Baseball Practice Plan Template

A baseball practice plan template is a pre-formatted schedule that divides your practice into timed blocks for throwing, hitting, fielding, baserunning, and team situations. Coaches fill in specific drills for each block, print the sheet, and bring it to the field so every minute of practice is accounted for and every player stays active.

Print this blank schedule, write in your drills for the day, and clip it to your lineup card holder. The eight rows match the standard practice flow most baseball programs follow: warm-up, throwing, hitting, fielding, baserunning, team situations, live reps, and cool-down. Use the "Copy as Table" button to paste it into Excel, Word, or Google Sheets if you prefer a digital copy.

A tee ball practice for 6-year-olds and a varsity practice for 17-year-olds share the same skill categories (throwing, hitting, fielding) but need completely different time allocations, drill complexity, and field dimensions. The table below breaks down practice length, skill emphasis, diamond size, and coaching approach for five age brackets.

9 and 10 Year Old Baseball Practice Plans

At ages 9-10, most players are transitioning from coach pitch to kid pitch. Throwing mechanics become critical because inaccurate throws now result in walks, not just tee-ball singles. Dedicate 15-20% of each practice to throwing form: one-knee throws, four-seam grip, and stepping toward the target. Hitting shifts from tee-only to a mix of tee work, soft toss, and front toss. Keep batting groups small (3-4 players per station) so each hitter gets 15+ swings per rotation. Fielding at this age focuses on ground ball fundamentals: get in front, field with two hands, make an accurate throw to first. Skip double-play turns and advanced relay work until players can consistently field a routine grounder.

Youth Baseball Practice Plans (11-12)

Travel ball and all-star teams at 11-12 start playing on the 50/70 diamond (50-foot pitching distance, 70-foot bases). Practices should reflect the bigger field with longer throwing distances and more baserunning reads. Add cutoff-and-relay drills, first-and-third situational plays, and secondary lead reads. Pitchers at this age are learning off-speed pitches, so include bullpen sessions in your practice plan (even 10-15 pitch count sessions). The USA Baseball Youth Manual(opens in new tab) recommends balancing skill repetition with game situations at this developmental stage.

Middle School (13-14)

Players move to the 60/90 diamond (regulation distance). The field gets bigger, the ball travels faster, and reaction time shrinks. Practices need to include advanced fielding (backhands, charging slow rollers, turning double plays with speed), off-speed hitting (recognizing changeups and breaking balls), and baserunning reads off the bat, not just the coach's arm. Position specialization typically starts here. Pitchers need dedicated bullpen time with pitch counts tracked. Map your pitching workload and skill progression across the full season with Striveon.

Sixty minutes is tight for baseball because the sport has so many discrete skills: throwing, hitting, fielding, baserunning, and team play. This plan compresses each block and prioritizes high-rep stations over long explanations. Paste it into your spreadsheet or print a copy for the dugout.

Coaching Tips for 60-Minute Practices

• Set up hitting stations and field equipment before players arrive. Zero minutes lost on setup
• Run throwing warm-ups as part of the dynamic warm-up, not as a separate block. Players jog, stretch, then pair up and throw
• Use three hitting stations (tee, soft toss, front toss) and rotate every 4 minutes. Smaller groups mean more swings per player
• Skip the cool-down stretch if time is short. Throwing warm-up at the start matters more than static stretching at the end

Ninety minutes is the standard for most travel ball and high school programs. The extra 30 minutes compared to the 60-minute plan go to dedicated outfield work, a longer hitting rotation, and a proper live at-bat segment. This format separates infield and outfield into distinct blocks so each group gets focused reps instead of sharing one fungo hitter.

Getting the Most from 90 Minutes

• Split the roster during hitting and fielding blocks. Group A hits while Group B fields, then swap at the midpoint. This doubles the reps for both groups
• Use the team situations block (block 7) to rehearse specific game scenarios you have seen in recent games. Bunt defense, first-and-third, and cutoff alignment are the three situations most teams need weekly practice on
• Track attendance and which drills you covered so you can adjust next practice instead of guessing what you ran last week

High school baseball practices run 90 to 120 minutes and carry a different intensity than youth practices. Players know the fundamentals. The challenge is applying them at game speed against better competition on a full 60/90 diamond.

