May 4

May 4 Update

Long Term Athlete Development - Part IV

Recommended activities for 5U/Rally Cap/9U

In January 2020, SPMBA started a new program, the Baseball Beginnings camp. This one hour camp session was designed to teach and facilitate LTAD-based activities and movement for our youngest baseball players. Even though we had a small group, we had a blast for the six weeks that we held the camp. The following is a list of activities that I used during the camp to teach fundamental movement skills and to facilitate play - probably one of the most important components of these age groups' development:

Warmup Activities

Pick a movement and an objective. Run to touch something (in our case, dots on the field), run backwards to a different point, balance walk along a line, squat jumps (hop like a frog), one foot hops, two foot hops (like a rabbit), bear crawls, crab walks, jump tucks, etc. Add movements you like and, more importantly, add movements the kids like. These can be gamified in different ways. Randomly pick a movement, have one of the players pick a movement, roll dice, pick a card from a deck, there are any number of ways to plot out a course. Randomness for these types of activities ensures players don't turn on auto-pilot while conducting the same warm-up repeatedly. Further, if you want more engagement, join your players in these activities.

With these age groups, especially since they are on the field so little, we can't dedicate vast amounts of practice and game time to developing fundamental movement skills. Little windows of dedicated time works! 10-20 minute chunks at the start of practice and games. This time adds up over the course of a season.

Baseball Tag

The premise of baseball tag is simple. Tag your opponents. I would assign one player a ball (making sure I mixed it up each game and every session). This player with the ball is "it" and has to chase everyone else to tag them. Normally, we would play a freeze tag variation where players would have to freeze in a "starfish" or "tree" pose when tagged. Their teammates would have to cooperate with them and crawl between their legs or run underneath one of their arms to unfreeze them and return them to the game.

Lose-a-Limb

This is a brilliant camp game that was introduced to me by our GM, Josh Bishop, while coaching my first summer camp. Arrange a group of players in a circle. Coaches can play too. There can be a little space in between each player. We also don't want too many players in a circle (to ensure there is little time in between ball touches). The game starts with a player tossing a soft ball underhand to another player in the circle. If the ball is dropped, the catching player has to lose a limb, either one of their legs or one of their arms. Players are out when they lose all their limbs and are required to sit on their butts in the circle at this point. The game continues until one player is left.

Modifications to make it more challenging include not allowing passes to players adjacent to them, losing a limb for bad tosses (anything below the knee or above the shoulder), or even adding in multiple balls. Rules vary between each group that plays too. Some groups are savvy and add in gamesmanship, like grouping up on players, blocking tosses, and others. Let the game take on it's own life in your team.

Rock, Paper, Scissors Baseball

This game is great if the players can understand the concept of the game, which I've had issues with even at the 18U level. The game works by using two separate teams, one running the bases clockwise and another counterclockwise. One player from each team takes off with the objective of rounding the bases and scoring at the base which they started at. When opposing players paths cross, they play a game of rock-paper-scissors to determine which player continues on. The winning player continues running the bases. The losing player returns to their line and their next teammate leaves. With age-appropriate basepaths, players will usually have to win 3-5 consecutive games to score at their home. The game continues to a specific time limit or one team reaching a particular score.

Jackpot

In jackpot, one person throws a ball into a group. One player in the group must catch the ball to win or score points. Players must accumulate a set number of points to win the game. Typically in jackpot, the thrower will call out a particular value of points and whether it's "alive", must be caught in the air, or "dead", must be caught after hitting the ground.

The difficulty of this game can be adjusted by moving the group closer or farther from the thrower. For the youngest players, I recommend the coaches throwing everything and all throws being alive. Other variations are popular in schoolyards. Allow players to bring in their own rules.

Hills & Valleys

This game needs a contained space. We used the centre circle on the field during the camp. Lay out around 20 agility cones (or some objects that can be flipped). Set half of them upside down (valleys) and the other half oriented normally (hills). Split the team in two and give them 60 seconds to flip as many cones to their orientation as possible. The winning team will have the most cones flipped to their side within the time limit. Players must remain on their feet for the duration of the game (no sitting or crawling) and cannot block cones.

This game can be played as a series (best-of-three, etc.). You can also have the losing team pick a player from the winning team to balance the teams out if they're one-sided.

Hand Hockey

Have the players form a circle with their outside of their feet touching each person adjacent to them. Their feet should be spread out to a greater than shoulder-width apart distance. This forms their field of play and each of their nets. A coach can drop the ball into the circle and players will hit the ball around the circle to try and score on others (and defend their own goal).

Free Play

This game is probably the most important in your arsenal. Free play is immensely beneficial to the development of your players and young athletes. Give them the freedom to create games of their own design with their own rules.

Coaches can modify this into structured free play as well. Maybe there's a particular skill you want players to work on and have a little bit of time at the end of practice. Give the players certain limitations, such as requiring 3 or 4 players in their group, certain field dimensions, specific equipment to use, or even the requirement to build off something they learned in practice and have them create a game around it.

If you have any games that you like to use, feel free to share them with our social media channels or with myself. I can continue to add games to this post, which can provide our coaches at the younger levels with a living repository of these activities for their own arsenals.

Yours in baseball,

Coach Lovie
Baseball Development Lead
Sherwood Park Minor Baseball Association
baseballdevelopment@spmba.ca