Volleyball Performance Training: The Other Skillz
Following the loose theme we've had this month of volleyball training (but really, let's be honest, all of this can apply to most sports), I thought it would be beneficial to highlight a few other athletic skills/movements that are woefully under-trained in volleyball players. It's all about the vertical!
But not really.
It drives me nutso that coaches and parents and the players focus singularly on improving the vertical jump. Yes, it's important, but how does one get to the net to jump? How does one move fast enough to get behind the ball to pass it well?
I've worked with dozens and dozens of volleyball players and I've seen terrible movement quality all the other planes of motion. Great volleyball players are more than their vertical jump heights! (tweet that) I've listed a handful of movements that would behoove any volleyball player, and coaches, to implement in a regular training rotation.
Side Shuffle
I can, without exaggeration, tell you that I've seen volleyball players side shuffle with the grace of a new-born giraffe. How in the world can a volleyball player move around the court while keeping their eyes on the game, without side shuffling? Answer: Not possible. Side shuffling is the most efficient and most strategic way to move around the court.
Transitional Movements
Above are just a few examples of transitional movement drills. Along with side shuffling, there are times when players need to sprint forward or backpedal quickly and then run in a completely different direction. The ability to change directions rapidly is essential in volleyball, especially if there's a wild pass or tip off the net.
Heidens
Yes, I know volleyball consists of jumping up and down, and not side-to-side, but reinforcing lateral movements is a boon for volleyball. Heidens also teach force absorption and production in the frontal (lateral) plane. Most of volleyball consists of lateral movements, so if a player is strong side-to-side, not only will it reduce injury risk but she will be more confident moving sideways and will thus do it more.
Rolls
There are a lot of opportunities to dive, roll, and fall on the ground in volleyball. Learning how to do so safely is imperative. Learning how to pop back up again after a quick "hello" to the floor is vital for scoring points. Because rolling and tumbling is not a part of our everyday lives (at least, most of us) the vestibular system might be a bit slow in re-orienting. However, if you train rolls, you're also training the vestibular system and strengthening its ability to readjust quickly.
Add these into your training arsenal and there will be a guaranteed bump in performance.
Conditioning for Volleyball; How to do it WITHOUT killing verticals
It never ceases to amaze me how often I see volleyball coaches running their athletes through, "old school," conditioning while in season. They then go on to wonder why their athletes are hurting their knees, why verticals aren't improving and what can be done to remedy these issues. Often times the thought is to add something to the program as more is better and hard work makes improvement, right? Wrong. More is just more and hard work only leads to improvement when it is applied correctly. It seems extremely popular for coaches to implement P90X style conditioning in which their athletes do repeated vertical jumps or burpees to fatigue while throwing in sprints, pushups, crunches and whatever else. The common thought is, "it's hard, leaves the athletes gassed and contains sport-specific movements, so it must work!" This may seem sport-specific because it contains jumping, but it actually couldn't be further from what they need while in season. This is because the actual energy system demands in these types of situations are far from actual volleyball. Expecting them to respond positively with respects to their sport from jumps, agilities, suicides while fatigued or in a heavily aerobic state violates the SAID principle.
The SAIDPrinciple and Energy Systems
Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. That is one of the golden rules of training. It does not entirely mean that if you just keep jumping you will get better at jumping. What it does mean is that if you keep jumping with certain muscle fibers, at a certain pace, with certain recovery, you will become better at jumping a certain way. That "way" is all determined by the mechanics of the jump and the energy system(click to get a good background on the energy systems) the athlete is tapping into while they jump. Performing jumps while fatigued and in a heavily aerobic(breathing hard) state means that you are training yourself to jump better in those conditions. This often times results in having altered mechanics, relying heavily on ligamentous and structural stability(rather than muscular) to jump as well as recruiting more slow twitch fibers in the pattern than fast twitch. Jumping like this can greatly increase the risk of knee injuries as you can see below..
When our bodies enter into a largely aerobic state, they limit the amount of fast twitch fiber recruitment. This is because our fast twitch fibers are largely glycolitic which means that they're fueled anaerobically. You can read up more on the energy systems HERE. In short, the anaerobic systems are your body's first choice for fuel. It is rapidly prepared for use and requires no oxygen. When you run out of the creatine phosphate(10 seconds of activity), your body starts trying to convert the glycogen into ATP. This causes a byproduct of lactate and hydrogen. If you are expending energy at a rate faster than what your body can shuttle out these byproducts, you start to develop fatigue and that, "burning" sensation in those muscles. These byproducts are shuttled to the slow twitch fibers that can actually metabolize them with the use of oxygen into more energy. The increase in oxygen for metabolism results in heavier breathing.
So as you can see, the fast twitch fibers run out of energy pretty quickly. The slow twitch fibers can go all day. The more you train these fibers in specific movements, the more dominant they will be in recruitment strategies. So if you're jumping while in an aerobic dominant state, you're training yourself to use more slow twitch and less fast twitch when you jump.
The energy systems are not black and white. We are constantly using all of them at the same time, but there is generally one dominant one. It is normal to have an increase in breathing or feel some work in your legs during jumping. However, I would argue that doing what should be explosive style movements to glycolitic fatigue in a sport that has almost no aerobic element is extremely counter-productive to maintaining power-production and general orthopedic health.
What they need:
First, I'd like to point out that a quick google search reveals that there are no time-motion studies to be found on volleyball(or at least when I was looking). A time-motion analyses is a group of collected data taken during sporting events to tell you the average of: type of movement, intensity of movement, it's duration, frequency and amount of rest between bouts for that particular sport. This way strength and conditioning professionals can take a more objective look at what an athlete actually needs. The fact that there are none to be found on volleyball, in my mind, just goes to show that the aerobic conditioninglevel is insignificant when compared to other variables. It's for that reason that more emphasis should be focused on mechanics, maximal power output, and strength. Now with that being said, there is still a small aerobic component that could potentially limit an athletes' jumping ability at the end of a long game, but it needs to be addressed properly, without taking away from the aforementioned traits.
Researchers analyzed a German female beach volleyball team and found that in one hour of play, an athlete takes about 85 jumps on average. Another study followed a mens' beach volleyball team and found that they take an average of 145 maximal jumps during the course of play in a game. That same study noted that about 27% of the jumps were due to blocking. Though beach volleyball and indoor volleyball are two different beasts, what we can conclude from this is that since beach volleyball has 1/3 of the players and is much more active, that indoor volleyball requires even less total work output. This does however give us a, "line in the sand," to know how much work capacity they need. If you focus on giving them more capacity than what they need, then you run the risk of pulling from other training variables such as explosiveness.
Knowing the numbers above I would estimate that prepping an athlete to take 80-110 jumps(being liberal) in a game should suffice for most levels and positions. So they ideally need to be able to perform that many jumps over the period of a 60-90 minutes, without losing much "umph". Throw in the constant shuffling and repositioning and you could argue that there is an aerobic demand, but due to the amount of time between plays and the, "clusters" of movement, I would argue that it is minimal when compared to the demand on the creatine-phosphate system. You rarely see an indoor volleyball player panting or having a build up of lactic acid during a game. The main role of the aerobic system for these athletes should be to help adequately replenish the glycolitic system.
To address this, you want to try to improve the aerobic capabilities of the fast twitch fibers without giving the slow twitch fibers much stimulus. Doing this must be carefully programmed so as to not interfere with maximal power output. My favorite method for this is ballistic style conditioning. The only prerequisites for this method is that the athlete has a decent strength base, so that we know the tissues won't negatively respond to the impact, and proper jumping mechanics. If the athlete is lagging in those two areas then they are much better off focusing on those aspects than worrying about their conditioning.
Enter Ballistic style conditioning
Not only does it sound hard-core, it's pretty easy to implement, is extremely effective and is probably the most specific conditioning method for volleyball players. It is a form of interval training that is set to the individuals ability every time it is performed.
To implement this method, you need a point in which the athlete(s) can measure jump height on each of their reps. What I recommend doing is adjusting the nethigher so that they can't get one hand over when jumping(if possible) or using some other object(like a basketball hoop) for them to consistently touch when they jump. The athletes will first see how high they can get by jumping uptouching a spot on the net/object and will be instructed to mark and remember that spot. You can use tags or stickers if you don't trust them to remember.
