Fun fact for you guys 65,000 coaches turn to get the pancake in 2019 for advice volleyball drills and coaching resources. That's like a lot of coaches whether they were looking for free stat sheet downloads goal-setting worksheets to use with their team or just a fun warm-up to start practice with I'mProud to say get the pancake delivered in this past year. We've added tons of valuable information to get the pancake.com new digital downloads free handouts and of course more drills and tips. There's a lot planned for 2020 and I don't want you to miss it. If you want to continue growing as a coach sign up for the get the pancake newsletter by going to get the pancake.com. There's a sign-up Link at the top of the home page. You can't miss it come and join our thriving community and let me help you have your best season yet? Hi their coaches, it's Whitney from get the pancake a podcast for volleyball coaches in today's episode. I'm going to be reading to you from get the pancake.com, which is a website for volleyball coaches. So yes get the pancake is a podcast and a website and there's a bunch of social media things going on as well. The article that I'm going to be reading to you today is titled The Ultimate Guide to coaching fit and 6th grade volleyball rules. Those skills drills and more. I just published this on the website. I believe last weekend and I thought this was a really important topic to cover in depth. So this is probably my longest particle that I have on get the pancake.com. There is just so much going on in fifth and sixth grade. Honestly. This is probably one of the more crucial times that it's very important that coaches kind of cover all aspects of Ball and sort of start to lead these athletes to what they will become once they get into middle school and high school and having coached for quite some time. Now the first time that I coached a group of fifth and sixth graders, I had really high expectations for what they would be able to achieve where I was coaching these players. Most of them had already been to some skills clinics and they had been playing in recreational volleyball for a couple of of years already where I was coaching previously many of these athletes started playing volleyball in first grade. So I went in with a lot of ideas about how he's going to coach these players into becoming Elite 5th and 6th grade athletes and they're just a lot of things when it comes to comprehension of the different concepts in volleyball that I thought they would be able to understand and instead they ended up really struggling with things. Positions and going to base and everything what I'm trying to say, I guess is that you don't need to make 5th and 6th grade volleyball too complicated but there are certain ways that I have found over the years to introduce these more challenging Concepts that they'll be able to use once they get into the next level of volleyball. So we're not trying to skip ahead. We're just guiding them along this path. So enough of the introduction here. Let's just get right into the article. The Ultimate Guide to coaching 5th and 6th grade volleyball rules skills drills and more by Whitney bar to cook from get the pancake.com 5th and 6th grade volleyball and exciting time for players and a challenge for coaches and parents. This is one most players are being introduced to the sport and no matter how athletic a player might be. There are a ton of complicated Concepts that will interfere with their performance. This is when coaches elf included tend to get frustrated. We know that we have Athletic kids on our teams, but they just can't quite seem to get it having worked with this age group for a couple of years. Now. I've finally realized A system that works best for teaching fifth and sixth graders how to play volleyball instead of getting frustrated that the ball drops between players or that they serve and watch the ball come right back to where they should have been. I've realized that it's my job to teach these very basic concepts to players instead of assuming they'll pick up on it it Obvious, but I know I'm not the only one who has gone through this before. I've broken down the basics into different categories. So we're going to cover the basic rules of volleyball where to stand on a volleyball court basic volleyball skills volleyball Concepts and finally I include the best drills for 5th and 6th grade volleyball teams in my opinion. The concepts are the most important element of teaching volleyball to beginners once players understand how the game works and what are supposed to do and why they can focus on the skills and getting better. Why because they'll actually be able to keep the ball in the air longer than two to three Duchess. So without further Ado here is a list of everything you need to teach 5th and 6th grade volleyball players to get them off to a good start and their volleyball careers basic volleyball rules first. There are only three touches per side before the ball needs to go over the net as players get older. This will become past set hit which is commonly called bumps. Spike at the younger ages many 5th and 6th grade players believe they need to pass the ball back over the net on the first Contact. I'm going to give you a drill at the end of this that focuses on using all three of these hits instead of just sending the ball back over the next basic volleyball rule is that there are no doubles so as soon as player a touches the ball another player has to touch it before player a can touch it again, if a player has a bad contact and ends up close by What I've noticed is that they will often take another swing at it to try to pass it again. This deters other players from going after the ball because honestly, they might