Youth Pitching Drills: The 6 That Fix the 3 Most Common Flaws

Search for pitching drills and you'll find lists of nine, eleven, fifteen drills, all presented like every kid needs every one. That's backwards. A drill is a correction. It exists to fix a specific problem in a specific delivery, and a kid grinding through drills aimed at problems he doesn't have is practicing hard while improving slowly.

So this article is deliberately short on drills and long on matching. Three flaws cover most of what we see in young pitchers' videos: rushing, flying open, and a late arm. Two drills each, six total. They're the same drills we prescribe inside our paid training plans, with the same demo videos and the same coaching cues, free. Find your pitcher's flaw below, run his two drills, and leave the rest alone.

Not sure which flaw is his? That's normal, they're nearly impossible to see at full speed. Our free evaluation answers it from one video, and our guide to the 7 most common mistakes explains what each flaw looks like.

Flaw 1: Rushing the delivery

What you'll see: everything looks hurried. He drifts or falls toward the plate before his leg lift finishes, the arm lags behind the body, and misses scatter high. Rushing is also the engine behind overthrowing: the harder he tries, the earlier everything fires, and the timing that creates velocity falls apart. Fixes for rushing live in the back leg, because a back leg that controls the descent gives the rest of the delivery time to happen in order.

Flaw 2: Flying open early

What you'll see: the glove side pulls off toward the dugout, the chest faces the hitter too soon, and misses run up and to the arm side. This is the flaw we see most in submitted videos. The cure is what we grade as Delayed Rotation: hips opening a beat before the shoulders, so energy stacks up instead of leaking out sideways.

Flaw 3: The arm drags late

What you'll see: the hand takes a long, looping route out of the glove, the elbow climbs early, and the arm is still climbing into position when the front foot lands. A late arm costs command and adds stress, because the arm plays catch-up under maximum force. These two drills quiet the lower body entirely so the arm can find a clean, on-time path.

How to run drill work (without ruining it)

Drills fail two ways: aimed at the wrong flaw, or done in a way that makes kids hate them. A few rules keep both from happening.

• One flaw at a time. Pick his flaw, run its two drills, ignore the other four. Kids improve one cue at a time, and overloaded pitchers get worse before they get better.
• Short and smooth beats long and sloppy. Ten to fifteen minutes, two or three times a week, at an easy effort where the movement stays clean. Five perfect reps teach more than fifty rushed ones. Smooth is fast.
• These are not throwing volume. Drill throws are easy-effort throws, but they still count as throwing. Keep them off high-pitch-count days, and skip them entirely if his arm is sore. If soreness lingers or anything hurts, stop and see a doctor.
• Film him once a month. The flaw you're fixing should visibly shrink on video. If it isn't, the drill may be aimed at the wrong problem, which brings us to the next section.

The step before the drills

Every drill above fixes something specific. Which means the whole plan depends on getting the diagnosis right, and the diagnosis is the part you can't do from the bleachers. Rushing, flying open, and a late arm all happen inside a second and a half, and two of them frequently show up together, tangled in ways where fixing one the wrong way makes the other worse.

That's the job our free evaluation does. Film one pitch, upload it, and we break the delivery down frame by frame: which of these flaws he actually has, which one to attack first, and which drills match. It's the exact process behind the paid training plans these six drills come from, and the evaluation costs nothing.

Common questions