Activity:
Using a plyometric jump box (or any approximately 2′ x 2′ plywood box), have your team get each member of the team up on the box. Each team member must have one foot on the box and last the length it takes them to sing a song, such as…
Transition Drills
Transitions in volleyball include the time spent moving from one skill to another and moving from defense to offense and back. A successful volleyball team practices transitions regularly, gaining precision and speed. Every player must know where…
Integrating Drills Into Practice
“Coach, can we run that again?”
“That was awesome!”
“Wow, that was close! Let’s do it again. We’ll take you.”
“It seems like the drill just started.”
“The time is flying by today!”
“Thanks, Coach!”
Team Building – Land Ski’s without the Ski’s
Activity:
Use one less volleyball than there are number of players on your team. The players must work as a team to carry the balls through a specified course, however they cannot touch the balls with any part of their body below the waist or…
The Importance Of Vision Training to Improve Sports Performance
The great volleyball players make the game look easy because they have vision. They can read both the opponents and their teammates, with a solid understanding of eye sequencing and peripheral awareness to be ahead of the play. Indeed, we can’t…
Team Building Drill – The Portal
Activity:
The team is stuck on one side of the portal (a hole in a wall or space or whatever one can imagine). The entire team must pass through the portal without touching the sides of it to safety on the other side.
Know Your Opponent
Creating scouting reports starts with remembering that the purpose is to provide a competitive edge over your opponent. This starts by playing competitively with the opponent. For instance, it does not matter what you want run offensively in your…
Dynamic Duo: The Setter-Coach Relationship
Let’s begin at the beginning. Other than my father (Dennis Berg), Charlie Wade and Dave Shoji were the two coaches who taught me to play volleyball. I was the one who was always playing up — the 14-year old playing with the 16s. At the time, these…
Simplify Your Offseason Workouts: A Matter of Priorities
I received this question from a high school volleyball coach:
In our offseason, we get to go two days a week and do have access to our weight room for about an hour. Then, in February, we will get our weight room for about an hour and a court…
Train the Way You Play!
“Our athletes must get stronger in order to compete.” Coaches think it and say it all the time about their players. But what does that statement really mean? What characteristics do we really desire and need our athletes to display to become more…
Taking Your Setter From Good to Great: Seven Qualities for Which to Strive
One of my favorite books on leadership is Good to Great by Jim Collins. In it, Collins describes the characteristics of companies and leaders that take a business from average to highly successful. Much of what he writes about can be related to…
Serving: What You Need to Know to Gain an Edge
SERVING IS A CLOSED-LOOP SKILL. All of the other skills in volleyball are open, which means there are a number of random variables occurring simultaneously that have an impact on the final outcome. As a hitter, you cannot control the set; as a…
Swing Strategy
Teams use the swing strategy when they want particular players (usually left-side hitters) to receive serve from all six rotations. The swing allows a team’s best passers to receive serve as much as possible, including when they’re in the three…
Mental Work and Communication Responsibilities During Team Defense
Most athletic performances are the result of interaction of physical action based on mental directive and influence. Some sports require greater emphasis on physical aspects of performance, whereas others rely more on mental aspects for optimal…
Have Your Team Ready to Go
What is most important for high school coaches in the development and training of their teams? On this occasion I will address some issues that I feel are critical to getting the most out of your teams. I firmly believe that coaches need to keep…
How to Use Your Timeouts Wisely Part 2 of 2
You plan practice, training routines and matches, but do you plan your time-outs? In our last article, we discussed strategies on timeouts and how to use that time wisely. While there is no right or wrong answer, here are some ideas to consider…
How to Use Your Timeouts Wisely Part 1 of 2
In any sport, there are times when a team struggles against its opponent. A strategically called timeout can be used to get the team back on the same page. Perhaps a blocking scheme needs to be changed, you need to discuss new serving strategies…
Big Picture Thinking
First, some definitions: volleyball skills include spiking, blocking, setting, passing, etc. Athletic skills include power, strength/stability, agility, quick movement, mobility, etc. The two are joined at the hip. You can improve a volleyball…
Know Your Role
It isn’t an easy thing to win a national championship, much less to do so in consecutive years. That makes what Coach Brady Starkey has done at Concordia St. Paul all the more remarkable. Under his guidance, the Golden Bears have strung together…
Volleyball: Reading Your Future
HAVE YOU EVER been to a sporting event and were just amazed at an athlete’s ability to react to a situation under extreme time constraints? The soccer goalie’s ability to block a penalty kick, the tennis player’s ability to return a serve, or the…
Using Your Bench
Have you ever been at a volleyball match and noticed a general lack of enthusiasm and total disinterest emanating from the bench? That used to be my team. Starters played enthusiastically and non-starters sat with arms folded across chests while…
The Out-of-System Offense
During the last two summers with the U.S. Men’s National Team, I was impressed with the velocity of the serves on the international level. What may have been even more impressive to me were the abilities of attackers to hit their way out of the…
Team Scoring Cauldrons: How Youth Volleyball Coaches Can Adapt
Legendary North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance popularized the term “competitive cauldron” to describe a system of grading and charting players’ practice performance. Many volleyball coaches have adapted his system to their own uses, and…
“Leadership Through Team”
Inception
The whole thing started in my earlier days as a coach when we figured out, as every coach does, that in order to have a strong team environment, we would need to have strong leaders. This was a hit-and-miss proposition at best, in that…
How to get your Student-Athlete Recruited
I think it’s very important for everyone to understand that there is a place for every volleyball player to play on the next level. The different levels of collegiate volleyball are Division I, II, III, NAIA, and Junior College. Certainly your…
Fast-Tempo Strategy
The fast-tempo strategy incorporates fast, low-arching quicker sets to various zones along the net. This style of play can be a variation of the spread offense, but the fast-tempo can be employed no matter what offense a team is using. Although…
Thinking Critically About Calling a Time-out
A volleyball coach calls a time-out during a match for a variety of reasons. One of the most routine times to call a time-out is to stop the other team’s “momentum,” such as when the opposing team is scoring a run of points. The thinking is that…
Developing Leadership Skills Through Conversations, Evaluations and Retreats
Talent and skills…there are differences between the two. Talent is a thing that just comes naturally; it’s a thing that an individual was just born to do. Skills are things that an individual needs to work on and develop. Leadership is a skill…
Deliberate Practice
As coaches we have all seen the famous quote “practice makes perfect”. That quote was then prominently modified to “perfect practices, makes perfect”. Though both are great motivating statements and fundamentally true, the focus of this article is…
Creating a Winning Culture: Six Keys to Success
People:
When I came to interview for the job at Kentucky I was really impressed by the people with whom I interviewed in the six hours I was on campus. Starting with Mitch Barnhart, our athletics director, and Lisa Peterson, our senior women’s…