Essential Volleyball Drills

Volleyball coaches can be thought of as carrying around a toolkit. In it we have all the various drills we can use in our practices. Some drills, like some tools, get quite a bit of use while others only come out in very particular situations which don't come along very often. And like a mechanic's toolkit, there are those items which are essential. In volleyball coaching we can think of them as drills which can be adapted to a number of different purposes and so form the core of our training plans. Here are three ideas for essentials you can put in your coaching toolkit.

Small-sided games

You always want to get as much game play into your training as you can. The easiest way to do that is to actually have your team playing games. Games where you use fewer than 6 players provide more contacts for those in the game, and if you use a reduced-size court you can create longer rallies, and thereby even more touches. On top of that, by coming up with creative scoring methods or varying the way balls are initiated you can adapt these games to work on just about anything you like. It's kind of like having a Swiss Army Knife for coaching!

Cooperative Games

Pepper is a favorite warm-up for volleyball players everywhere. It quite effectively has the players working on passing, setting, and hitting skills. If we expand that beyond 2-3 players and start bringing in more players - up to full 6 v 6 - we can have a very adaptable drill which can be used for warm-ups, to work on all facets of ball-handling, and to focus on certain types of offense and/or defense strategies. Because the idea is to keep the ball in play rather than going for kills, you automatically get longer rallies and thereby more touches for everyone involved, and you do so in game-like situations. And lest the players get too focused on hitting the ball at each other, you can always use a cooperative play to lead into full play or small-side games.

Team Serving & Passing

We all know that good serving and solid passing are the foundations of volleyball success. A simple way to work on these two skills is to split your team in half and have one side serve to the other. What makes this such a useful drill is how you can use scoring and competition to adapt it to different training needs. And you can add follow-up skills such as servers covering a setter dump or the passing team running an offensive play to raise the stakes.

There are obviously other types of drills which can be key parts of any coach's toolkit. These three, though, provide a very good foundation upon which to develop a good training plan. Used with some creativity they will serve you well.

John Forman, author of the Coaching Volleyball blog, is an experienced coach and volleyball program administrator. These days he plies his trade coaching at the university and upper National Volleyball League levels in England and consulting with clubs on organizational issues while working toward his PhD. Previously he coached at the NCAA Division I level and in the Juniors ranks. In 2011, John published a college volleyball recruiting book titled Inside College Volleyball which quickly became a Top Seller on Amazon.