SmarterVolley Systems - Push

In-System Offense

If you’re anything like me, it seems like summer just started, yet the fall season is here for many teams. If you’re a high school girls coach, you’ve either just started pre-season or are about to. The NCAA women’s season will be underway shortly. So for the fall, I’m shifting to a systems focus. What do I like to teach from a systems perspective? How do these systems work at different levels — high school/club, NCAA, pro, etc.?

This article series is probably the most detailed and technical non-statistics-related article series I’ve ever put together. If you’ve been a free subscriber and have needed a push over the edge to subscribe, this would be a good time!

Another note: these articles are long, and very video-heavy. There’s a lot of example video here. Sometimes that causes them to get laggy in your email app, so you might want to click the article title above and open in your browser.

And final note: I like to use clips from men and women, pro/uni/club/school, etc to illustrate concepts. Sometimes the idea is the same between a high school girl and a pro guy and the only difference is the power and level of execution. Sometimes the principle is the same but there are important tweaks that are necessary between different levels. I use some clips from teams that I’ve coached, some clips from teams that I didn’t coach but know their systems, and some clips from teams that I only know via video. So don’t take it that when I show a clip of a team that they use the exact same terminology, teaching points, etc that I do.

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In-System Offense: Push Series

I’ve written about this a bit before:

Push Series
5-Push Friday

But since I wanted to start this article series with in-system offense, I’ll share some additional thought. First, some general thoughts on offense.

Attack The Gaps

I’m a big believer in getting hitters into gaps between blockers. I like hitters looking for a primary shot and taking it if it’s there. I believe you react faster to something when you are prepared for it. Therefore, if the hitter is looking for a certain shot, they’ll be a split-second faster to get on the ball than if they are looking for every shot every time they are up in the air. Of course, you can go too far with this. Hitters can’t be totally pre-determined. You have to have an out shot if they are sitting on your primary.

Push - For The Middle

Let’s start with the image above. You can number the gaps however you want, but in that diagram, I have the gap to the opposing middle blocker’s right side (our left) as the 4-gap and the other gap labeled the 5-gap. Fundamentally, I don’t like running hitters right at a middle blocker. This goes for middle attackers as well as the pipe. What I like to do instead is get a middle attacker off-center of the middle blocker. Even better if we take an approach that starts on one side of the middle and crosses the face of the opposing blocker.

So specifically for this Push concept, we want to start the middle on our right side of the court and end up in the labeled 4-gap above. Like this: