Pray for Rain

The June, 2007 edition of Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has an article that every coach and parent should read about the risks of and treatments for a child’s physical injuries from overuse and overtraining….and their mental injuries from burnout. The article is written by a pediatrician for the benefit of other pediatricians, but it’s easy to read and informative for lay readers as well. Full Citation: Overuse Injuries, Overtraining, and Burnout in Child and Adolescent Athletes, Joel S. Brenner, MD, MPH and the Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 6 June 2007, pp. 1242-1245 (full text / PDF version).

The bottom line is that kids should take a break from practice and training. Some of the specific guidelines are to:

•   “[Provide players] at least 1 to 2 days off per week from competitive athletics, sport-specific training, and competitive practice (scrimmage) to allow them to recover both physically and psychologically”;
• “Advise athletes that the weekly training time, number of repetitions, or total distance should not increase by more than 10% each week (eg, increase total running mileage by 2 miles if currently running a total of 20 miles per week)”; and,
• “Encourage the athlete to take at least 2 to 3 months away from a specific sport during the year.”

The article is a terrific resource. If you’re running a team or a league, you might want to copy it and distribute to all of your coaches and parent.

This post sponsored by SailModel.Com.

I’m convinced that one of the reasons basketball has become more popular in recent years is because you don’t need an entire team to have fun. With a basketball goal on every playground and at the end of every other driveway, kids can shoot baskets by themselves for hours upon hours. Baseball, and other team sports, suffer by comparison because it’s hard to enjoy the sport when you’re alone in your own backyard.

I’ve recommended the SoloHitter before, after just a week of using it, and now that I’ve gone through an entire season with it, I thought I’d recommend it again. And I recommend it not just as a training device for kids….I use it myself, and I’m not training for anything at all. I get tremendous satisfaction from slugging that ball hanging from a bungee cord in the evening after work. It’s a little pricey, but probably no more expensive than putting up a basketball goal at the end of the driveway.

This post sponsored by NeedCred.Com.

So here’s a quick and easy way to get your kids moving, running and having more fun at practice (see Thursday’s post ;-).

Start with any “line-up drill” — you know, these are the ones in which you ask the kids to ‘line-up’ and take turns doing something — but use two lines, with one coach or parent running each line. Make the lines parallel to each other but about thirty feet apart. Rather than asking each player to go the back of his or her own line after their turn, tell them to go to the end of the other line. This keeps the team in constant motion, reduces the time they have to wait, and gives them the opportunity to learn from each coach.

This post sponsored by Gizimo.com.

When I first started coaching five years ago, it never would have occurred to me to run high energy practices — for five- and six-year olds — but this year I noticed that the more I worked the kids at practice, the more fun they had. Somewhere around the mid-season point this year, I ran a practice that started with us running the bases, then running the perimeter of the field, and then moving immediately into a series of fast-moving drills that had the kids constantly in motion. At the end of the hour, not only did they want to keep practicing, but they were grinning as they asked for more drills and more running games.

I’ll spend more time on this idea of “high energy practices” as I write up a few additional model practices for this website. My experience this year has definitely changed the way I think about practices.

This post sponsored by Wondrous.com.

I’m sure the idea of “negative attention” is a very old one for school teachers, and perhaps many parents, but as a baseball coach, I first learned this a few years ago when I was conducting batting drills with one of my players. Here’s the story.

One day when one of my assistant coaches was running fielding drills with the team in the main field, I decided I would pull one kid at a time to work on hitting. Each kid would hit 10 balls from a T into a chain link fence, and I would work with him or her on the proper stance and swing. I told them that they each would “get to hit 10 balls cleanly from the T.”

When it came time for my best hitter to take his swings, he appeared to be in a deep baseball funk. His bat struck the T time after time. He couldn’t seem to get his swing right. His feet were in the wrong position. His bat wasn’t even coming close to the ball. I was stunned. In the games, this was my best hitter…by far. Why was my coaching making him worse? After spending 10-15 minutes with this one kid (all the others averaged about 3-4 minutes), I told him that I was going to have to move on to the next batter. I gave him three more swings, but “Even if you hit the T,” I told him, “I need to move on.”

BAM! BAM! BAM! Three of the best hits from anyone all day.

I’m not sure whether he was conscious of it or not, but he obviously had been playing me for the extra attention. Looking back on it, it was almost sweet. This terrific 7 year old kid, who didn’t have a father at home, had been messing up to get extra time at the plate…and extra time with the coach.

