Progressive Volleyball Drills By: Hayley Merrett

When training a team for volleyball, perhaps the most important consideration is the schedule of the drills you will be using. There are many types of drills to use, most falling within the three main categories of skills and movement, teamwork, and conditioning. It is a good idea to take specific examples from each category when training, in order to give your team an overall training advantage. However, it is even more important to understand the progression of these drills.


When starting your training for the season, you will want to start off with easy, basic volleyball drills. More than likely, you will have many team members who have played on the team before. Unfortunately, you will also be training new members of the team. It is a fact of life that every season will give you new players to work with, even while working with your returning players. Because of this, you want to start with drills that will teach and work with the basics of the game. These can include basic passing, blocking, and even simple conditioning such as running.


Once the team has gotten the basics down, you will want to move on to some more advanced volleyball drills, building on the basic drills you started with. At this stage in training, you will have a good feel on which skills your team will need to work on more, and which skills they seem to be able to handle easily. Simple combinations of the basic volleyball drills will work great during this time. Running and jumping for spiking, passing and setting for teamwork, and speed drills for conditioning are great starting points for this second step of drills.


Now that you have a good solid base of overall skills in place for your team, it is time to fine tune those skills that will give your team the advantage over other teams. By this time, you should be able to visualize some specific plays that will transform your team from a good team into a great team. You will be able to tailor your volleyball drills at this point to suit the skills of the team, building upon the drills you were previously using. Using examples of what real play should look like you can build on spiking the ball, a full set of pass, set, and spike, and even have mini games between your players. The main goal at this point is to teach the tactics and teamwork. Being the final stage of volleyball drills, these drills should instill automatic reactions in your players for a variety of plays that will likely be seen during games.


Building a strong volleyball team takes a lot more work than just getting a bunch of players together and giving them a ball. You will have to train them with a strong schedule of volleyball drills. If planned correctly, by the time your team plays their first game, they will be ready for just about any situation they will encounter. With a proper progression of volleyball drills, you will have no problem watching your team evolve from a bunch of players to a well tuned team.


Hayley Merrett, Author and Volleyball Coach Start winning more games now! Put the thrill and excitement of consistently winning back into your teams life.






Sign up for 20 free drills at



This volleyball article was found on Ezine Database and was written by Hayley Merrett on December 29, 2010. If you want to progress in volleyball, I recommend reading this article and taking time to work on these drills. 

Comments