The "W" formation is often the first serve receive formation players learn when they start to play 6 vs 6 volleyball. This simple drill helps the players learn and practice how to set-up the "W" formation in all six rotations, while simultaneously getting some serve receive and hitting practice.
This is a simple and fun game often used as part of the warm-up phase at the beginning of practice to get players motivated and improve player's competency with the overhead pass skill.
"Short Court" is a widely-used and very fun warm-up game that is also very good for introducing and stabilizing three contact play. The extremely small court means the ball moves slowly which aids novice players in controlling each contact so they can more easily learn the rhythms and timings of the game as well as reading and responding to ball…
Volleyball can be a difficult game to introduce to novice players because a certain amount of baseline skill is required for rallies to be initiated. It can be difficult to get players to move beyond the initial first contact to create fun rallies. This 3 vs 3 game permits a catch on many of the first contacts (and utilizes a…
"Pepper" is the classic skill warm-up drill used by almost all players around the world and it's great, players get to use many skills and get a lot of contacts in a short period of time. However, it also has some limitations. It doesn't incorporate the net, include much player movement, or require the ball to be redirected anywhere except…
This can be a great drill when you have limited training time and want to optimize your serving and passing volume. The use of a "time limit" motivates the passers not to waste passing opportunities as well as work to create as many passing opportunities as possible in a short period of time.
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 is a simple, fun, and challenging drill for young players. It helps them learn that even when not playing the ball, they need to be adjusting position based on what they need to do next and not caught "watching" their teammates play, all while giving them meaningful passing, setting, and hitting repetitions.
This simple drill helps new players improve their lateral movement to the ball and their ability to receive the ball from one location and re-direct the ball to a different target.
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.
Once players have acquired the abilities to pass-set-hit with some consistency in simple situations, this warm-up game becomes a very fun way to start practices. It gets the players excited, motivated, and encourages ball pursuit. It can help novice players learn some of the rhythms, timings, and general ball movements of the game, and reduces a key "rally breaker" to…
This drill is fun and challenging for intermediate level players and is a great drill for the ball warm-up phase of any practice. It helps them to learn to communicate with each other quickly and efficiently during rallies. They will need to quickly decide who is going to perform each skill in the three contact sequence, then quickly reorganize and…
This is a fun drill to use with younger players, in a camp or clinic setting or as a bit of a ball warm-up drill. It's great for encouraging players to communicate, adapt, and get organized during a rally.
This engaging serve and pass drill places players into a competitive passing and setting situation that focuses on encouraging accuracy and precision when passing and setting.
This 2 vs 2 modified game introduces the fundamentals of the spiking arm-swing. Players learn how to hit the ball over the net using one hand, as well as how and when a hit is used in the game. It also teaches them the basic tactics of volleyball - specifically the concept of attacking and defending territory, how to use…
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.
Learning to read a hitter's approach and their hitting intent is fundamental to good blocking. However, young blockers often focus more on the path of the set than the hitter. This drill removes the ball from the blocker's vision, forcing them to focus on the hitter to obtain information related to the timing and location of the hit.
This is simple and fun game for players in the earliest stages of learning how to play - specifically players who have not yet developed competent rallying skills. It teaches them how to attack and defend territory and gives them practice executing volleyballs skills from their own toss.
This simple drill helps to improve the ability of non-setters to successfully deliver hittable sets. It's a great drill to use for a few minutes near the start of practice during periods of the year where you want to reinforce this skill.
This is a good drill if your passers often neglect to call serves "in" or "out" when receiving serve. It encourages the passers to communicate with each using effective verbal cues.
Teams need to learn how to become very offensively efficient when the pass is perfect. This scrimmage game consistently puts setters in the optimum position to run their offensive system in all reception rotations and allows all players to become familiar with the rhythms and timings of their team's offensive system, workout any issues, and gain the confidence needed to…
A team's ability to consistently "sideout" in all rotations is vital to it's success. This unique scoring system of this game emphasizes the importance to "sideout" consistently.
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…
