How To Play Baseball: Running Grid Drill

Learn the running grid drill in order to improve agility, coordination and running technique.

(Music playing) This really helps our agility, our coordination, making sure that our running technique is still good. There are a hundred different drills you can do with this running grid. We are going to run trough a number of them but there is certainly more options if you are looking for something else to do in a little more advanced way. Alright, first thing we are going to do is one foot in one hole and a running format; we want to pick out our focal point(ph). Okay Jake, go ahead and start this through. One foot in one hole, get the good arms swaying. Okay, knees up, good. Touch the end light; we want to try to avoid making contact with the grid whenever possible. (Music playing) Second drill will be two feet one hole. So we are going to touch down twice in one grid and then we will move on to the next. We really got to get our knees up in order to do this or we are going to miss hitting in the grid. (Music playing) Okay, this time, we are going to take one step, we are going to elongate a little bit, so we are going to hit the one hole, the three holes, the five holes and out. So, we are going to lengthen our strike(ph) out just a little bit, stand on the right side of the grid. Here we go, one, three, five and out. Still getting the knees up but elongate to strike(ph) a little bit, more or like a normal run. Good, come on back. Good, knees out, good arm pump, that is it, one, three, five and out. (Music playing) Okay, our next exercise is going to allow us to use both sides of the grid. We are going to touch down in the first grid with our right foot then we are going to hit the next grid with our left. We want to stay close to the center line with good running technique, we do not want to get sloppy here and start struggling all over the running grids. Stay always close to the centerline. Good, that is it, pump the knees. Good. See it, see how nice light on the feet, very nice. (Music playing) Okay, we are going to do this one, the next one in the walking form. This is what we call a duck waddle. We are going to take our right foot, and we are going to step on the left side of the grid and then we are going to go left foot up, step on the right side. We want to stay real close to the centerline, knees up and we do not have to pump the arms on this one. Want to lift with the knee, good, stay close at the centerline. We are going to walk through this one time and then we are going to come back with a run. The natural tendency is for people to swing out the way from the centerline, we do not want to do that. Get your knees up and be able to put them straight up and straight down. So it requires some coordination, a little bit of agility, especially if you raise this off the ground. This time through, we are going to run it and we are going to see if we can avoid going back and forth each time that we have to touchdown with our feet when going to straight line. Okay, knees up, very nice. So stay I stay in the straight line, good. Any degree of coordination, you can achieve through the running grid, we will just transfer in the success on the ball by man. Okay, we come back, good, that is it, very nice. (Music playing) Okay, we are going to do bunny hop, we will go on the right side of the grid and what we are working on here is a little bit a lift with the legs, but a whole lot of lift with the arms. One hole at a time on the bunny hop, up, good, see how he is getting some extension, Jake is getting up. Good. Lifting the arms, that helps his drive as we did not take that into a running format where the arms are used to be in able to lift and give you a little bit extra help. (Music playing) Okay, now we are going to take the bunny hop and we are going to go diagonals with it, so, we are going to hit hole then come over here and then back and then back. Again, stay close to the centerline. Good, excellent. Nice, see he is getting up off the feet. One thing you want to try to remember is whenever you do this, try to find a soft surface that you can hit on, a gym floor works well, it has a little bit to give. You do not want to do this on concrete. As I mentioned, there are many other things that you can do with this. You can do all kinds different ones coming in and coming out. You can make it as advance as you would like to you can keep it fairly simple. I think, if you get eight or ten exercises in in a given day that would be a good number to shoot for. You may find that you are not quite as good as some, as others you want to work those a little harder, maybe some that can very simple to you. Chop those aside and keep the ones that are little more difficult and work goes extra. Whatever it happens to be, whatever you come out of this, I guarantee, you are going to come out more agile, more coordinated, more able to move right, left, forward and backward on the baseball diamond.