Hitting in pairs

Hitting warm-up without a net: the ball travels to your partner off the floor, and the partner digs it and hits it back. The hitting arm builds up that way without anyone going full power straight away, and the receiver gets real defensive balls instead of tosses.

2 players 6 phases ± 12 min 1 ball per pair, the full length of the court From U15 upwards, once players hit overhand

Phase 1 of 6Pair facing each other; the left player has the ball

Pairs facing each other 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

Arm swing build-up: hit the ball off the floor to your partner; the partner digs and hits back, two rounds.

Building the arm swing from loose to full, instead of going full power cold.
Hitting the ball from high down to low: the same angle as on a spike.
Digging a hard, bouncing ball: staying low and keeping it up.

Coaching points

A full arm swing, even at half power.

Players who want to hit softly shorten their movement into a shove. Then you train a swing that does not exist in a match, and the shoulder gets used to the wrong pattern.

Contact the ball above your head, not in front of your chest.

The contact point decides whether the ball can go down. Anyone who hits it too low automatically hits flat, and later in the gym that is exactly the ball that ends up hanging in the net.

The defender keeps the arms away from the body.

Reacting to a ball that has just bounced only works with a platform out in front of you. Arms against your stomach leave no room to adjust.

Three rounds: loose, half, full.

The shoulder needs a few minutes before it can take load. Going full power right away in the hitting warm-up is the most common cause of shoulder pain later in the same session.

Variations

Easier: Throw instead of hit, two-handed from above the head down into the floor. Reduce the distance to six meters.
Harder: Two steps sideways after every hit, so the partner never has to defend the same spot. Or the defender has to take their own ball overhand.
With three players: One hitter and two defenders side by side. The hitter picks the side, the defenders call who takes it.
As a game: Count the hits in a row without the ball becoming unreachable. A ball the partner cannot get to breaks the streak, so hitting too wildly costs the hitter points.

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: learning to spike in five steps · the three-step rhythm of the approach · training in a gym without a net