Getting Into It

Breaking down the Club Season practice templates

November marks the start of the season for many juniors club coaches. Last year I made November Club Month at SmarterVolley and a lot of you enjoyed some content that was more tailored to the club level. Check the first post of the 2023 series for links to the 2022 series as well.

Club Season - Getting Started

This year I’m extending this content into December and January, although I’ll still sprinkle in some NCAA analysis as well.

In this article:

I lay out a sample pre/early-season training plan for club coaches and diagram a 12-practice cycle to take you from the start of practice to your first tournament. The whole cycle is behind the paywall, but I’ll break down some of the specific practice layouts over time for free subscribers as well.

Practice 1
10’ - Self-Toss Spiking
- 4-Step, Slow-to-Fast emphasis
10’ - 4-Ball Passing
- Goldilocks Posture (Stance width)
10’ - Doubles
- Narrow-court, full-length, with antennas
25’ - 2-Way Hitting
- Pass-to-Attack Footwork emphasis for outsides
20’ - 1-Way Sideout
- 2nd Ball bowl to outside attack to pass-to-attack
45’ - 6v6
- 4 rounds of 23-19 Aceball.
- Use extra time for Last Ball Bounce 6v6 (fast-paced)

Practice 2
10’ - Self-Toss Spiking
- Distance change (spike one from in front of 3m and one from 4-6m off)
10’ - 4-Ball Passing
- Tape/10/Perfect
10’ - Doubles
- Narrow-court, full-length, with antennas
25’ - 2-Way Hitting
- Shuffle footwork emphasis
20’ - 1-Way Sideout
- 2nd Ball bowl to libero
45’ - 6v6
- 4 rounds of 23-19 Aceball.
- Use extra time for Last Ball Bounce 6v6 (fast-paced)

Okay, so there’s the layout of the first 2 practices I have written up. So what the heck does this all mean?

Self-Toss Spiking

This is a core drill for me at any level, but for sure at the juniors level. You could call it a mini-jump serve if you want. You’re going to toss the ball up in the air, take an approach, and spike it over the net. There’s a clip of an athlete doing a self-toss spike in this post and I also talk about using a radar gun to measure velocity in that post.

At the introductory level, I don’t care too much where they spike it from. Players tend to self-regulate to hitting from somewhat close to the net but not right on the net. Okay fine. Pretty soon, I like to get them spiking from 3m to establish some consistency, and then I’ll add in some variation (as you’ll see in the practice templates) to give a different learning stimulus. Sometimes hitting from close to the net is good, sometimes moving back, maybe even all the way to the end line, adds a nice constraint to change how the player needs to contact and hit the ball.

You might notice in Practice 1, the emphasis point is more technical. In Practice 2, it’s more outcome-based. So in Practice 1, we’re going to directly instruct some hitting footwork. In Practice 2, you might follow-up with that, but I like to have an outcome-based challenge to add some variety. So in Practice 2, they can continue to work on footwork, but now they are going to vary between moving up close to attack right on the net, and then moving back so they are significantly behind the attack line when they contact the ball. You can ask directly, “how did you have to change how you hit the ball when you were right on the net vs when you were off the net?” or you can just let the learning happen subconsciously.

4-Ball Passing

I’ve written multiple articles about this drill. I’ve been doing variations of this for more than 10 years. Why? Because it’s the easiest way to get a ton of passing reps and allows you to teach 1 player at a time, while still getting everybody a lot of reps.

Now: how do you set it up for your club team? I recommend this setup:

This is a 10-person setup. If you have 12 players, then I add a second “target” whose job is more collecting balls and getting them back to the servers. 1 target for 2 passers gets a little hectic, so you’ll end up with a bunch of loose balls rolling around. Not a huge deal, since you’re just passing, not jumping, but your ball carts will get empty if you don’t have some targets hustling around to get the servers more balls.

In terms of teaching, you might notice that I program this similar to how I programmed the Self-Toss. Practice 1 is more technical: we’re teaching passing by starting with posture. Practice 2 gives the passers an outcome challenge: varying between passing the ball tight, passing the ball off the net, and then trying to pass the ball pefectly. Again, you can directly call attention to what kind of angles create those passes, or you can allow for more self-discovery. Your choice.

Doubles

In this case, I’m running the same Doubles game here on both days. You don’t have to set up extra antennas if you don’t have them, but I like to if you can. I used to divide the court in half, and you would play each game on one half. But now, I divide it into thirds, with a dead zone in the middle:

Why? Two reasons:

(1) Narrow-court Doubles is my favorite serving drill, especially for juniors. Giving them 1/3 of the court to hit instead of 1/2 of the court really sharpens up your serving focus and gives them practice every day of keeping the serves out of the center of the court.

(2) I think it’s a little safer, which leads to more and faster play. Kids play 2 half-court doubles games safely once you ask them to be mindful of the other court, but I found there got to be too many stoppages, which led to sloppy play. When you add that buffer zone, the number of stoppages gets reduced because they are more mindful of playing on their 3rd.

When I run Doubles, I almost always stand by the servers and coach them up. This is a great drill for serving focus so that’s what I dedicate the most time and effort to. The rallies are more of a fun bonus.

2-Way Hitting

Got a question from a reader about this, so I’ll answer it here:

Hey Joe,  I have loved reading your substack info, its been a great resource for me as a coach and trying to always get better.  I have a question on the Practice email from last week.  I am confused on what the 2-Way Hitting drill is.  I know that might sound self explanatory but wanted to know what you meant by that.   Could you explain this drill and how you run it.  You mentioned both out of trans and first ball.