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.

Although peppering is fun and incorporates the basic skills of passing, setting, and hitting, some coaches are strongly opposed to the use of this classic volleyball warm-up.

In this article, I’m going to explain the pros and cons of peppering so you can better decide if this is a warm-up you want to use with your players.

If you are a new volleyball coach and want to learn the basics of how to coach volleyball, you’re in the right place! Although there is a lot that goes into coaching, you can feel much more confident on the court by understanding these fundamentals.

Last week I asked Get The Pancake’s Instagram followers the following question:

“Coaches: What’s one thing you wish you knew in your first season?”

And boy, did you guys deliver!

It’s important to be aware that no matter how much you prepare or how experienced you are as a player, there are going to be some lessons learned the hard way. However, this list certainly gives you a few areas to focus on!

ACL injuries are a concern for many female volleyball players. Most, if not all, female volleyball players know a girl or know of a girl that has sustained a non-contact ACL injury. The idea of such an injury can be scary for young girls, especially with people making the claim that it’s happening more frequently than it used to.

Learn some of the reasons why these injuries happen more often in females than in males and why the number of these injuries has seemed to increase in the last few years.

The libero position can be confusing, even for experienced coaches! Learn about libero basics, some of the more complex rules, and get explanations on the most challenging aspects of using a libero.

When ACL and MCL injuries happen in a non-contact setting, it’s typically because the joint was forced too far into the “un-allowed” range and the ligament could not hold up to the stress. Learn more about ACL and MCL injuries in volleyball and how to prevent them.

What will your team do if your setter goes down with a rolled ankle mid-match? What if your libero gets sick the night before regionals? Prepare for these scenarios before they happen so that your team remains calm during an emergency!

Should 12-year-old volleyball players train differently than 15-year-olds? What about 17-year-olds? Does it even matter? Find out in this insightful article from David Hardy, Volleyball Trainer!

What’s the “right” way to warm-up for volleyball? Are butt-kicks a good idea? We asked Volleyball Trainer, David Hardy, to explain some of the basics of warm-ups for volleyball!

Benefits Of Running This Attacking Drill:

• Beginner volleyball players develop multiple attack options.

• Intermediate and experienced players start to attack more strategically.

• Your defense gets better at recognizing different attacks.

• Your team becomes more well-rounded because they’re playing against better players in practice once they all understand these concepts.

Leaving the gym after a less-than-stellar performance is one of the worst feelings for a coach. But don't get hung up on what went wrong! Give yourself a day for your pity party, then it's back to work! These 4 steps will have your team back on the right track in no time!

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.

Preparing for your first volleyball tournament (even as a coach) can be scary! Practically all coaches feel uneasy, nervous, anxious, underprepared, overwhelmed, stressed… you get the point! 

But there’s hope!

You can calm your nerves (and help your players and their families feel better, too)! All you need to do is use these 8 easy tips to help you calm your nerves before your first volleyball tournament.

New Year’s resolutions are a fantastic way for volleyball coaches to review what worked for them, identify where they struggled, and create a plan to get better! But New Year’s resolutions don’t have to all be about self-improvement where you’re hunched over a notebook. There are plenty of activities where you can get up and out of the house, while still bettering yourself as a coach!

Do you need a crash course on the basic rules of volleyball, what skills young volleyball players need to know, and what concepts you need to teach them? Let me walk you through how to coach beginner volleyball step-by-step!

Volleyball warm-ups for young athletes do not need to be the long, complicated stretches you remember from PE. Arm circles, butt-kickers, and Frankensteins are fine for older children and adults. But what about your 4th-grade rec team? Check out a basic warm-up for your athletes, and then build your own from there!

Libero rules are confusing (and not always enforced properly). Let me give you the technical rules, a summary of those rules, and then explain how I teach my own players!

Young players, parents new to the sport, and new volleyball coaches often wonder about the different roles players fill on a team. Learning what the positions on a volleyball team are can be challenging, but with these brief descriptions, I hope to make it a little easier for you!

Have you ever wondered why one player touches every other ball? Or why your daughter subs out but another girl doesn’t? And why is that girl showing up to games in a different colored jersey!? We’ll discuss that all here!

Y’all know by now that I promote communicating with your players in a positive manner whenever possible.

Well… now I’ve got (more) evidence to back up my thinking!

While hunting down research I sited in Episode 23 of the Get The Pancake Podcast, I came across another study that seemed worth reading! Of course after I read the paper, I realized this information NEEDED to be shared!