Mental Game and Practices

Volleyball, like many other sports, has a very mental aspect to it to accompany the physical. The mental part of the game comes with experience, normally in game-like situations. This can be hard to obtain since you don’t always have the luxury of starting your weak players in games. How can this be resolved? You need to get your team to practice as if it were a game. This is a crucial step to developing a competitive team. Players are athletes because they are competitive by nature. It’s hard to keep a player’s full attention in a “boring” drill, so often letting them compete with one another allows them to fully focus their skills thus improving their practices.

Important aspects of the game that are often over looked are goals. Most young players believe when you serve hard, you are trying for an ace. While an ace is great, and you hope to get as many as possible – you are not serving for them. Your serve is to bring the receiving team out of system. This means that they cannot run a play on your team, increasing your chances at shutting them down through your defense or making it easier to transition into your offense.

A good drill that will incorporate both of these points is what my team calls “servers vs. passers”. Now – the basic concept is that you have your servers trying to take the passers out of system. Have your setter and a few hitters run an offense off of all the balls. This allows them to work on their setting and hitting for both in and out of system passes. How will we add competitiveness to this? Keep score of course! As a coach, keep a score in your head – it doesn’t necessarily have to be kept allowed for everyone to know all the time. For every missed serve subtract two points, for a shanked pass or ace adds two points. On an out of system pass – do not add or subtract anything. Out of system for this drill can vary upon your player’s skill level. You can tape off a box (or use marks already on the floor depending if you have basketball lines) for a “target box”, try to have the setter move as little as possible. An in system pass is subtract one.

So quick recap;
Keep one score in your head.
-2 for a service error
-1 for a in system pass
0 for an out of system pass
+1 for shank pass or ace

Now, to keep things more competitive – you can place a “bet.” Loosing team has to do 5 suicides, or 25 push ups, etc. You lose when the other team reaches +/-10. Servers would try for positive 10 while passers are aiming for -10.

This emphasizes getting your serves in while trying to teach your players to go for smart serves, not necessarily pounding in aces. It will also keep your passers in a game like state. An out of system pass may not always lead to ineffective hitting, but a controlled, “in system” pass greatly increases your chances of success.