What Makes a Good Volleyball Drill?
There’s a lot of volleyball drills out there and some are definitely better than others. But exactly what makes one drill better than another is often not very easy to answer. It will probably take several blog posts to fully discuss what makes a drill “good.” So for this first post on the topic, we’ll just try to cover a few of the basics.
In general, drills that adequately incorporate the following concepts are usually pretty good ones.
Skills are performed in a “game-like” manner – The more closely skills are performed to the way they are used in games, the better they will transfer to game situations. The use of skills in drills should reflect the way they are used in games.
They’re constructed in a way which teaches players to effectively “read” game situations – One of the most critical elements to successful performance in a game situation is the ability to interpret what is happening around you. Coaches must pay close attention to what cues are being provided and/or eliminated when setting up drills and should direct the athletes to look for those cues. The elimination of important cues for the sake of higher success in the execution of a drill will reduce the transferability of the training to the competitive environment.
For example, tossing the ball for spikers to hit. It is often easier for coaches to toss balls for players to hit rather than utilizing setters to deliver the ball to the hitters. Coaches can often rapidly toss multiple balls leading to a higher number of repetitions in a shorter period of time and tosses often result in a lot of high-quality attacks. More high-quality attacks is good, right? Except that the coach is not allowed to toss the ball to spikers in matches. Hitters need to learn to read the cues of an actual set if they are ever to become effective hitters.
They utilize some sort of success criteria – The use of success criteria as “a scoring” or “measurement” tool is extremely useful on three distinct levels:
- They provide athletes with a measurable outcome or “finish” to their task. This most definitely reduces the “coasting mode” that often occurs in drills with no clear end goal and will bring a motivating “sense of accomplishment” for participants. Even better are drills with success criteria that put the athletes in competition with each other (see point 3). Most people play sports because they like to compete, right?
- Success criteria allows a coach to evaluate where each athlete and/or the team is at in performing specific skills or tasks. For example, if a coach determines that their players need to hit 70% of spikes in court, setting that standard as part of the success criteria for a hitting drill is a good way to determine whether the players’ abilities are where they need to be or whether more practice might be required.
- Success criteria can help to train your athletes to score points. After all, this is the principle objective of a volleyball match. As a team progresses into the competitive portion of their season, it is important that the success criteria of most drills requires points to be scored.
They have a purpose – There needs to be a specific reason you are doing the drill. Avoid doing a drill just for something to do or to give your players “reps.” There should to be a phase of the game, a skill, or some other performance aspect that you want to improve with your team AND the drill you have selected or designed has the potential to effectively train this element.
They keep as many players active as possible – Good drills keep players actively involved and avoid long line-ups of players “waiting for their turn.” Good drills keep players actively engaged in playing the ball and/or responding to situations the ball creates. Players waiting in line are not improving!
They’re fun – Volleyball is a game after all so it should be fun. Try to use drills that are fun for the athletes.
There is not one drill or a series of drills that will work well in all situations. Although drill web sites such as this one are useful, coaches should also be prepared to develop new drills or adapt existing drills to meet more specialized needs and maximize training opportunities. For the inexperienced coach, drill development can be a challenging task, but it also has huge payoffs for those coaches willing to learn drill design skills. We’ll discuss the drill design process in a future blog post.
Are there any important elements to a good drill that you think we missed? Please share in the comments section below!
