Skill Development

Below are techniques that you will learn following our training system.

Serving

  • Posture
  • Right-handed servers = left foot slightly in front of the right
  • Left-handed servers = right foot slightly in front of left
  • Toes pointed towards the target

Serve Receive/Passing

  • Footwork
  • Ability to shuffle behind the ball, drop step and t-stop
  • Don’t let the platform drop between legs when moving
  • Players should not be taking crossover steps when passing a serve receive ball or a free ball

Setting

  • Footwork
  • Understand footwork to the target position
  • Able to do left, right, set footwork, and 4-step footwork to set a pass 10 feet off of the net using left, right, left, and right footwork
  • Able to get hips around the ball and square to the target
  • Receive ball over the top of the forehead (ball should hit your forehead if it were to slip through hands)
  • Semi-circle footwork- every setter should be able to do proper footwork to a ball in front of the target, off the net, and behind the target 

Attacking

  • Footwork and Posture
  • FEET TO THE BALL
  • Able to make correct 3-step approach (1st step = drive step and 2nd/3rd step = plant step)
  • Shoulders forward
  • Understand arms forward on first step and back on plant step
  • Use arms to explode off the ground
  • Understand how to jump straight up
  • Floating is minimal
  • Able to do proper block transition footwork
  • step, cross, hop footwork
  • Able to do proper base to read the defense to transition footwork
  • step, cross hop footwork
  • Able to do proper serve to receive to transition footwork
  • turn, run, slant to get all the way outside (even with the 10ft. line)
  • Hand Contact
  • Spend quality time perfecting the hand contact. Teach the stiff, wide hand, shaped like the ball.
  • Understand how to apply topspin to the ball by snapping the wrist. Creating spin is the number one thing to learn as a young player
  • Understand to contact the ball with the arm fully extended

Defense

  • Footwork 
  • Step, cross hop for the base to read
  • Shuffle through a defensive ball
  • Take a big first step to the ball by pushing off the opposite leg
  • Step to the ball and then push off FRONT let to increase defensive range
  • Introduce floor moves and how to execute them (STAYING OFF YOUR KNEE), such as run and roll, run and slide, side layout, barrel roll.
  • Posture
  • Bending at the knees not the waist
  • Bending at the ankles
  • Weight forward
  • Head and shoulders forward (lead with the head)
  • Hands neutral to be able to play balls with a platform or hands
  • Positioning
  • Understanding base to read and moving to the dig position for one of these systems
  • perimeter
  • rotation

Blocking

  • Footwork
  • feet shoulder-width apart, legs loaded
  • space between you and net
  • step, cross, hop for middle blocking footwork
  • Hand Shape
  • fingers spread apart
  • thumbs pointed towards the ceiling
  • understand going over the net not straight up
  • Set-Up & Timing
  • pin blocker set the block
  • hitter’s hitting shoulder should slice the pin blocker in half
  • the athlete jumps when their attacking arm starts to go forward
  • understand if the setter is in the front row or back row and who your hitter is
  • only single blocking the middles at this age
  • Vision
  • introduce on, off, over eye work
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