Spring 2025 Mailbag Part 2

Itsy Bitsys, Hitter Eye-Work, Sharing A Court, And A Whole Lotta Double-Push Clips

This spring has been all about Triangle analysis, if you haven’t checked out:

Triangle Primer
NCAA Women’s Season Analysis
LOVB Triangles

You might enjoy those reads. I have some NCAA Men’s Analysis underway before those playoffs happen, and then I’ll be down at Gulf Shores for the NCAA Women’s Beach Championships as well. After that, I’ll switch gears and I have some more teaching-oriented content coming your way for the summer. But first, a mailbag!

Check previous mailbag posts here if you haven’t yet:

Winter 2024
Fall 2024
Summer 2024
Spring 2024

Alright, let’s get it rolling onto Part 2. Part 1 is here if you haven’t seen it yet.

A club coach says, via Substack DM:

For those of you who are newer to SmarterVolley, here’s what I mean by Itsy-Bitsys.

So what is an Itsy Bitsy? It’s a short burst of something in the dead time between drills or games when players are rotating on and off the court.

One of the best uses of this coaching tool is for digging moves. That’s what this reader is talking about in the DM above. Let’s say you’re playing a Doubles workup on the court. If you have some space off the court, every time a team loses and is coming off the court where they are playing doubles, have them come over to you and dig a ball overhand. Depending on how long you play, every player should be able to stack up 5-10 extra overhand dig reps.

Coaching club volleyball is all about squeezing in extra reps, and this is a good way to do so.

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Jeremy Hoelker, in In-Match Coaching Part 2 asks:

Can you add some specifics to your eye work comments in regards to hitters?

In terms of hitter eye work, the big thing here is identifying the pass so you know what tempo the set will be and what step of your approach to be on. We're trying to be full 2nd-step in-system which requires identifying an in-system ball and making your call and getting on 2nd step. But if the pass is out-of-system, then we're slowing down and going 1st step. So you really have to see it, which isn't easy for a lot of kids.

The same is also true on blocking. A characteristic of medium-level players is that they get very used to taking the same move. Blockers will get accustomed to about what speed they normally see. And then, if the set is faster than that, it’s really hard for them to catch up. This can also happen if the other team is setting high ball sets really high. Blockers often go way too early and lose their rhythm. It’s all about seeing the pass or set and matching your tempo of movement to the play.

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Sara asks, in 2024-2025 Triangle Primer Part 2:

I love your posts and have implemented a lot of them in my practices. However my club is short on space so I’m only able to use half a court for a good chunk of practice. If the team on the other side of the net isn’t interesting in doing something together… do you have any thoughts? I’m struggling!!

The first recommendation is obviously to get them to coordinate on doing things over the net. For example, might they agree to do split-court stuff so you divide the court long-ways into 2 halfs. In theory, each team can do some pass-hit that's not necessarily together, but at least going over the net? Also, in the past when I've worked with programs that had to go 2 teams on a court, I've had them in a progression that is like:

1. Dig-Set on your own side.

2. Dig-Set-Hit. Team A hits for 5 mins while Team B shags (and maybe blocks) and then vice versa.

3. Transition 4s, winner-stays-on style. Team A is going to have 2 teams of 4 and Team B will have 2 teams of 4. Sometimes you'll play each other, sometimes you'll play the other half of your team.

Other stuff that can be coordinated are serve/pass drills. 4-Ball Passing you can do dividing the court long-ways so your servers can serve at your passers and their servers can serve at their passers. Or even 3-person Serve/Pass drills. Your servers are on the same side as their passers. Their servers are on the other side behind your passers. So their servers serve across the net at their passers. Your servers serve across the net at your passers. Again, that requires at least being on the same schedule as the other team.

If they are adamant about staying on their side of the net (and to make the point again, your club needs to mandate that this needs to only be a small part of practice. Maybe 30 minutes. You just can't get that much better at volleyball without going over the net a lot), then some stuff you can do is:

-Blocking and Transition Footwork

-Dig-Set, and digging mechanics in general. (Digging lines against the coach are the most over-done thing in club volleyball but I guess you can do some)

-Partner hand contact and arm work in general. (Again, you can only do a few minutes of this before you need to go over the net)

-Speed/Power work

-Serving at the wall is pretty good for low/medium servers. If you can put a line of tape or something that can simulate the net and stand back 30' that can replicate serving over a net.

-Again, if you put tape on the wall that simulates a net you can do some setting work and they can have an idea of a target.

-Anything else from the Itsy Bitsy article.

If I had a team on the other side of the net that absolutely refused to cooperate and coordinate any kind of split-court or anything with me and I had to stay on my side for 30 minutes. I would do the best version of Atomic Speed, which takes about 15'. Then set up a little station with some exercises from the Atomic Spiking workout while everybody else did Dig-Set and/or Blocking/Transition Footwork on the court. And just rotate everybody through that. And that at 30' demand that we start going over the net.

And we had a follow-up as well:

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond so thoroughly! I really appreciate it.

I've tried to get creative this season as the teams I share with aren't necessarily as interested in doing stuff over the net cooperatively as teams I've shared with previously.

I've done a little dig-set with players initiating to their teammates, everyone digs, everyone sets, etc. I added something new we call "hop and schlopp" because I couldn't remember what you called it which was the "Pot Roll". It's now affectionately called a "hoppenschloppen" with the worst German accent. I'll have players self toss and hop, pot roll the ball and defender has to get a dig. It's been a nice addition and the kids giggle at the name. 14s, gotta love 'em.

We get 30 min of our 120 min practice with our own net, and every three days a full 60 min. It's not ideal, but we don't have much space to work with.

At 14s they can still get a ton out of serving at a wall if you put a tape line or have any reference point that's higher than net height. Setters at that age often struggle to have enough power to set the ball high enough, so they can benefit from setting high up to targets or reference points on the wall. For example, setter and a partner go to the wall. Setter stands about 10' away from the wall with a ball. Partner stands right at the wall. Setter gives partner a downball and partner digs. Setter has to set to a 20' high target on the wall. That will be a challenge for most U14s. While it's not as good as setting to a hitter who is attacking over the net, it's still developing their ability to set high off a pass or dig and there's going to be some transfer from that.

Not an easy challenge for a coach to manage, but unfortunately not a rare one either.

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Another reader asks, via email:

How would you start training the double push? What are some keys/activities that you have done with younger players to train this move?