More On High Low

Follow-Up Qs

I’ve gotten a few questions about the High-Low ideas that I discussed in some recent articles. To paraphrase:

Q: How Low is Low? Do you still get enough training in?

A: To clarify, we play 6v6 in some context every day, it’s just questions of: who plays, how much do they play, and what the setup of the drills looks like.

The (Low) day after a match, starters might not play much 6v6 if any at all. But the subs are definitely playing a bunch. The (Low) day before a match, starters are definitely playing 6v6, but we’re going a little lower-volume and it’s a bit more of a block/defense orientation with a focus on some specifics for the other team.

On the other hand, the High day is going to see everybody playing a high volume of intense 6v6 that’s usually 1-way and oriented toward sideout. And it probably has a peformance goal such as X sideouts in Y chances or repeat the rotation. Etc.

Q: How do you handle days where you don’t have your full Low-High-Low-Match flow?

The easiest situations are:

Match » Off » Low » High » Low » Match
Match (Home, afternoon) » Low » High » Low » Match

The trickier situations are:

Match » ?? » ?? » Match
Match (Away, evening) » ?? » ?? » ?? » Match

In the first case, we won’t have a High on either of those two days. We’ll go:

Match » Low (Post) » Low (Pre) » Match

So that first Low (Post) day we’ll review the video, talk about any tweaks we want to make for the next match, hit a recovery workout, and do some serve/pass training. The subs/reserves will play some 6v6 and do some attack/block, but starters likely won’t do much of that.

On the second Low (Pre) we’ll hit some block/defense-oriented 6v6 and get into the scout phase to prepare for the upcoming match.

A lot of NCAA teams have Match » ?? » Match which ends up being pretty clearly a Low day. You’ll both review and scout and total time on the court is probably a bit lower. You’ll almost certainly need to play some 6v6 to prepare for the upcoming match, but you’ll probably keep the volume lower on the starters.

In situations where you go Match » 3 days » Match, but the first match is an evening and/or away match, things are a bit trickier because the travel complicates things. If you play 7pm on a Wednesday and then you’re looking forward to a Sunday match, what do you do?

You’re not going to have a morning training after a match that ends around 9pm with significant travel after. Should you have afternoon/evening training though? I think you have to look at what your schedule looks like before or after those matches. NCAA mandates you have at least 1 full day off out of 7, and while pro teams don’t mandate that, I try to get pretty close to it. We actually have a 10-day stretch early in this season where we won’t have an off day, but then we’ll have 3 off days in the next 11, so we make it up. I hope :)

Q: How would you handle Thursday/Saturday or Friday/Saturday schedules, etc?