Volleyball Adult Clinic - Bump and Downball

A killer clinic today. The clinic continues to grow with a larger group and new people.

The focus for today was endurance and interval while working on passing, downball and hitting drills.

15 minutes warmup - following the same warmup as session #1 with the following modifications: (1) Add side-to-side action on the squats to work the hips flexors. (2) Add side lunge press, static feet, touch the floor on one side and then twist to the other side with arms high and back. This combination works legs and core which are very important for any volleyball warmup.

5 minutes stretch- same as session #1

20 minutes - Conditioning

• Line runs
• Back-and-go - Pair drill, one ball, run back to half court, run forward and bump the ball after one bounce.
• Cross court: Frog jump, One leg jump, Lunges in passing position (yoga style), One leg jump (other leg), broad Jump – cross, frog jump

Surprisingly, but not unexpected, about half of the group broke down by doubling up the reps on the above sequence.

90 minutes - Skill Development

Bumping concepts

• Mistakes – jumping or squatting when contacting the ball, bending back or standing up, swinging arms.
• Be in athletic or ready position; knees bent, arm on knees, shoulder hunched
• Learn to disassociate the back from the arms. Arms move about 10 degrees. Arm swing controls the height of the bump.
• Legs are squared to the target. Place legs in a mini-lunge, slide forward in your lunge and down over your front knee. This movement controls how far forward the ball will move.
• When ball is 30 feet away (1.5 sec rule) from you, then arms are locked.
• Perfect pass: ball to the target with backspin.

2-person bump pepper drill

Run to the wall and back bump drill

 Shuffle around the cones passing drill

Two-person pit (laying down) 15-double touches

Downball concept

• A down ball is a swing or hit you take while your feet on the ground. It is usually the third hit in a broken play, when the pass wasn’t good and/or setter is unable to set properly.
• Downball is not a serving swing, but rather a hard driven topspin hit. It’s best executed when you aim cross court to use the most court length.
• Emphasize swinging both arms high, shoulder high and snap on top of the ball.

Downball progression drill - toss to self, toss to partner, hit to partner, hit over the net.

Killer hitting drill - setter sets outside, hitter hits, then block on the other side of the court, then move back to defend middle back and finally comes back to hit.

Progressive triples or king of the court doubles

Scrimmage

Would have liked to run but did not have time…

Burn the hitter, other ball control from pervious session (i.e. 3 person pepper)