Teaching Your Baseball Team To Be Mentally Prepared For Each Game

Many coaches, especially at the youth level, do not connect the mental toughness and discipline of their team with a daily practice routine. For a team to develop confidence in each other and the philosophy of the coach, there are routines that must be followed each practice. The importance of practice preparation through a practice plan only takes a few minutes and will minimize time and confusion. Our practices follow the same routine everyday, but not all of our practices are the same. We also have the flexibility in our routine, stopping a few minutes to fix something that is not getting done right. Once our coaches and players learn our daily practice routine, there is not as much time spent on writing down the plans each day.

In fact, there are days where I will ask the assistant coaches before practice if we need to add anything. We have the flexibility to adapt and make input where needed. It surprises me to see practices that are slow and confusing. Players stand around and then need to guess at what is coming next. Coaches that lack order in practices set their teams up for failure in a game. For example, the first thing we do each day is take Batting Practice. Our varsity and junior varsity players often practice together, but our varsity team arrives first.

We spend forty (40) minutes with 15-16 varsity players taking a BP session. After BP, we take a 10-15 minute break before the junior varsity is ready to practice. Our varsity Bp involves a routine that our players quickly learn and makes the sessions go quick and smooth. For example, we usually hit in four groups of four batters.

One group is hitting on the field, one group is either in the cage or running bases (depending on our practice that day) and the other two groups are in the outfield. All four groups help to set up the field before we start with each group having a job such as setting up the hitting tunnel, setting up the pitching screen, mats, practice balls, etc. During practices, we also follow what I call "rituals" each day. Rituals are help train the team philosophy into our players and build a strong mind and self confidence. For example, during our BP sessions, we always start by hitting the frist round to the opposite field.

We have a philosophy that all players should feel comfortable in hitting to the opposite field. This is extremely important when the hitter is facing an over powering pitcher or when the hitter has two strikes and needs to protect the outside half of the plate.

Every first round of BP is always a round to the opposite field. If we have a younger player that forgets, our older players remind them really fast. We do not let up until each player is comfortable with opposite field hitting and it becomes a natural part of our practices.

I have other coaches that make comments that our hitters hit to the opposite field so well and are tough to strike out. They think we have some kind of secret or hitting guru, but I know it goes back to our philosophy and what we do every day to instill that in our players minds.

Sometimes it takes time, especially with young hitters that learn to pull the ball at early ages. Patience in helping them learn the importance of using the opposite field (and seeing their batting average climb) will give them confidence in themselves and in you as a coach. Help your teams to be mentally tough through a daily practice routine that avoids confusion and builds self confidence.