We all know that practice time is valuable and limited. Every time (and yes I mean every single time) I’m waiting for my cage time to begin I see coaches and parents wasting their money working drills that don’t do jacksh*t to help their kids improve at anything game related. They get very proficient at the drills, but they have no bearing upon game performance.
I have re-evaluated every drill I use, every side session I break into, and asked what game activity will this improve? If there isn’t any benefit–it’s gone.
I’m starting this thread to see if there is anything that any of you have seen done often that is a waste of time, or any pervasive thing that you used to do, but have dropped because there was no return on investment. I think this could blossom into an interesting discussion.
I’ll go first
Just last week, I saw a coach run his entire team through batting practice with live pitching (from him) about 30 feet away. No worries yet, right? But add the fact that the reaction time he was giving them was sub .3 secs. He was firing the equivalent of +100 mph to them. Keep in mind these kids were in the 15-17 y/o range. Maybe one of them will ever face 90+, never mind 100+ in their entire lives! He was getting on them for failing to get solid contact. He was also giving them about 10-15 swings each. By about the 7th pitch they had wiffed on, their swing mechanics started to break down and they were striding and swinging in one motion (I call this drifting). They were essentially guessing about speed and location just to get the bats through the zone in time. Some of them actually started making solid contact to the praise of the coach. I wanted to vomit. Did I mention that he drilled one of them in the back? Oh yeah. That kid had some really fast reflexes to turn away in time. This dude is also the Senior Ruth League Director! In my opinion, he wasted an entire hour of cage time and sent 15 kids’ swings down the path to destruction.
Does anyone see anything beneficial from the events describe above? I’m apparently missing the point of that drill. :roll: