Posted by: Teacherman () on Sun Nov 24 20:38:31 2002

Suppose you had 10 hours a week to train to prepare for next season which official 1st practice begins jan.20th.looking for ideas,something new for h.s. age.training geared for just hitting not throwing.

Are you training one person, a few kids, or the whole team? Do you have 2 hours/5 days per week or 3 hours/3 days per week?

Depends on the swing mechanics of the players. In the off season I would clearly work on mechanics first to make sure they swing properly. This may take the entire time for some kids. Once I was comfortable that the mechanics were solid I would do overload/underload training to develop the fastest bats I could. I would work on the SETPRO type training schedule.

I would also determine the "level of competence" for each kid. By that I mean at what speed of pitching is each kid able to handle. This is a base of information from which you make decisions on. Does the kid need to learn to "catch up" to good pitching. Does the kid already do fine with speed but needs to learn to stop lunging? Does the kid need to work on handling off speed or breaking balls? Does the kid need better plate discipline? etc etc.

When I determined the level of competence I would attack the next step up the ladder of success to see if I could break that barrier before the season starts. I would do this along with the overload/underload training on a rotating basis.