How to Train Aggressive and Fearless Servers

One of the most important things a coach can do to increase a team's ability to score is to develop a strong tactical serving team. This process begins with establishing a serving philosophy and then teaching your players the skill and technique to implement that philosophy most effectively.

Deane Webb explains why teams needs to serve aggressively to be successful. He examines different server types and shares drills to help your players find their aggressive serve. He makes a strong case for why you need to get your team to understand how serving aggressively can help them win more matches.

Serving Philosophy

Coach Webb goes through a good amount of stats from his teams to prove how effective aggressive serving can be, pointing out what coaches need to pay attention to in order to verify their team is serving successfully. He goes into detail about what to look for, including functional speed, movement on the ball and locations.

Coach Webb gives examples of how to grade serves and track team serving success. He explains the different types of serves, what level they're useful for and how to figure out what serve is best for a team's level of play.

How to Get Your Team to Buy In

Coach Webb has a great philosophy on how to get players to understand that they must be more aggressive for their team to be competitive, and provides advice on how to get your players comfortable taking risks with their serves by being more aggressive. He explains what needs to be done in practices and matches to train the serve, especially early in the season.

Drills

Coach Webb uses players to demonstrate drills that will help you train your players to be more aggressive with their serve. These drills work on aggressiveness, consistency, pressure serving, spot serving and serving with velocity. Many of the drills use a radar gun to help players understand the importance of speed within their comfort zone.

Any coach who views this video will walk away with a full bag of tools needed to train their team to be more aggressive with their serves.

Produced at the 2015 AVCA National Convention.

50 minutes. 2016.