Serve Receive: Increased Platform Control and Awareness

The first contact is the most important contact in the game of volleyball. Making sure we control this contact and get the ball to go where we want it to go seems like a simple concept, but gaining control and awareness of your platform takes time and attention to detail. By focusing our attention on our platforms, we create a solid foundation for our team serve receive. This volleyball DVD will explore the styles and techniques used to increase platform control and awareness.

Villanova Head Coach Josh Steinbach presents the passing techniques and philosophies that he uses with his players. Coach Steinbach discusses his philosophies on technique vs. results, height of pass to control offense tempo, how to call the ball as a passer, and the much discussed thought on left is right-right is wrong.

Right from the start he explains his thoughts on how a passer should call the ball and use a simple yes or no to give themselves instant feedback on the accuracy of their passes. Steinbach continues the discussion with the question "how much time do we spend on the techniques?" Many coaches are very critical in every little aspect of the passing skill, while others only focus on a couple of things with result as the main goal. Although he feels that technique is not as important, he does stress two components that are a must when becoming a good passer; posture and angles and how they relate to the ability to control the direction of the ball. Once a passer can consistently use good posture, the angle of the platform is the key to passing to target.

There are some great visuals throughout the video when coach Steinbach stops and corrects players who breakdown in posture or passing from the right. He closes with the 3-2-1 drill that shows the importance of being able to get a pass to a spot as opposed to focusing on all of the techniques used to pass to target.

Even a veteran coach can walk away from this video with something to chew on in regards to the most discussed topic in volleyball.

48 minutes. 2012.