"Small sided games" are a great way to get players lots of quality repetitions in a fun and competitive environment. Fewer players means each athlete gets almost twice the ball contacts when compared to 6 vs 6 play. This particular game challenges the side with fewer players to "overcome the odds" and the team with more players to effectively utilize…
Learning to be creative in transition can really help a team to become effective in out-of-system situations. The rapid play in volleyball means players regularly find themselves out of position and need to learn to adapt to a wide variety of different situations and circumstances. This small sided-game creates unusual transition situations that will challenge the players' capacities to communicate…
Being able to successfully defend against extremely hard-driven attacks can create those much desired momentum swings that can change the outcome of a set or even a match. Most often this capacity is trained with feeders hitting hard attacks of of an elevated box at defenders. However, the cues related to digging an attack from a feeder on a box…
This simple game is great for developing the setting skills of non-setters and gives both teams plenty of opportunities to attack out-of-system as well as defend against hard driven attacks. It's a great game for developing these skills in a competitive and game-like situation.
This cooperative "pepper" type progressive exercise helps players to improve their basic ball handling skills in several ways. It gives defenders plenty of medium paced ball contacts and helps them learn the angles needed to redirect a medium paced attack to a setter. It also helps setters improve their front and back setting skills. Sequence 2 builds on the initial…
This physically challenging drill can be a great drill to start a practice with (once players are sufficiently warmed-up) to get players moving and develop those "pursue the ball" and "never give up" attitudes.
This fours game puts players into a variety of different situations to improve their overall game play and ball control. In particular, defending against medium paced attacks, attacking "out-of-system," and in trouble situations.
A key feature of defense in volleyball is the ability to quickly back-up, yet keep your body weight forward once you have repositioned. This high volume drill helps the player to improve their ability to quickly back-up in a low defensive posture while keeping their body in the preferred weight forward position.
This is a simple and popular drill used by a lot of programs to get some simple defense and out-of-system setting repetitions. It's a great drill to quickly get your athletes some repetition volume in these important skills and train skill accuracy.
Teams with defenders who are efficient at defending hard attacks have more success. Often to train this skill we hit a lot of balls at our players off of boxes. The problem however is that digging a ball hit off a box is not the same as digging a real hitter. It's great for helping the player learn how to…
Players need to learn to receive and redirect hard-driven balls to the center of the court from a wide variety of attack locations. This simple drill directs attacks at the defender from a variety of different locations along the net, giving them the opportunity to learn to appropriately adjust their platform to defend and redirect the ball as required.
This fun drill teaches players to "scramble" effectively in out-of-system situations. It will improve basic ball pursuit, the ability to generate a settable ball, to set effectively out of system, and to spike the ball from anywhere in the court.
Having servers just stay at the service line and serve over and over in practice is not very game-like. Servers almost always need to enter the court, participate in a rally, and possibly perform additional actions before they return to serve again. This changes the server's focus and they need to learn to refocus on serving after playing defense for…
