Everything You Need To Know About Batting Cages

Scott Stevens
Every professional athlete who has ever been asked what they attribute their success too, has named someone who encouraged them to keep on practicing. About batting cages, it is said that use of a batting cage can improve your batting average. Where you live, as well as schedule conflicts can limit your accessibility to public batting cages.

The easiest, most effective way to help improve your batting, or that of your child, is to make it a game. People, especially children learn better when learning is fun. Keep score of your practice sessions. Use a three point scoring system, give line drives three points, grounders and low balls get two points, and fly balls get one point. Keeping track makes it easy to make it a game, and when you're trying to beat your own score, you're improving your own skill, and it can be a lot more fun.

If you don't have access to a batting cage, you can always build your own, right in your own backyard. You'll have access to it whenever you want. A good size batting cage is seventy feet in length, fourteen feet in width, and twelve feet in height. The height shouldn't be a problem for anyone, but if you don't have a big enough yard for the length or width, just modify them to suit your area.

The list of materials needed to build a batting cage are pretty simple, and easily located. The netting is most often composed of polyethylene or nylon. Nylon is most suited for indoors as it absorbs moisture and stretches. For the support poles you can use wood or aluminum. For poles on the top you can use PVC pipe. You may also need some cement.

Once you measure out where your batting cage will go, you will need to put your poles down at least three feet in the earth. This helps with the stability. These poles have to hold the weight of the netting, so it wouldn't hurt to pour cement around them once they're in the holes. Once your skeleton frame is up, simply attach the netting to the top and drape it over the sides. Make sure not to attach it too tightly or too loosely.

The last two things you need to make sure you didn't forget is an entranceway so you can get in and out of the batting cage. You also want to make sure that the balls can't get out from under the bottom of the netting. Your netting should come all the way to the ground.

Now place the pitching machine inside the netting, and you're ready to start practicing your batting. Remember to use the scoring techniques to make practice more fun, and more effective. Get out there and practice, practice, practice. Before you know it your RBI's, runs batted in, will increase and you will get on base more and get out less