Defense is a skill that every coach and team can take pride in. A great defensive team can counter a height differential if one exists with your opponent.

In this video from Iowa State University head coach Christy Johnson-Lynch shares how she teaches her players to stay on their feet and pursue the ball.

She does not want her players to create the habit of taking one step and falling down.

Coach Johnson-Lynch states that she wants to train her players to extend their range and cover more ground defensively and in order to do that she believes that you train them to run to the ball and accelerate through the ball. By not slowing down as they approach the ball the player will necessarily cover more ground and thus extend their range.

To train her players to accelerate through the ball she utilizes a simple drill that she illustrates in the video below.

The drill is taken from her instructional DVD entitled Training Relentless Defenders. For more information about that DVD click here

In her complete DVD you’ll get a slew of practice drills that work on training defenders to be their very best. Coach Johnson-Lynch not only includes pursuit drills, like the one below, designed to train players to never give up on any ball, no matter how difficult it may seem to track down.  In addition she also includes:

• The Wong’s Walk Drill – An upbeat, intense passing drill
• The Coach on 3 Drill – Perfect for producing more gritty defenders
• 6 on 6 Pepper – A great way to get athletes moving actively on the court
• Neville’s Pepper – Forces defenders to try to keep the ball alive to score points
• 5 on 5 concepts
• Ways to add defensive read and communication skills into drills

The YouTube video has audio, so please make sure your speakers are on and that you have access to the site. Click the arrow to play the video

Getting your middle’s involved is critical to producing a versatile and effective attack.

But how can you emphasize this so that it occurs more often in match play?

In the video below Bobbi Petersen, University of Northern Iowa Head Coach; 2018 AVCA Midwest Region Coach of the Year; 2006 AVCA National Coach of the Year; demonstrates a drill that she calls Hit the Deck.

This drill is designed to help her team focus on setting a zero tempo ball to the middle for a quick attack.

The drill is conducted 5 v 5 with no left front.

The Hit the Deck drills begins with the coach entering the ball.  The point is played out normally. However, if any strategy is used other than a zero tempo ball to the middle, every play must “hit the deck”. This means they are required to get to the floor on their belly and then get back to defend.

In other words,  you can set the middle a higher ball, you can set the back row, use can pass the ball over, or use a setter dump but every player will have to ‘hit the deck” before they play the next ball.

They only restriction is that they cannot tip inside the 10-foot line.

This forces the middle to up and ready to be an option. It also forces the other players to concentrate and utilize the middle attack.

This is just one of many drills that Coach Peterson uses to score practice drills to hold players accountable for executing specific skills within the drill.

To learn more about the Hit Drill and other “Accountability Drills” check out Coach Peterson’s instructional DVD entitled Creative Drills for Training Accountability.

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your speakers are turned on and the volume is up. Note that some schools may block access to YouTube.

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Coaching Volleyball.

By John Forman – Founder of Coaching Volleyball. Coach Forman is the Technical Director for Charleston Academy. He has served as DI college coach as well as a professional coach in Sweden

Pepper is a volleyball drill or exercise you can see in just about every pre-match routine and training session warm-up. In its most basic form, it comprises a 3-touch sequence executed by two players which replicates the three contacts used in competitive volleyball – dig/pass, set, hit. It goes as follows.

1. One player hits the ball at their partner.
2. That player digs the ball back to the first partner
3. The first player sets the ball back to the second
4. The second hits the ball to the first
5. The cycle repeats

This is a great little volleyball exercise featuring all the primary game skills in a way where they can get many contacts. Because it also replicates so many of the game movements, it is also good for warming up ahead of training or competition.

There are many, many variations on the basic pepper structure. They include adding players, having the ball go over the net, requiring specific contact sequences, and incorporating jumping, among other things. Here is a collection of those variations (look for more added over time).

Overhand: All digs must be made with hands, requiring hitters to execute a higher attack than usual.

Rotating: This is for when the whole team is doing partner pepper. At intervals you have one side of the gym rotate so players are spending time peppering with different partners. This is good for getting players introduced to each other during the team formation process, breaking them out of persistent patterns later in the season, and generally for them to better know how each other plays.

