Push Series

Middle attack variations

Earlier this week I profiled teams with an In-System Strength Offensive Profile:

If you want to be good In-System, it helps to have a strong middle attack. If you have to have a strong middle attack, I think you need to have some variety to it. I’ll share a little bit of information about one of the variations I like, the Push.

Floating Push

The most common way to run Push is relative to the setter, similar to the “1” or “A-Quick” variation that is the most common middle attack. The main difference is the setter is going to push the ball away from them a bit, which tends to set up the middle to hit it toward zone 1.

Running it from Setter-6 is common because the middle already tends to be over on the right side of the court, so the right-to-left motion is natural.

Fixed Push

The way I teach it at Offensive Concepts seminars is with a fixed location. This tends to put the ball a bit farther away from the setter.

The advantages of this is that you always get into the gap between the middle blocker and right-side blocker. You can see in the floating example above that the middle blocker can stay neutral and still touch the ball jumping from where she is. So getting a little farther into that gap forces teams to decide whether they want to:

• Stay neutral with both blockers and take their chances on you connecting and having a big gap to spike through.

• Front their middle blocker and open up our right side.

• Pinch down their right-side blocker and risk getting overloaded by our left.

The disadvantage is that you have a little less court to hit to as you get farther to that side and if you get too shot-determined you can risk getting jumped by a late-fronting middle who really dives that way.

Here’s how I solve that.