What her first club practice looks like, and why.
The first five minutes on the court, in one take. What a new player does in her first practice at the facility, what the coaches are watching for, and the one thing parents can do to help.
The first five minutes
The video above is one take of the first five minutes of a club practice at the facility. No warm-up laps, no lecture. The players are touching the ball inside the first minute, in small groups, on all three courts, with a coach at each net.
What a new player does
She is put with players close to her age and level, not thrown in with the oldest team. She passes, she serves, she plays small-sided games where she touches the ball far more often than in six-on-six. The coaches are watching how she moves and how she listens, not whether she wins the rally.
Thirty minutes of the practice happens in the strength room, on Volleyball Pattern Training®, so by the end of her first week she has also learned how to squat, lunge and throw the way a volleyball player should.
What the coaches are watching for
- Does she chase the ball, or wait for it?
- Does she look at the target or at her own hands?
- Does she talk? Every drill here needs a voice.
- What happens after a mistake? In Coach Andor's words: if we are looking stupid, we are learning.
The one thing a parent can do
Watch the end of practice. Every practice closes with a short life lesson, the It's Bigger Than Volleyball® part, and the ideas carry further when a parent heard it too. Most parents who leave us a review mention that part before they mention the volleyball.
More from the gym
- The screens beside our courts replay every rep. Here is why.A player sees her own arm swing a few seconds after she made it, while the coach is still talking. What delayed video review does for a 12-year-old, and why we built it into the gym.
- Coaches, slow down. A tryout story.A coach who had never met her asked a player to move five feet and change her platform in the middle of a tryout. What happened next is why we tell players to say thank you and play their game.
- Volleyball Pattern Training®, explained for parents.Why the squat she lifts with is the squat she passes from, what the eight VPT episodes cover, and why every club practice starts with thirty minutes in the strength room.