10 Beginner Volleyball Drills Every Coach Needs

Do you work with new players? If so, here are some beginner volleyball drills you can use to help them develop in key areas of the game. They are intended to help players build essential skills, gain confidence, and have fun on the court.

Please note these drills are intended for actual beginners – those who’ve never played before.

Underpinning Philosophy

As coaches, whether we realize it or not, we all operate with some underlying philosophy of skill acquisition. Here are the two major aspects of mine which underpin the drills I list below.

As close to game context as we can, but simplified

I am a firm believer that long-term development is best achieved by training things in as close to a real game context as we can. Players who don’t train in something approximating a game context tend not to perform as well as they could when actually faced with game conditions.

This does not mean we send kids who’ve never played the sport out into 6v6 games right away. That’s too much. Instead, we simplify the game to reduce the amount of information, the number of players, and the decision-making. We don’t remove it all, but do set it at an appropriate level for their development. For example, playing doubles is much simpler than even playing 3v3. Aside from the first ball, players always know who has the next contact and what to do with it.

This is why I strongly favor small-sided games for beginners. Plus, they get a lot more quality touches than if they’re playing 6v6.

Blocked for teaching, variable for training

You may have heard of the concept of blocked vs. random or variable training. If you haven’t, the short version is blocked training is simple repetition of a skill without much in the way of variation. Think repeatedly shuffling to your left and passing a tossed ball. Variable training means breaking up the reps in any number of ways so it’s not simply the same thing time after time.

Research pretty consistently finds that for long-term skill acquisition it is better to use variable training. Blocked training is quite useful for teaching something new, when the idea is to introduce a concept and make sure the players get the idea. After that, however, you want at least some variability.

For more on these subjects, here are some useful videos.

OK. Now on to the beginner volleyball drills!

Warm-up

If you’re working with adult athletes, some kind of dynamic warm-up is probably a good idea. You’re probably dealing with young kids, though. They don’t need all that. At a slightly more advanced level, I would use light ball-handling drills. For true beginners, though, there’s a whole bunch of movement stuff we can do:

• Shuffles
• Blocking movements (may not need it now, but good for developing coordination)
• Spike approaches
• Throwing
• Anything involving depth perception and ball tracking

You’ll noticed I put throwing in there in place of arm swing. That’s because if they don’t have good basic throwing mechanics they are unlikely to have good hitting/serving arm swings. This is something I run across much too often. So make sure they can throw properly before you have them spike or serve.

So the first of the beginner volleyball drills here (Drill #1) is a circuit involving all the above. Pair players up. Have them shuffle a certain distance, then do a set number of blocking movements (e.g. crossovers), followed by some number of spike approaches. Then have them throw a ball back and forth over a reasonable distance a certain number of times to cover the last two on the list. Make sure they use doing things in a mechanically sound fashion, of course.

Now, the stuff above definitely doesn’t fit into the concept of specificity when it comes to volleyball. It does, however, work on physical literacy. This is an important thing for youngsters.

Passing/Reception for beginners

Here is a progression of beginner volleyball drills for passing first contact.

Drill #2: Toss to Pass (passing basics)

This is simply passing a ball tossed by a partner. You can do a small number of reps where one partner tosses a simple midline ball to pass back to make sure the players have the concept. Very quickly, though, you want to add variability to get players moving around.

I’m not talking about going fully random here where the ball could go anywhere. That’s too much. Better to stick to just side-to-side or forward/back within about a single shuffle at this point.

Drill #3: Toss-Pass-Target Triangle (learning angles)

You don’t want to stay too long with the drill above. It lacks much in the way of game context. We’ll add some here, though, but putting the tosser on the other side of the net. That way the players start to learn how to gauge ball trajectories more like those from a game.

We’ll also add a target for the passer to send the ball to. They should be positioned to create a triangle between the 3 players involved. This requires the passer to play the ball at an angle rather than simple straight back from whence it came. Much more game-like. Be sure that target is sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.

Don’t forget the variability. Make sure the tosses aren’t the same, nor should they be predictable.

And think about where you want that target to be. At this level, up at the net is probably not ideal. With beginners my main interest is high and somewhere in the middle of the court around the 3m line. Their teammates can always do something with a ball like that. Plenty of time to refine things as they progress.

