Boost your game of volleyball! Here are a few drills to help you or your child who plays volleyball get prepared for the volleyball season!

Passing Drills

Passing to Yourself

With this drill, you want to plant your feet and lower your legs like you would be ready to receive a pass from the opposing team. Throw the ball up in the air and pass to yourself while moving back and forth along with side to side. This drill will help you improve your passing along with your footwork as well!

Wall Pass

For this drill, you can grab an empty wall outdoors or in a gymnasium and use it to hit the ball to and get the return pass from. See how many times you can return the ball from the wall and see how many you can get in a row! This will improve your passing skills as well as create a bit of competition within yourself to see how many consecutive passes you can get!

Pepper

Pepper is a great drill to do by yourself or with a partner. Pepper helps you practice the three things you do most during the game: bump, set and spike. To do alone, you can grab a empty wall outdoors or in a gym. Then try to keep a rhythm going by first bumping to the wall then volleying the return from the wall then lastly spiking the ball back to the wall as well. Your main goal is to try and keep a rhythm going.

To do with a partner, you can grab a friend and do the same steps above. This is a bit more of a challenge because you'll be trying to keep each other in sync. This also helps with passing as well as teamwork and communicating with other players.

Setting Drills

Warm Up Hands

For this drill, quick set against a wall for 45 seconds. Next, take a step back and set against the wall for 60 seconds. Finally, take another step back and set against the wall for 90 seconds. The point of this drill is to help you strengthen your fingers for passing during a game.

Lie Down and Set

This drill requires you to lie down on your back with your knees bent. Then set the volleyball to yourself, quickly, 100 times without pushing the ball high. After doing that, you can slow it down and set the ball higher for 100 more times. This drill is a great one to do anywhere! If you want to make it a little bit more challenging, you can use a heavy ball such as a basketball to strengthen your fingers as well.

Hitting Drills

Hit Against the Wall

This drill requires you to stand about 10 feet from a wall. Then toss the ball up with your left hand and take a step with your left foot as you hit the ball with your right hand. You want focus on snapping your wrist with this drill. Ideally, the ball will bounce right where the floor meets the wall. Hitting drills can also help you learn to overhand serve as well. Hitting drills are great tools to use when you're beginning to work on your overhand serve.

Serving Skills

You can practice serving by using a wall outdoors and placing a piece of blue painter’s tape to mark how high you need to hit the ball to make it over the net. That is 7’ 4” for players over age 14 or 7’ for players age 12 and under. You can scoot back about 30 feet from the wall or net as well. Your goal is to get the ball over the blue tape every time. For beginners, you want to see how high you can get it so you know it's going over, as your skills improve, though, you can see how close you can place it to the line for a more aggressive serve. Also, if you're using a net you can place a trash can on the other side and work on accuracy! See if you can aim your serve and hit or get it in the trash can!

As athletes, we're always looking for way to improve ourselves and better our abilities. All these drills can also be practiced without a ball in the mirror at home. Using a mirror will help you develop your form and improve your skills as well! All these drills are easy and do not require a lot of time to do. These drills will help you improve your skills for the next season!

Written by: Tim Gaines, Sports Director at the South City Family YMCA and Carondelet Park Rec Complex, and Dale McLin, South City Family YMCA Sports Intern