The jump float serve: more pressure, less risk

Between the standing float and the jump serve sits a serve that is played more than any other at every level above recreational, and that most club coaches never do anything with. That is because it looks like a jump serve: players assume they have to be able to hit hard before they are allowed to jump. It is exactly the other way round — you specifically don't have to hit hard, and that is where its return comes from.

What changes when you hit a float in the air

Nothing changes about the contact itself. A jump float is still a ball you strike in the middle with a stiff wrist, an open hand and a short follow-through, so that it picks up no rotation. Why a ball without rotation dances unpredictably, and how to train that quiet contact, is set out in the float serve.

What does change is four things, and they hang together:

• The toss doesn't go higher, but further forward.
• The approach is one or two steps, where a jump serve asks for three.
• The contact height gains forty to sixty centimetres; the trajectory becomes flatter.
• The timing becomes the hardest part, because now both the ball and your body are moving.

Don't confuse it with the jump topspin. There everything revolves around a full arm swing with aggressive wrist action and a long approach; that route is covered in the jump serve. With the jump float the jump isn't a power source but height: you jump to make contact higher, not to hit harder. Players who don't grasp that difference will have wrecked it within two weeks.

The risk maths nobody does

Coaches pick a serve type on instinct: he can hit hard, so jump serve. The question you should be asking is how many points a turn at the service line yields on balance. That sum can be made and needs three numbers per player:

1. How many serves go wrong — into the net, out, or past the antenna.
2. How many break the pass, meaning they arrive in a way that stops the opponent playing with all their hitters.
3. How many simply arrive, after which the opponent sets up their normal attack.

A set that ends 25-20 consists of forty-five rallies, split between two serving teams — you serve roughly twenty to twenty-five of them yourself. Twenty service turns is therefore a usable unit of calculation: about one set. The figures below are round examples to show the shape of the sum; replace them with what your players actually produce.

• Standing float: 1 error, 4 broken passes, 15 ordinary serves.
• Jump float: 2 errors, 7 broken passes, 11 ordinary serves.
• Jump topspin: 5 errors, 9 broken passes, 6 ordinary serves.

Then the conversion into points. Assume you win the rally six times out of ten after a broken pass, three times out of ten after an ordinary serve — because then the opponent is up with their whole attack — and zero out of ten after an error. Per set that gives:

• Standing float: 4 × 0.6 + 15 × 0.3 = 2.4 + 4.5 = 6.9 points.
• Jump float: 7 × 0.6 + 11 × 0.3 = 4.2 + 3.3 = 7.5 points.
• Jump topspin: 9 × 0.6 + 6 × 0.3 = 5.4 + 1.8 = 7.2 points.

Three things stand out. The jump float beats both of its neighbours, but not by much. The jump topspin breaks the most passes and still yields less, because five points given away per set weigh heavily. And the difference between the jump float and the jump serve sits entirely in that one number: put the jump serve's error load at four instead of five and they come out level.

That last point is exactly why you should do this sum with your own figures and not mine. Anyone who notes per match how many serves a player gives away and how many produce an ace or a broken pass — on a scrap of paper, or in Koach's points screen — has three real numbers per player after four matches. See serving statistics and aces.

The toss: further forward, not higher

This is where it goes wrong for almost everyone, because players copy the toss from the jump serve. There you toss two to three metres high and a metre into the court, because you have to be able to take three steps. With a jump float you don't have that approach, so you don't need that height either — and height is your enemy here: the higher the ball goes, the faster it is falling at the moment you want to hit it, and the smaller your contact window becomes.

Concretely: toss sixty to eighty centimetres high — slightly higher than the thirty to forty of the standing float — and half a metre to a metre out in front of you. That distance forward is the gain: the ball then hangs where you can hit it at your highest point after one step, without reaching.

• Toss with two hands. They impart less spin than one. Release the ball, don't push it away.
• Work from a fixed starting point. Front foot on a mark, the same spot every time. If the toss varies, your whole approach varies with it.
• Check the rotation. Watch the logo as the ball goes up. If it is already turning on the toss, the serve failed before you touched it.

How to make a toss boring and repeatable is in the toss on the serve.

The approach: one step is usually enough

The approach serves one purpose: getting under the ball in time with enough speed to take off two-footed. Two variants will do, described here for right-handers — left-handers mirror everything.

1. One step. Left foot slightly forward, ball in two hands. Toss, let the ball drop for a beat, take a step with the right and close with the left into a two-footed take-off. This is where you start, and where plenty of players stay.
2. Two steps. Feet level. Toss, step left, then right, and close with the left. You gain a few centimetres of height and some tempo — and you give up timing.

The take-off is two-footed and goes straight up, not forward. Anyone aiming the jump into the court loses height precisely when he needs it, and lands over the end line as well. Landing in the court is allowed, touching the line on take-off is not — see the foot fault on the serve. Twenty to thirty centimetres of jump is enough: jumping higher gains you nothing, because you can't hit the ball above where it hangs anyway.