You then pick an interval depending on the need, position, time of year and conditioning level of the athlete(s). I recommend 5-15 seconds on and 20-35 seconds off. When you start the interval the athlete(s) will jump and touch their individual spots repeatedly until the rest period starts. During the rest period, the athlete still does slight movements such as sidesteps in place. Just enough to keep the blood flow going. Then returns back to jumping when the rest ends. This is repeated UNTIL THE ATHLETE MISSES THEIR MARK, which signifies fatigue of the fast twitch fibers. At that point, the athlete stops and gets a gull recovery of 3-6 minutes so that the glycolitic system can recover. This constitutes as one set. I'd recommend doing anywhere from 1 to 3 sets depending on the situation and frequency of implementation. The training effect will make it so that the fibers can recover faster in between bouts so that they can generate near maximal forces even towards the end of the game.
This method should be used and completed before the season starts so that the training effect can be utilized in practice. So long as they are continuously practicing and playing in game-like situations, the effects should last. It will actually allow you to get in more maximal power work too, which is what you should be doing while in-season. Performing circuit-style conditioning or anything that pushes the athlete into 60-90 seconds or more of intense activity will start to diminish this affect.
Give this a try with your team next year. Get them working early so that they can get a good wave of ballistics in before their season starts and then continue to work on their maximal power and skills from there. If your team isn't ready for ballistics conditioning then working on jumping mechanics and a solid strength base will still improve their endurance on the court as well as improving their vertical.
SAPT MailBag: The Path to SwoleCity
SAPT MailbagQ: I’m 6’1 and I weigh 160 lbs soaking wet. My goal is to get to 200 lbs by June. I work out 5 days a week. Monday & Wednesday belong to the Lower Body; leg press all day, then burn it out with hamstring curls and leg extensions. Calf raises if I took my pre-workout. I do upper body on Tuesday and Thursday. I run on Fridays. I start out with chest flys, then I grab a squat rack and knock out 4 or 5 sets of bicep curls. I’ll finish up with some lateral raises, tricep extensions and lat pulldowns. I take mass gainer before and after my workouts, but the scale hasn’t moved at all! Tell me the secret to getting ripped!
- Drew C, NY.
Drew… first of all, thanks for your question. Second of all, I’m sorry to hear about your lack of success thus far in the mass-gaining department. Luckily for you, I’m about to drop a knowledge bomb that is bound to get you moving in the right direction. Relax, take a seat, and get ready to learn.
Expectations
It’s great to have goals. Goal setting is a vital skill to possess, and it’s the first step you need to take in order to actually accomplish anything of significance. Not only that, but you’ve also put together some semblance of a plan on how to achieve your goal. That’s fantastic, but let’s take a minute to examine your goal and see how feasible it actually is.
By my count, we have about 18 weeks until the beginning of June. This means you’ll need to gain around 2.2 pounds per week to achieve your goal. When gaining mass, putting on 1-2 pounds per week is considered excellent progress. Remember, our goal is to put on lean muscle mass. Sure you could sit on the couch, drink a gallon of milk a day and eat oreos until you develop a mild case of type-II diabetes. You’ll have no problem ballooning up to 200 pounds, but how much of that weight do you think will be muscle, and how much do you think will be oreo?
Patience is key. The mass gaining process is a journey, and there’s no point in gaining weight if it doesn’t make you stronger, healthier, and manlier. A more achievable goal would be to put on 25-30 pounds by June, or extend our deadline to the end of July. With either of these strategies, we would only need to be gaining 1.5 pounds per week. A much more attainable feat that gives you a greater chance to succeed, and allows you to maximize how much muscle you will gain, while simultaneously limiting excess fat accumulation.
Diet
As convenient as mass-gaining shakes are, they aren’t magical. You may be drinking upwards of 2 mass-gaining shakes a day, but if you’re not in a calorie surplus, you’re only spinning your wheels. Hire a nutrition coach. Make an appointment for a consultation with our very own Coach Kelsey Reed, mass gaining extraordinaire. She’ll point you in the right direction, show you how to truly understand nutrition, and book you a one-way ticket to swole-city.
Most experts agree that you’ll gain about .5-1 pound of fat for every pound of muscle that you put on. Making sure to properly manipulate your food intake is vital to gaining muscle in the most efficient and effective manner. Shoot for around 1.5-2.0 g/kg of protein a day, and try to hit about a 10-15% calorie surplus. Understand that more is not always better, and it is accuracy and consistency that really matter. Examine.com, and Precision Nutrition are fantastic resources for all things diet-related. The web is wonderful place. Take advantage of it.
