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101 Volleyball Practice Drills Tips for the Coaches

We start a list “101 Volleyball Practice Drills Tips”, which gives coaches tips how to run volleyball drills and organize practices.  The list is ongoing and we keep adding ideas on it.

101 Volleyball Practice Drills Tips

  1. Prepare for the practices. Plan practices carefully. When you put some serious time on planning the practice, then you’re able to organize the practice in a way there will be no downtime for players. Goal is to keep waiting in the lines as minimum as possible.
  2. Planning practices is extremely important – especially for the junior club teams which often have very limited practice time.
  3. It also helps to keep players more focused on the practice. When players are busy all the times, they don’t have opportunity to start playing around, chatting etc.
  4. Add short bursts of conditioning (sprints, footwork, jumps etc.) all the way through the practice – especially if your (club) team doesn’t have conditioning on the training schedule.
  5. Use your warm up time wisely – perform volleyball related exercises and drills for warm ups.
    We don’t use practice time on running and stretching. First, there are better ways to warm up. Secondly, it gives an extra opportunity to do conditioning and learn volleyball skills. If you absolutely want traditional warm ups – ask players to do those before the practice.
  6. Skills drills, volleyball related games, footwork drills, etc. are an excellent way to warm up – as long as you start slow and easy – increase the practice tempo when players are fully warm.Focus on skills training. Make sure players do lots of drills to improve their techniques.
  7. When teaching techniques, it is important for the young player to visualize the technique first – many people learn just by seeing it. Be sure to present the drill carefully – either by yourself or by using video tapes, pictures, etc.
  8. Repetition, repetitions!
    Countless repetitions are needed to learn volleyball technical skills. It can get very boring easily. Make sure players change spots often during the drill – don’t let them get bored.
  9. Don’t make players perform exactly the same drill from practice to another. Be creative and change them a little bit. Don’t let the drills become a routine. Even if you have one favorite drill, which works great – change it just a little bit for each practice.
  10. In every drill pay attention to techniques and helping players to improve their skills.  Assistant coaches can have an important role in it – if you have to focus on running the drill. Or let assistants run the drill and pay focus on techniques yourself.
  11. Help players to improve their tactical understanding by explaining the reason why they are performing the drill. Constantly bring up “that reason” through the drill. Be vocal about it. It helps players to understand the game and perform better in the matches.

… the list is ongoing, we’ll continue to add tips on it..

Feel free to leave a comment below.  A negative critic as well as praise is welcome.