How's Your Hammer? Mastering The Crosscourt Attack In Volleyball

For many volleyball players, the crosscourt attack is their go-to shot. A hitter who has a strong, consistent crosscourt shot can almost never be stopped by just one blocker and will always be feared by the opposing team. However, developing a strong crosscourt attack takes time and practice- as well as understanding of certain key techniques. In this article, I will explain a couple of these concepts and how I use them to teach players how to develop that Crosscourt Hammer!

Concept One: Your Approach Angle Should Bisect The Court
Before we get into details concerning the swing or the hand contact, we must start with the approach. The best hitters in volleyball all tend to take an approach that bisects the opponent's court. What this means is that if you drew a line extending your approach into the other court, it would cut it roughly in half.
Or, to visualize it another way, you should be facing your opponent's back corner as you jump to hit the ball. If your shoulders are facing the back corner, that means two things: (1) if you hit directly in front of where you are facing, you have the maximum possible (the out-of-bounds line is only 30' away down the line, but more than 40' to the crosscourt corner) amount of court to hit into and (2) you have an equal amount of court on either side of your approach line to hit a shot into. Often, I see too many players who want to hit a crosscourt shot take an approach that faces too sharp crosscourt, and it makes them too easy to block. Line your approach up to the back corner and cut the ball inside the block with your swing or hand contact.
Concept Two: Use Your Hand Contact To Cut the Ball
As I mentioned in Concept One, too many hitters go for the crosscourt shot simply by taking a sharp-angle approach and then hitting straight ahead of them. There are two problems to this: (1) you become predictable and easy to block, and (2) it is hard to adjust if the set is not exactly where you expected it. Instead, keep your approach to the crosscourt corner, as explained above, and use your armswing to cut the ball inside. For a right-hander hitting from the left side, this means putting the thumb down as you contact the ball and cutting the ball away from your body. Since the block will align based on your approach angle, and since you took an approach that faces the crosscourt corner, you will have plenty of room inside the block to cut the ball.

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