I had the pleasure of attending a great volleyball coaching seminar last weekend. Many thanks to theartofcoachingvolleyball.com for allowing me to attend.
The seminar speakers are heavyweights of volleyball success including Russ Rose (4 straight national championships), John Dunning (3 national championships), Terry Liskevych (Oregon State), Matt Affolder (University of Dayton), and Anne Kordes (Louisville and formerly of
St Louis).
The instructors were very well skilled in their ability to reach the audience and alternating instructors kept you from being bored by listening to the same instructor for an extended period of time.
They explained that there are several ways to skin a cat, no particular method or system was the perfect system depending upon your players.
Right now I want to talk about how volleyball has gone high tech. Golf and every other sport has invented machines to make training and mastering the sport possible for more players.
For setters there is now a machine which evaluates your setting and repeatability of that setting. The name of the machine is Noah and the website for information is
http://www.noahbasketball.com/volleyball/products.php
What is great about the Noah machine is that the setter does not feel that the coach is criticizing him/her. The machine measure arc and distance and then verbally says "54" as an example. If the next set is "48" the setter knows that they are not repeating their motion well enough. The setter at the seminar did a great job in keeping her sets very close to the goal.
The best thing about Noah is that it only requires a setter and someone to catch the ball, two setters can work out by themselves. Or, a third person can throw the ball as the setter moves to different positions on the court.
I ran into Erin Shroeder at the clinic, she is now working as an assistant coach. We talked a short time about the serving of the team when she played at UD. She agreed that serving was not their strong point although Erin and a couple of others were good servers.
The coaches are now using a radar gun to gauge the speed of a serve. The faster you can hit a floater serve the more violent the knuckleballing action will normally be. The faster you hit a top spin serve the more violent the dropping action will be. Info on the radar gun used at the seminar can be found at
http://theartofcoachingvolleyball.com/pocket-radar/
In the past hitters have been dependent upon a setter setting the ball to get their practice in. There are now two pieces of equipment that allow a hitter to repeat their perfect swinging motion without having to worry about the setter giving them a bad set. While the hitters are practicing their swing the setter can be working on perfecting their setting motion in another location
The first piece of hitting equipment is the Acu Spike trainer which was at the seminar. This equipment holds the ball at any height you desire for a player to practice their swinging. That allows a hitter to make their perfect approach and have the ball in the correct location every time. More info on this machine can be found at
http://www.acuspike.com/volleyball-t...-spike-trainer
The final piece of equipment that can help your team improve tremendously is the Sports Attack volleyball machine. This machine was not used at the seminar but I have previously visited their website.
http://www.sportsattack.com/volleyball-machine/
This machine is capable of making perfect sets for hitting practice as well as simulating spikes and serves at international level. It can serve floaters or top spin serves at a speed that will definitely improve a team's return of serve ability and digging ability.
It is obvious that all of these pieces of equipment can raise the level of a volleyball team. I hope Matt has extra money in the budget or a great sponsor!
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