6 Ways to Improve Your Practices Today

By John Forman

Most of us only have a limited amount of practice time with our teams. That means we need to get the
absolute most out of that time we can. Here are six things you can do to make your practices as efficient
and effective as possible.

Set your priority

Every time you bring your team together you should have at least one main priority in mind. That is the
thing you most want to get out of the session. What we are mainly thinking about here is practice, but
this idea applies to any time you have the team together in a learning situation – team meeting, video
session, etc. And it applies to individual or small groups sessions just as much as to full team training.

For example, maybe it is the first day of pre-season and you want the players to get lots of touches to
shake off the rust and get the players introduced to each other on the court. Or you have a match
coming up and you want to prepare for your opponent. Maybe there’s a certain aspect of the game you
want to work on, like out-of-system offense. Perhaps it is teaching your youngsters how to serve. It
could be anything. The key is knowing exactly what it is.

And it could be more than one thing. If you work with new players, for example, you might want to do a
bit of everything. If you are working with an established team, though, you will probably only want at
most a couple of focal points for any given practice. More than that and you risk not giving enough real
attention to anything. Generally, the more focused the practice, the more you will get out of it.

Keep in mind that each drill or game you include in your practice can have its own focus. That focus,
though, should contribute to the overall priority for the session.

Identifying and defining your priorities is something that is an ongoing process. In fact, I think that is one
of the main jobs of a head coach. Do not be the coach who just throws a bunch of cool drills together
and calls it a plan. That coach does not prepare their team for the next match or further their
development as effectively as they could. You should always think in terms of planning your practice
based on your priorities.
Start with the end in mind
What do you want the team doing at the end of practice? Oftentimes it is some sort of game that
incorporates the session’s main theme. For example, if your priority for the practice is serve receive
offense, you would probably finish with a game that features a lot of rallies that start with a serve. The
idea of knowing where you want to end up is that it gives you a destination for your practice planning.

Once you have that final exercise in mind, the question then becomes how you progress your players
toward that destination. Holding to the serve receive offense example, thinking of the different
elements involved. Service reception is one that jumps out. You might want to work on hitting and/or
setting in some fashion. Maybe you want to do some rotation-specific work. The point is to use drills and
games which work on the components of your overall focus, building toward your final exercise.

And do not forget that you can use this build-up idea throughout the whole of your practice, with each
activity building on the last.

Make good use of “warm-up” time

One of the first posts I wrote for the blog focused on how much time was potentially wasted by bad
warm-ups. Let us think about the purpose of your warm-up. It is to prepare the players physically and
mentally for what is to come. There are lots of things you can do from that perspective. Just about any
lower intensity activity will serve to warm-up the muscles and loosen the joints. And young kids really do
not even need that.

Since there are so many options from a physical perspective to warm-up, it makes sense to focus on the
other side of the preparation equation. That is setting the players up for what you plan to have them do
during practice. There are lots of pepper variations that help warm-up the body and work on ball-control
skills. There are volley tennis games like this one, that get players moving, reading, communicating, and
competing. A simple partner serving progression where they start at the 3m line and steadily move back
is a good way to both work on serving technique and loosen up the shoulder.

My point here is that you should not just think about the physical side of things. You should also think
about what you want to accomplish that day and what you can do for a warm-up that starts moving the
players in that direction. This is all part of what I talked about above in terms of thinking first about the
end point. Use the warm-up to start moving the team along the path to that destination.

Make things as game-like as possible

If you are not familiar with the motor learning principle of specificity, I strongly encourage you to do
some research on the subject. It is a very simple idea, but one that is often overlooked. If we want our
players to be good at executing a skill in a game situation we should train them in a game-like fashion. I
wrote about these concepts in the post Going beyond maximizing player contacts.

Now, if you are at the very beginning of the learning process for a player, it is fine to think in what we
refer to as more “block” training ideas. Those are simple repetitions of a skill where there is little in the
way of variability, such as passing a tossed ball. Even the motor learning science advocates this approach
when first teaching a skill so the athlete can develop an understanding of the required mechanics. The
recommendation, though, is to quickly move to more game-like (random) training once the concepts are
grasped. By that I mean doing something like 10-12 repetitions to set the desired pattern, then
progressing.

So how do you make drills more game-like? This is something I wrote about here. There are a couple
ways to do it. The obvious one is to train the skill in some form of actual game. There are ways you can
set up games that really put the focus on a particular element.

