When we see the ball heading for the net, our first emotion is worry. But we can turn this into a situation that our players handle with ease and confidence! It just takes a little practice.

With this quick and easy drill, you’ll have your players not only passing out of the net, but attacking the ball back over!

Does your volleyball team only have 1 hour for practice? Use this full plan as a guide for a fun, high-energy practice session! Bonus: all drills can be adapted to any age with just a few changes!

Volleyball relies on quick bursts of speed. Sprinting, jumping, diving, reacting… but conditioning is important, too! Use this fun and easy volleyball game to work on serving accuracy under pressure while conditioning your athletes.

Stop sending over freeballs! This volleyball drill is easy to run and will have your players hitting downballs and back row attack in no time! This is a fun volleyball drill to run with youth and middle school volleyball teams, at volleyball camps, and clinics! Perfect for coaches who like a more aggressive style of play.

This serving game is a great way to spend 15 minutes laughing, cheering, and bonding with your team. Use this game with your young players to keep them engaged at practice, or play it with an older group as a reward for hard work.

Whether you’re using this as a drill for volleyball camp or during team practice, you’re sure to share a ton of laughs with your athletes.

It’s currently the beginning of the school season, which means one thing is certain: We’ve all got a LOT of work to do.

Players will always be growing and developing, and even us coaches aren’t as perfect as we’d like to believe. But there’s something I’ve seen a lot of this particular season and I want to help you see it and overcome this lazy play with your own teams.

Think back to the first time you were learning a new position. One of the most challenging aspects of learning this new position was probably where to go for defense. Not only do you need to know WHERE to go, you need to learn WHEN to go and how much area you cover!

Players can easily get overwhelmed in this stage of their development, but it doesn’t need to be frustrating! By using this quick and easy drill, I’ve taught players as young as 6th grade how to transition into defense.

Ahhh, the classic “Sharks and Minnows” game.

If you went to volleyball camps as a child, you probably played this game at least once.

But the hard thing about playing games as a kid, is that you don’t always remember them as an adult!

Let me give you a quick refresher on this classic warm-up game as you start to prepare for summer volleyball camps.

It’s easy to tell your players to look on the other side of the net… However, if they don’t learn WHEN to look, or if they don’t PRACTICE looking, they’ll likely struggle in this process, and likely give up because they just don’t get it.

The beauty of this drill is that you only need to run it once to teach the concept. So although it may go slow while they’re learning, it is very important to use 15 minutes of practice to run this drill.

According to Coach Karch Kiraly, (U.S. Women's National Volleyball Team Head Coach) the most important skill in volleyball is to learn to read the ball.

This is one of those answers which is simple in theory, but very, very challenging in practice. You can’t just TELL players to read the ball. Heck, half of them probably wouldn’t even know what you meant (and of course, they’d just nod their head and go with it until you called them out).

In order to play volleyball well, you need to anticipate where the ball will go. This has recently become a point of pride for coaches who yell at their teams for diving (they wouldn’t need to dive if they read the ball correctly). Which… they’re not wrong! But we need to make sure we teach players to read and anticipate before we expect them to eliminate any dives or rolls.

This drill teaches players how to read the hitter through simple, repetitive plays that draw attention to movement patterns, helping players learn faster.

OK, I’m making BIG claims for this drill, but I’m ready to back those claims up!

See, I’m really big on PROGRESSIONS. Progressions start simple, add small pieces of information, and ultimately lead to BIG gains.

The best part about this drill I’m about to share with you is that it will work for ANY age group (even the littles who can’t get their fingers above the net) and your players will LOVE it.

This is also a great volleyball camp drill, for those reasons and more.

If there’s one volleyball drill that just about EVERY volleyball player will play throughout their career, it’s Queen of the Court (or King of the Court/Monarch of the Court depending on who you’re coaching).

Queen of the court is a top volleyball drill because it…

• is fast-paced

• is FUN

• is competitive

• is good as a warm-up drill or to end practice with

• can be played with as few as 8 players, and up to 16 (or more) per court

If this sounds like a must-have for your coaching binder, I’d have to agree with you. Not only is this a good volleyball drill for practice, you can use it at open gyms and volleyball camps!

Let’s just cut to the chase here. You won’t have perfect attendance at every practice.

And while that can be frustrating (especially for the well-prepared coach who planned practice down to the minute, with perfectly selected drills based on numbers), it’s a reality that we need to deal with.

Basketball practice. Spring Break. Family trips….

These all tend to make planning a high-quality practice a challenge.

UNLESS! You have these six drills in your back pocket.

Once we start to get towards the middle/end of the season, it can feel like you’ve been running the same drills over and over again!

Add a fresh new drill to the end of your practice! This is one of my FAVORITE drills to end practice with, because it is high intensity, competitive, fast moving, and mentally challenging for the players.

This drill works best for 6 vs 6 situations (either against your own team or with a similar team you would normally scrimmage against), but can be modified to 5 vs 5 if needed.

You’ve put in HOURS of practice, have gone over every rotation at least two dozen times, and think you’ve worked out the best lineup for your first tournament.

You make sure everyone knows where to go, when to be there, and what is (and isn’t!) allowed in the facility.

Everyone gets to the court relatively on time, and the girls start passing the ball around until it’s time to get started. And suddenly you realize… You don’t have a warmup planned.

This warm-up gets everyone moving and working primarily on the skills they’ll need in their main position, and I’ve liked how well it has worked with a few of the teams I’ve coached in the past.

“Stay low!” “You’re standing up!” “Use your legs!” “Shrug your shoulders!” “Get down!”

You know you’ve said one (or all!) of these phrases before. But if you find yourself saying it over, and over, and over again, maybe verbal feedback isn’t working?

That’s why I like to run the drill “Feel the Burn!” Players get immediate feedback that signals they are standing while passing the ball AS IT HAPPENS.

If you are a new volleyball coach, you’re in for a treat! Whether you’re getting ready for your first volleyball practice or are in the middle of your first season, I’ve got a fun and easy volleyball drill which your team will LOVE!

OK, so…. Let’s just get this out of the way real quick...

Yes: The drill really IS named “Dead Fish.”

One of the biggest mistakes I see new coaches make is that they focus on teaching a skill in a controlled environment, but unfortunately this doesn’t translate well to game scenarios.

In a match, you’ll never have someone toss the ball to you, exactly where you’re expecting it, over and over again. In an effort to get my players used to MOVING and EXPECTING to move to the ball, I came up with this simple passing progression drill. It’s a perfect “beginning of the season” drill and is great as a skill check-up drill later in the season as well.

Although I’m big on creating drills to suit my team and their specific needs each season, there’s a classic drill that I always make time for! 

Running a half-court round robin with your team is a simple way to let your players lighten up a little and enjoy competing against one another. Best of all, it’s pretty simple!

You know when those guys on horses are charging at each other with those big sticks and try to knock the other one off the horse first? Well, we do that in volleyball too!

Of course, there are no horses involved, and we really shouldn’t be making contact with the other player. Jousting in volleyball is when a ball is in that weird gray zone of “is it coming over the net, is it not?” 

Ideally in his situation, your player will jump up to hit/block the ball instead of just stand there are and watch it drop (even if it’s on the other side of the net! We still want to be ready).

And I pity the fool who stands and watches while the opposing team goes up to smack it, almost certainly winning the point unchallenged.

Let’s breakdown a joust, shall we?