How to improve baseball hitting and pitching skills- 11 year old

[Anonymous]

My son is interested in practicing this summer in order to improve at baseball. He is the fastest runner on his team and good at fielding but struggles with hitting now that it is kid instead of machine pitch. I got him a tee and a net and he is practicing swinging off the tee and I am also soft pitching to him to hit into the net. I got him an apparatus off of Amazon called the swing rail to help him work on how he holds the bat.

For pitching I got him some j-bands and suggested he practice doing long tosses.

I don't know a lot about baseball...I put this plan together for him from doing some googling. Does anyone have any other suggestions for him?

His grandmother is willing to get him a handful of sessions of private coaching at the baseball zone too....

[Anonymous]

You can try local batting cages too.

My husband takes our son to practice pitching at a local baseball field. I don’t really know what do there - I guess he pitches from the mound but not really sure. We also have a net with a strike zone that he can do in the yard and he knows how far back to stand to be the distance of the mound.

[Anonymous]

I’d recommend the lessons at Baseball Zone. Really helped my pitcher, and I feel more confident that his mechanics are solid.

[Anonymous]

PP--did you do private coaching or group lessons?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP--did you do private coaching or group lessons?

Private. We started during Covid if I remember right and that seemed safer. I think I’d do the same thing regardless - the lessons were half hour, and focused just on my kid’s needs. He sometimes hangs back in a group so that helped. It’s expensive, though, for sure.

[Anonymous]

I would also recommend some private batting lessons. it;s expensive but better than practicing with bad form.

[Anonymous]

I would recommend getting him a few lessons if it is in the budget. We have 2 boys that play, and DH found that his ability to help them with hitting maxed out right around that age. He could take them to the cages etc and get them making contact, but he had no idea how to help any more beyond that (for example, one of our sons was just hitting really weak grounders and getting thrown out like 90% of the time...DH didn’t know what to advise). He took them to lessons and listened to the coach’s advice/corrections and then could reinforce that if he took them to the cages himself. My sons’ coaches were always great, but didn’t have time to sit with every kid and rework their swings (or in rec ball didn’t know how to). I think they could have hit ball after ball off the tee at home but if using bad form etc would just reinforce flaws and possibly make things worse.

Pitching lessons are great, too, but DH was able to look a bunch of online tutorials etc and get our boys pitching fairly well. He’d take them to our local baseball field and catch for them, and then the boys coaches would give advice/make adjustments as needed. Both boys have a had a few pitching lessons over the years if an issue cropped up, but never on a regular basis.

DH works with them himself on any fielding practice they need- again, at the baseball fields. At the younger ages it was just a lot of playing catch, hitting grounders/fly balls etc and DH got pretty good at it after awhile.

[Anonymous]

OP here...thanks for the advice...I will get some lessons for him

[Anonymous]

I think daily tee work and a fielding with pitch back are the most effective tools for that age. A couple lessons to nail down technique, then a follow up every couple of months, and the daily solo sessions should produce great results in fielding and batting. Same for pitching, ask the coach for an arm care routine to follow during the off season.

[Anonymous]

Tee work and slow pitch with a heavy bat and then go live with a light bat and the same form!

[Anonymous]

Highly Recommend neural movement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Highly Recommend neural movement

Hadn’t heard of this before. Is 11 on the young side for their programs?

[Anonymous]

My DS just turn 13. They do it out of hit pitch run in Tysons but sometimes they come to the house in Bethesda

[Anonymous]

There are many videos on youtube showing hitting drills your kid can do.

For improving your kid's arm, try throwing a football with your kid