Here is an interesting study conducted in Australia on some participants in the Australian Junior Volleyball Championships. Unfortunately I can only access the abstract…
According to the abstract, the results show that skill based conditioning games resulted in improvements in vertical jump, spike jump, speed, agility, upper body muscular power and estimated maximal aerobic power. However improvements in skills were few and far between.
This was compared to instructional training, which resulted in some improvements in spike jump and speed, but strong improvements in measures of skill.
Just wanted to say sorry to anyone out there who checks this blog. It has been a fairly busy time for me recently and haven’t been able to put up regular content. I have just moved to Adelaide to start studying a Masters of Physiotherapy (Graduate Entry). I have also just started a new job with Tennis Australia as a part-time Strength & Conditioning coach. This has kept me pretty busy, but also gives me plenty of oppurtunities to learn, which hopefully will flow through to the blog.
Every volleyball player that is aiming at being an elite player is aiming to become an expert. Motor learning gurus have studied all aspects of expertise, from how to obtain it to what separates experts from the rest of us.
Regardless of the skill being performed, whether it’s a sport specific skill, a dancing move or playing an instrument, there are certain characteristics that experts have in common.
A previous post Do The Opposite dealt with a principle to adhere to when planning a strength & conditioning program for volleyball. “Train movements, not muscles” is another conditioning principle that is applicable to all sports, including volleyball.
The Principle
A key principle when trying to improve your volleyball performance is specificity of training. Your training should be specific to the demands and movement patterns of volleyball. The more similar your weight training exercises are to the movements performed in a game, the more carryover there will be from the weight room to the court. This means that your weight training movements should of a similar pattern, velocity and contraction type to those performed in volleyball.
Ankle sprains are one of the most common injuries in volleyball, and no doubt a fair proportion of the readers out there have had this injury at some stage. We know that taping or ankle braces can be a good way to prevent or reduce the severity of ankle injuries (see To Brace Or Not To Brace). But what else can be done?
Not only do we want to keep our ankles injury free, we want them in good condition to ensure optimal performance. Here are a few strategies you can employ to help keep your ankles injury free and in good working order.
Part 1 of this series looked at why the glutes are important, basically because they are a major component in jumping, and why they are often not as active as they should be. Part 2 looked at how to address this by giving some motor control exercises designed to get your glutes firing. Now that your glutes are nice and active its time to look at how to strengthen them.
There seems to be some confusion about where static stretching fits into a volleyball program. Before training? After training? Does it prevent injuries? Just exactly what is the deal with static stretching?
Studies have shown that a warm up based around static stretching can impede vertical jump performance and power outputs. In some cases this has scared people off static stretching completely, and there has been an overreaction. In other cases the original message has still not quite gotten through. Hopefully this will clarify the role of static stretching in a volleyball program.
Its been a while since part 1 of this series, but part 2 is finally here. The first part of this series looked at why the glutes are important, and why they don’t fire in a lot of people. Bad motor patterns and tight hip flexors are two of the biggest culprits. Now that we know they are important its time to look at how to get them firing.
Warming up for volleyball used to be so simple. Jog a few laps, stretch for a bit, or vice versa, then get into it. This is definitely not the ideal warm up. Research has shown that static stretching can reduce the amount of power and force the stretched muscles can generate. This is discussed in the post Static Stretching in the Warm Up.
So if static stretching is not the way to go, then what is the best way to warm up for a game or training? The answer is a dynamic warm up.
Enough with the curls, do some squats! Pic: MrBeagle
Written By Dave
Following on from the post on Increasing Vertical Jump, this post supports the fact that strong legs are required for a good vertical jump.
Vertical jump and sprint times correlate well with max squat strength. This means that if you have a strong max squat you are likely to have a good vertical jump and short distance sprint speed (both of which are important for volleyball).