get hit by the player who made the last contact. No, they're not going to get it right away. What you need to do is emphasize freezing if they make a bad contact. This will allow other players to come in and play the ball without fear the next basic volleyball rule. Do not touch the net technically. There are more exact rules. When you can and cannot touch the net in my opinion, this is too much for fifth and sixth graders to remember just tell them that they're not allowed to touch the net to keep life simple and safer similarly to do not touch the net the next rule is to stay on your side of the net and just like touching the net There are rules about how you can and cannot cross the center line again. Just tell them that they can't step under the net to make things easy and reduce rolled ankles. They last rule that I think is important to emphasize. Emphasize with this age group. Is that the back row cannot hit in the front row. Look hitting is fun and players who especially like hitting will sometimes run into the front row from the back row to hit the ball while there are a ton of technicalities around this rule. We're again going to simplify and say that players who are in the back row can only down by the ball, which we'll talk about more when we start talking about skills. You may have noticed that many of these rules have been simplified and that's I was in my past experiences. I tried to teach the exact rules and I learned that that just confuses everyone keep it simple. They can learn the technicalities later. The next thing that we're going to talk about is positions substitutions and playing time first. There are six players on the court at a time. You will most likely have 10 players or more on your team. And that means that everyone will have to sit out at some point and probably for half of the game. That's just how volleyball All works explain this to your players and their parents so that you have fewer pouty lips on the sidelines and just as a warning there will still be some players who get mad when they're out. They'll probably cross their arms and complain that it's not fair that they have to sit out even if playing time is equal. You've been warned next regarding positions. I do not recommend using a libero for fifth and sixth graders unless you're playing Club volleyball most players are not specialized in fifth and sixth grade. Have a true libero identified even though it would be fun to mix it up and have players experience playing libero. I'd save that for advanced teams or Club teams who are a few months into the season as a side note while I'm going through all of these you're more than welcome to disagree and test out your own theories with your 5th and 6th grade volleyball team. But this is what I have found works with multiple teams in multiple locations throughout the u.s. So this is how I recommend during this age group. But again, you're more than welcome to do your own thing. The next piece of advice that I have for playing positions is to have your players play the position that they rotate into one of my biggest mistakes coaching 5th graders in the past was expecting them to understand positions. Sixth graders during long Seasons may be able to figure out positions but fifth grade, especially beginner players should just play the position they rotate into having your players set when they wrote Into middle front is easiest but having them set from right front as more like the game, they'll learn as they get older. So if you have complete beginners just set from the middle front to make life a little easier and then for intermediate volleyball teams try setting from the right front if you have a more experienced team or if you're playing Club, I would recommend that you learn how to run a 6-2 which at this age I think would be best because of equal playing time and simplicity or you can run a 5:1 but in my opinion they're not going to be specialized enough or able to even remember all of the different places that they have to stand on the court when running a 5-1 when it comes to substitutions. I suggest that you make Subs when players rotate into front row or back row playing time is most commonly determined by when a player is in front row or back room before the game designate players who will play front row or back row and tell them who they are something. For an example would be Kayla will play front row and as she's rotating into back row Jennifer will Sub in technically you can make substitutions anytime you want. But this is what a standard at all levels of volleyball just as a heads up players who only play front row will sub out right before they serve this often results in hurt feelings because all players want to serve so I would mix up who plays front row and back row on occasion also substitutions are typically made. When your team wins a rally and rotates not when you lose a rally and are in the middle of a rotation again, you can sub at any time, but this is what's normal. All right. Now, I want to talk about skills to start us out. We're going to discuss serving all rallies start with a serve and being able to get the ball over to start a rally is critical underhand overhand serving are both acceptable at these ages, but Club will be primarily over. Hand over hand serving will be expected by seventh grade in most areas. So start to teach your players the overhand serve when you feel they are ready many fifth graders are able to serve over hand if they are taught the proper mechanics and given time in my opinion over in in is more important than a tough serve when I'm teaching the underhand serve I use Rock and pop as my keywords and then for overhand serving toss and 5r my cue words. So q words are things that you sort of repeat