BSBH Variations

Scripted and semi-scripted ways to train defense

Coaches who are following In The Gym might see that I do a drill I (and many others) call BSBH (Ball-Setter-Ball-Hitter) often. It’s perhaps a bit of odd nomenclature, because BSBH is both the short-hand for block/defense eye sequence as well as a shortcut to refer to drills working on eye sequence and other parts of training defense. I’ve had a few questions about what I mean when I say this as a drill, so here’s a quick post talking about some of it.

Quick Eyework Discussion

I want to keep this article more focused on what a BSBH drill looks like, but it’s worth touching on defensive eyework. Ball-Setter-Ball-Hitter describes a blocker or defender’s eye sequence, that is: what you look at and the order in which you look at it.'

BSBH has been long associated with Gold Medal Squared. If you’ve worked or hosted one of their camps, or attended a GMS Coaching Clinic, you’ve certainly heard the time. I don’t know if Carl invented the term, but he sure did popularize it.

So let’s say I’m a middle blocker. I’m in my base blocking posture. As the ball is being passed, I need to take a quick look at the pass and get some information from it:

Ball has just been passed. Middle blocker’s eyes are looking at the pass, seeing if it’s coming over or not.

At the most basic level, blockers need to see if the pass is coming over or not. If it’s coming over, you need to do something — either go block/hit it or transition off as a teammate passes it. If it’s not coming over, then you move to the next part of the eye sequence, which is “setter.” Blockers need to look at the setter to see where he’s playing the ball.

A little hard to see in screenshots, but you can tell by the change in head angle that her eyes are already down (despite the ball being higher) and looking at the setter.

To put it simply: blockers who follow the pass all the way to the setter generally react slower to the setter playing the ball than blockers who are looking at the setter before the ball comes into her hands. You’ll notice elite players are really good and consistent at this:

You can see that Danesi’s eyes never really follow the ball up. Her pattern recognition is good enough to know that pass isn’t coming over and she goes right to the setter, and then reads to the hitter.

In contrast, we’ll see club players make mistakes where they follow the ball way too long, and then react late to the ball being set. You can see the left-side blocker here follow the ball all the way into the setter’s hands, rather than getting off the ball and on to the setter before the ball gets to the setter:

(Obligatory: I generally don’t much like making posts that seem like, “hey this club kid is screwing up,” because hey, they are kids! They are learning. And when I do post mistakes, I like it to be my own players because then it doesn’t seem like I’m dunking on another team. But all my club video is same-side, so I can’t show any examples of my own players’ eyes. So I will just also point out that we lost this match and this girl had several big kills on us. I’m not dunking on this kid, I just had this clip handy. Okay, let’s move on.)

So sometimes instead of “Ball-Setter” we say it like: “Ball-SetterSetterSetter” to emphasize that you want to get off the ball and on to the setter.

As to the next piece “Ball-Hitter,” there’s some debate and possibly some distinction between what blockers need to do and what hitters need to do. Some coaches like their blockers to stay on the ball longer in order to line up with the ball. Some like to get on the hitter earlier. I want to move on past that (and maybe revisit later) in order to get to the drill-based discussion. So let’s leave it at: BSBH is the eye sequence I like to train blockers and defenders to have, and it is important.

Drills

Now, let’s get on to drills where we can train this.