Creative Drills for Training Accountability

with Bobbi Petersen,
University of Northern Iowa Head Coach;
2025 MVC Coach of the Year (the 4th straight year);
13x MVC Regular Season Champions;
12x MVC Tournament Champions;
10x MVC Coach of the Year;
2002 AVCA National Coach of the Year;
4x AVCA Regional Coach of the Year;
played for UNI from 1986-89;
3x First Team All-Conference;
Her 40 kills in a 1989 match remains the all-time Missouri Valley/Gateway Conference record

As a coach, you should want your players to be accountable for their practice and game performances. In this video, Northern Iowa's Bobbi Petersen shares different ways to score practice drills to hold players accountable for executing specific skills within the drill.

Using a variety of exercises, Petersen demonstrates how emphasis can be put on any skill that your team needs to focus on. She encourages coaches to not only emphasize the result of a drill, but to also put focus on the result of the skill.

How to Demand Player Accountability in Drills

You will learn how drills can be modified depending on the specific improvement you need to see from your players.

Petersen covers:

• How players can be held accountable for the end result of contact.
• How drills can be broken down for a more specific focus on a skill.
• How drills can be adapted to add more pressure on players.
• How the speed of a drill can be over-trained or under-trained to meet the skill-emphasis needs of your team.

Drill Progressions

Coach Petersen demonstrates a vast array of drills ranging from simple over-the-net progression drills to more difficult 6-on-6 drills with game-like variables. She suggests that coaches should hold players accountable in a drill by how that drill is scored. Specific skill accountability ranges from platform and passing skills to your team's ability to stop a run from the opposing team. In all of the drills that Petersen demonstrates, she reiterates the emphasis should be on the specific skill(s) in which you want to see improvement.

This video covers why it is important, as a coach, to measure success within a drill as opposed to only measuring success from the result of the drill. Petersen does an outstanding job of explaining the progressions within her featured drills. The exercises in this video can be implemented in your gym immediately for near-instant impact!

52 minutes. 2019.