In terms of drills, you can add something before the skill and/or after it. For example, if you want to
work on middle hitting, you could have your middle hitter block first, then transition before they attack.
That is much more game-like than just going from a standing start, especially if you include a passed or
dug ball in there.

Similarly, putting passers next to each other in serve reception is more realistic and game-like than
having just a single passer. And if that passer is also a hitter, making them attack the ball after passing is
even better.

The great thing about making things very game-like is that it often lets you work on multiple things at
the same time. Think about something as simple as hitting against a block. In one activity you have
hitters working on their attacking and blockers working on the blocking. You probably also have a setter
working on setting, and perhaps some other ball-handling work as well.

Get your ball circulation right

There’s not much more frustrating during a practice than having to stop a drill or game in the middle of
things because you ran out of balls or because a ball rolled into a dangerous area. When this happens it
is usually a break down in ball circulation. By that I mean balls are not collected and put where they
need to go, like a ball cart or a player feeding the coach. This is something important to think about
when you plan your practice, especially if you want to do something at a quick tempo. Also, when you
don’t have very many balls or are in a confined space.

I can give you an example from my own experience. When I coached the Exeter University teams in
England our main training gym was quite small – not much larger than the court itself. That meant balls
could very easily bounce or roll back into the playing area. We also did not have many balls. I had to
keep both things in mind as I planned sessions so we could avoid constant interruptions.

That said, sometimes you want a break. For example, you do not want to overly tire your hitters, so you
want them to have a break after a reasonable number of swings. You could make ball collection a kind of
natural break. In that case, you do not have on-going ball circulation, but rather wait for some period of
time, or until the ball cart is empty, then have the players retrieve the balls.

This may not seem like a big deal compared to the other things mentioned here, but it can make a real
difference in how much work you and your players get done.

Focus your feedback

This may be the most important recommendation of all, which is why I put it last.

I talked at the outset about having specific focus points for each drill or game. This is important when it
comes to feedback. Learning and development comes as the result of feedback. As such, it is vital for
you to make sure the players are getting concentrated feedback throughout the session.
When I say “concentrated” I mean specific to the training priority for that exercise. If, for example, the
focus in serve reception, but you’re doing a pass-to-attack type of drill, you must make sure the
feedback is all related to the passing. Don’t let yourself – or your players – be distracted by the hitting
part of it. That’s a really easy trap to fall into. We naturally want to fix mistakes when we see them, and
players often think the same way. Resist that urge!

Also, realize that feedback isn’t just what you say. It can come in different forms, including the simple
outcome of the exercise (e.g. a good pass). This is something I wrote about in Thinking more broadly
about feedback.

Final thoughts
There are lots of different things that go into good coaching. Planning good, effective practices is high on
that list. If you do not maximize every training opportunity, your team simply will not go as far as it
could. While planning a good session does require a fair bit of thought and consideration, it does not
need to be a complicated thing where you choose from lots of different games or drills. It can be a much
simpler process, especially if you follow my advice above and make things as game-like as you can.

You should also keep in mind that it is important to think about how you structure your practices in
terms keeping them coming back. This is especially true if you are working with newer players where fun
is really important for retention, though it applies to everyone. Here again, science can be very helpful.

Hopefully, this report – and the supporting material I have linked to - has given you some good ideas for
how you can improve your practices. I would love to hear your feedback. And I am always happy to
answer questions – on the material here or anything else. Just send me and email at
john@coachingvb.com.

About the author

John Forman is the author of the well-respected Coaching Volleyball blog
(CoachingVB.com). For the past two years he coached in the U.S. at Midwestern
State University, an NCAA Division II program. This follows a stint as head coach of
Svedala Volleybollklubb in Sweden's top women's league. Prior to that, John
coached in England at both the university (BUCS) and National League (NVL)
Division I levels. During that period, he also spent time as a visiting coach with a
pair of German Bundesliga team. John previously coached at NCAA Division I schools Brown University
and the University of Rhode Island, as well as then NJCAA member Dean College. He was also a Juniors
club director and coach in the New England area for several years.

An oft-published author, John has multiple books and literally dozens of articles across multiple fields to
his credit. In 2011 he published the book Inside College Volleyball, which focuses on US collegiate
recruiting for prospective players and their families. He is also the co-developer of the Volleyball
Coaching Wizards project, which involves interviewing great coaches from around the world and all
levels of play.

John is a member of the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA). He holds a CAP III certification
from USA Volleyball and a Level 3 coaching certification from Volleyball England, as well as a PhD from
the University of Exeter.