3 on 3, No Touch You're Out

 I have to give full credit to Amy Jones for this drill. She created it  when I was about ten,  playing with my best friend who is now a DI volleyball player. She, by the way, was the best at the drill the first time we tried it.

The goal of the drill is simple: be aggressive.

Start with three players on each side of the court with a line of players off the side of the court by the net waiting to go in. The game is full court because we are aiming for training pursuit and aggressiveness. The coach has a ball cart next to her and is standing by one of the poles and chooses a side to toss the ball to. Alternating is the best option to promote fairness. The players then play until the ball is dead.

Once the ball is dead, any players who did not touch the ball during the volley are eliminated and have to get in the end of the line. The players waiting fill in the now empty spots. One little rule, if the ball never comes to your side of the net, you won’t be eliminated.

It’s simple and it goes quickly as long as you prompt the players going on the court to quickly get to their spots. A ball thrown quickly after a dead ball helps with that.

An advancement to this drill is No Touch, No Talk You’re Out. Even if a player touches the ball, and it doesn’t have to be a legal touch, if they don’t call the ball loud enough for the coach to hear, they are eliminated. They only have to do this once during the volley. Most of the time, players can be held accountable for whether or not they touched the ball, however most of them are unaware of how quiet they are being so the coach does have to track this.

This advancement can result in more turnover in the players on the court which mixes teams up more often. As a coach you get to quickly see how players interact with one another and you also get to see which players hate getting kicked off the court. You will quickly find one player who will do everything to be the first one to touch the ball on their side of the court.

For younger teams, this can be more beneficial for warm ups than hitting lines. Serving is always important for warm ups but would you rather have a drill that gets your players moving or one where they might use it once or twice in the game?

Update: I have been informed that though the dog might disagree, a coach is not a couch. A very large thank you to Coach Amy for catching the typo.