In her book, Coaching Volleyball Successfully, Sally Kus shares how to make drills game-like. This is something which gets a lot of attention in coaching circles these days (see my post on random vs. blocked vs. game-like training). Here are those steps.
- Identify the skill.
- Go back one play.
- Start the drill there.
- Perform the skill.
- Perform the next in the sequence.
So, for example, if you want to work on OH attacks you could do something like this.
- A serve or free ball from the other side of the net is initiated to a player.
- That player then transitions and attacks a set ball.
- The player then moves to their defensive base at the net.
- The player executes a block (perhaps with some initial footwork).
The idea of using these more complex drills is for the player to execute the skill within the context of how they do it during a match situation. The player sees what they will see before the skill (ball coming across the net, coming from a teammate, etc.), executes the skill, then does something immediately afterwards.
Admittedly, these types of drills run slower than the simple ones (like hitting lines). Aside from training the players to play the ball as they do in real life, though, these drills allow you to train multiple skills. This is done either with one player or several of them. Clearly, when working with beginners you’ll use less complicated drills. Even with that group, though, there are plenty of ways to make things game-like by initiating the ball over the net, having them execute a follow-up skill, etc.
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