Indoor Pre-Season Practice Drills for 12-Year-Olds

Question
I am working on developing a practice plan for 12 year olds trying out for an All Star team that will be suitable for indoor use in a gymnasium for pre-season workouts.

Can you provide any specific drills that you would recommend or ca n you direct me to resources that outline these.

Thank you.

Answer
Allen,

Thanks for the question. This is a tough one for me as I live in a warm climate and never have to use indoor practice time.  We are preparing for our first tournament this coming weekend.

You will probably want to use a station approach to your indoor practices.  Throwing is obvious for warm up, etc..

Fielding drills: ground balls, slow rollers, etc.

This will give you a good opportunity to do classwork such as bunt coverages, pitchers covering duties, Firstbaseman cutoff assignments.

Pitching practice: you can get your pitchers a lot of work in indoors.  Work on control and pitch selection.  Pickoff moves, etc.   At that age I had a rule that over the course of the season saved us a lot of errors and runs: We never had a pitcher try to pick off a runner on 3B.  You will seldom see an out, but often see a run score because of a poor throw.

Hitting stations: Soft toss with plastic balls, tee drills. These are what make good hitters. We do it with our kids(14U) and have them do it at home.  A pre-requisite piece of equipment for our players is a hitting tee.  Groove their swing.  You can also use whiffle or tennis balls for live hitting.

I recommend a web search of videos or books for indoor drills.

Good luck,

Mike Boss