There are a million variations of Pepper. This is another one, but with an interesting twist.
Now, something like this does require a decent amount of ball-control from the players. Don’t want anyone taking a ball in the face, after all.
The bit that grabbed my attention was the potential to work on intentionally getting block touches as an “attacker”. If that’s something you’re working on with your team, the incorporating a drill like this into your warm-up could be useful. It would help put the hitters in the right frame for latter going against a block in a live situation.
You could also make the case that there’s a block positioning element here as well. Again, something that might be a useful lead in to other work later in practice.
Either way, you need to really be on the focus, as I harp on in The Perfect Drill. Otherwise, you won’t get the kind of benefit you’re after.
By the way, I coached in that gym back when I was at Midwestern State. We played one of the more memorable matches there one time. It featured a set neither team could stop the other. Both sides had 20+ kills in that one, if I remember correctly.
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2 Responses
Why is the “blocker” so far away from the hitter? Isn’t that unrealistic, maybe with the exception of a backrow attack, where aiming for a block touch is very risky imo!?
I really like the pepper though!