Pepper by pair

Six pairs, six balls, the whole gym in use. With a full group, how you put the pairs together matters more than technique: two players of the same level keep a rally going for minutes, a mismatched pair mostly picks balls up off the floor.

12 players 5 phases ± 10 min 6 balls, the full width of the gym From U15 upwards

Phase 1 of 5Six pairs ready, one ball per pair

Twelve players in six pairs; every pair plays its own ball 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

Six pairs play pepper: pass, set and a controlled attack at each other to train ball control.

Controlling the attack: hard enough that it has to be dug, soft enough that it can be.
All three contacts inside one pair: dig, set and hit.
Sustaining a long rally without the quality falling away.

Coaching points

Hit at your partner's knees, not next to him.

In pepper, an attack that cannot be dug is the hitter's mistake. The point of the drill is the rally, not the kill.

Put the pairs together by level, not by friendship.

A mismatched pair trains nothing: the strong player puts the ball away and the weaker one goes to fetch it.

Take half a step sideways when the ball comes straight at you.

Balls straight at the body are the most common reason a pepper rally dies. Step aside and you turn it into an ordinary dig after all.

Set a minimum number for the last two minutes.

Without a target, pepper always drifts. Twenty contacts in a row as an assignment holds the intensity right to the end.

Variations

Easier: Drop the attack and just play pass and set back and forth.
Harder: Every third ball has to be a tip instead of a swing, so the defender has to move forward as well.
With six players: Three pairs on one half of the court, so you can take them all in with a single look.
As a game: Every pair counts its longest streak in five minutes. A streak only counts if there was an attack in every cycle.

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: posture, position and diving technique · the tip, the poke and the roll shot · scaling drills to fit the group