Catcher Drills You Can Do By Yourself

Hey, what's going on everyone? Matt Antonelli here. And one of the most frequently asked questions that I receive on all of our social media platforms is how do I get better on my own? If I don't have a coach, if I don't have somebody to hit to me or throw to me or hit me ground balls. And I've made a video in the past using the rucket rebounder for infielders. And we talked about different drills that you can do to improve all by yourself. Today, I want to make a similar video, but I want to talk about it from the catching position because after I put out that infield video, a lot of catchers wrote to me and said, how do I use the rebounder? What are some drills that I can do as a catcher to improve my skills? If I don't have anybody to throw to me so I can block or receive or throw to bases. And I've stressed for years that the most improvement a player will make is the work that they do on their own away from their team practices. Having team practice is great, but there's so much more time available to you outside of team practice and actually in team practice. And that's where the real improvement happens. So let me show you some drills that we do with our catchers that you can do all by yourself with the rucket rebounder. If you want to check it out, just go to the description box down below, click the link there. You'll get a discount off of the rebounder. So let's get into the drills now. Okay. So the first thing we're going to do is start off with the receiving drill, and I'm going to do it with no glove on. You can start with no glove and then you can add a glove after that. I'm also going to show it from a traditional catching stance. Now you can practice this with one knee down, either your right or left knee depending on what you like to use in the game. But I'll demonstrate here from a traditional catcher stance. So what we're going to do is we're going to underhand the ball off of the rebounder. We want the ball to bounce on the ground and then we are going to work underneath the ball. So always trying to work the ball back into the strike zone. So we're going to give a low target. We're going to work underneath the ball and we're just going to pick the ball on the short hop and work the ball somewhere up to our chin. We're going to exaggerate the move a little bit. So let me show you what it looks like. So that's getting us used to being under the ball again and working everything up into the strike zone. From there, you're going to progress to just normal flips right off of the rucket screen. And you're going to do the same thing. And you can move the ball around the screen to work on inside, outside, low and high. Now, after you've done that, you can transition into using your footwork to throw runners out. So you can mix between footwork to second, footwork to third, back picks to first base. And so I'll demonstrate a couple of those now. So all I'm doing right there is I'm trying to allow the ball to travel. I'm working my footwork right to left, left to my target. So I want to get my feet into the ground as quickly as I can and lined up to where I'm trying to throw the ball. As I receive the ball, I'm trying to take the ball to the middle of my body. I don't want to take it up here. I don't want to take it down here. I don't want to take it out here. I want to receive the ball, bring it to the middle of my body. As I start to work towards my target, my transfer is going to happen somewhere right around the chest area. And then I'm going to be nice, short and quick with the ball into the throwing position. So I think about almost like pulling back a bow. So I'm going to be right here and I want to be in straight lines. As straight a line as possible to get the ball ready to throw. So you can also tell them out of shape. I'm breathing pretty heavy, only doing about 15, 20 reps or so. After that, you can work on blocking. So I don't have gear on right now, but all you have to do is slide back a little bit, get in your stance, and you can just throw the ball off the rucket screen and you can get down and block it again. As you make subtle movements with where the ball is off the screen, the ball is going to bounce slightly left or slightly right. And so you can work on blocks right at you. You can work on moving to your right, moving to your left. So there's all types of different things that you can do off of the rucket rebounder, regardless of position. If you're looking specifically at the catcher's position, again, you can work on receiving, you can work on blocking, you can work on transfers and throws. There's no part of your game that you can't hit. Just using a ball yourself and the rebounder. So again, there's no real excuses to not be able to get work in. And a lot of the development, like I said earlier, is going to happen away from the field. The best players that I've played with are players that are dedicated, not just during their two hour practice or hour and a half practice, but it's those other hours of the day when you're not sleeping or at school that you can develop, you can put time in to work on specific skills. What are you doing during those hours? That's where the real development happens. So hopefully this helps you out. If you have any questions, let me know in the comment section below, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, give it a thumbs up, all that good stuff. And we'll talk to you later.