The number one catcher blocking drill is called catcher blocking ground balls. Not only is it my personal favorite blocking drill but it's also a fantastic drill for catchers of all ages. The youth athletes that I work with love it and the high performance athletes get super competitive with it.
The catcher blocking ground ball drill is designed to develop athletic catchers who are quick, fearless, have the mindset to block any ball that bounces, and who anticipate blocking the ball. In order to become
Game-changing catcher you need to have excellent footwork, strike stealing receiving skills, and split second throwing ability. Plus you need to be able to execute all of those skills under pressure while in a game. The catcher blocking ground ball drill nails every skill in that skill set.
Here are six key teaching points for the proper execution of the catcher blocking ground ball drill:
1) Be an athletic catcher by reacting to the incoming ball, blocking it, and making an immediate strong accurate throw
2) Have the mindset to block every ball that bounces at all costs. Anticipate you're going to have to block the ball and anticipate the worst throw possible coming from the pitcher.
3) Use your imagination to get energy, effort, and enthusiasm out of your players when catching ad blocking. Imagine being a goalie in the Stanley Cup finals or FIFA world cup. It’s a shootout and sudden death if any balls go by you. Imagine that the catcher's gear is a knight's armor and you're a medieval warrior. Every time that you block that ball and you get a bruise it's like a battle scar.
4) Understand a proper catching stance and proper blocking stance. For a proper catching stance we want our butt up (like we are sitting in a chair), our back flat (as if you could put a glass of water on it and it wouldn’t spill), the glove should give a target at your knees, and we need to be balanced, stable, mobile ready to react to the incoming ball (similar to a defensive linemen in football who is ready to bust through the offensive line and sack the quarterback). For a proper blocking stance the glove goes down first, replace your knees with your feet, round your shoulders with the chin tucked down to create an angle so the ball hits and goes back into the field, and get up, grab the ball, and fire a bullet to a base.
5) Compete in practices! Compete versus yourself or versus an opponent to see how many balls you block in a row, how many times can you hit a target out of a certain number of throws, or how many balls can you block in a certain amount of time. Can you block more balls than them? Can you hit the target more often than them? You have to compete every single time.
6) Use soft squishy balls and tennis balls with younger players to eliminate fear.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:48 Happy Gilmore
1:07 How Catcher Blocking Ground Balls Help
1:50 Demonstration
3:05 Key Teaching Points
3:41 Medieval Warrior
4:48 Challenge
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