Winter 2024 Mailbag Part 2

90-Minute Practices, Pass-and-Go Footwork, 2-Way Hitting Feedback, and Atomic Speed + Spiking

It’s been a while since I did a mailbag. We’re not really at the end of Winter, but I’ve got enough questions stacked up to fill up a couple mailbag posts. So here we go. Check previous mailbag posts here if you haven’t yet:

Fall 2024
Summer 2024
Spring 2024
Winter 2023

Part 1 of this Winter 2024 mailbag is here. Let’s keep it going.

Alejandro De Mendoza asks, in reference to Don’t Plan To Fail Part 3:

How would you modify if you only had an hour and a half for practice? Assuming it’s a high school club team

With only 90 minutes, the first thing I do is allocate >45 min to 6v6. Assuming you practice twice per week, that's 90 mins of 6v6 per week, which is about as low as I'd want to go. If you have a Saturday practice where you're going to come in and get at least 1 hour of 6s (internally or scrimmaging other teams), then you could probably get away with 30min of 6s at some practices.

But let's say you want at least 45 min of 6v6. That's your Aceball, GP Sideout, etc or your more defense/transition-oriented ones like Transition Wash or Serve + Bounce.

And then I want 20-25 min of my main teaching drill. For me that's 2-Way Hitting (in Sideout-oriented practices) or some combination of Dig-Set-Hit, Transition 4s, Transition "Lines", or just BSBH in a slower, teaching setting.

So 45 + 25 = 70, which leaves you with 20 mins left.

Self Toss, 4-Ball Passing, and Doubles can each be done in 10 minutes if you're hustling through them quickly. So I would do 2/3 of them on a given day.

Day 1
4-Ball Passing
Self Toss
2-Way Hitting
Aceball

Day 2
4-Ball Passing
Doubles
2-Way Hitting
Aceball

Day 3
Self Toss
Doubles
Transition 4s
BSBH

And just cycle through those 3 templates. Every now and then swap in something else if you need to vary, but I would go with that general timeline of:

10' - Individual / Doubles
10' - Individual / Doubles
25' - Main Teaching Drill
45' - 6v6, transfer to the teaching to competing.

For a few years I coached club and our main gym was a high school gym. So during the winter we couldn't get in until after basketball was done, which was in theory 6:00 but usually 6:08 to complete the, “somebody has to make a foul shot while everybody watches or every runs a sprint and then come back and try it again,” that every high school basketball team seems to do. And then we had to get nets set up, etc. So younger wave went 6:30 - 8:00 and older wave went 8:00 - 9:30. We did fine. For the older girls, I would get them doing some dynamic warmup or whatever in the hallway so that at 8:00 we would START practice. I remember one particular year we started every practice with what I would now call MTP Queens and I told them I was whistling first serve at 8:01. The kids were pretty good with it and we got a lot done in 90 minutes.

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Alex Simons asks, in Technique Tuesday: Pass and Go:

Hey Joe - Any thoughts on teaching a three step shuffle after a pass? That's what I've traditionally taught my U15 club teams rather than this "pass and go fast" footwork you are sharing here.

This is a controversial opinion but I almost never specifically teach Pass + Shuffle-3. I find that a lot of kids over-shuffle and take too many steps and struggle to roll into their first step. You're probably setting your U15s a pretty slow tempo ball on the left, so, conceptually, they could Pass, take 3 shuffles, and be on a 1st-step timing to hit a high ball on the left. But in reality, I consistently find players taking too many steps and the shuffle steps lead to going all fast on their approach whereas this "Pass. Wait. Step as she sets." Rhythm of the Pass + Go footwork, even though it's not "needed" (because you're setting slow) really helps them develop a slow-to-fast rhythm.

Basically I would rather give up the +5% boost to attack angle that the Shuffle-3 gets you in order to get a +10% boost in slow-to-fast rhythm. Both numbers made up obviously.

I think sometimes there’s a worry that a kid won’t be able to get there if they don’t shuffle. Here’s a 5’8” 15 year-old kid passing a deep 5/6 seam serve and then getting there with just¹ the Pass-and-Go footwork.

This player is pretty dynamic but I would say there’s a chicken-and-the-egg thing where you get more dynamic by being asked to make dynamic moves. For a less dynamic player I would just not set them quite as fast.

If you also take a look at the Skinner clip from the 5-Play Friday post you see almost the flip side. She has plenty of time to shuffle because it’s an out-of-system play, but she still just rolls slow into it in order to maintain rhythm. The serve put her on a knee, so if she tried to get up and shuffle she’d be rushed. A 3-step shuffle would be fine in this situation but it’s not necessary and many kids feel like they have to shuffle and then they lose their rhythm. And I think the rhythm is what’s important.

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A reader asks via email:

I had a question regarding how you coach/give feedback in 2-way hitting. I like how game-like it is, especially for my 14 year olds this year who still struggle a bit with P-S-H out of SR. One issue is that I've found it to be a bit slow at times, especially when I am giving feedback to players in the drill. Was wondering how you manage the pace, as well as interject feedback, or have external goals to help with 2-way hitting?