Exercise Selection
The average person interested in bulking up will google “workouts for getting yolked,” grab the first routine that pops up, and repeat it over and over again until they develop an over-use injury or get bored. Oftentimes, these routines are loaded with isolation exercises. They’ll consist of a chest isolation movement, a back isolation movement, a shoulder exercise, three more for your arms, and core circuit. The program will have you going to the gym 5, sometimes even 6, days a week. I’m here to let you in on a little secret...
You don’t need to be lifting 5 or 6 days a week. You’re wasting your time isolating muscles. Ditch them and start performing multi-joint, compound movements with heavy weight. Bench press, overhead press, squat, deadlift, row, perform chin-ups and push-ups until you can knock them out in your sleep. These are the “bang-for-your-buck” exercises. These are the exercises that will allow you to gradually add weight to the bar over time. They allow you to use greater loads and utilize more muscle mass, which in turn releases more growth hormone, more testosterone, enhances bone density, strength, and power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdbTxbQQWaY
Conditioning
Believe it or not, your run on Friday is probably working against you. Long, steady state cardio is exactly the kind of thing that you want to avoid when your goal is to put on size. Instead, try higher intensity methods of conditioning. Perform hill sprints, prowler sprints, loaded carry variations, crawl variations, medicine ball slams, etc. High-intensity conditioning work and resistance training have a synergistic effect upon each other. Sprints, slams, and loaded carries, just like heavy barbell work, is going to seriously jack up your hormone production, and leave you gassed and weak-kneed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0-jd8418FU
Conclusion
Follow the above recommendations and you’ll be well on your way to gaining a respectable amount of size. Remember, individual differences will also play a huge role. Genetics are the cold, hard reality, and some of us (myself included) just aren’t as genetically gifted as others. Work with what you’ve got. Learn the how to lift with PROPER technique before you use heavy loads. We can help you with this. Book an appointment for a consultation with one of our coaches today and you won't regret it. We excel at teaching proper lifting technique, and progress our clients intelligently, systematically, and consistently. We absolutely love this stuff, and have been turning average Joes into superheros since 2007.
Use the Deadlift to Bring Your Jumping Skills to Life
The deadlift has long been associated with strength and power and an exercise frequently prescribed and executed by the wonderful athletes here at SAPT. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined this exercise and discovered illuminating data to further validate the positive effects this exercise has on athletic performance.
The primary purpose of the study was to examine what effect 10 weeks of deadlift training would have on rate of force development (RFD), rate of torque development (RTD), and vertical jump performance.
RFD, a person’s ability to rapidly create force, is paramount to success in sports performance. A higher RFD produces much quicker and more explosive movements. In the weight room this equates to being able to move a barbell or implement with a given load at a faster rate. On the field or court the results will be noticed in laser quick cutting and lightning fast running.
The study consisted of 18 people who completed 5 sets of 5 reps on the deadlift twice per week for 10 weeks. Utilizing pre- and post- vertical jump test results, the authors found a 7.4% increase in vertical jump height. To put that in a real world measure, it would be similar to adding about 1.75 inches to a 25in. vertical jump. Not a massive increase but certainly enough to get you closer to the ball in most cases. The study also noted marked improvements in RTD for the major lower extremity muscles groups.
The results of this study give hope to jumping athletes looking to take their athletic prowess to the next level. I feel Dan John said it best in the book Easy Strength, "If you aren't deadlifting, you aren't training."
Get Smarter Today! Strength Training for Your Brain
We haven't done a post like this in a while and I thought I'd start the practice back up again. There are a plethora of smart people out there, most of whom we learn from, so I figured our readers could too! 5 Steps to Managing Large Groups- Sarah Walls
Did you all know that Sarah, founder and owner of SAPT, also founded and owns a second company? For those who don't know, it's called Concentric Brain and it's a software solution for fitness professionals. It makes the program writing process faster, and believe you me, anything that helps with that is gold. They have a blog so check out the link above (as well as the other posts.... it's also where Steve Reed has transferred his splendid writing skills).
Fix Your Knees, Get Bigger & Stronger- Tony Gentilcore
Tony is a great coach, not only because he's a pretty smart dude, but he walks the walk. He trains hard and knows what it's like to train around pain. If you have knee pain, this is the article for you!
