I see a lot of volleyball training videos come through my Instagram feed. They tend to be a mixed bag of potentially useful, marginal, and definitely not things I would recommend.
Here’s a recent entry.
Before I even get to the video itself, I need to comment on the text that goes with it. As I’ve discussed, the idea that anything other than how a player contacts the ball influences ball spin is simply false. Follow-through does not do it. Nor does it keep the ball in play.
This is not to say follow-through isn’t important. It absolutely is. We want good follow-through because it’s healthier for the shoulder and means the player is applying power appropriately.
Now let’s get to the video. I’ve got 2 problems with it.
Don’t like isolating a piece of the skill this way
First, I’m not a fan of decomposition, which is what’s happening here. That’s taking a piece entirely out of the full skill, working on it, then trying to plug it back in. Just working on the serve toss without actually serving falls into this category. It usually doesn’t work as well as you’d think.
The bottom line is that there really isn’t any reason not to do the whole skill to work on follow-through. You just put the point of focus there. By that I mean all the feedback should be directed there. Doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
It’s reinforcing bad arm swing mechanics in some players
I can’t help but cringe at some of the things these kids are doing as they prepare to throw the ball. In particular, I see some arching their backs quite a bit rather than using torso rotation.
I don’t know if they do that in their spikes normally. If they do, that’s not good and I’d be looking to address it as much higher priority than focusing on follow-through (which should happen naturally). If they don’t, why are we allowing them to do it here?
And this brings up my final point.
Drills can’t be set it and forget it
As the old saying goes, practice makes permanent. To reference The Talent Code, each repetition increases myelin, which further solidifies a technique. Thus, we don’t want players repeatedly doing bad things. That just makes matters worse.
So if you’re going to put a group of players in a technical drill, make sure they are working to correct faulty mechanics. You’re not doing them any good if you just sit back and let them repeat something ineffective, inefficient, and/or potentially injury risking over and over.
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