Warm-Ups

Table Of Contents

Warm Ups. by Vic Lindal

Tony Crabb of Hawaii (assistant coach USA men 84) believes in getting in to game time very early. His favorite is, "Tip and Slop" or we call it "Tip and Half Speed." Players can get into this very early in a practice. Do a short warm up and then into this type of game. Players are to concentrate on reading and moving for the tip or half speed. Determine the defensive alignment you want to have and them play. For maximum effect use a wash. This usually means two to count one. Reward the side that won the rally with the next ball. Or you may want to play to 25 points using rally scoring but still have the coach initiate each ball. The various scoring ideas can intensify this game. You may do a minus for unforced errors and give the team a back to zero count if it is determined that they could have got the ball. This determination ( The "could have had it ball") can be made by the coach or by the other side. We must be applying more of a consequence for errors, particularly now that we are into rally point. Wash can be effective but we must be very careful to watch for the "I'll get the next one", attitude. We must be in the moment and get the ball now.

Early in the year, I like to do "game like situations", that require only certain skills. For example when we want to get more first contacts with a Volley then we play "split court" doubles and the best of the court stays on.

This works well with 6 to a group and you have them stay with the same partner. Only use a Volley, including the Volley serve from about 4 metres (serve from "B" side). If you win on the "A" side you stay on, if you win on the "B" side you move to the "A" side. You only score on the "A" side. The two players that are off, enter on side "B". If you have 12 this works nicely and they can retain their same partners. Five works well and with this you change partners so each player will retain their own score. Play the game for 7 minutes and then move the winners to the Winners court and do it again. You can do this several times with moving players up and down. The concentration on the Volley and the looking for open spaces are important in this game. With younger kids it is important to ask them to keep their hands up all the time. The perfect cup is important.

The next skill you add to the game is a half speed hit, and only the Volley. Then add a serve and still only the Volley and the half speed. Notice that we have left out the forearm pass. The reason for this is that we want the players to read and move in front of the ball. Reading is so important in the game, this game does contribute to the skill of reading.

Warm Up Deep Court:

Most coaches run this game. We do it in several ways. We use it as Monarch of the court. In this situation you have 9 hitters and two setters. As long as you win you stay on. All hits except the setter are from behind the three metre line. Depending on our numbers we may use the Jim Bjerring formulas for triples with 7 players or we may use his formulas for 9. If this is for warm up we may only use 5 minute games. For a fun evening of competition we will go for 10 minutes. If you want to get some more work out of your power hitters then you can have the same rules except the left front can hit ahead of the 3 metre line. The setter will be there to block. With the power hitter in the action, it is important to encourage great back row "pipes" and "D’s". Even though this can be used as a warm up, players need to realize that they can obtain great back row hitting practice. Make sure the setter leads the hitters. This is a subtle point but very important and must be emphasized. To be sure that you get the most out of "Deep Court" hitting, you must have the players do an EPV of the exact spot they want the ball to land on the other side. When we have emphasized this point we have had great results. Hitters must be developing their ability to visualize the spot on the other side.

7 person formulas

This is excellent for learning defense. The idea is to play 5 on 5 with no middle blocker. Best to run this as a continuous game. It is interesting to note that years ago (before wash) we used to run a lot of practices with continuous scoring ( Val Keller ,first CVA technical director used have us score to 31). Speaking of continuous scoring, Bill Neville loves to put in the plus minus zero scoring. Minus for out of bounds or any unforced error. Add in a back to zero for any ball that the coach feels you could have got to or if the other side calls you on it. Bill feels this leads to more responsibility on the avoidance of unforced errors. I have found that Wash is great, but you really have to be on top of it, or sloppiness creeps in. With Rally scoring we switch front and back every 3 minutes.

Isolation drills.

There are several kinds of isolation drills. For example Tony Crabb (of Hawaii) will play 6 on 6 and have every ball go to his power hitters. Tony wants the power hitters to get 70% to 80% of the kills in the game. This was with his high school girls team (97/98/99). Tony creates the situation that he wants and then he initiates the attack. The situation he wants, will relate to one of two defenses. His defense for a strong hitter and his defense for a junk hitter. He also creates the situations for quick hitters, all of this will depend on scouting that has been done for the team they are to meet. This system is very simple. Tony starts the play and then every ball must go to the power hitter. He is big on a high set to give the power hitter lots of time. If we worked on one thing in Canada, for our power hitters it would be high sets to the line (antennae). Tony will focus on the power hitters at least two days a week maybe three. Middles and right side get one day each. It is important for coaches to determine their priorities for their offense.

Isolation Drills with less than 12 at a practice.

Not everybody can have 12 to 14 at a practice, so what do you do? 6 on 3, is one of my favourites. We confine the 3 players to the zones of 1 and 2. The isolation here is to have the team of 6 saturate zone one. We isolate the exact zone that we want every ball to go to. For this we use continuous or wash and we start with a serve from the side of 3 players (important to have servers vary the spot on the end line for serve). Benefits to this game are many, but the big thing is the focus on zone 1. There is enough evidence to indicate that if you can saturate zone one in a game you will have success. To be able to do this you need to work on it in practice. 6 on 4 works well and you angle the line to include more of zone 6. When you include zone 6 you can put a permanent player in zone 6 to get the isolation you need for this position. For the side with 3/4 you can decide on your strategy. Is the setter front row or back row?

