The 5 Steps To Youth Baseball Success:
(2/5) The Truth About Your Playing Options

The Inside Scoop On Camps & Clinics

Things You Should Know Before Diving Into Your Wallet

Camps are the most underrated developmental baseball resource that you can possibly put your child in. The fact that you can get six hours of baseball in a day, six hours x five days a week, thirty hours of baseball in one week of a baseball camp – that’s like an entire season of practices! How cool is that?

So if you want your child not just to get better at baseball, but fall in love with it, send them to camp. When you’re signing your child up for camps, don’t look for development, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to tell me that there are camps out there that genuinely develop skills like you would in a travel ball practice. Yes, we develop skills at Legends Baseball Camps, but our first priority is fun.

We will still get better, but I’m not going in there and pitching everyone saying, “Hey, you know, this is going to make your child an All-Star, this is going to take their hitting skills from here to there.” We will get better, but the strides are not the types of strides that you make over the course of a season. So when you’re looking for summer camps or winter camps, holiday camps it doesn’t matter. Look for fun first.

Next, camps are great because you can play with friends, you’re out there all day and you get lots of exercise. But like I said, the downside is that they’re not always developmental. Sometimes they’re money grabs. If you have anything greater than a 10:1 coach to kid ratio – that’s probably a bit of a money grab.

Some coaches throw a clinic because it’s better money for them than a private lesson – and they can take 10, 20, 30 kids at once. They put two coaches out there, and it’s like they just did 20-30 lessons in a day. So pay attention. You should be looking for camps that have somewhere around a 6:1 player to coach ratio. Anything more and they’re just not going to get the level of supervision, instruction, and attention that they need to make it a fun, worthwhile, and meaningful experience. That means getting tons of repetitions, like you would get at a Legends camp for instance.

Lastly, it can be difficult to find info on camps in your area, the slate of activities, and the player-coach ratios. So make sure that you’re asking friends and family as well as looking at Google and Yelp reviews to get the proper information needed to determine whether or not a camp will serve your child in the way that you want it to.

I would recommend doing as many camps as you can. They’re fun, your kids are out there all day and they’re going to get better. I would try to do them before the season because it’s a great warm up for the spring youth baseball season. Again, look for camps that are fun first and stay away from any camps that are supplemental to other programs. For instance, stay away from camps put on by a travel ball organization, a college, or high school because that’s not what they specialize in. Those teams or orgs are just throwing a camp up to make a little bit more money in addition to their core offering. With someone like Legends Camp for instance, that’s what we specialize in. We eat, drink, and breathe camps that are fun. If you’re nowhere near a Legends run camp, I would look for similar camps that focus on fun with the same credo and goals in mind.

Again, we don’t just operate a camp, we call it an “experience”. We offer camp “experiences” for winter break holidays and summers. Feel free to check us out.

Clinics are awesome, and certain types of clinics are in very high demand, but low supply. Our clinics are outstanding because we run pitching and catching specific clinics, strength conditioning clinics, and hitting clinics. Clinics are excellent because you can get training on a specific skill that your child wants to develop – and see measurable improvement. I would consider myself an expert catching coach. Catching coaches might be difficult to get access to (and I don’t do catching lessons), but you could access my catching knowledge by signing up for a catching clinic. If you want to get access to a high-level pitching instructor but can’t get private lessons with him specifically, check and see if that person is running a pitching clinic and sign up!

The training that you’ll get in a skill specific clinic (catching for example) will be better than what you might get in a practice. It’s hard to find a great catching instructor within a travel team’s organization, let alone one that will take enough time in a practice to give you catching specific instruction. So clinics are great for that reason.

Clinics also represent a lower financial commitment unlike travel teams that are into you for 2K or more versus a few hundred dollars for a clinic. You also have to know what you’re solving for. Usually, you’re solving for development, so look for clinics that provide quality development. Ask questions, ask friends, and ask for recommendations regarding what’s worked with other people and their baseball clinic experiences.

Here are some of the downsides. Check to see if they have a speaker scheduled with 30, 40, 50 kids and parents in attendance. You know, the ex-pro or the pitching coach for the Astros, or whatever – for me that’s a big money grab.

We know that skills are built over time. We know that Gen-Z doesn’t learn by long lectures, or videos, or anything like that. They learn by doing. The time and money that we spend signing up and listening to a speaker, at a one-day clinic or a two-hour session where we’re just sitting in a seat, really isn’t going to move the needle as far as actual development is concerned. So make sure that you flag those, and stay away from those clinics that have poor ratios – or just bring in a speaker. It might be interesting, but is it really worth your time and dollars? Again, pay attention to player:coach ratio. Stay away from one day events – and do your research.

And then lastly, if your child specializes in pitching or catching, or hitting, or just infield, find skill specific clinics that attack that specific area. What do Legends Baseball Clinics offer you ask? We offer winter skills clinics including pitching clinics, swing development programs called our swing builder program, and then I personally run a catching program, which is fantastic!