Volleyball drills · Match play · Passing

Side-out per rotation

The Wash Table walks you through all six rotations: the receiving team gets a serve in rotation 1, plays the side-out all the way out and then rotates on to rotation 2. After half an hour you know exactly which rotation your team loses the ball in — and it is almost never the rotation the coach picked out beforehand.

7 players 6 phases ± 25 min 8 balls, full court, paper and pen to tally each rotation From U19 upwards, with a set lineup

Phase 1 of 6Rotation 1 is in serve receive; B serves from behind the end line

Receiving team (P = passer, M = middle, S = setter, L = libero) Servers 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

Wash table: serve on rotation 1, play the side-out all the way out and then rotate on to rotation 2.

Getting a side-out out of every rotation, including the two you rarely see in a match.
Agreeing the serve-receive split again the moment the formation shifts.
Measuring instead of guessing: tracking how many side-outs land in each rotation.

Coaching points

Two balls per rotation, then rotate — even after an error.

The drill only works if every rotation gets the same number of chances. Stay stuck on the rotation that is not working and you can no longer compare the numbers afterwards.

Tally every rotation: made it or not.

Two rounds of six rotations give you a table you can build the rest of the training week on. Without it on paper, nobody remembers which rotation was actually the problem.

The libero says how much court he is taking before the serve.

His range changes with every rotation, because he is standing next to a different passer each time. Leave that unspoken and the ball keeps dropping in the same seam.

The servers serve to an agreed zone, not just anywhere in.

A soft serve makes every rotation look fine and hides exactly the problem you are hunting for. Have them aim at the same spot in every rotation and the comparison is fair.

Variations

Easier: Serve from the three-meter line and allow the attack to be a free ball. Now it is about the pass and the build-up, not about the kill.
Harder: The side-out only counts if it comes off the first attack. If the rally continues, the point goes to the servers.
With nine players: Six in serve receive, three servers who take turns serving and keep the tally sheet at the same time. After a full round the roles switch.
As a game: The receiving team scores for every side-out they get, the servers for every side-out they break. Two rounds of six rotations, highest total wins.

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: calculating side-out percentage · reading points lost per rotation · serve receive with three, four or five players