over and over again to your players to help them. Remember the mechanics of a certain movement. Now, I do have a video on YouTube about underhand serving if that's what you would prefer to use and honestly, I would suggest using underhand serving if your players are not strong enough to overhand serve a yet the video almost has a hundred thousand views. I'll link to it in the description, but it is a long explanation. Sharon of the different steps so that you have a full understanding of what to do going into practice when you're teaching the underhand serve now, let's talk about passing. So passing and keeping the ball on your side of the net is one of the toughest Concepts to teach for going to talk about later want you to teach players to get behind the ball and stay sort of hunched over as they're passing swinging at the ball only causes Shanks, which is volleyball speak for bad pass that no one else can touch. It's also important that you teach players to move in all directions to pass the ball start with teaching side to side movement then running forward to pass the ball and finally how to pass the ball after moving backwards. You can try to pack this all into one day, but this is probably going to come over the course of a season especially moving backwards and then passing the ball forwards that is very challenging for 5th and 6th graders. So worried about side to side first and then running Word and stopping before we pass the ball. Those are the ones that I would highlight as a coach do not always toss the ball nicely two players in practice the ball rarely if ever comes to them nicely in a game the results may not be pretty and practice. But when you get in a game situation, you'll see that your team is likely much more prepared than your opponent also practice serve receive which is passing the ball after it's been served since this will be the most and passing contact that young players will have on the ball at this age of there aren't too many rallies. So they're passes as I just said will most likely come in serve receive setting. Okay setting as a Setter is rare at the younger ages. The setting motion can also be called overhand passing and can be used at other times in a match rather than just setting an attacker for a hit so teach settings / / hand passing as Alternative to backpedaling and passing the ball this often results in a better contact and keeps the ball in play longer. It also just kind of makes sense to players to stick their arms up and over hand pass rather than keep their passing form Shuffle backwards and then pass the ball forward when you're teaching setting in the context of setting the ball so it can be hit teach your players to set down the alley that's what I like to call it instead of setting to a person. So I Have an article about setting down the alley and I'll link that in the description but a lot of players get confused and think oh, I want Alejandra to hit. I'm going to set to Alejandro and what they need to do is set in front of her so that she can do her approach and hit the ball there. So this is like in football you throw the ball where the receiver is going to be not where they actually are when you release the ball now, we're going to talk about hitting so hitting is like everybody's favorite thing to do except for like one or two people on a team. Sitting in the front row is complicated but often players like hitting so much that they will practice their footwork and arm swing at home that makes your job a lot easier at practice start by teaching how to down ball the ball and just forget about the full approach footwork to start with just work on the last two steps and contacting the ball at the right time. No jumping involved once players are ready teach them the four step approach most of us coaches grew up doing the three-step approach, but But at the higher levels this has pretty much been abandoned for the four-step approach simply because of the momentum and timing that it gives players. So if you've been teaching three step, that's fine, but moving forward. I am only teaching the four-step approach. Not only are you going to teach them to down by the ball from the front row you're going to teach them to down ball the ball from the back row as well. This reduces the number of times the ball drops and it gets a big cheers from the Crowd if you try to emphasize that the full approach to early on you'll get players just running into the net and tripping over themselves. So just focus on the last two steps and the arm swing and don't worry about jumping the last skill that I think often gets overlooked is jousting. So after your team has been practicing a while you'll notice that when the ball is close to the net they'll often just stare and Let It Drop teaching your players to joust. Arliss of height will help you win more points because they'll know what to do when the ball is close to the net you may even get some inadvertent blocks out of this training. Now if you're wondering what the heck is jousting, I always like to introduce this to my players in practice by asking them what they think Jay Chou sting is and often times you'll have one or two that say it's one that two people on the horses are riding at each other and try to hit each other with the sword and that's basically what we're doing except. We're doing it in volleyball. So we're trying to hit the ball back over onto the other side of the net before the other team. Can I have a whole article on what Jousting is and how to teach it to your players as always the link will be in the description. So just go and check that out to learn more about jousting before we continue. I want to take a quick break to tell you about anchor anchor is honestly the easiest way