One of the real developmental challenges we have in volleyball is being in a situation where error avoidance is the more productive strategy for winning than actually scoring points. What you end up with is players and teams who don’t take risks. They’d prefer to just get the ball over rather than take the chance of making a mistake. This is productive in a situation where the odds are good that the other team will err.
We see this most dramatically with young, inexperienced players. It’s easy for a bunch of 10 year olds to win just sending the 1st contact right back over the net, especially if the other team tries to play something like 3-touch volleyball.
A more subtle version of this happens with older players. There they shy away from strong attacks and/or serves for fear or making an error. Instead we see them send weak balls over that are relatively easily played by the other team. The fact that the other team is probably at least as likely to score coming back is fine, though. That’s one step removed from them costing their team a point by making an error, so it’s not their fault.
At least that’s the risk averse thinking going on. It’s away-from motivation. Not what we want in a developmental situation.
So how do we encourage players to go for the kill or the aggressive serve? There’s two ways we can approach it.
Incentivize
Probably the easiest way to get players to be more aggressive is to incentivize doing so. In other words, we give them points for it by the way we score the team. This could be through process scoring. That’s where you give points based on what they do rather than the final outcome.
What this looks like, of course, will depend on your team. It could be the speed of the serves, or trying to hit certain targets. In attacking it could involve going after the block or trying to hit certain parts of the court. Or perhaps more simply just swinging hard rather than half-speed shots or tips or whatever.*
Remove disincentives
The other approach to encourage more aggressive attacking and serving is to remove the incentives to do otherwise – the disincentives. Increased risk-taking means more errors. More errors means more points for the other team. That’s a disincentive to taking more risk.
How to we take that disincentive away?
What if we take errors out of the scoring equation? For example, if you play a game where you only count earned points – kills, blocks, aces – you take out the scoring disincentive of avoiding errors. That frees players up to be more aggressive.
You might also do something like the tennis serve approach. That’s where you allow a player a do-over if they make a mistake.
Creating a culture that carries into matches
Running games and drills that work toward getting players to be more aggressive is only one part of the equation. You need to build around that a culture that’s accepting of risk-taking. This is something I’ve written about before. Key in that is how we talk about errors.
And I’m not just talking about in practice. We have to carry that over into matches as well. You can preach risk-taking all day long in training, but it comes to match day and you’re now telling players to play it safe (“Just get it in”) all that hard work goes out the window.
That includes what your body language says. You may not say anything about errors, but if your showing frustration every time there’s an error, the same message comes across.
So be sure your messaging is consistent throughout.
Why is this important?
Why is it important for us to develop players who are willing and able to take risks (and can bounce back from making errors)? Because what works fine today (e.g. putting the 1st ball over) won’t work as players progress. As you move up the levels, actually scoring points becomes increasingly important.
If you allow players to settle into a risk averse mindset – just like developing bad technique habits – it will limit them in the future. So you may have to work against the incentives of your current level of play. Basically, you may be looking to disrupt the pattern before it takes too firm a hold.
* – Make sure to check out The Perfect Drill if you’d like some further thoughts on how you can adapt your games and drills in a variety of ways.
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