Club Month: Second Week Of Practice

Building on the last one.

November is Juniors Month at Smarter Volley. Juniors clubs have been underway in Europe for a little while now, and in North America most boys have already started and girls are just now getting going. Because of that, most of the content this month will be geared around the Juniors game and be directly applicable for Juniors coaches. But, a lot of it will be useful for coaches at other levels, including this one. Enjoy!

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Also: We have about 8 spots left for my Offensive Concepts seminar in Wilmington, DE on Dec 17/18. If you’re interested in attending, send me an email. If you’re interested in hosting me and running an event at your gym, send me an email.

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Last week, I outlined what my first week of club practice might look like.

Club Month: First Week Of Practice

Now, let’s talk about week number two.

Before You Hit The Court

We discussed last week how important it is to frontload as much as you can before practice starts. This week, we’re shifting priorities to focus on getting some In-System offense in place, so we’d like to frontload some pieces of that before practice starts. There’s going to be variation in what you’ll do offensively, depending on the level of your team and some of your individual strengths and weaknesses. But some things to think about:

1. Do you anticipate running a 5-1 or a 6-2? You might not know for sure, but this matters because…

2. If you run a 5-1, will you run Slide when the setter is frontrow? Slide hitting is a whole different beast from “normal” attacking, and there’s limited transfer between 2-foot attacking and slide attacking. To a large degree, you can swap outside hitters into hit 2-footed middle attacks or throw opposites over on the left without a huge risk. You just need to get the timing down. But if you’re planning on running Slide, you need to train it from the beginning.

3. Do you anticipate running tempo to the outside? You might have a feel-out period early in the year to see exactly what tempo you want to run, but you should know if you’re planning to run with speed to the pins, or if you’re just going to set high balls.

4. What sort of middle attacks do you anticipate running in front of the setter? Again, you might have a tryout period, but, at the Juniors level, this probably ranges from multiple “quick” (“1st tempo”, “3rd or 4th step”, etc) attacks, to a simple fixed-point 2-ball.

Sketch out some of those concepts and pick the most important. If you can find some video clips to demonstrate, even better.

“Just do this you stupid kids!” Is not acceptable frontloading.

Again, see if you can send clips, do a short Zoom meeting, or find a quiet space in the gym before practice to discuss some of these concepts before practice.

On The Court