I have a variety of other drills (with diagrams) on our home page http://hypbus.com/vicvball. You can go to this page and then look under coaches corner.

The principle behind the isolation drill/games is to create situations that need work and then have the player repeat over and over in a game like situation.

For example we may want to focus on the back row "D" (a hit from zone 1 on the line and just ahead of the three metre line). 3 on 3 or two on two on a split court works well. The two on two works well and you have a permanent setter on the side hitting the "D’s". The "D" hitter has to hit the ball down the line or more appropriately in the seam between zone 5 and 6. This game works well for warm up as you have a serve come to the "D" hitting team and then send another ball (wash) to the "D" hitting team. You can run this with 7 players (monarch of the court). Permanent setter on the "D" side, 4 players on and two off running the game. To score you must migrate to the "D" hitting side. Use two to count one wash. Now if you have 12 then you set up a two on two five person monarch of the court on the other split court. Note: When running split court it is very important to not allow players to chase a ball into the adjoining court.

Power hitters love to hit cross court but they need to hit line shot to be effective. In this isolation drill we give the hitters practice at both cross court and line. This is another Monarch of the court.

Use only half the width of the court. The scoring side will be zones (half of 6/5/4. You will have a permanent setter play in zone 2, and you may have a permanent middle back. The other side (zones 1/2 part of 6) can have two who rotate and you may have a permanent player in 6. The key to this drill is the initiation of the first ball. I like to toss the first ball to zone 4 of the the team covering zones 1/2/6. This toss is off the net slightly. The player has to pound the ball as hard as she can into the opponents court being cognizant of what area may be open (between zones 4/5). This player must then get back into the game in zone 2 or 1 depending on the agreed strategy of the two players. This is a monarch of the court wash, so now the choice is what to do with the second ball. I like to create a scramble situation with the team in zones 1/2/6. The wash ball gets tossed out for a recovery as though they have touched the ball once. Recovery drills are important and work even better if a game is on the line. Only score on the side with zones 6/5/4.

Wash and Stat Taking:

"If we don’t expect it, measure it, and reward it, we will likely not get it done." This quote comes from "Flight of the Buffalo by James Belasco." Very simple but very powerful quote from a leading business book. So I have changed it to read. "Expect it , Measure it, and Reward it For Greatness."

There are a variety of wash drills. The original concept was to create a situation in which the "A" team had to get a side out and then play defense to score a point. This taught the principle of "You really had to do two things in the game to score a point". We may want to think of this in light of rapid scoring. The principle still applies, but not for the same reasons. My contention on wash is that it can breed great thinking or it can breed great slackness. Players who are constantly aware of the point situation can get a lot out of Wash. To get even more out of wash you may want to keep certain statistics. The statistics you keep are up to you. A team stat on your percentage on side outs is good. But one of even more importance is the percentage of side outs obtained by each power hitter. For example you have side A as your top 6. They are on service reception. All sets to the power hitter. This power hitter must get (60%,70% , your choice) side outs, before you rotate. Give this hitter (3 sets of 10) at the side out. Use a wash "free ball" to side A and track the free ball team %. If we want to have success, we must keep track of, "time on task" and keep a success ratio statistic. This is only one example of many that you can think of. Think of what you want to happen in the game and then track it in practice. Jason Sinclair likes a slight modification Wash scoring, he wants you to get two in a row, he feels this goes much faster and works best when you have people out. So when you end up with the normal wash of 1-1 he just carries on and has the team that got the last point eligible for the next one to make it 2 in a row.

Fun events for inter house leagues or summer recreational programs

Buddy 4’s and buddy 6’s are two programs that we have been running in Victoria for the past 3 years. We run this for kids in grades 6 to 9. We run one program indoors in the Fall and one outdoors in the Spring.

Players are asked to sign up in twos. (kids like to go to an event with a partner) This can be two of the same sex or mixed. We use three courts but it can be run with two courts. With 28 players (14 groups of two) we use the buddy 6 system. We use the Jim Bjerring formulas for triples. One group of two off and the other 6 groups on the court. See formulas above. The team off does the score keeping and refereeing (minimal). They also record the results at the end of each time period. Plus for a win and minus for a loss and put in the point differential. We use the same system for 4 aside only we use the Jim Bjerring 5 person formulas.

 Court 1

You can use these formulas to have a fun evening with your varsity boys and girls teams. You just ask the boys to stay behind the three metre line to hit and indicate there is no males blocking females.

Volleyball has a plethora of variations to keep and add interest to every program. I have outlined a few that I have use over the last 30 years. Every week I am learning and exploring more ideas. Keep track of your goals and be specific as you create "fun targeted", situations in your practices. If you have any questions you can always Email me at viclindal@home.com

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