Standards-Based Drills Part 1

Using SO, eSO, and FBK #s

Sideout % is a great stat, because it correlates very well to winning.

Sideout % is also kind of a dumb stat, because basically it just means, “winning the point,” which risks being broad to the point of meaningless.

But then again, Sideout % really IS great, because there’s a Big Flip that occurs in volleyball when teams go from thinking about volleyball as “trying to win the point” to “trying to sideout better than the other team.” And therefore a flip that occurs when the level of play is: “serving team has the advantage” to “receiving team has the advantage.”

Because of this, I’d argue that one of the most important coaching switches you can make is viewing the game as a Sideout Battle. And therefore, it would be nice if your practice activities reflected that.

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Note: If you don’t regularly check the In The Gym section, you should! You’ll see how I use these sorts of drills in practices and I often have pictures of practice whiteboards and what they look like up on there.

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1-Way Drills

I’m a fan of 1-Way drills. A 1-Way drill is a game where the same team stays on receive for the duration of a round and the other team has the serve. After the end of the round (timed, # of points, etc) either the roles switch and the serving team becomes the receiving team, or the players mix and the play continues in the same way.

A 2-Way drill is something where the serve trades back and forth between the two teams over the course of a round of play. For example, a normal volleyball game is 2-Way because whoever wins the rally gets the serve. Classic wash drills like 1+1 or 1+2 are also generally done 2-Way, although you can modify them to make them 1-Way.

I like 1-Way drills for two big reasons:

1. They are logistically a bit easier to coach. More on that in another article.

2. How you score and structure them helps your team learn to sideout at a high level.

I do also use 2-Way drills, depending on the context. In club volleyball, I don’t use them very much during a typical weekday practice, since club kids spend so much time playing in tournaments (by definition, a 2-Way activity) that I want to get them more exposure to 1-Way stuff.

Scoring 1-Way Drills

The best way to score 1-Way drills is to set up X Before Y scoring, where X and Y are various standards for winning volleyball. These criteria can be set up for by-rotation or for all rotations combined.

Let’s use the data I just shared in Club Standards - Part 1 to create a few 1-Way Drills. Quoting from that article: