[nmsvbteam]

I take my personal trainer certification test on Monday, but have been training and competing at a high level in the sport for a long time (18 years this year...jeez...)

There is always lots of advice out there, good and bad. Doing plyo's, namely depth jumps and drop jumps, is a bad idea unless you can pass the test of squatting 1.5 times your body weight at a minimum. That is because if you can't handle that weight, your tendons and ligaments are likely not strong enough to handle the impact from those jumps,you could injure yourself, and you are more likely to make gains by increasing leg strength rather than focusing on neuromuscular response.

In a brief, and insufficient nut shell: build your core strength, stabilize your joints first and then focus on improving muscle strength and endurance. The king exercises for volleyball are squats (free weight only) and deadlifts. Everything else is window dressing really. Gradually build your threshold for those exercises. You can build explosiveness using heavy weights once you are ready for them. That is, you can exert maximum force against a heavy resistance. Even though you may not move the weight quickly, your musclular response is such that you will recruit more fibers more quickly. Also, make sure you have a good flexibility component included in everything. THe last thing you want to do is injure yourself training or playing. On cardio, try interval training. You will build your capacity much more quickly and effectively using this method than jogging at a steady pace for 1,2, 3 hours, etc. 3 days a week of split routine is fine, probably close to an ideal if you can majage it and you can do cardio every day if you wanted. If you are playing one day a week, don't do more than one more day a week of anything that involves jumping because you can wind up wearing your joints down. Focus more on technique and do very limited numbers of sets of things like tuck jumps, squat jumps, even approaches. Again, I don't think that will bring you the most benefit. Oddly enough, power lifters are some of the best jumpers in the world. I wrote an article a while back on training that is somewhere in the article section, maybe it could help...