hi
i have a 12 yr old who plays baseball and is very good except for foot speed.
how do you increase the foot speed for a young person

ty

jeffatl

Sup, I played baseball all my life as well (through college) so I might be able to help you out. I'm not too sure about 12 though because you still have a TON of growing to do. I will tell you some of the things I did when I played college ball to help my speed. Start jumping rope, once a day for about 30min easch time that REALLY helped me. Long sprints, and short sprints(long: about 50yards, short: about 20yards). BE CAREFUL doing these, make sure you STRETCH ALOT BEFORE HAND!!!! What position do you play? that will help me be able to tell you better what you can work on as well. I played SS and worked alot on my side to side foot work. If you play infield, do shuffles to both sides, stay on the balls of your feet and just more side to side (about the distance you would in your position). Also work on hand eye, reaction speed is a BIG help. Play ALOT of hand eye games to work on this, or just shag a ton of HARD balls. I LOVE baseball, its the onlt sport i ever really played. Let me know your position because there are 2 kinds of speed in baseball.

speedbag

Here are a few links to ideas that might help.

Speed & Agility training articles

Speed Training programs

foot speed & agility ideas

and a product:

Football foot speedster

hope this helps you.

999

Get him the air alert jump program its also good for foot speed

Jimbob51

Now this might sound funny, but once while I was attending a baseball workshop for baseball coaches at the University of Houston, Gene Coleman, Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Astros said that in order for players at ALL levels to run faster -- they should move their ARMS faster! He reasoned that our natural coordination between the way the arms and legs work together in running, if the hands and arms worked faster then naturally the legs would move faster also. Sounded reasonable to me at the time, yet I never included it in my workouts with the team that I was coaching at the time. Give it a try, you've got nothing to lose. Good luck.