Hitting Toolkit Part 2

8-way Spiking For Arm and Wrist Development

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Hitting Toolkit Part 1
Hitting Toolkit Part 3

In Part 1, I talk about the importance of creating approach angles.

A hitter needs to be able to attack high, hard, and deep in line with their approach. Early in my coaching career, I was really eager to teach players how to hit deceptive cut shots and no-look line shots and I was really into what then-USA WNT coach Toshi Yoshida called, “system 1,” and, “system 2,” hitting, which emphasized significant wrist turns to hit the ball away from the line of the approach. I think there’s some validity to that. But most volleyball players don’t struggle because of the block, they struggle because of the net and the defense.

What I mean by that is that players at the high school level make far more unforced errors than they will be blocked. On average, high school hitters hit out 5 times more than they get blocked! What this means is that early hitting toolkit work isn’t focused on beating the block in the way that Toshi was teaching undersized Japanese players to create one approach angle and hit the ball away from it, it’s actually teaching players to understand how to create a line of approach to attack the ball hard in the direction of your approach, and then build from there.

If I had to sum up the most common mistakes I see being made (and also: that I made) when teaching players to hit shots or build a toolkit, it’s this emphasis on beating the block. The block doesn’t need to be beat. At most levels, the block beats itself! And you can’t beat the block if you don’t beat the net.

Nowadays, my Hitting Toolkit work is much more focused on accessing the whole kid with high/hard swings than beating the block. There are ways we can use the block and exploit weaknesses. It’s not that there isn’t. But those things don’t work if we’re making too many unforced errors.

8-Way Self Toss

The first step in the Toolkit is creating good approach angles and approach lines. The second step is to be able to access the court when some of these angles get disrupted or the ball gets you in a slightly less optimal place.

I’m also a big fan of creating some deliberate variability in skill execution. One way to do that is to create some task constraints that require the player to attack specific areas of the court from specific approaches.

So here’s what we’re going to vary:

2 sides of the court.

2 approach directions.

2 arm actions.

2 x 2 x 2 = 8

Nothing too fancy, just a simple setup to work through a variety of approach angles and the arm actions off of them.

I like to do them as a “self-toss” spike aka “mini jump-serve.” For younger players, I like to spike from 3m. For more advanced players, do it closer to 6m. You can also keep them at 3m and add a speed gun. Or put the speed gun on them at 6m as well.

If you approach to 1, then you hit zone 1 straight-on (blue), or use an external arm action to hit the ball to 5 (red).

If you approach to 5, then you hit zone 5 straight-on (blue), or use an internal arm action to hit the ball to 1 (red).

I like players to cycle through the 4 swings to zone 1 first, and then the 4 swings to zone 5.

I also like them done with pre-action intent. Meaning, don’t just toss the ball up, see where it goes, take a swing, and then say, “oh yeah…. I meant to toss that toward 5 and hit it to 1.” As a player, you want somebody watching you to be able to see what approach you intended and what arm action you intended. You might not always hit the shot you wanted, but the intent should be clear.