanics

There is limited consensus — even among professional coaches — about what constitutes proper baseball mechanics. If you’re someone who hasn’t studied the science of the game, doesn’t have a background in a field like sport performance or biomechanics, and only played baseball at the high school level or lower, chances are you don’t actually know what’s right and wrong.

Here are just a few concepts that are widely-taught by youth baseball coaches but flat-out incorrect:

• Back elbow up
• Hit the ball on the ground
• Never take the third strike
• Squish the bug
• Swing level
• The list goes on…

The good news is that it doesn’t really matter. At the lowest levels of the game, you should be focusing on teaching movements rather than mechanics.

What do I mean by movements?

Movements are general and mechanics are specific. If you’re an econ major, think of movements as being the macro level and mechanics as being the micro level.

The mechanics of hitting are complex, but the movements required to successfully execute those mechanics are simple. Most coaches skip the movements phase and try to teach mechanics first. And it doesn’t work.

You’ve probably seen this approach in action: a coach will take a kid who has never swung a baseball bat before, stand him or her up at the plate, and start by explaining how to hold the bat, how to hold the elbow, how long of a step to take, etc.

Then, they expect the kid to remember and execute that list of instructions in a coordinated fashion.

The result? A stiff, awkward and robotic swing that is completely out of sequence.

That’s because the player’s brain is trying to process too many new things at the same time, and because he or she doesn’t have the basic movement patterns in place to actually string those instructions together.

If you need to learn about what constitutes good swing movements, check out The Hitting Vault and Driveline ⁠— two solid resources.

8. Coach All the Players… Even the Bad Ones

There are some coaches who are advocates for equal playing time. I’m not one of them! It’s important for kids to learn to work for the results they want. The opportunity to pursue a goal in the face of challenges and adversity is one of the most valuable aspects of participation in youth sports. So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with divvying up playing time based on skill.

But in practice, every player should be treated equally. And all too often, that’s far from the case. Some coaches tend to view “bad” players as distractions that take reps and practice time away from the “good” players ⁠— the ones who carry the team and who they assume will move on to the next level.

When you design your practice plan, you should strive to avoid this type of skill bias and actively seek to fully incorporate your “bad” players into the training program. Doing so will help them improve while also building both a more cohesive team and a more fun environment for everyone involved.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every player should do the exact same thing. Especially at lower levels like 12-and-under Little League, you may have a team with players across a dramatic range of skills and abilities ⁠— from a 12-year-old all-star who’s been taking private lessons for six years to a 10-year-old who has never touched a baseball bat before.

It’s perfectly reasonable to run players through drills appropriate to their particular skill level, so long as you’re not using those drills as a way to segregate them from the rest of the team.

9. Enforce a Dress Code

Lots of coaches try to run their ballclub like it’s a military regiment or their own personal fiefdom. In some cases, they sincerely think that’s the right approach. In other cases, I suspect it’s because their team is the only sphere in which they have any meaningful power or control.

Regardless of the rationale, it’s a poor way to teach the right lessons and get the most out of your players. People tend to learn better when they feel positive and are having a good time. So, it’s helpful to be self-reflective about whether you’re letting your ego influence how you run your team.

With that said, there’s truth to the idea that sloppiness leads to sloppiness. In my experience, sloppiness of dress reflects sloppiness of attitude ⁠— which can easily bleed into your team’s on-field activities.

I recommend setting and enforcing a very basic dress code: baseball pants, tucked-in shirts, and forward ballcaps. Some players won’t like it at first, but over time they’ll come to appreciate being part of a program that respects them enough to demand a little extra attention to detail.

10. Keep It Positive

Negative reinforcement never works. It doesn’t help your players get better — it only breaks their spirits, demotivates them, and leads to fear, self-doubt and anxiety. Whether your focus as a coach is on performance (i.e., development and winning) or on building life skills like sportsmanship and teamwork, negative reinforcement undermines your efforts.

I never criticize players for mistakes or errors. They’re trying to perform up to your expectations. Players don’t want to let a ground ball roll under their glove or make a boneheaded move on the bases. Nobody is more embarrassed by a mistake than the player who made it. So keep your frustration in check and don’t exacerbate their sense of failure.

With that said, I do criticize my teams when I feel they’re showing a lack of hustle, a lack of effort or a lack of focus. I don’t care if a player messes up a play, but I care deeply if they don’t finish a play or only go after a ball at half-speed.

That criticism should be corrective rather than coercive. Your goal should be to get players to change their behavior on their own, not to force them to change it in order to avoid punishment (like running laps).

Here are some rules to live by for keeping it positive:

Never criticize players under the age of 10 for any reason. If they’re being lazy, picking daisies, digging holes or doing whatever… well, have you ever met a 9-year-old?

Keeping it positive doesn’t mean accepting a lack of focus ⁠— it means recalibrating your practice in a positive and productive manner. Call the team in and regroup. Better yet, change the drill! And remember: if you’re using a good practice plan, those kids will always have something to do and won’t have time to get bored or distracted.

Never criticize performance. Instead, set the expectation for a high level of effort. Errors and mistakes are fine, but being lazy and goofing off aren’t. Of course, the line between performance and effort isn’t always that clear cut. For example, I hate dropped baseballs ⁠— in warmups, when shagging, everywhere. They’re a scourge!

While dropped baseballs are technically a physical mistake, I classify them as the product of poor focus. As such, I will absolutely stop practice to refocus the team’s attention on avoiding that particular form of sloppiness.

Never criticize individual players. Singling a kid out, even once, can sour their experience and make them hate coming to practice. Hold your team accountable as a unit, and if you need to talk to one player about something like unacceptable behavior or a bad attitude, do so in private.

Related: Youth Baseball and Burnout — Why Pushing Too Hard Can Harm Kids’ Mental Health.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to some of the questions commonly asked by youth baseball coaches and parents.