Volleyball workout program pdf

The University of Florida volleyball program has posted some pretty impressive results over the years. Head Coach Mary Wise has led the team to more than victories in her 20 years at the helm. During that time, the Gators have never been ranked outside the top 15 of the American Volleyball Coaches Association final poll. Last season, the team became the first to finish the Southeastern Conference regular season with a perfect league record since double round robin play started in To top it all off, the team produced three All-Americans.

This data reveals where our players are deficient and allows me to design the most effective training program possible. Because this data is so crucial to the program design, what I test for is the most important part of the equation. My main goal is to help the athletes perform better in their sport, so the tests I choose must be volleyball-specific.

At this elite level, long rallies are not the norm. The average rally lasts only 14 to 20 seconds. An ace lasts one to two seconds depending on if there was a touch on the ball. And a serve, pass, set, and kill sequence averages about four seconds.

The ball is usually on each side of the net for only three to five seconds. The point here is that the physical tests employed with volleyball players should mirror the short bursts of energy needed on the court. In addition to the initial test day at the start of the off-season, the players are also tested midway through, and a final time before two-a-day practices begin in August. Here are the physical tasks our volleyball players perform on test day:. Approach jump: At the NCAA Division I level, most elite players can reach between 10 feet and 10 feet, three inches, so we strive for the top end of this range.

This height gives our players a great chance to hit over a block or have high hands on the other side of the net. We use the Vertec apparatus to measure approach jump height. Box jump: I expect our athletes to jump onto a inch box from a quarter-squat position. Being able to reach this height guarantees a great static jump at the net. Agility: Volleyball players are forced to change direction every three to five steps, so agility is very important for performance development.

To test this, we use an on-court volleyball-specific pro agility test. I set up three cones, each three yards apart. Starting at the middle cone, the player shuffles to the cone on either their right or left. After reaching that cone, they change direction into a crossover sprint to the far cone on the other side.

From there, they shuffle back to the middle cone, which finishes the drill. The goal is to complete the test in 2. Overhead press: This is a simple test of shoulder strength. I expect each player to perform at least three reps of 95 pounds. It strengthens your legs and stabilizes your ankles to reduce injury risk. It also helps you train for single-leg jumps. These lateral lunges with plates are suitable for developing quicker side-to-side moves and strengthening the arms for a more stable digging and passing platform.

The dumbbell snatch is best for training triple extension the mechanics of jumping , power development and improving explosiveness. This volleyball training exercise has similar benefits as the side-to-side twist with the overhead press: it improves core and upper body strength and transfers of strength from the core to the upper body in rhythm.

It also helps with all overhead volleyball movements, including serving, blocking, setting and attacking. The dumbbell squat to press is a general volleyball exercise for all positions. It builds lower-body strength and also accounts for the upper-body movements that are crucial to volleyball: setting, serving, attacking, blocking and transferring power from the lower body to the upper body in a fluid motion.

The and-2 drop is a volleyball workout for shoulder health and core stability. Here at the University of Notre Dame, we strive to build a sound foundation that allows each player to reach her maximum potential. The overall goal of our program is to develop a total athlete by improving her strength, flexibility, power, and athleticism, which she can then use on the court of competition.

We use a proper progression that reduces the risk of injury while developing the traits needed for the sport of volleyball. Our program also emphasizes motivation. We tell our athletes there are many factors that play a role in their physical development, but there are only two factors they can control: intensity and effort.

If they give their all in these two areas, we promise to motivate and push them to new levels both physically and mentally. For our part, we try to give them as much variety as possible in their workouts and provide competition in many different forms. We also teach them how what they do in the weightroom relates to making them better volleyball players—once an athlete truly comprehends how training can enhance her play, motivating her becomes much easier.

When designing a strength and conditioning program for volleyball, I keep eight key areas in mind: strength, core, flexibility, power development, agility, injury prevention, conditioning, and recovery. No area is more important than the next, and each is intertwined in the development of the others. We start with strength development because it is the foundation for all the other areas.

Our goal is to develop a complete athlete who is balanced and has no deficient areas that may cause injury or prevent her from reaching full potential. Most freshman volleyball players who enter our program have a very good athletic base and sport specific development, but are deficient in certain areas of total body strength.

The most common problems we see are a lack of posterior shoulder, back, gluteal, and hamstring to quadriceps strength ratio. We work hard to correct these during strength development so they do not lead to imbalance issues down the road. For posterior shoulder development, I incorporate isolated shoulder exercises such as DB rear shoulder raises, band saber diagonal raises, manual resistance, static holds blackburns , band and plate shoulder complexes, and scapular isolations and pulls.

For lower back isolation, I include chin-ups, seated rows, cable rows, DB rows, pulldown variations, inverted pull-ups, weighted hyperextensions, and others. In addition, during our Olympic lifts, the trapezius, rhomboids, and deltoids are being activated. The last area of the posterior chain is the gluteals and hamstrings. The gluteals will be activated during jumping, squatting, lunging, step-ups, dead lifts, and Olympic movements. Our program is based on multi-joint Olympic-style movements squats, cleans, snatches with supplemental exercises that are progressed and cycled.

The intensity of our resistance-training workouts remain consistent all year, but the volume and workload change depending on the season. The workouts are developed to maximize volume of workload in the least amount of time without sacrificing strength gains. Core strength is the second area for developing a total volleyball player as deficiencies in this area can limit other components from achieving full potential.

In addition, abdominal and low back development is a central ingredient in rotational speed, power transfer, body control, and injury prevention, all of which are very much needed in the game.

For example, a player going up for a spike needs to have great power from her core while maintaining precise body positioning. We incorporate core work into the warmup, weighted exercises in the workout, and end-of-workout team drills. Types of exercises include basic bodyweight floor abs, dynamic movements such as med-ball throws, and those that incorporate abdominal activation such as a walking lunge with a twist.

We stress full range of motion and contraction rather than volume of repetitions. Without it, a volleyball player may not extend her shoulder complex to its full capacity, which will limit her spiking and serving ability.

Problems in flexibility can also hamper her ability to lunge for a difficult dig. Since coaches have a limited amount of time to spend with their athletes, flexibility often loses out to other areas of training. To make our flexibility drills time efficient, we incorporate them into our dynamic warmups through kicks, lunges, and hurdles, and place them between major exercises that require recovery time. At the end of each workout, the team goes through several static stretches led by a captain or senior.

Also, any athlete that has severe flexibility issues will do extra work to help increase range of motion. The area that our volleyball coaches are most concerned with is power development, especially as it relates to vertical jumping. They know the higher their front row players can jump, the more successful their team will be. But we also pay a lot of attention to lateral and forward horizontal power in order to build explosive agile athletes. Volleyball players need power to move very quickly in all directions to get to the ball and to produce strong shoulder movement for serves, spikes, and sets.

The weight training contains several exercises designed to maximize speed of movement such as cleans, snatches, resisted boards, and band squats with lighter weight loads.

We also use several unloaded triple-extension movements in order to increase power output and speed of contraction of the muscles. These may include box jumps, plyometrics, and slide boards.