How to Teach Youth Baseball Fundamentals

Teach the proper way to field a ground ball. You want your players to get in front of the ball and crouch down while keeping their gloves on the ground. As the ball bounces into the glove, your player needs to take his free hand and put it down right over the top of the ball to keep it from bouncing out of the glove. Compare this to an alligator chomping down with its jaws when it gets something in its mouth. Just like nothing gets away from the alligator once it has chomped down, nothing should get away from a player who has used both hands to secure the ball. Remind your players when they take the field to use this method by saying "alligator" before the start of an inning.

Teach your players to get their arms high when they throw the baseball. Many young players won't take their hands higher than shoulder level when they throw and they tend to push the ball to the target instead of throw it. Their throwing hands should be at ear height when they throw the ball and they should step toward the target when they throwt. The players should snap their wrist as they throw. One easy way to help players remember the correct way of throwing is to tell them, "Fingers high, touch the sky." That way, as they throw, they should be able to remember to get their hands up before throwing the ball.

Teach players that their first move should be to lean back when they start hitting the baseball. This is called negative movement and it is how a player loads his swing. This is where bat speed and power come into play. It is as simple as a shoulder movement backwards before coming forward. This is not an easy concept, but nothing about hitting is easy. Hitting has often been described as the most difficult thing in sports. Teaching negative movement requires one-on-one teaching with every player on your team. Give every batter a minimum of 15 swings in the batting cage at every practice.

Go over base running with your players. Teach them to take a smooth and economical route around the bases. You don't want players circling out towards right field when they go from first to second or out to left field when they go from second to third. Players need to realize they will have to come back to their base when a line drive or fly ball has been caught with less than two outs and that they can run on anything with two outs. Remind them of game circumstances every time they are on base.

Teach young players the dimensions of the strike zone. In youth baseball, a strike is called when the ball is anywhere from shoulder to knee height and the ball can be one ball length outside the plate. This is much larger than it is for older players because it is harder for younger players to throw strikes.