Dead fish

Serving here is not a line of players hitting ball after ball, but a game between the two sides of the net. Miss a serve and you drop to the floor, where you stay until someone lays a catchable ball down right next to you — and freeing a teammate takes more accuracy than the serve itself. The drill keeps running without you having to step in.

4 players 7 phases ± 15 min 4 balls, full court with net From U13 upwards; also works as a finisher with older teams

Phase 1 of 7Both sides serve in turn; the balls are ready on the left

Team on one side of the net Team on the other side 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

Both sides serve at the same time; whoever misses becomes a 'fish' and has to be freed with a catchable serve.

Serving at a target lying on the floor instead of at a zone.
Learning to hit two kinds of serve: one to put on pressure and one to free a teammate.
Playing on after a miss without the drill grinding to a halt.

Coaching points

Serve the catch ball high and soft, but keep it overhand.

A player who switches to an underhand serve to free someone is no longer practicing the serve at all. The same motion with a higher toss and a shorter swing keeps it overhand and still catchable.

The fish sits still and puts both hands up.

A fish that crawls toward the ball makes itself a bigger target and makes the rescue worthless. Sitting still with the arms up gives the server one clear point to aim at.

Look at where the fish are before you toss.

Two jobs run side by side here: putting on pressure and freeing teammates. A server who never weighs them up hits the same ball every time and has half the team on the floor within two minutes.

A freed player walks back to the end line first.

Serving from the spot where he was sitting is a foot fault, and it also robs him of getting used to the real distance.

Variations

Easier: A fish may get up on its own after a count of ten, even without a catch ball. Shrink the playing area to the zone in front of the three-meter line, so the fish end up closer together.
Harder: A fish is only freed if it can catch the ball without moving. Anyone who has to reach or shuffle stays down.
With eight players: Four against four with two balls per side. Someone is on the floor much sooner, so the choice between pressure and rescue comes back on every ball.
As a game: The side that is completely down as fish first loses. Start again straight away, with the losers serving first.

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 young players ask for · what to change when the serve does not clear the net · drills without a waiting line