It’s a lesson I’ve tried to remember.

This year, at the very last game, I assigned the kids’ their fielding positions for the inning (in T-Ball, we rotate positions every inning) , and I asked them to run out to their positions after we counted to three. “1-2-3, Angels!” All of the kids ran out but one girl lingered behind…and told me that she didn’t know where shortstop was. Could I please take her there? I was sure she was seeking attention, so I told her that if she didn’t know where shortstop was, after an entire season of 12 games, she needed to stay in the dugout. She ran straight to shortstop.

What’s the lesson here? What these experiences have taught me is that the kids really crave attention from the coaches. And while each of the coaches with whom I have ever worked has been happy to give that attention, it’s important to give it at the right time and not at the expense of the other kids. When my best hitter wanted extra hitting attention, I asked his mother to bring him to practice early, or stay with him late after practice, so we could work a bit one on one. And I heaped praise on my lost shortstop after she came in from the field. I’ve tried to listen to what the kids are really saying though, despite what their words might suggest.

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I have a lot of comments to post about things I learned this season that will trickle out over the next few weeks. I thought my team had a terrific season, and I was very proud of the progress the kids made over such a short amount of time. I also plan to write some longer posts over the off season and organize the site a little better.

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“Angels!”

This year I’m coaching T-Ball again. I forget where I read it, but one of the baseball books I read during my first year of coaching reported that 5- and 6-year olds have a three minute attention span. This is important to remember during the slow parts of games. Here’s an easy trick I adopted to bring them back to baseball.

Before every practice and game, and at the end of every practice and game, I ask the team “Who are we?” And the kids shout the name of our team. After a few times, they grow accustomed to the question and know what to do what I say “Who are we?”

So now during the games, when I want to keep the kids from catching bugs or building dirt castles in the infield, I ask the question “Who are we?” It’s better than shouting instructions or reminding them to pay attention.

The first year I coached 7- and 8-year olds, I ran many of the same pre-season drills I ran when I was coaching T-Ball. Then at our first game, I noticed that almost all of the outs recorded against our team came on base-running errors. Or, to be fair to the kids since I had not actually coached any base-running yet, pre-season coaching errors.

“Run or Hold” is one of the games I implemented at our next practice to correct our early season problems.

Run or Hold? You can play this game on the regular baseball diamond, but to get everyone involved at the same time I like to lay out as many bases as I have players into a giant circle. Since most practice fields don’t have an unlimited number of bases, you’ll probably need to use paper plates, rags, cones, or some other marker to be the “base.” One coach/parent stands outside the circle and another coach/parent stands in the middle of the circle, and each player stands on a base.

The purpose of the game is to teach the kids when to run and when to hold on a base. Players run on a grounder or a missed fly ball, and they hold when a fly ball is caught. The coach/parent on the outside of the circle is the “batter” and the coach/parent on the inside of the circle is the “defense.” If the “batter” rolls a grounder to the “defense,” all players run to the next “base.” If the “batter” throws up a pop fly and the “defense” misses it, all players run to the next “base.” If the “batter” throw up a pop fly to the “defense” which the “defense” catches, all players hold on their base.

‘Musical Chairs’ Variation. After your team gets used to this drill, you can vary the game by making it like “Musical Chairs.” Any player who makes a mistake in running or holding picks up his base and leaves the circle. How many players will be left after five minutes?

Details here from Little League International. Week-long camps run in July and August, with sign-ups currently underway.

One of the hardest things to teach young players is to run through First Base instead of stopping on the bag. Even for young kids who routinely watch professional baseball — and see every player run fast through and past First Base — their initial instinct is to slow down as they approach the base and gently touch the bag. I had some extra time at last week’s practice, so I improvised this quick drill. It worked well, and I plan to make it a regular part of my practices.

Running Through First. This is easy to set up. The team lines up at home plate, while I set up two orange cones (or you can use a brightly colored rag or any other “target”) about ten feet beyond first base. I stand to the side of the cones. When I clap my hands, simulating the sound of the bat hitting the ball, the player runs along the first base line, touches the base, and runs past the “target” marked by the cones. Since the kids’ natural inclination is to slow as they approach the base, I’ve simply given them a different target, well beyond the base, at which to aim. It works.