Speed: Players stand quite close together and try to do the pass-set-hit sequence as quickly as possible. Obviously, they aren’t hitting the ball very hard at each other. (Saw this used by USC)

Tempo Change: This is a 3-player variation. The digging player intentionally digs either low or high. The setting player is then required to set at proper tempo. So, if the dig is high, the set will be lower while if the dig is low, the set will be higher. (Saw this used by Long Beach State)

See also:

• 4-person Diagonal Pepper
• 3-Person Pepper (In-Line)
• 3-Person Pepper (Over the Net)
• 1-Way Pepper
• Hard Drill
• Cooperative Cross-Court Hitting
• 4-Player Pair Pepper
• 2-and-1 Pepper with Movement
• 6+ Player Diagonal Over-the-Net Pepper

I should note that it makes sense to go over the net as much as you possibly can. That, obviously, makes things a lot more game-like.

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Coaching Volleyball.

By John Forman – Founder of Coaching Volleyball. Coach Forman is the Technical Director for Charleston Academy. He has served as DI college coach as well as a professional coach in Sweden

Obviously, these days volleyball is almost exclusively played using rally score. Depending on what you want to concentrate your training on, however, you can use different types of scoring in your scrimmages and friendly matches to achieve your goals. There are game type drills. In this case, though, I’m referring to actual games which operate on a standard play model. I’ve mentioned bonus points before, but here are some other options.

1. Sideout (score only when you’re the serving team): Some coaches do like to mix in this scoring system in their training at times. It allows for teams to be more aggressive in transition attack when they have serve. That’s because they need not worry about losing the point. As a result, you can work on more advanced offensive plays than you might use in a rally game.
2. Floor or Earned Points: A team can only score by putting the ball down in the other team’s court. This means only positive plays count for points – kills, blocks, and aces. If a team makes an error (with the exception of being blocked, which technically is considered a hitting error), the play is a wash.
3. Real Volleyball Points: In her book, Coaching Volleyball Successfully, Sally Kus mentions what she called “real points”. The context is focusing young players (14s and younger) on playing pass-set-hit rather than being concerned with winning rallies. She kept a separate score during games based on how many times her team did a pass-set-hit vs. how many times the other team did so. This is regardless of whether it results in a kill. Obviously, it’s something focused on beginning and lower level players.
4. Points for…: Extending on the Real system above, a similar concept can apply to more advanced teams. This is done by allowing points to be scored only when some sort of skill or play is executed. It could come either in the run of play or to win a rally. For example, if you want to focus on good passes, you could only give points for 3-passes. If you want your team working on the quick offense you could only give points for executing a 1-ball. You can even have multiple things teams can score on. Just don’t go too far, though, as it will split the players’ focus (and be hard to track!).
5. 10 to 0 +/- : Sally Kus mentioned this one in her book as well. In this scoring system the game starts at 5 points. If Team A wins the rally, the score goes up a point. If Team B wins the rally, the score goes down by a point. Team A wins by getting the score up to 10, while Team B wins by getting the score down to 0. You can adjust the starting point up or down to suit your team and the length of came you want. Of course you can also incorporate bonus points and if you have two unequal teams you can have the weaker one winning a rally worth 2 points rather than just one (or whatever ratio seems reasonable).
6. Finish With…: In this variation, a team must score its final points (you decide how many) in some specific fashion. For example, the last two points must come on kills. The idea is to keep a team from getting tentative at the end of a game when winning (playing not to lose). At the same time, though, you can also use this type of scoring to encourage certain types of plays based on your identified developmental needs. For example, a more advanced team must get a kill on a one-on-one or one-on-null hitter/blocker match up.

You might also find 25 or reset interesting.

John Kessel at USA Volleyball compiled a lengthy list of different scoring approaches. Top 166 Volleyball Drills from Around the World

If you’ve got a scoring alternative you like to use, definitely tell us about it in the comment section below. We could add it to the list above.