Serve & Receive Drill: Master Your Volleyball Serve + Serve-Receive
Posted on: 10/20/24
Last Updated: 10/20/24
Author: Thalia A. U.
Serve & Recieve Drill
As we have talked about in previous blog posts, there are 4-5 main parts of volleyball which include:
Serve
Passing
Setting
Hitting
Blocking
In this drill I like to call “Serve & Receive” because you get to work on two of the five major points of volleyball which are Serving, and Passing (specifically serve receive passing for this drill).
In this blog post you will learn:
How to set up for the drill
How to run the drill
Additional element to add intensity + competitiveness for higher level teams
So let’s hop right into the description of this drill!
How To Set up for the Serve & Receive drill
Set up for S&R drill:
6 Players on one side of the net
3-4 players serving on opposite side of net, behind serving line
You want to reiterate to your team that although these 3-4 players are starting the drill at the beginning, you intend to have everyone switch places throughout the drill to ensure the entire team serves AND serve-receive passes at some point.
Of course, you could adjust this to best fit your team or coaching style. If you have players who are serving specialists and want them to be the only servers during the drill… do what you please! For my program, I want my athletes to be well-rounded, so I push them to serve and serve-receive pass no matter how confident or consistent they are in both areas.
How to run the Serve & Receive drill
To start the drill, you will ask the 3-4 serves to decide who will go first, second, and so on to ensure the efficiency of the drill. Then, you will have your 6 players get “down and ready”, meaning they are low, on their toes, and arms are out to show they are ready to serve-receive pass.
As the drill starts you will watch how your 6 players passing are doing by:
Are they moving their feet to the ball?
Is their platform in the right zone when passing? (not too low, not too high, and no opening body/unnecessary swinging)
How early are they reading the ball? Are they reading + moving to the ball too late?
Etc!
As the drill continues you will also be watching your 3-4 servers & making sure you ask yourself…:
Is their toss consistent? (Not too high/low, too far in front/behind them, height, etc)
Is their contact point on the ball in the correct zone?
Is their serving arm high during their toss?
Etc!
Adding intensity to Serve & Receive Drill for Experienced Teams
After running this drill for 10 minutes, more experienced teams may want to add a competitive aspect.
You can do this by asking everyone to “freeze” (So they don’t move from their current spots while you speak). You’ll then give them a numerical goal to meet by a certain time frame.
For example, I would say: “In the next 5 minutes, I want you guys to give me 10 perfect (3 ball) passes to the setter. If we do not meet our goal, we will go 1 minute wall sits”
Adding a numerical and timed goal to any sports drill will add that extra intensity for any team, but this also helps you as a coach since you will be yelling out “1, 2, 3” etc when you see those perfect, 3-ball passes. This lets your athletes notice what makes a 3-ball perfect pass, and possibly adjusts their next SR pass.
Remember to not be “too nice” when rating their passes. Of course, be mindful of your team’s developmental level, but don’t give 3-ball perfect passes to everyone to be nice… this is meant to push them to perform more consistently!
Instead of being “too nice”, you can just adjust the numerical goal, or time frame allotted for them to complete the goal. An example could be doing 5 perfect passes in 10 minutes instead of 10 perfect passes in 5, etc.
In conclusion…
This is a drill that works on the two main points of volleyball. In my coaching opinion, serving and serve receive passing wins teams games. A consistent serve, as well as a consistent serve receive team is more times than not un-stoppable on the volleyball court… and that doesn’t even include setting, hitting, and blocking yet!
If you wonder how to rank passes statistically for this drill, check out a previous blog post that details how to do that exactly!
Hope to see you in a future blog post!
-Coach T