Amoeba serving

Miss your serve and you sit down in the court on the other side. From that moment you are the target: only when someone hits you with a serve may you stand up, take your ball and join the line again. So the aiming point is not a zone but a player you can call by name.

3 players 8 phases ± 15 min 6 balls, full court with net From U15 upwards

Phase 1 of 8a1 is ready with two balls; b1 and b2 sit in the court as amoebas

Servers Amoebas: players sitting on the floor inside the court Ball

This animation comes straight out of the Koach app. In the app you play it at your own pace and the positions carry your players' real names.

Open in the app

How the drill runs

What you are training

Serve and sit down where the ball lands; teammates hit you with a serve to set you free.

Serving at a point you can point to rather than at an area.
Holding on to your normal technique under mild social pressure.
Judging quickly which target is realistic and which is not.

Coaching points

Pick the amoeba sitting closest to your usual zone.

The temptation is to go for the hardest one, because that impresses. A server who first takes the target that suits his own serve has freed two players before anyone else has freed one.

The ball may bounce before it hits, but it has to stay inside the court.

Without that rule players simply hammer the ball through. Allowing the bounce rewards a placed serve, and placement is exactly what you want to train.

Stay low, even as the ball comes in.

An amoeba that jumps up to get hit makes itself bigger and ruins the measurement. Staying seated shows how accurate the serve really was.

A freed player walks to the end line first and only then joins the line.

Otherwise he serves from two meters inside the court and the ball does not count. The walk also gives him a moment of rest before his own next serve.

Variations

Easier: Amoebas may kneel with their arms up; a hit on the arms counts. Serving is allowed from the three-meter line.
Harder: Only a direct hit counts, not a ball that touches the floor first. And the amoeba may not move itself at all, not even by shuffling.
With four players: Two servers per side and a maximum of two amoebas at a time. If a third one would be added, that side is out and the round starts over.
As a game: Five minutes on the clock. The side with the fewest amoebas on the floor wins; if it is tied, one serve per player decides.

Volleyball drills

4 players · 6 phases SafeVolley base round Warm-up 3 players · 5 phases Shoulder activation with band Warm-up 2 players · 6 phases Dynamic movement patterns Warm-up 5 players · 5 phases Core plank with rotation Warm-up

Read on in the knowledge base: game formats that keep serving light · the overhand serve step by step · drills in which players need each other