Contact at the highest point — this is where everyone stumbles

With a standing float you stand still and only the ball moves. With a jump float you and the ball are both moving, and that makes the contact window small. On top of that, bad timing can't be repaired: on a topspin serve you can still rescue a poor moment with your wrist, but on a float that wrist has to stay stiff. There is no emergency brake.

What you are after: making contact while you are still just rising or exactly at your peak, with the hitting arm almost straight. Almost — a fully straight arm forces you to reach, and anyone who reaches hits the ball off-centre. That produces side spin, and a float with side spin always drifts the same way. A passer reads that within two serves.

The three errors you will see in this phase, and where they come from:

• The ball goes into the net. Contact too late, on the way down, so you hit slightly downwards. By far the most common error. Fix: set off earlier, don't hit harder.
• The ball goes long. Contact too early, while you were still low, so you hit upwards. Fix: keep the toss half a metre closer to you.
• The ball spins. The follow-through has crept back in because the player still wants to put force into it in the air. If the logo stays readable, the contact was clean.

One exercise solves this faster than any instruction: have the player serve ten times and say "early", "good" or "late" out loud after each ball before he sees where it lands. After three sets that judgement is accurate, and from then on he corrects himself.

The flatter trajectory: the passer gets less reading time

This is what the whole serve is about. A player of around 1.80 metres hits a standing float at roughly 2.20 to 2.30 metres; jump thirty to fifty centimetres and he makes contact at 2.60 to 2.80 metres. For seniors the net is at 2.43 metres for men and 2.24 metres for women; in youth volleyball the height differs per age category and per federation, so check it there. The point stays the same: you go from hitting below the top of the net to hitting above it. Four consequences the passer feels immediately:

• You don't have to hit the ball upwards. From a lower contact point every serve has to arc to get over the net; from above the net tape it can go over more or less horizontally.
• The flight time gets shorter. A ball that arcs to eight metres deep is noticeably longer in the air than the same ball travelling flat. It is precisely in those tenths that a passer decides where to stand.
• Short and deep look alike. On an arcing serve the passer reads from the height within three metres where the ball will land. On a flat trajectory, short and deep look identical for the first few metres.
• The float falls in a shorter window. The ball doesn't drift any more than on a standing float, but the passer has less time to react. That is why a jump float breaks more passes without being any harder.

What happens on the other side of the net is in passing a float serve. The higher contact position also gives you placement: the deep corners and the seam between two passers are now reachable without an arc, so you can choose where to put it instead of being glad it went over — see serving tactics. The price is a smaller margin above the net tape, and that is exactly why the extra errors nearly all fall in the net and not behind the line.

From standing float to jump float: five phases

Treat this as a project of weeks, not of one practice. The gate for it is hard: eight out of ten standing floats in from the end line. If a player can't manage that, jumping mainly teaches him bad habits.

1. Tossing only (one to two practices). A mark on the floor, half a metre to a metre in front of the starting foot. Ten tosses per practice, without hitting; the ball has to land on that mark every time.
2. From the three-metre line (two to three practices). One step, half power, over the net. One question per ball: did I make contact at my highest point and did the logo stay readable? No targets, no counting.
3. Back to the end line (three to six practices). One step, full tempo but not full power. Gate: eight out of ten in. If it drops below that, go back to the three-metre line for a practice.
4. Two steps (optional). Only if phase 3 has held for two weeks. Plenty of players never need to get here: the second step gains a few centimetres and costs timing.
5. Targets and consequence. Mats in the deep corners, and serving runs against a receiving trio that judges every ball.

Volume: ten to fifteen focused serves per practice, at the start of the session while the legs are fresh. At two practices a week, count on six to ten weeks before phase 3 is match-ready — and on a dip of three to four weeks in which the percentage is lower than with the standing float. Announce that dip in advance, otherwise the player quits in week two, exactly when it is starting to work.

When not to choose it

The jump float is not an upgrade everyone should get. Five situations where you leave it:

• The standing float isn't there yet. Below eight out of ten, jumping is a waste of time: you stack difficult timing on top of unreliable contact.
• The toss isn't stable. Someone who doesn't have his toss under control won't solve it by jumping — he magnifies the problem.
• On the decisive points, as long as the return is unproven. Give a decision rule the player can apply himself: jump float at three points' difference or more, standing float from 22-22. If the error load stays under two per set for four matches, you drop that rule.
• For the placement server. Anyone who gets his points by putting the ball exactly on the weakest passer gives up accuracy by jumping. For him precision is the gain, not pressure.
• During a growth spurt. Coordination drops away anyway then, and learning new timing takes twice as long. Wait until the body cooperates again.

For youth players, the criterion is not age but a stable overhand serve from the full end line — in practice often around thirteen or fourteen, with big differences between players.

Load: lighter than a jump serve, but not zero

Physically a jump float is a modest jump: you jump low, you don't swing through fully and there is no whip through the shoulder. Compared with the jump topspin, a full spike on every serve, that makes a considerable difference — and it is one reason players can keep a jump float going for a whole season.

Zero it is not. Fifteen serves per practice are fifteen extra take-offs and landings, on top of your hitting work and your blocking. Count them in the week's jump load, certainly with youth players; the build-up rules are in injury prevention. Land on two feet, through the knees.

Frequently asked questions