Beginning Volleyball Drills

Volleyball coaches often face certain hurdles that are common to all coaches. How do you take a bunch of players who have never played before and teach them the skills necessary to become an effective force? How do you create volleyball drills to erase the bad habits learned from elsewhere and have your players perform the way you expect them to? The good news is that both of these questions can be answered in the same way. You create good beginner volleyball drills. This is not to imply that you have only beginning players on the team, this is more in the realm of the beginning technical drills in the new season. Using these drills will correct bad habits or teach new players just the same.

One of the first beginning volleyball drills you may want to work on will be for passing. A good way to get the concept down is to have the team divided into pairs of players. The first player tosses an easy ball to the second, who then correctly passes the ball back to the first. You will want to set up a set number of correct passes, then the players change out their rolls. This ensures a good rotation, and allows both players in each pair to learn the correct method. Once the basic passing drill is mastered, add some difficulty by having the players pass it back and forth to each other. You can even have contests to see which pair can keep the ball going with correct passes the longest. These volleyball drills will condition the player on the correct form to follow when passing a ball that is coming in a steady and known trajectory.
Volleyball drills that work on setting the ball are crucial to successful game play. Setting is important for players to correctly perform as they can work as a pass and also set up critical kill shots. In order to drill on the correct form required for a good set, have pairs of players stand on opposite sides of the net. The players will then volley the ball back and forth, using only sets. This will reinforce the mechanics of the set, so the performance will become an automatic thing during play. Once the players are proficient with this, you can add a challenge by having the players move around to the court into different zones while continuing to set the ball. Adding these types of variations in your volleyball drills will help ready your players for real game situations.
Serving volleyball drills can be some of the most difficult drills to implement successfully. A good beginner drill is to have pairs of players stand on each side of the net. They will then take turns serving to each other. To start out, they will be standing on the baseline, close to the net. As they get the form and distance down, they will move backwards a small amount, until they can routinely serve from behind the court. Once they show that they have the skills needed to serve, you will have the "receiving" partner move around the court, so the server must hit different areas with their serve. This is one of those volleyball drills that will teach good form as well as precision.
These beginner volleyball drills can be used to help new players and returning players alike. They are simple to run yet have key basic components that can be built on for more difficult plays. They are part of the basic building blocks that are necessary for any player to have in their arsenal. Never underestimate the effectiveness of a good set of beginning volleyball drills.