If you hang around sports for any length of time you will hear coaches saying things like speed kills… 

The truth is it does and you should work on speed development for yourself, your child or the players you coach to improve their speed.  As a coach you will find your team winning more and more games as your speed and base running skills improve. 

As a parent, you will notice your child having more and more opportunities because of their speed and agility.  From my perspective as a coach, I’ve recruited players solely based on speed even when their fundamental skills were not up to par with others. 

Whether you are a coach or parent you can work with your young athlete in a positive way to improve his or her speed and agility.  Now I’m not saying you can make the child the next Olympic caliber sprinter but over time you can improve their speed dramatically.

This manual is not about speed and agility training and the subject is way to long to go into in a baseball fundamental book; however it’s extremely important and you should look for some good material on the subject because providing speed training to your child and/or players is one of the best things you can do for them athletically. 

The Youth Baseball Insider does hope to produce a Speed and Agility manual in the future but at this time we do not have anything.  There are lots of additional resources on the topic and I suggest you look into them. 

This section wouldn’t be complete unless I provided you at least one tip that you can implement immediately to improve your speed or the speed of your child and/or team.

Key skill improvement point….

You must get the players arms moving straight forward and straight back as they run.  If you spend just a little time watching kids run you will notice all the wasted movement of their arms as they fly back and forth and in most cases way away from their body in almost a side to side motion.  This wasted movement slows down the child drastically. 

Eliminating this extra movement and getting their arms going straight forward and back will increase speed immediately.  Now, it’s not as easy as it sounds for kids that have been running incorrectly for some time but with patience you can get them to correct the poor fundamentals.

Ten minutes a day will lead to lasting improvement. 

Walk them slowly through the form you are trying to get them to repeat.  Show them how to move their arms forward and back keeping them close to the body.  Then have them repeat it in slow motion 15-20 times.  After doing this get them to actually run doing the same movement.  Be patient and keep practicing it over and over. 

If you coach a team you should do this at each practice and start by having them walk in slow motion repeating the arm movements then progress to full speed.  The walking through the motion is where the child actually develops the muscle memory needed to make a successful change.  

Remember to make it fun by creating a competition between your kids or as a parent create a competition against the clock.  I’ve found it best to set up running distances about the length of your base paths.  If you have access to regular baseball fields then use the base paths on the field.  Additionally, you can time them at each practice and show the improvement over the entire season.

Remember to make the practice fun for everyone and the point here is not to win every time but over the years I’ve found that a little competition is good if done correctly.  Your job as a coach and/or parent is to motivate your child and healthy competition can do that for most kids.

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