Instructional Baseball Videos

Instructional baseball videos are a terrific investment for parents and coaches having difficulty getting through to their young players. For whatever reason, children who tend to tune out hands-on instruction and training often spark to instructional baseball videos. It may just be that kids today are conditioned to relate to moving images more readily than, say, lectures.

There are instructional baseball videos that cover every topic of the sport including hitting, throwing, pitching, and fielding. Many of these tapes rely on expert advice from former major league stars, some of whom have batting crowns or Cy Young Awards of their own on their resumes. Odds are, someone like Nolan Ryan or Tony Gwynn will have a much easier time reaching adolescents than will mom and dad. If you're going to learn, why not learn from the best?

Types of Instructional Baseball Videos

Hitting videos are the most popular of the aforementioned teaching aids for at least two reasons. One, at the junior level anyway, all kids must hit. The majority of young baseball players aren't pitchers, so there's no reason to force an entire team to sit and watch a video on the subject (even if it does provide good general background). By the same token, not all kids should be taught to field their positions in the same way. Yes, there are certain techniques that apply to all position players, but there are enough differences in these positions to warrant separate instruction for each player, which is often best given by a coach in a one-on-one fashion.

The second reason hitting tapes dominate the instructional baseball videos landscape is that hitting is much "sexier" than fielding and throwing. Ask 100 kids to picture their dream moment on the baseball diamond, and maybe one or two of them will describe a fantastic defensive play. The other 98 or 99 times those youngsters will narrate a dramatic home run or simply a game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth inning.