Baseball Pitching Practice Plan for 11 and 12 Year Olds

The zone becomes four rooms and the fastball learns their addresses. The change-up arrives: same arm, slower mail. Every pitch counted, every rest day law.

Catch ramping twenty to sixty feet. Three paused leg lifts, three slow-motion deliveries feeling the ORDER: front hip leads the landing, shoulders follow, arm last and loose, like cracking a whip that starts at the belt. Five half-speed full deliveries. The sequence rehearsed slow is the velocity nobody has to force later.

Duration: 20 min · Equipment: gloves, ball, a target zone split in four (tape or imagination), pitch counter

The day's main count: rounds of five fastballs at game effort, each round ASSIGNED a quadrant (down-away first and most, the money room; then down-in, up-away, up-in last and least). Twenty-five pitches. Scoring per round: in the called quadrant two, in the zone elsewhere one, out zero. Misses get read like mail: consistent misses arm-side mean the stride is flying open; everything high means the finish is standing up.

The grip found together (circle-change or a deep three-finger choke, whichever the hand fits today), then plain CATCH with it at forty feet, ten throws, zero pitching. The whole secret said once: the grip does all the slowing; the arm must never help. Any change-up thrown with a careful arm is a batting-practice fastball with paperwork.

Ten to fifteen counted pitches: rounds of five alternating two fastballs then a change-up, all at IDENTICAL arm speed, change-ups aimed simply down the middle (their fade will move them; command of the change comes later). Grade only one thing: did the arm stay honest? A parent catching can call it from the glove: if the change-up looked exactly like a fastball out of the hand and arrived late, it worked, location be damned.

Six easy throws walking in, effort melting. Then the ledger, out loud and written: today's total count, this week's count across all teams and lessons, next allowed pitching day per league rest rules, and the two full no-throw days located in the week. One perfect balance hold to close. The ledger habit at 12 is the arm at 22.

What to watch today: arm speed on the change-up, with honest eyes. Every young pitcher slows the arm to slow the ball, and it reads as a lob from fifty feet away. Praise change-ups by their DECEPTION (did the delivery lie well), never their location, for the first month. The grip will learn addresses later; the arm must learn honesty first.