Fun Softball Practice Drills

Suppose you want to prepare your softball team for the upcoming season. You’ll need a well-rounded variety of fun softball practice drills, a rotating set of softball practice plans and the right softball equipment for the most complete and entertaining softball training.

Softball practice should be productive, dynamic and fun for the whole team. There are skills that every team member should practice, and there are likewise specialized skills and drills for certain positions. Specialized and generalized softball practice skills are crucial, but so are strategy and teamwork drills.

Here, we will look at various softball practice drills to mix and match as you incorporate them into your softball practice plans. Using both softball drills and practice plans will ensure that you are preparing your team effectively and efficiently.

Softball Batting Practice Drills

Softball batting practice is an essential part of every softball practice plan because every player on the roster comes up to bat and should know how to hit a softball. Most batting drills focus on specific aspects of batting, including swing technique, swing speed and hand-eye-coordination drills. Here are a few of our favorite softball batting practice drills you can use to create excellent hitters.

Batting Tee Practice

The best way to comprehend and ingrain repetitive hitting motions into your players' muscle memory is by swinging off a batting tee repetitively. This can be the first drill of softball batting practice before you move on to more complicated pitching and hitting drills.

Softball Batting Practice

For more experienced players, softball batting practice in which players repeatedly hit pitches launched from a pitching machine in a batting cage is a great first step to get them warmed up for more complicated drills.

Soft Toss Drill

This drill involves using a Wiffle ball to throw a quick underhanded pitch to the batter. The batter’s objective is to commit fully to the hit with a hard and thorough swing. Apart from imparting good swinging form, it also works hand-eye-coordination.

Two-Ball Drill

This drill is about improving hand-eye coordination, spontaneous decision-making and reaction speeds when hitting the ball. A pitcher throws two different colored balls to the hitter at once. The pitcher calls out the color the batter should hit while the balls are mid-air, forcing the batter to think fast and swing fast.

Pepper Drill

In this drill, you’ll need a batter, a thrower and three outfielders. This drill involves slow pitches thrown from a short distance away from the batter, who in turn must try to aim the swing so that the trajectory of the ball heads toward one of the three outfielders positioned to receive it.

Softball Practice Drills for Pitching

Pitching is a specialized skill that deserves focus and special softball training drills for a small group of pitchers.

Fastpitch Softball Practice Plans

Fastpitch softball drills for practice are for more advanced teams that employ the fastpitch technique, in which they throw the softball underhanded at speeds of up to 75 mph.

Pitchers utilize different styles and throw a variety of pitches when fast pitching, so the best way to introduce and drill pitching techniques is with softball pitching training aids. The best softball pitcher training aids teach pitchers to throw the ball using the correct form for any number of pitch styles including, curveballs, drop balls, changeups, rise balls and overhand throws, to name a few.

Throwing, Fielding and Running Drills

These drills will likely comprise a large part of your softball practice plans as they encompass both offensive and defensive aspects of the game as well as working as a team unit.

Infield Hustle Drill

For the first drill, you will divide the team into groups of four, positioning them on bases 1-3 and the shortstop line. You will hit a ball to the player on third base. The third baseman will throw the ball to the first baseman; upon throwing to first, the player on third runs to the shortstop line. After the first hit to third, you will hit two more balls, one to the shortstop line and the other to the 2nd baseman. Both the shortstop and 2nd baseman throw the balls to the first baseman and rotate to the line directly to the left of where they previously received the ball. This is an intentionally chaotic fielding game meant to catch and correct fielding errors.

A second drill involves a similar cycle of catching, throwing and switching field positions. This drill involves a catcher, a first baseman, a person standing at the foul line to the side of first base and a line of players at third base. The throwing and catching order is as follows:

1. The coach hits a ball to third base.
2. The third baseman catches the ball and throws it to the catcher, then runs to home base.
3. The catcher throws a bunt simulation to the following third baseman, who picks up the ball and throws it to first base. The third baseman then runs to the foul position.
4. The first baseman catches the ball and throws it to the catcher — the first baseman sprints to the end of the third baseline. The foul position player replaces the first baseman.

All these dynamic infield throwing and running drills help with conditioning, throwing, catching, speed and fielding strategies.

Aim, Target and Ball Movement Drills

The following fun softball practice drills are some of the most entertaining for players as they are high-energy, dynamic and competitive, appearing more like a game than a drill.

Target Practice Drill

This drill sharpens players’ aim for throwing. You line up and stack buckets as targets. Players divide into two groups at equal distances from the stacks of buckets. Players from each team throw balls at the buckets to see how many they can knock over by the time all balls are thrown. The team to down the most buckets wins, and the losing team cleans up all the balls.

Four Corners Drill

This drill is a running and fastball movement game in which one player acts as a runner and the other players split into groups of four, occupying all the bases. The runner begins at home base, and with the coach’s prompting, starts to run around the bases.

The other players must throw the ball back and forth from home to third and from third back to home before the runner makes it back to home base. The last player to make a throw or catch from home base when the runner reaches home becomes the new runner.

Strategy Drills

While these softball practice drills may be tedious, they are some of the most important drills to win the game. These drills require running relays using various real-game scenarios. For example, you could simulate fly ball hits with the bases loaded for one scenario. You could simulate a ground ball hit with a player on first and a player on third for another scenario.