Volleyball Drills Without a Net: Training in a Bare Gym
A school that will not lend out the posts, a back-up venue with no fittings, a hall where the nets are locked away: every season you end up in an empty gym a few times. That does not have to be a lost evening.
What you can still train without a net
Volleyball without a net sounds like volleyball without a ball, but it is not that bad. In most drills the net does only two things: it forces a height and it separates two sides. Everything underneath that — ball control, footwork, movement, approach timing, communication, defensive posture — carries on exactly as before. In fact, a few elements get more attention without a net, simply because players are not distracted by the job of getting the ball across.
The parts you have to let go are limited: blocking, hitting above net height, and anything to do with net faults or the back-row attack rule. For the rest, a bare gym is mostly an excuse to do the things you never normally make time for.
Replace the net, not the drill
Before you tear up your plan: check whether you can improvise a net. Usually you can.
- Rope or tape between two basketball posts or between two heavy goals. Strung at 2.20 meters it does exactly what a net does for passing and game formats.
- Two benches turned on their side down the middle of the court as a visual divider. No height, but two sides.
- Tape on the wall at net height, for anything played against a wall — see wall drills.
- A line on the floor nobody may cross. Enough for game formats where the ball has to travel over an imaginary boundary.
Six drills for a gym without a net
1. Platform control in pairs (10 min). Three meters apart, one ball, forearm passing back and forth. Phase 1 standing still, phase 2 with a compulsory sidestep before every contact, phase 3 with a half turn between two contacts. Scoring: sets of ten clean; on an error the set restarts.
2. Setting at a wall on height (10 min). Tape at four meters; the player sets ten balls above the tape and catches each one. Phase 2: no catching, keep it going. Scoring: longest set of the evening. The technique in overhand setting is the starting point here.
3. Defensive carousel (12 min). Threes: one thrower, one defender, one catcher. The thrower hits or throws hard left, right and short; the defender digs to the catcher. Fifteen balls, then rotate. Trains precisely what digging drills are built around, and needs no net at all.
4. Approach and jump without a ball (10 min). Three-step rhythm along a line, ten times, with attention on the arm swing and the last two quick steps. Then ten more with a tossed ball caught in the air at the highest point. Without a net you can correct this far more calmly than usual.
5. Serving over an imaginary line (12 min). Two groups serve to each other from either end; the ball has to travel at least four meters high over the center line. Scoring: in the court is a point, too flat is nothing. The height requirement replaces the net.
6. Four on four over the center line (20 min). Three contacts compulsory, the ball has to be played above the imaginary net, attacking only with a tip or an underhand swing. A surprisingly good game format: because the hard swing disappears, the rallies get long and the game becomes about placement.
What not to try
Do not improvise hitting practice under a low rope. Players adjust their swing to the fake height and carry that adjustment into the next session — exactly the habit that is hard to remove later. The same goes for blocking: without a net there is no band to reach over, so what you mostly train is a wrong sense of distance. Leave those two out and double the time you give to defence and ball control instead.
Planning the evening ahead
No-net evenings rarely arrive out of nowhere: you usually know a week ahead that you are in the school gym. So build one complete plan once — warm-up, two technical blocks, one game format — and keep it. Next time you load it and only adjust the emphasis. How to store and reuse a fixed plan like that is in reusing practice plans as templates.
Announce it as a choice, not as bad luck. "No net tonight, so we are doing the stuff we never normally do" produces a different evening from "sorry, no net". The second sentence gives your team permission to check out.
Frequently asked questions
Can you run a full session without a net?
For passing, setting, defence, footwork and conditioning, absolutely. Only blocking and hitting above net height drop out, so schedule a no-net evening in a week where those two have already been covered.
Is a rope at net height a good alternative?
For passing and game formats it is fine, for hitting practice it is not. A rope gives no net band and therefore no real sense of distance; players adjust their swing to it and carry that adjustment into the next session.
How much space do you need for these drills?
Half a gym is enough for the first five. Only the game format needs a court length; if you do not have one, play three on three on a quarter court with the same rules.
