A New Coaching Education Initiative

Originally Published in: Coaching Volleyball - Provided by: AVCA

Performance Conditioning Volleyball is celebrating our 20th year as being the "Official Licensed Publication" of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. We are truly grateful for this long-standing relationship and providing the very best in volleyball-specific educational information on the conditioning of the volleyball athlete. To celebrate this moment, we are providing each AVCA member coach this starter library to help you in developing your conditioning program. This starter library is free and contains 20 of our best articles organized into the "Fit to a T" 7-T System of Program Design. You can get your free library by going to: http://performancecondition.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Starter-Library-VB.pdf - enjoy!

The starter library is part of our larger entire collection, which contains over 150 articles and is updated weekly. It also contains a comprehensive index and user guide to take you through the program design process. More information on the entire package and a special offer to AVCA members is contained in the free starter library.

How the Library Works - Lessons in Designing your Own Program

We have selected and organized past Performance Conditioning Volleyball articles to help you design your own volleyball-specific strength and conditioning program that fits your needs to a T.

Step 1: The seven T's provide a checklist of the seven things you have to consider in starting your conditioning program and educating yourself on how others approach the task. This library spans our 20 years of bringing volleyball coaches reliable how-to articles from the world's leading volleyball conditioning experts.

Step 2: The library is also organized into the four pillars of volleyball conditioning. These are the four physical qualities necessary for you to consider to write the program itself; the X's and O's of what exercises to do that form the basis of your program. The four pillars are:

1. Strength

2. Movement - SFQA (Speed/Footwork/ Quickness/Agility/Mobility)

3. Volleyball-Specific Recovery/ Endurance

4. Jump/Hitting Power

The exercises you choose are specific to the training age and history of your players and if they have injuries or physical situations that will limit their participation (T-1). Do you have time to do these exercises based on the season they are in, and your practice/competition schedule? In-season you are limited by what you can do. Time is a big limiter when it comes to conditioning. Off- and Preseason you can devote to developing the four pillars (T-2), starting with strength and then improving movement and explosive power. You need to have the tools to do the exercises (T-3) and be able to teach them (T-4). If you can, test the athletes' jumping power and movement speed. These are the two physical qualities all players and coaches are interested in. You can see if your program is working based on improvement of test results (T-5). Then, put it all together into a practice, competition, strength and conditioning, and rest package that the athletes can manage and get better within (T-6). Finally, you can make it position-specific if you choose (T-7).

Step 3: Write your program. The final part of this index/user guide provides you your Guide to Putting Your Program Together which will guide you through the construction of your program on a step-by-step basis. It also contains a VOLLEYBALL CONDITIONING ANNUAL CALENDAR and DAILY TRAINING LOG for download to help put your plan into action.

Good luck, and I encourage you to get your free starter library and get started!