I coach 9 - 12 year old in a boys minor league (Little League) division in Delaware. My question is : What types of warmup stretches/exercises do you recommend for this age level before practice and games ? I am new to managing a team and have not been able to find much info on this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank-You.

Barry Smith

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Barry

It's my experience and advice to have the players warm up doing the skills of baseball.

I would always have the players jog a lap and play catch, the truth most of this type work is done simply to get them in the frame of mind that is now time to think about baseball and playing the game.

If I had time I would take some kind of batting practice even if it was just with plastic balls in the outfield, then I would ask the outfielders to take some fly balls, again whether it's in the park or outside the field, and do the same with the infielders. This is working under the assumption that you have about an hour before the ballgame.

As far as infield before the game goes you have two choices one is just to take infield like is normally done so that you're getting into the right frame of mind or you can take it and do skill practice and really not get into a lot of throwing the ball around. I was lucky to have two assistant coaches so for infield we hit ground balls that were thrown back to our catchers one of us to the right side and one to the left-sided infield and then the third coach hit fly balls across the outfield to the outfielders. After we had gotten each player about five or six grounders and however many fly balls we went one time around throw to second base by the outfielders and one throw to first base by the infielders. The pitchers are a different question they need to warm up on their own time frame and whether you're the home team or the visitors. For the rest of the players 90% of warm-up is strictly a mind set in getting them ready to play the game. Skills need to be learned at practice not warm-up. Baseball has so much down time between action that a player really has cooled off physically and is just a normal person that's getting ready to make the play.

Hope I'm giving you something to think about and agree or disagree with what I do appreciate the question.

Coach Arnald Swift