How to Wipe the Block in Volleyball: Technique and Drills

The block is up, the set is glued to the net and there is nowhere to swing past it. Most hitters bang into it and lose the point. A hitter who owns the wipe uses those same hands to send the ball out of bounds.

What a wipe is

On a wipe you contact the ball so that it strikes the outside hand of the block and rebounds out - past the sideline or over the antenna. That is not your error: the ball went out off the opponent, so the point is yours. You will hear it called wiping, tooling the block, or simply using the hands.

So it is an attacking choice, not an accident. And it is the best option in exactly the situations where a normal swing is the worst one: a tight set, a big block, or a hitter who is not getting above the block on that particular ball. Where a tip or roll shot looks for the space behind the block, the wipe uses the block itself.

When to choose it

• The set is within half a meter of the net. Swinging over it will not work and swinging around it is too risky, so you go for the hands.
• The block is big and closed. Two or three pairs of hands above the band and no seam to hit through.
• You are stuck on the pin. From position 4 and position 2 you have a sideline right next to you - the shortest route out that exists.
• The defense is perfect. When every angle is covered, the ball off the block is often the only gap left.

What you do not do is make the wipe your default. A blocker who notices that you always go for the outside hand will pull that hand in and turn it, and then the ball rebounds neatly into the court. The weapon works because it is one of three choices.

The technique: contact on the side of the ball

The approach, the jump and the arm swing stay exactly the same as on a normal swing. The difference is in the last tenth of a second:

1. Look at the hands, not at the court. During your jump, find the outside hand of the blocker - that is your target.
2. Contact the inside of the ball. From position 4 that means your hand catches the right side of the ball (right-handers) and sweeps left, toward the sideline. You are steering the ball sideways.
3. Hit up and out, not down. This is the counterintuitive part. Aim for the top of the blocker's hands or just above them, on a flat or slightly rising path. Hit down into the hands and the ball rebounds straight down into your own court.
4. Let the wrist turn with it. The hand rolls around the side of the ball and steers it out - the same move as on a sharp cross-court, but more extreme.

The biggest beginner mistake is hitting too softly. A wipe needs speed: the ball has to rebound far enough to clear the sideline behind the blocker. Laying it gently against the hands produces an easy ball that the block simply pushes back down.

The rules to watch

Three things are worth knowing. First: a block touch does not count as a team contact, so after your wipe the opponent still has three touches - they have every right to chase the ball down, and they regularly do. Second: a ball that hits the antenna is immediately out, and the point is yours as soon as it came off their hands. Third, the ordinary net rule applies: your hand may follow through over the net, but you may not touch the net. All the nuances are in the net-fault rules.

There are gray areas too: if your ball touches the block and then goes out, the referee looks at who touched it last. Which is exactly why a wipe with speed beats a soft one - nobody can doubt the touch.

How to train it

1. Static block on a box: put a player on a box at the net with their hands in a fixed position and instructions not to move them. The hitter attacks a tossed ball deliberately into the outside hand.
2. Target on the hand: stick a piece of colored tape on the thumb of the outside blocking hand. The point only counts if the ball hits that side.
3. Tight set with a rule: the coach deliberately tosses balls fifty centimeters off the net. Only two solutions are allowed: a wipe or an off-speed shot, never a full swing.
4. In the rally: a game format where a wipe counts double, so hitters start looking for it instead of avoiding it.

Then measure honestly whether it pays. A wipe counts as a kill in Koach's per-player attack stats, so hitters can see that the smart point pays off just as much as the hard one - an insight that convinces attackers to pick the clever ball surprisingly fast. What every category means is in point types.

The flip side: what the block does back

Good blockers know all this too. They turn the outside hand in, or set it slightly outside the ball, so a wipe attempt rebounds into the court instead. Once you recognize that, the counter is simple: go back to swinging through the seam or over the top, because a turned-in hand covers less surface. It is a cat-and-mouse game, and the hitter who genuinely owns two options wins it. How the block thinks on the other side of the net is in blocking in volleyball.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Poke, tip and roll shot: scoring smart without a hard spike Blocking in volleyball: footwork, timing and hands How do you learn to spike a volleyball? The technique in 5 steps