to make a podcast for starters it's free, which doesn't get any better than that second of all. Paul they have a lot of tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer the best part in my mind is that anchor also helps you distribute your podcast so I don't have to go and create an account with Spotify Apple podcast Google podcast overcast can't even list all the places that get the pancake is played from simply because I don't have to worry about it. Anchor does it for me if starting a podcast is something you're interested in download the free Ankara? Or go to Anchor dot. F m-- to get started not anchor.com anchor dot f m now back to our episode. All right, it's time to talk about Concepts. And like I said in my intro this is in my opinion the most important part of what you teach to your young athletes, and that's because once they understand these Concepts and everything else becomes so much more simple. The first concept is to serve and then run. In into defense so blares will often serve and then watch that serve and since for your opponent the easiest contact on the ball often results in it returning right back to where it came from. This usually ends up in a point inside out for the other team so practice serving and then running onto the court and getting into ready position you get bonus points, if you then throw a ball to this player and have them pass immediately after with a lot of these Concepts. It's important that you Actually design a drill that incorporates these Concepts because just telling your players what to do isn't going to help they need their body to go through the motion that way they understand fully what you're talking about. And then you can refer back to the drill if they forget about it during a match. The next concept is understanding who is responsible for what area of the Court when passing I like to use what I call my two-step rule balls drop all the time because it lands in tween two players or worse yet. Just right next to someone since you'll probably be running a very basic defense at this age. I like to teach my players that any ball within two steps of them. Well, it's there's this is more concrete to them than telling them. It's there's if it's in their zone or something like that has a side note. I would suggest that you make the best use out of your most aggressive players and put them next to players who don't move much to start out. This will result in less dropped balls two strikes. Start your season and as time goes on expand the responsibilities for your more timid players another concept that this age group really struggles with is that the setter chases down the second ball, since you're probably having everyone set at this age. It can be hard for players to get into a Setter mindset teach players that when they are at the setter. The second ball is theirs when they rotate into Center position have them say it out loud both as a reminder to them and for their teammates, Some teams will let their Setters call help if they can't get to the second ball. And then what happens is a teammate is supposed to step in and pass or set the ball, but I'm just gonna be honest. This is really confusing for this age group. So I would only use this if your team has more experience. Otherwise, I would Institute a no-help policy there will be dropped balls, but that will motivate your team to pass better stutters are also more likely to go for it if they No that no one else is going to get in their way. So practice having your players set from different spots on the court and make sure that they practice running there from wherever you have your Center position. This will help them feel more confident come game time. So once your Setter finally figures out that they have to go and get that second ball then of course what happens? Well, they said somebody and that person isn't ready. So the next concept is to make sure that your hitters are preparing to hit while the setter is getting the ball just like Setters forget to chase down the second ball hitters forget that their turn to touch the ball is coming up next. This will be one of the hardest Concepts to teach new players since getting a true path set hit sequence is pretty rare at this age teach your hitters to recognize that asset is coming and that it could come from different angles by running hitting lines with your team. But have your tosses go to different spots on the court. They will start to recognize who the ball is going to based on where The pass is helping them prepare to hit. All right, it sent the ball over. It's time to watch it and see if the other team messes up bright know your team needs to get back into a defense mindset after the ball goes over. That's our next concept that is really challenging for this age group. Because once you finally hit it you want to just see what happens and it so everyone stops moving and watches the ball. The players should learn to reset after the ball goes back over and get into their Air Base position on the court more advanced teams might have true positions that they run too. But younger teams just need to get back into their Zone on the court. So incorporate moving into Base by practicing this movement every time your team sends the ball back over the net in as many drills as you can I would also use reset or base as a keyword as an easy way to remind them in the middle of a match when they inevitably forget to do this. The last concept that I think will really help you out when you're coaching this age group is to teach them front row jousting for a tight ball. And we talked about this in skills, but the concept can be tough for players to understand now coaches eyes light up when a tall player walks into their gym for tryouts. You'll