This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log.

Not my best training session in the context of where we are in the training. I was down a few players for various reason, so wasn’t able to quite do the team training stuff I’d have normally done. Instead I had the team working on a few other things.

After dynamic warm-up they did the Touch & Go game. I followed that up with 3 and 4-person over-the-net pepper and then had them do some serving. From there I moved them to the hard drill. I set the target at 5, but they weren’t able to achieve that. There were some good rallies and some nice hits, but the mix of players didn’t make for a group who was going to handle things as well as if we’d had a couple others. I eventually shifted things on the net in the form of cooperative cross-court hitting. The result was similar. After a bit more serving, I finished training with a round of 3-serve mini games.

Those two cooperative drills are ones I decided to do based on the number of players I had and how they can work on multiple aspects of play – hitting, defense, playing intelligently, etc. They are good drills from that perspective, but in this situation where I want to be building the players up for Final 8s and I didn’t have the group which was going to have the best chance of success they were probably not the best choice. That puts a premium on doing trainings next week that have a much more positive vibe to them.

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John Forman
John Forman

John is currently the Talent Strategy Manager (oversees the national teams) and Indoor Performance Director for Volleyball England, as well as Global Director for Volleyball for Nation Academy. His volleyball coaching experience includes all three NCAA divisions, plus Junior College, in the US; university and club teams in the UK; professional coaching in Sweden; and both coaching and club management at the Juniors level. He's also been a visiting coach at national team, professional club, and juniors programs in several countries. Learn more on his bio page.

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