Drill: Rotating Cooperative Cross-Court Hitting

volleyball butterfly drills

Synopsis: As with the non-rotating variation, this can be viewed as a kind of team pepper drill with lots of focus on ball-control and the additional element of encouraging keeping the ball in play and overcoming frustrating situations.

Age/Skill Level: This is a drill for intermediate to advanced players

Requirements: 8 players, full court

Execution: This drills starts and is executed the same way as the Continuous Cross-Court Hitting drill. The difference is that the players don’t just do it as alternating attacks through area 4. They start there, but when they complete the required number of reps one team shifts so it becomes one side attacking through 4 and the other through 2 (so OH vs RS). The team which did not move the first time then shifts to area 2, making it a cross-court execution again (RS vs RS). They then finish with the side attack that originally moved from area 4 to area 2 returning back to area 4.

Variations:

  • You may require the reps to be completed continuously (ball cannot drop or count goes back to 0) or not, depending on how fast or slow you want to go.
  • You can have players in their actual positions, or rotating around through the positions each time they send the ball over the net.
  • If there are extra players they could be subbed in on rotation.

Additional Comments:

  • This could be a good drill to do in a stations situation where you have multiple courts available and want to break a smaller group out to work on something specific.
  • I saw USC run this variation.
  • There’s also a competitive variation.

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John Forman

John is a volleyball performance director and coach educator with 20+ years of experience across the NCAA (all three divisions plus junior college), university and club volleyball in the UK, professional coaching in Sweden, and juniors clubs. He has also served as a visiting coach with national team, professional club, and juniors programs in multiple countries.

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