surely win all your matches with someone who can reach over the net without even jumping. However, you need to teach those players and all others what to do at the net instead of assuming knowing that they'll naturally know what to do when the ball is tight to the net and you're not sure what side it'll come down on many players will just stand back and watch but teach your players to jump up to meet the ball and you'll likely win 70 percent or more of these balls until other teams figure this out too when two players go up for a ball. It's called jousting. Like I mentioned earlier there's a link in the description that explains what Jousting is. All right, we finally gotten to the drills portion of the article. So now Knowing what skills to teach is one thing but having drills to teach them is another I've put together a brief list of some of my favorite drills to run with this age group. But many of the drills on get the pancake will work to even if something seems a little too advanced there's often A variation at the end of the article that gives you a simpler way to from the drill. I will briefly discuss each drill, but I'll just include a link to all of these drills that way you can go and check them out for yourself the First one is dead fish which is a fun accuracy serving game. The next is hitting Survivor in this helps players aim their hits and then also teaches being in the right spot for passing and their shuttle passing which encourages players to read the ball correctly and teaches them the right height to pass the ball, then there's Justin group work which already talked about jousting a whole lot. It's pretty important to go through this. Least once with your team then there's also one touch to touch three touch Columbus. That's a really long name for a drill that this eventually reinforces that your team can use all three touches and you eventually work up to that point where each side is using all three. Finally Queen of the court is one of the most basic volleyball drills and just about everyone who has played volleyball has ran this drill and that's because it's awesome. It reinforces a lot of the skills that we've discussed and it also So teaches a lot of the concepts as well. So highly encourage you to go and check out all of these drills along with just exploring get the pancake.com Before. I Let You Go, be sure to join our closed Facebook group, which is volleyball Coaches Corner. That way you have a place to turn when you have questions. If you're new to coaching volleyball. I also highly recommend that you check out my book, which is titled coaching volleyball a survival guide for your first season. This is just teaching you. How to run a team effectively so it's about Team Management. It's about taking stats. It's about preparing for your first tournament how to run a practice how to run your season is a pretty complicated process. So this is the book that I was looking for when I first started coaching I wanted something that just told me this is what you need to do and I really struggled to find anything out there. That's why I Africa coaching for a couple of years. I was like, you know, what I'm going to do it if nobody else is going to ride it. I'm going to write it I've Saved a ton of awesome feedback from coaches who read the book and there are many people who recommended out there. I obviously think that you should read it and I think it would be a good gift for someone as well. If you have a friend who is new to coaching. Even if you are past your first season if you're in your second or third, I still think it would be a good read you can get it as an e-book or as a paperback. It's only available through Amazon. So of course, I'll include a link. That's the last one that I have for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. Be sure to subscribe to the get the pancake podcast where ever you're listening to it. And if you can leave a review, I would love that. I love getting feedback about what I'm doing. Well what I can improve on. So if you're wanting longer podcast episode shorter podcast episodes more drill specific skills specific coaching philosophy, whatever leave it in the review. I read them. I check them all the time. Be sure to follow a cat the pancake on Instagram Facebook and even Pinterest I am wishing you all happy holidays. I'm so thankful that you are here and I can't wait to have you back for the next episode on the get the pancake podcast.
If you are coaching beginners in volleyball, this is episode is a *MUST* listen! Do you need a crash course on the basic rules of volleyball, what skills young volleyball players need to know, and what concepts you need to teach them? Let me walk you through how to coach beginner volleyball step-by-step! ---------- LINKS ---------- Original Article: www.getthepancake.com/drills-and-tips/ultimate-guide-5th-6th-grade-volleyball How to Underhand Serve a Volleyball for Beginners: https://youtu.be/E65rysfSWNQ How to Run a 6-2 in Volleyball: https://getthepancake.com/drills-and-tips/6-2-offensive-volleyball-system How to Run a 5-1 in Volleyball:https://getthepancake.com/drills-and-tips/5-1-offensive-volleyball-system Setting Down the Alley: https://getthepancake.com/drills-and-tips/teaching-your-setter-to-set-along-the-net-not-to-the-hitter [BOOK] Coaching Volleyball: A Survival Guide for Your First Season: https://amzn.to/2Q2ODYa Closed Facebook Group "Volleyball Coaches Corner:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/322963254922796/ DRILLS   Dead Fish   Hitting Survivor    Shuttle Passing    Jousting Group Work    1 Touch, 2 Touch, 3 Touch, Columbus    Queen of the Court    ---   This episode is sponsored by  · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. 