What To Do After Warm-Up?
WARM-UP
After the warm-up, the players should stretch together as a team, led by the coaches, trainers, captains, or instructed players. Early season instruction should be given to emphasize the importance of stretching after warm-ups, Each body area should be stretched properly for increased range of motion, flexibility, and optimum joint and muscle use during physical activity. Most teams enjoy a set routine of stretches. It helps them physically feel ready and psychologically feel safe to practice.
Static muscle stretches should be used this time, stretching one large muscle group at a time. The next step is to work range of motion and hold the stretch. An athlete should feel the stretch, but it should not be painful. Bouncing stretches can tear muscles and extend joints and muscles too far.
BALL HANDLING
Ball handling work usually starts with movement drills that include two to four players, Players should start with passing and setting drills, followed by hitting and blocking, or digging drills. When players have achieved some rhythm in movement and skill work, combination drills can be added.
Ball handling drills usually build on particular basic skills that the coach wants to practice everyday, This repetition will reinforce these skills and refine fundamental movement. Basic skills include passing, serving, and serve receive. Fundamental movement includes spike, block, defensive, and transition footwork. The time of the season and skill level of the team will dictate the depth of any such ball handling drill.
Early in the season, drills should include more repetitions to acquire skills. Midseason drills should maintain skill levels. Late in the season, ball handling work should emphasize gamelike conditions. Let's use serve receive as an example. Early in the season, serve receive drills usually include repetition of passing to a target. By midseason, a team may progress to repetition drills of serve receive pass, set and hit (emphasizing the initial pass). Toward the end of the season, serve receive drills may include a back-row triples game using both sides of the court, again emphasizing serve receive passing. This doesn't mean a team would never play triples earlier in the season, but illustrates a progression throughout the season.
The most popular ball handling drill is the pepper. The pepper is not an opportunity for a coach to take a coffee break or work on practice plans. Pure coaching takes place during pepper. Constant anticipation, correct posture, fluid movement, and proper skills need to be reinforced. This is not a drill of playing it safe and keeping the ball in control. If a coach does not supervise a pepper drill and encourage aggressive play, the players will turn it into a toss-pass-set-tip-to-a-teammate drill. Pepper should be aggressive and require pursuit.
Pepper drills can also be for control. This is best done over the net and is a good way to work on basics. A toss, pass, set, hit, and dig in a controlled manner can still develop movement and basic skills. This drill is usually timed or a number of continuous rallies is counted. The coach can vary the drill by using tips, roll shots, or two-handed placements over the net to replicate a third hit.
Beginning teams can also play pepper in this manner and practice one skill at a time. An example would be toss, pass, pass, pass over the net. This encourages movement and three hits on a side. It provides practice with game-like angles and promotes anticipation skills. This is a form of cooperative volleyball, where the players are working for a number of continuous three-hit contacts instead of trying to simply beat the team on the other side of the net with a first contact return. Cooperative volleyball can be competitive if each group tries to score the highest number of continuous contacts.
REVIEW OF SKILLS
The review is a time to demand communication and movement. It is a time to prepare a team for the main objective of practice. It is a time to set a tone. The team should review the main theme of the previous practice. This helps to "instill the skill" and provides an opportunity for the coach to assess the team's progress (and their retention of key concepts) and to build from one skill to the next. Keep drills active and apply each skill in a gamelike manner. If practice time is shortened, a team can review skills as part of the ball handling warm-up. Simple combination drills can also be used.
If the level is beginners, the coach should remind the players of the movements and cue words introduced at the previous practice. The drills at this level should be more limited than a gamelike drill, and they should be varied from the previous practice. A beginners' drill can be made somewhat gamelike by initiating the drill from the appropriate court area or by finishing the drill at an expected target area. This will help the young player see the big picture. As example of this involves the teaching of passing technique. In this instance, the coach has taught and drilled toss passing and partner passing. The next step is a drill where the ball is tossed over the net and then passed to a target. The players may not be perfect at the drill, but they are perceiving and excuting the skills required in a gamelike fashion. Of course, if a player is not even getting to a ball, it may be time to regress or punt.
The review time of practice can also include working on a skill that has been a struggle for the team to master. This can be something the team struggled with in a past practice or during a match.
NEW INSTRUCTION
In this part of the practice, a coach's long term goals are taught, drilled, and achieved. Depending on the time of the season and level of play, instruction could include an individual skill, team skills, or positional training.
Individual skills include the six basic skills. Team skills include serve-receive play and out-of-system play. Serve-receive play has to be performed and practiced from all positions on the court. Out-of-system play refers to how a team performs when the first pass does not go to the setter. This includes "help" plays, pursuit plays from all the areas on and around the court, and some emergency techniques.
Team skills also include counterattack plays. Counterattack plays involve a transition from defense to attacking the ball on offense. These counterattack plays may be from a dig off a block, from a tip, from a rollshot, from a free ball, from a spike, or from an attack coverage position. Countertattack could also involve from emergency techniques or from an out-of-system play. In any case, all of these playss requre a team to be able to defend all positions along the net and receive the ball at any position on the court.
COMBINATION PLAY
Early in the season, the coach will combine skills into combination drills. A combination drill is a phase of the game, such as pass, set, hit segment. The combination drill can include new instruction if the coach is teaching a new element of the game or a new play. A combination drill can be used for beginners who are learning to combine skills in game play. These drills can be used for higher level teams as warm-up during the season. The benefit of combination drills is that they prompt players to react to gamelike situations. As the team and season progress, coaches plan less time for individual drills and more time for combination drills.
6-ON-6 PLAY
During 6-on-6 play, players get the chance to take all of the skills and tactics they have been working on throughout practice and use them in a gamelike situation. Any 6-on-6 drill that allows normal point or side-out conclusion can work. In other words, these are scrimmage situations. The problem with scrimmages is they are usually boring because they are slow. Coaches can devise ways to keep the play moving faster. If a team is scrimmaging, after the rally is concluded, the coach can begin the next rally by tossing a ball to the winning or losing side, or by returning a ball to the person who made the last mistake.
The coach can change the scoring methods according to what should be emphasized. If the theme of the practice was right-side attack, the scrimmage scoring could award more points for a right-side attack.If a coach wanted to force the issue, he could add points for the right-side attack and subtract points for any other attack. If a team is being wimpy and giving up too many free balls, a coach could award points to the other team every time a free ball is returned. The coach must force any 6-on-6 scrimmage situation to be aggressive and make it achieve the appropriate goals.
