Volleyball is definitely a team sport! Every defensive or offensive action involves at least a couple players to make it successful …
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t practice alone. Indeed, you don’t always have access to a proper volleyball court and partners to be able to practice as a team. That’s why learning how you can help improve your skills alone is a Great idea!
In this article, I breakdown the best and easiest ways you can practice volleyball by yourself and make sure you make significant improvements.
When should you Practice volleyball by yourself?
Practicing alone gives a player his own time to check on his mistakes and improve them. This type of training is most suitable during the off-season. Following are the reason why a person should sometimes take this approach …
- Unavailability: The availability of teammates at every point in time isn’t possible. If a person isn’t comfortable with training alone at such times, then he may have to skip his training that day.
- Self-training: The coach lays down training exercises for a group, not an individual. When an individual train alone, he can work on his weaker areas. He can also plan out his schedule on how to make his strengths even stronger.
- No hesitation: when working around 10-15 people, a player gets himself in a conscious state. He is not able to practice and act freely in such situations. This may hinder his overall training. This problem doesn’t come up when practicing alone.
Quick Recommendation: If you want to learn more about the skills and best practices to train by yourself, then you should definitely have a look at this complete and helpful resource. This will help you set the basics right and get you started on the right foot.
5 Volleyball skills you can improve by yourself
While some skills require a partner’s participation, there are some tips which one can improve on his own. Following are the skills you can improve by yourself …
1. Accuracy
It is one of the most crucial skills in volleyball. A person can increase his accuracy to a great extent by practicing in your backyard.
Accuracy is mostly about concentration and ball control. Improving concentration is a time-consuming process, and you can enhance it better when alone.
A person can perform various available drills to improve these aspects.
2. Speed
The faster you can move, the better you can play. The same goes for volleyball.
A person’s speed can give him a major upper hand in any situation during the game. You can work on your peed anywhere you want.
It doesn’t matter if you practice with a team or alone. If you are performing all the necessary drills perfectly, you will surely enhance your volleyball speed.
3. Spiking
Volleyball is all about how well you hit the ball. Many people think that spiking can only be improved at the court, but it’s not true.
Spiking drills will help you gain the necessary confidence and ball control to time and hit a ball perfectly. One can train his spiking skills by performing spiking drills.
These drills focus on enhancing the ball control of the player and helping him to hit the ball at the right spot.
4. Setting
If you master the skill of setting you will be able to ensure your place in the team during every single game.
Not just that, you will be the greatest asset of the team during the game. Setting is all about ball control and positioning.
You can improve both of these at home as well.
5. Passing
Controlling the bumps is a tough task at first. A person needs to have good control over the ball to ensure this.
Home volleyball drills can help a person to a great extent in this aspect.
How can you improve these skills alone? (5 Drills)
There are various drills available that you can perform at home. Below are some drills that will help you improve skills I’ve just mentioned …
1. Accuracy drill (hit the cone)
To improve the accuracy, you need to go to the open ground and position ten cones at random places.
After this, you need to start bumping the ball on your wrist. After 10 to 12 bumps you need to hit the ball in such a way that it strikes the cone off.
This way you’ll improve your ball control as well as improve your accuracy.
2. Speed drill (shuttle running)
This can be undertaken in a house but more preferably should be done in-ground or in a park. Here the person needs to set four cones at a distance of 40m each.
Then the player must stand behind the first cone and rush to the second one and touch it using his hand.
After this, he needs to go back to the first cone again. Following this, he’ll go to the third cone and back to the first cone, and so on.
This drill will improve your rapid movements drastically.
3. Spiking (bench hitter)
To perform this drill you need to go to a local park. Search for an empty bench, and start to hit in such a way that the ball hits the middle of the bench and comes back to you
Keep your hitting hand ready and continue the rally for as long as possible.
4. Setting drill
This drill can be done in multiple ways. In the first variation, you need to lie down on your back with knees folded and start to throw the ball straight up as if you are setting it.
Continue doing it until failure. In the second variation, you need to stand up and throw the ball up for setting.
Here you’ll have to work on your footwork as well. Rapid foot movements help you to quickly get under the ball and set it in a better way.
5. Passing (low bump- high bump)
Controlling bump heights is a tough job. To ace this, you must perform the bumping drill.
Here you’ll need to take the ball and start bumping it on your wrist. Once you get into the rhythm, start to add variations.
These can be in a way that you bounce low twice and then have a high bump. This will help you to control the ball in a much better way.
This ball control will help you to have great passes during the game. Not just that, the control enhances your overall game performance.
Keep in mind that you can practice some of those solo drills for beach volleyball …
Volleyball Skills you can’t improve alone
Though you can improve yourself a lot by training alone, there are few aspects which can only be improved with a team. Below are some skills you need to practice with a team to hopefully become a true professional in the future …
- Serving: it is one aspect that can only be improved when on a court. A person needs a full-court to throw a proper serve. This is not possible when a person tries to perform while outside the court.
- Team setting: You can indeed improve your setting skills at home. But during a game, you need to set the ball in such a way that the hitter of the team can hit the ball perfectly. It can be possible that you are setting the ball perfectly, but the hitter finds it difficult to hit the ball set by you. Hence, this can only come after players play and learn together.
- Coordination: this can also be considered as a skill team only. Coordinative skills can never be improved alone. A person needs a good team and a team environment to enhance this aspect. Working alone can only improve you as an individual. But no matter how good your skills are, you need to work as a team while in a game. If there is no communication within the team and there are no proper callouts, then winning will be very very difficult. Learn how you can improve coordination for volleyball!
How often should you practice Volleyball alone?
We’ve discussed why you should and why you should not practice volleyball alone. But after this discussion, the question arises when and how often should you practice volleyball alone?
You cannot neglect the team and just keep practising by yourself. The best time to practice volleyball alone is within off-season.
There are fewer or no tournaments during this time and the practice part is also not that vigorous.
This gives a player ample amount of time to work on his weak areas. Even during the on-season, you can take out time once in a while and work alone.
So during the season, you can practice alone once in a week. However, during off-season you can practice as much as you want.
Finally, if those home drills sound or feel boring for you, then you can always implement those simple tips to have fun while practicing volleyball …
Final Thoughts …
Hopefully this article has given you some ideas on how you can keep improving your volleyball skills even if you don’t have access to training partners …
I do honestly believe that players who manage to keep improving regardless of whether they have access to partners to train with or not are the one who manage to play at the highest level.
So, hopefully you will take some notes and prepare your solo-training routing!