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Sure, baseball may be a team sport, but the success of the team is dependent on each player’s ability.
Unless you’re in a major league or playing for a living, team practice sessions can be hard to schedule. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t work on your own skills by yourself.
Practicing on your own to be better at baseball is totally doable and if we’re being honest, also quite necessary.
Better players make better teams, and as a member of a team, it’s your responsibility to prepare yourself, know your strengths and weaknesses, and work on them.
Here are 6 of the best baseball drills you can do alone.
Batting Practices
Swinging
Before you start hitting balls, start with practicing your swings.
Get comfortable with your grip, and with the weight and feel of the bat. Also try to adjust your stance, bending your knees and body at different degrees so you can get your swings right.
Practicing your swing before heading straight into practicing your hits helps your body get used to the movements and the bat.
Hitting
When you feel you’ve got your swings down and you feel your body’s more comfortable with the movement, move on to hitting the balls.
Since you’re practicing alone, it’s the perfect time to hit the batting cages or even purchase or rent a ball-throwing machine and set it up in your home.
For the next stage of batting practice, the goal isn’t to hit the ball as hard as you can to get it as far as you can, but the goal will just be to hit the ball.
Still, while practicing, take note of the paths your balls will take when you hit them and kind of envision how far they’ll go on a real field.
Even during a game, there’s no guarantee you’ll hit every ball thrown at you. The goal of this type of practice is for you to get used to the movements and know the best positions for batting (learn how to improve your baseball swing here).
Ball Drills
Pitching
When practicing pitching, it helps to pre-determine the area or spot you’re aiming for.
Try different pitching styles until you find your top 5. Like with every skill in baseball, a lot of hand-eye coordination is needed. With pitching, you’ll need to have good precision.
One of the best ways to practice pitching is to mark something or get an object that you can use as a target. Aim for the target when practicing pitches, and adjust your distance, speed, and strength accordingly.
Throwing And Catching
For throwing and catching drills, make sure you have a hard wall to practice on.
You can throw your balls against the wall and catch them as they bounce back. Alternate different speeds, strengths, and incorporate some cardio into it by running for rolling balls.
You can also incorporate using timers when doing these drills. If you want to set your practice a level higher, you can also throw and catch with multiple baseballs instead of just one.
Practice different skills and ways of throwing, adjusting to short and long distances, and forehand and backhand throws.
Mental And Endurance Practices
Hand-eye Coordination
One of the best drills that baseball coaches and players swear by for improving your hand-eye coordination is to toss a ball in the air with one hand, 100 times a day.
Alternate this with your less-dominant hand on another day, and then practice throwing and catching with interchanging hands another day.
Running Or Sprinting
If you’ve ever seen a baseball game, there’s a lot of running involved.
More specifically, sprinting. A lot of the game is trying to run as fast as you can from base to base, from point A to point B.
Try to warm up with some stretches and a short jog, some hops and lunges, and practice sprinting with a timer so you know how slow or fast you were.
Remember that the goal is to get from here to there in the shortest amount of time possible.
Practice Makes Perfect!
There’s no way for a person to become a pro at baseball overnight.
Like any sport, baseball requires focus and hours of practice. Doing these drills is a way to really help your body build up that muscle memory and stamina so that eventually each act becomes more fluid and easier to execute.
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