This is drill is the wall blocking drill for the catchers. The purpose of this drill is to incorporate the up-down, the slide blocking techniques that you have already practiced and to do it without knowing in advance which way the ball is going. The catcher will face the wall anywhere between 10 to 15 feet away. You will stand behind them with the ball, and you throw it of the wall and they have to pick it up and block it at that point. We will do repetitions. Two sets of 10 in this instance. Nice job.
Well one of the ideas is, is that you need to stay on the balls of your feet even as a catcher. You can't sit down into this lower part of your leg or you will have to stand up before you can move and that will be too late to react to the ball. You will see sometimes that even though you want to do the slides ultimately, sometimes the ball was so wide that they are forced to just use their glove just like that. Very nice job, making sure she knocks it down with the full stretch.
Increase the difficulty, increase the velocity of the throw. A nice variation of this is using a tennis ball. It's more bouncy, you can learn to see if they are really killing the ball. As well as it comes of the wall with the lot more velocity. They have a little less reaction time. Again, very nice mechanics. As she is in her stance, you see that there is a space here. She is on the balls of her feet; she can react to the ball, very nice.
What you don't want to do, is start down in this sitting position where you are touching; as you watch your should come out of this. She will lose time because she actually has to come up out of the crouch before she reacts to the ball, which will make her late. And you actually -- it was a good example there. As you saw that she couldn't quite get around the ball and it ricochets off and away from home plate as opposed to the directly back in to the base, where we want the ball to remain. A little bit late, see how she is down inside her thighs her calves are touching. You do not want to be there, you cannot react quickly to the ball. Good example there and she started to raise up the ball was already on her, it forced her not to be in the proper position and you saw the ball catapult over the top of her.
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