What Changes at the High School Level

• Hitting shifts to live pitching. Tee and soft toss still have a place during warm-up, but the bulk of hitting reps should come from facing live arms. Front toss with an L-screen, bullpen sessions where hitters track pitches, and intrasquad at-bats build timing that tee work alone cannot replicate
• Fielding becomes situational. Instead of isolated ground ball drills, run full-speed plays: runner on first, ball hit to the 5-6 hole, turn two. Runner on second, base hit to right, relay home. Every rep should mirror a game situation
• Pitchers need structured bullpens. Bullpen sessions should include pitch counts, specific pitch sequences (fastball-changeup-fastball, inside-outside-inside), and simulated at-bats where the pitcher works a count against an imaginary hitter
• Baserunning shifts to reads. At this level, baserunners read the ball off the bat, not the coach's arm signal. Practice reads at every base: primary lead distance, secondary shuffle timing, and when to take an extra base on a ball in the dirt

Weekly Practice Plan Structure for High School

Most high school programs practice five or six days a week during the season. A common weekly structure rotates the primary focus across days while keeping throwing, hitting, and fielding as daily constants:

• Monday: Offensive focus (extended BP, bunting, hit-and-run)
• Tuesday: Defensive focus (cutoffs/relays, bunt defense, pickoffs)
• Wednesday: Pitching and catching focus (bullpens, blocking drills, pop-time work)
• Thursday: Situational focus (live at-bats, game-speed reps)
• Friday: Pre-game prep (light BP, infield/outfield, review signs)

Adjust based on your game schedule. If you play Tuesday and Friday, your heavy practice days shift to Monday and Wednesday. The key is that each day has a specific focus beyond "general practice."

The practice plan templates tell you when to work each skill. The table below tells you what drills to run. Pick 5-7 drills per practice from different skill categories. Rotate them across the week so players build muscle memory on each skill without running the same drill every day.

Matching Drills to Your Practice Plan

Start by picking one throwing, one hitting, and one fielding drill as your daily core. Add a baserunning drill twice a week and a pitching-specific drill on days when your arms need lighter work. Over a two-week cycle, you should touch every drill in the table at least once.

Store your drill selections in a shared document or coaching platform so your staff can prepare stations before practice starts. Explore how Striveon organizes your drill library with tags, skill levels, and equipment needs.

Baseball practice structure follows a different logic than most team sports. In basketball or soccer, you move from warm-up to skill work to scrimmage in a straight line. In baseball, you need to run multiple stations simultaneously because hitters, fielders, and pitchers all need different environments.

The Station-Based Approach

Split your roster into three or four groups and rotate through stations on a timer. Station 1: hitting (cage or tee area). Station 2: infield work (ground balls from fungo). Station 3: outfield work (fly balls). Station 4: bullpen or baserunning. Every player hits, fields, and runs in the same practice, and nobody stands in a line of twelve waiting for one ground ball.

Why Throwing Opens Every Practice

Baseball is a throwing sport. Every position requires an accurate arm. Starting with a structured throwing progression (short toss, medium distance, long toss) builds arm strength over the season while doubling as a dynamic warm-up that improves lower body explosiveness(opens in new tab). It also sets the pace for practice. When players pair up and throw with purpose from minute one, the tone carries through the rest of the session.

End with Team Situations, Not Drills

Isolated drills teach mechanics. Team situations teach decision-making. Close every practice with 8-12 minutes of full-speed game situations: runners on base, ball hit to a specific zone, defense reacts. This is where players connect the skills they practiced in isolation to the reads they will need on game day.

Baseball creates a unique planning problem that other sports do not have. Your practice plan is not a single linear schedule. It is three or four simultaneous schedules: the hitting group runs on one timer, the fielding group on another, the bullpen session on a third. A printed sheet handles one session, but it cannot tell you whether your pitchers threw bullpens Monday and should skip them Wednesday, or which hitters still need reps on off-speed pitching this week.

Where a Printed Plan Is Enough

If you coach a single recreational team with one practice per week and no overlapping age groups, print the templates above and you are set. The blank form works well when your plan stays consistent week to week and you are the only coach making decisions on the field.

Where a Digital Tool Helps

Travel programs and high school teams run into three problems that paper cannot solve. First, you need to track pitch counts and throwing workloads across the week, not just within one practice. Second, your infield coach, outfield coach, and hitting coach each run a separate station and need the same plan without a group text. Third, your season plan should connect individual practices to a larger development arc so your March fundamentals work feeds into your May situational prep.

For programs that need that kind of coordination, platforms like Striveon connect practice sessions to pitcher workload tracking, drill libraries, and season-long development plans. See how Striveon ties baseball practice plans to athlete progress tracking.