Position Training Drills: Outside Hitter

Get an inside look at training powerful hitters from one of the most successful coaches in NCAA women's volleyball history. Starting with the approach and swing and finishing with competitive team drills, coaching legend Russ Rose shows you how to get the best out of your outside hitters.

Characteristics of an Outside Hitter
Coach Rose begins with expectations for outside hitters and what they need to do on the court to be successful. His philosophy will provide you with a blueprint for developing great outside hitters.

Passing and Hitting Drills
Coach Rose showcases a series of drills that enable outside hitters to practice the movement patterns they need to master to be successful. Coach Rose shows you how to adjust the drill to see how movement patterns change based on where the ball is served. As the drill progresses, defenders and blockers are added and scoring is added to make the training more game-like.

Blocking and Hitting Drills
This set of drills, which includes tip coverage to attack, digging to attack and blocking to attack, gives players opportunities to block from both the left side and middle before transitioning to a good attack position. Players are trained to work hard to get a big swing coming off the block.

Drills for Hitting Out of System
Out-of-system drills offer the opportunity for players other than setters to practice setting the ball to outside hitters. These drills also teach hitters how to adjust for an out-of-system ball.

Competitive Drills
One of most beneficial drill segments in the presentation is this series of competitive drills. These drills use scoring systems to push players to compete. Coach Rose has outside hitters battle head-to-head in 6v6 games. These mini-games are scored to seven points, but only one player from each side can be set during the game. You'll see many different iterations of this drill including OH vs OH, RS vs RS, and back row attacker vs back row attacker.

Another competitive drill is played 5v5 with no middles. Only pin hitters and pipe attackers can attack in this drill. Hitters learn how to take advantage of solo blocks, players learn how to block solo when necessary, and everyone learns how to defend when the block is not perfect.

Conditioning for Hitters
All of these drills feature multiple attacks and game-like contacts in rapid succession. Though conditioning is certainly a big part of these drills, Coach Rose designs them as volleyball drills first; the conditioning is just a result of the pace of the contacts.

Coach Rose gives you numerous drills that you can start using in your gym immediately. In addition, his observation on the different roles an outside hitter must master might change how you evaluate players in the future.

56 minutes. 2015.