Learning How to Play
Volleyball - How to Do
Volleyball Skills Training?

This how to play volleyball section goes through some ideas how coaches can practice maybe the most important part of game, volleyball skills training. We go through two methods:

1. Learning Techniques by Playing Games



2. "Breaking Down" the Drills

Volleyball skills training is crucial to develop into a top level player - lots of practice time needs to be put in to hone the volleyball skills.

In some other ball games an athlete could be lacking on the skills and still play at the top level - but in volleyball you can't play at high level without having great technical skills. If the volleyball players don't have the skills, the play is messed up every time they hit the ball.

It is evident that you don't learn skills without repetitions - players simply have to do tons of them. For that reason volleyball coaches often battle with an issue how to make practicing monotonous technical skills exciting.

Learning How to Play Volleyball -
How to Learn Techniques by
Playing Mini-Games?

In some leading volleyball nations they have successfully solved this problem by having youth volleyball players playing lots of different volleyball games in practices. By using little creativity coach is able to make up various games for each volleyball skills - when players seem to get tired of the game, coach just makes up another.

2 on 2 Games are fun - and you
get lots of ball contacts

We have discovered 1 on 1 games on the mini size court (for example 5 feet X 5 feet) being an excellent way to practice technical skills. You could also use 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3 games as well. This is an excellent method for the little kids who probably don’t have a long attention span for monotonous drills. Playing is always fun for kids - they often think it is great just to play in practice.

Mini games are not just for the kids - it will benefit junior volleyball players or adults as well. Often we see adult players playing recreational volleyball with a regular size court and due to limited skills the rallies are not very long.

You see that happening especially on the beach volleyball courts. Beach Volleyball on the regular court is extremely difficult game to play with questionable skills. It would make much more sense to cut the court half and enjoying longer rallies - then when skills develop the court can be made bigger.

Learning How to Play Volleyball - How to Practice Technical Skills?

To make it easier for the players to learn the new skills, the coach needs to teach skills piece by piece - not dumping the new information on them straight away. As an example when training for hitting coach could

Spiking is quite complex skill - how to teach it?

1. Teach the four step approach first without even mentioning the arm lift up.



2. Adding the arm lift up to the four step approach.



3. Next adding the jump to the approach/arm lift up.



4. Moving to the net and training the steps and approach on particular hitting position.


5. Etc etc.

That "breaking down" allows players to comprehend the skills fairly quickly - and more importantly with a correct manner.

Learning How to Play Volleyball - How to Keep Players Interested?

Another trick to keep players somewhat excited about technical drills - is to keep up the tempo in practice - feed the repetitions fairly fast - and keep changing the target and the player working on the drill often.

 Keeping up the tempo in practice..

For example when training serve receives, player repeats 10 repetitions with a fast tempo and players switch. After switch the same routine continues multiple times.

It is better to switch often - if one person has to repeat 40-50 reps in a row, it is common s/he doesn't concentrate and performs reps with a bad technique.

Coaches' job is to make sure players are awake and focus on every single repetition they perform in technical skills training.