What Happens to Your Body During a Cleanse - Thorin Klosowski
Aside from having a spectacular name, Thorin does a fine job of debunking the detoxing junk that is spewed forth from every direction. If you feel like your body needs a cleanse, read this first, then go eat some vegetables. Your body will thank you.
How Flip-Flops Change Your Feet- Katy Bowman
Katy is a biomechanist and blows my mind every time I read a post of hers. This one has less nerd-speak than some of the others and illuminates why flip flops are, well, not the best footware choice. I highly recommend perusing the rest of her site, but I'll send this post your way to whet your appetite!
These should keep you occupied until next week!
Teaching and Improving the Vertical Jump- Strength and Power
Last week's post was all about the technique side of improving the vertical jump. Today will entail multiple videos (for those of you who don't want to read on a Monday morning) of different drills and exercises that help improve strength and power for purpose of gettin' dem ups.
The following are SAPT's go-to exercises for all of our volleyball and basketball players for improving their vertical. We have two goals:
1. Increase force output- that is, the amount of force applied to the ground. The greater the force, the greater the jump height (it's physics).
2. Increase rate of force development- as we've discussed before, how fast can an athlete apply force to the ground. The faster she can hit peak force output, the higher she'll jump (more physics).
Goblet/Barbell Squats:
Why- Squats, both goblet and barbell, increase strength/power in the hamstrings, glutes, and quads- more notably the backside muscles- all of which are the primary jumpers. An article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that deep squatting (below parallel) was beneficial in both strength and power development. I find it interesting that partial squats actually decreased strength and power...
Deadlifts:
Why- Again, posterior chain development but also, look at the hip angle. The hip hinge of the deadlift is very similar to the hip hinge needed in the vertical jump. Not only that, we can toy around with the reps/sets/weights to either train for strength or for speed (i.e. increasing the rate of force development) both of which contribute to more air time. Above is conventional style deadlift, but sumo works too. Incidentally, I've noticed that most of our volleyball players sit into conventional more comfortably.
Kettlebell Swings:
Why- Kettlebell swings are a delightful (well, I think they're delightful) and effective way to improve power production. The Olympic lifts are touted as the best power production exercises, but I think the risk-reward ratio is skewed in the "risk's" favor for the O-lifts- mostly because they're extremely technical lifts that take a large investment of time to see the benefit. Kettlebell swings are, by comparison, fairly easy to teach and we can milk the swing for a long time to continue to increase strength and power.
Split Squat/Lunge variations:
Why- While I know that vertical jump is a bilateral movement and if I were training athletes ONLY for vertical jump tests (which are very controlled) then I would certainly prioritize squats/deadlift. However, the vast majority of the time the context these athletes will jump in, games/practice, the vertical jump will have a variety of take-off stances. Therefore, they need to be strong in a split-stance. Unilateral training also evens out imbalances and improves stabilization. Unstable athletes don't jump high.
I really, really like Bulgarian Split squats (second video)because of the extra stretch on the glute muscles of the front leg which ilicits a higher growth response. And they're hard.
Split Stance Vertical Jumps*:
Why- Speaking of split stance, we can specifically train the jump technique with this drill. I only move athletes to this drill when they've mastered the basic vertical jump technique. I like this drill a lot as it mimics what a lot of game-time scenarios will actually be, especially for outside hitters and basketball players going up for a rebound.
Vertical Jump with 180 Degree Turn:
Why- Vestibular training! How often, in a game or practice, does an athlete have to turn and jump? I'd wager the scientific measure of "a lot." While an athlete may not do the 180 in the air, the change in direction does stimulate the vestibular system and teach the athlete to orient him/herself faster.
Seated Vertical Jump:
Why- The seated part takes out most of the benefit of the countermovement (the arm swing and sitting back) which challenges the athlete to generate more force/power from the legs to achieve any semblance of height. It's a way to challenge the lower body without adding weights to the athlete.
Depth Drop to Vertical Jump:
Why- This taps into the reactive component of jumping. It helps increase rate of force development, but also trains the reaction of the athlete. Athletes will often have to jump multiple times in a row without much respite, so training their ability to rebound upon landing is advantageous.
There we have it! This should be enough to jump-start (pun totally intended) improving your/your athletes' vertical jump.
* In case you were wondering what I was listening to, it was Nightmare Before Christmas Revisited. Yes, it is awesome.
