How to Drastically Improve your Volleyball Game on your Own
If you just started volleyball or have been playing for many years and you are looking to improve your game, you came to the right place. You’re not always in the gym and have access to a net or even a person you’re able to pass with. So here are ways you can drastically improve your volleyball game on your own.
Workouts
This may not be the most fun thing to you, but will help you get stronger and help improve your volleyball play. You can also do them by yourself with no equipment.
Any sort of cardio workout would be good, since you’re always moving and the more endurance you have the better you’ll be. So running, the elliptical, biking, things like that will help.
As far as other workouts go, one of the important things you might want to focus on are your legs. You use them a lot in volleyball when it comes to being in a ready position all day, running, jumping, and sprinting. The kind of leg exercises you might want to try are
These are all really good leg exercises you can do at home. It depends on how many you want to do of each. If you’re just starting I would go slower and maybe do each one 15 times for about 3 reps or whenever you feel like you’ve pushed yourself enough.
Jump training is also a very important part of volleyball. Especially if you are a front row player, you want to be able to jump as high as you possibly can for your approach and your block.
This is also something that is simple enough and you can do at home by yourself. If you have a box that is sturdy enough try jumping up on it multiple times. If you don’t have anything like that, a jump rope is also something that’s super useful.
This might not be the most exciting part of volleyball to you, but if you strengthen your body this will help you a lot on the court. It’s also something you can do for 15 min every day just to help strengthen your legs and body to get them ready for game time.
Passing Drills
Passing is something that you can always be practicing and improving. If you don’t have anyone that is able to pass with you, the next best thing you can do is find a large wall somewhere and use it to pass back and forth with yourself.
While you pass back and forth with yourself, using the wall, try focusing on your platform and form. If you are a beginner it will be super useful for you to work on your ball control. If you can get over 10 in a row you’re doing pretty well.
If you’re more advanced you can tape a small area off and focus on getting your pass there. This will work on your accuracy!
Setting Drills
Setting is another important thing you can be practicing at home as well. Even if you’re not playing the setter position it will always help you and come in handy to be good at it.
Something that is fun that I do is find a wall and stand about a foot away from it and just start setting not far but just over and over again. This will help your hand-eye coordination and help your ball control as well.
Another thing that is fun is to take a ball and start setting above your head to yourself standing up, try not to set the ball too high though, and then continue self-setting while trying to sit down and get lower to the ground. Keep doing this until you’re sitting down on the ground setting to yourself, and then try laying down on your back while still setting to yourself. The last step in this challenging drill is to try and stand up from laying down on the ground while still setting the whole time. This is sort of challenging at first and might not be good for beginners, but once you get it down it’s pretty fun and challenging to see how many times you can do it!
Another workout/setting drill I used to do are setter sit-ups. They’re pretty much exactly how they sound. All you do is a sit up, and when you get to the top of the sit-up someone throws you the ball to set back to them. This is a nice workout and will also help you with ball control.
There are also weighted volleyballs you can buy online. You can set this heavier ball to help strengthen your sets. If you can find any semi-heavy ball this can work well too.
Attacking / Footwork
Footwork is another part of volleyball that is really important. Even though you feel like you cannot work at this because you don’t have a net there are still some things you can do to improve!
Footwork is something that is super important when it comes to hitting, but it does involve a lot of time, practice, and repetition. There are different approaches you can do but when starting out I would recommend using a three-step approach.
The steps to a three-step approach is a longer step with your left foot, and then a quicker right and left step. Your first step should be taking you in the direction of the ball and then the last right-left should help you jump. Make sure on your last right-left steps you swing your arms to help you get in the air.
There are also many videos on YouTube you can look up that will explain this in better detail. I would recommend watching them if you are new to volleyball or even to remind you.
Then for a drill you can start facing a wall pretending you just got done blocking and then work on transitioning back to hit and then swing and pretend to hit. The faster you can get at this the better.
Arm swing is another thing that is important that you want to make sure you have down. You can also watch many videos on this that will explain exactly what to do to get the best hit possible.
If you have a wall free and there is nothing breakable close you can hit the ball either directly at the wall or on the floor in front of it. Try to focus on your swing and think of things you can be doing better to improve it!
Watch Videos
I know I sort of already touched on this but I believe that it can be super useful! There are so many videos on YouTube that you can specifically look up and watch to help improve your game. Even professional coaches and players will tell you tips on what to do.
You can also watch videos of professionals and try to focus on what they’re doing and take mental tips on what you can do to get better. This is something that is easy but at the same time really helpful.
Work on Your Mental Game
This is such an important aspect of the game of volleyball. You can be a really good skilled player but have a really bad mental game and that won’t do you very much at all. I know it’s kind of a weird thing to think that you can improve your mental game yourself and practice improving it at home, but here are some ways that might help you!
One thing you can do is make a playlist of songs that can get you pumped up before games or before your workouts or practices. Things that can get you focused and ready before games will do you a lot of good. Blast it in the car on the way to practice or a game. Get in the right mindset!
Set Goals
This is something else you can do that will help keep you accountable and focused on what you want to improve on. Set goals for things you want to improve on each week. Maybe one week for you it is your footwork, then maybe the next week you want to do cardio workouts, then the next setting. Focus on the parts of your game that you want to improve.
Or some other goals you can set are maybe working on tipping or reading the hitters on defense. Look up videos and you can also ask your coaches for advice and work hard towards it. This will help you improve individually and will set you apart from other players as well!
Summary
As you can tell there are many different things that you can do at home to improve your play. The fact that you don’t have a partner or a volleyball net doesn’t mean you can’t improve your volleyball game. So don’t let this excuse stop you from being the best player possible.
I hope this gave you ideas on drills or workouts or even different things you can do at home to improve yourself. I hope this was also able to inspire you to continue to work hard and to strive to become a better player.
These are the kinds of things that can help take you to the next level in volleyball. These are also the things that coaches are going to be looking for. Players that are striving to get better at the game of volleyball. I hope this helps you also fall more in love with the game and in the end turn you into a beast on the court, and in the end drastically improve your volleyball game.