Becoming familiar and the first approaches to volleyball

Becoming familiar with the net will be fundamentally important, since it is the barrier with the adversary’s court and line where the two teams meet. In order to favor the approach, the net should be lowered, to not worry the young people, who are above all occupied by the desire to hit the ball over it and often careless about techniques. This is the reason exercises that are easy to understand and execute must be used.

Becoming familiar with the court will aim at raising awareness of one’s own court and that of the adversary’s. For this purpose it will be useful to start with simple translocation exercises inside the court, to then move onto exercises with the ball that gradually require more and more precise execution. Ample space is left to the imagination for carrying out exercises alone or in pairs or with many people.

Finally, becoming familiar with the opposing team, in order to improve and adapt movements with the purpose of precisely controlling the ball’s trajectory, knowing how to exploit errors or uncovered areas. Precision exercises for hitting the ball, which, during the match, will enable directing the ball to certain areas or players.
Using exercises to encourage the best observation of the opposing team’s court will be propaedeutic in all phases of the game. These exercises will also include hitting then stopping the ball, which can be done as in the following:

- in free style (like a goalkeeper in soccer);
- with only hands, in a free style;
- with the limbs positioned to volley or to carry out a dig;
- with stop and pass to a teammate.

Obviously the exercise to be done will be chosen based on the ability and level of the students, who, in any case, will automatically tend to prefer the more complex ones as their skills improve.

Very useful exercises are those with two opponents in adversary courts, the dimensions of which are drawn in chalk. The purpose of this exercise is to improve precision in hitting the ball in a precise area but also to develop the ability to predict a ball that is going to go out of the court. The courts can therefore be both smaller and asymmetrical, more or less distant from the net, and finally, many students can be made to play at the same time. The last variant will stimulate the students to observe other areas of the court in order to avoid being hindered, but in order to further develop the ability to observe open areas, a single student can be placed to cover more areas. The availability of court areas must obviously be varied, in order to accustom the students to play in every area. Finally, more players will be placed to defend the same area of the court, in order to develop the coordination skills needed to receive the ball.

The complexity of the situations proposed so far are by now one step away from the first game simulations and, speaking of games, it will be opportune to play some, when the main volleyball skills have been mechanized, in order to introduce them into a more game-like area that can relax the students and at the same time develop their coordination and conditional skills.