Drill #4: Passing with a Partner (working together)

This simply adds a second passer to Drill #3. Now players have to coordinate to decide who takes the ball, so you’ve introduced decision-making. Players don’t pass by themselves in games, so you want to get to the point of them passing together as quickly as you can.

Of course, as soon as you have two players passing together your have a seam. Make sure you teach them seam responsibilities. Don’t just stick them in the drill, tell them to call the ball, and think it’s going to magically work.

Drill #5: Beginner-Friendly 2v2 Mini-Game

Once players have a handle on being able to pass as partners you can start to play simple games of 2v2. The most basic is pass it up, pass it over. That’s where one partner takes the first ball and passes it up like they worked on in the above drills. Then the other partner sends the ball over on the 2nd touch.

You can make a game of this in a couple ways. One is cooperative where the two partners try to see how long they can keep it going. The other is to score it like a normal game based on who wins each rally.

Either way, the point is they are playing something that looks like volleyball. Since presumably playing the game is why the came in the first place, it’s good to quickly get them doing so, albeit in a very simple way.

Serving

Drill #6: Beginner Serving Progression

There is one drill I use consistently with even non-beginners to develop serving skills. That’s to have them pair up one one partner on either side of the net at about the 3m line. They serve back and forth, progressively working their way back toward full serves. You can do this with overhand or underhand serving. Even jump float serving, though you may want fewer pairs on a court for that one.

The idea here is that by starting fairly close to the net the players can focus on solid technique without having to worry about power. As soon as players start to think about power, mechanics tend to suffer.

Beginner Setting

Beginner volleyball drills for setting can follow a very similar path as those for passing, to the point where ultimately you merge them.

Drill #7: Self-Toss to Set (setting basics)

The simplest way to work on the very basics of setting is to just have the players toss the ball up to set it to themselves. If they’re doing it the way you want, you can then have them toss the ball away from themselves (or bounce the ball high) so they have to move to get under it to set.

The next step would the been for them to have to set the ball to some target (set and chase). I’ve seen a lot of pro and national teams do this sort of thing as a warm-up to work on setting high balls out-of-system.

Drill #8: Setting Triangle (setting from a pass)

Once you’re happy that the players can perform basic setting mechanics you want to get them setting off of a pass as quick as possible. We can do this by doing a Tosser-Setter-Target triangle as a starting point. I would, however, quite quickly roll that into have the target is Drill #3 and/or Drill #4 setting instead of catching.

This obviously requires a target for them to set to. That, though, could either be the passer from Drill #3, or perhaps the non-passer from Drill #4 if they move into a reasonable target position after the pass. Either option is more realistic at this stage than the kind of target you would use if you’re thinking 6v6 play.

From Drill #8 it’s super easy to progress into of Drill #5. All you do is have 2nd contact be a set. Then you can have 3rd contact over the net be either a pass or a set.

Hitting

The following beginner volleyball drills for hitting need to come after you’ve worked on throwing and approaches (see Warm-up). There are obviously a lot of moving parts in hitting. The three main elements, however, are the approach, the arm swing, and the timing. Because they are all intertwined, they have to be trained together.

Drill #9: Self-Toss Hitting

You can start this with standing attacks (down balls) to get them used to tossing, engaging good mechanics with their arm swing, and getting topspin on the ball. Once they have a handle on it, progress them to full on hitting with an approach.

This is going to be ugly, but it’s valuable. My recommendation is that you have the players start with back row attacks. That takes the net out of the equation. For most of them it likely also encourages more realistic swing angles. Definitely make sure everyone is going in the same direction!

Drill #10: Hitting from a Set

Once the players start to look somewhat under control with the self-toss thing, move them along to hitting off a set. Ideally, that set is an actual set, but it can be a toss if needed to avoid excessive variability.

Again, you can start with a standing attack to get them locked, though generally if they can hit a down ball off their own toss they can do it just about as well from a set. Still, a down ball at this stage does provide a simple progression in the 2v2 mini game from Drill #5. Make 3rd contact a standing attack. You’re more likely to see rallies than if you jump straight to spikes for 3rd contact.

Final thoughts

You might have picked up that I like the idea of getting new players playing pretty quickly. While strength is a potential issue for younger athletes, you’d otherwise be surprised at how readily newbies can get to doing something that resembles volleyball. Remember that engagement is important. Your biggest job at that level is to make them want to come back again.

USA Volleyball has some lesson plans you may find useful.