Interested in summer volleyball events? Like this post for a show of interest please.
It’s 11:00pm and it feels weird not to routinely post a SpikeThru event!
As many of you know, tonight was the last SpikeThru volleyball drop-in as the school term ends but not to worry, we’ll resume again in September 2016!
SpikeThru would not have been so successful without your support so many thank yous to everyone who has participated or spread the word – I hope everyone had a great time every Monday night.
Not wanting the fun to end, I want to organize a few beach volleyball events or find other indoor courts we can play at in the interim. To keep things simple, please like the Facebook post or this blog post so I can gauge interest.
Again, thank you all for the awesome year and hope to see everyone sooner than September! 🙂
Volleyball Tutorial by Coach Donny: Serve Receive Rotations for a 5-1 Offense
Video Posted on Updated on
As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, watching YouTube videos can help improve your volleyball techniques and formations.
Here’s an awesome YouTube video from Coach Donny on Serve Receive Rotations for a 5-1 Offence Volleyball for anyone wanting to up their game. Definitely go check out his other videos as he goes through passing, receiving, hitting, setting and much more!
“Learn all 6 of the serve receive rotations and specific formations for a 5-1 offence. This video also covers the rules so you understand how the different rotations work.”
If you’re in the San Fran area, make sure you check out Coach Donny‘s clinics.
Welcome to the new SpikeThru community
As you can already tell, SpikeThru has rebranded! We decided to create this official brand to better represent our community, a brand that you can be proud to be a part of.
SpikeThru has become more than just a Monday night drop-in. It’s now a community of like minded players displaying great sportsmanship and a demonstrating a love for volleyball.
Hope you guys like the new SpikeThru!
Becoming a Better Volleyball Player – By Watching YouTube Videos?!
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, YouTube played a big part in my development. Watching is much easier than reading. I can spend hours and hours watching volleyball games, trying to analyze what the players are doing, watching videos on hitting, passing, and blocking. What I learned from these videos, I took to my volleyball clinics or drop-ins. I came across a few that have helped me the most so far so I thought I’d share them with you.
In my research, I stumbled across Coach Donny on YouTube. His videos are very elaborate and detailed, not too long to be dull, but long enough to get the points across. He provides great tutorials and breaks everything down to the basics, so it’s easy to understand and apply. Coach Donny not only provides various volleyball tutorials, he also does videos on improving your vertical jump, spiking power and highlights from 9 man tournaments.
Learning about passing.
This video really helped get me started. Coach Donny goes into the fundamental of passing in volleyball and he breaks it down to 3 parts: the ready position, platform, and passing motion. A few keys points he discusses for each part are listed below:
Ready Position
- Feet should be shoulders width apart
- Feet staggered, normally with your dominate foot in front
- Knees bent
- Shoulders forward
- Arms in front and ready to form the platform, being neutral and fairly relaxed
Forming Platform
- Locking the fingers, palm over palm with the fingers overlapping each other
- Thumbs parallel with one another and pointed down for a flat surface
- Have the elbows locked and keep them straight
- Form everything together in one motion, so there’s no wasted movements
- Contact the ball just above where you wear the watch, which is also known as the “sweet spot”
Passing Motion
- Knee, waist, sternum – Get the platform ready at the knees, contact the ball at your waist and finish your pass at the chest
- Power and control is with the arms mainly as legs tend to add too much power and lacks control – Legs are used for positioning
- Keep it simple and fluid
Just a few points I’d like to add is to square up to where you want to pass, the quicker you square up to the setter the easier it will be to pass the ball accurately. A few common mistakes players make when performing the pass:
- Not moving back away from the ball, cushioning and absorbing the ball
- Lifting your arms and using too much of your legs
- Not square up to the setter
- Not following the ball to your arms
I do advise for you to take professional clinics to ensure you’re actually doing everything properly. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and in the new year, join us Jan 4th to work off that turkey!
VIP Code for Canuck Stuff
For those of you looking to buy volleyball gear or doing some Christmas shopping for a volleyball lover, check out Canuck Stuff.
By using the VIP code CrazyAboutVolleyball (case sensitive) at check out, you can receive a 0-20% discount on certain items.
New to volleyball? We were all beginners once
We were all beginners once. While by no means am I an advanced volleyball player, I wanted to share with you how I got started. Hopefully provide some motivation.
In elementary and high school, most of my friends were really into volleyball while I played basketball and never gave volleyball a thought. I stopped playing sports altogether in university and after being a bit “unfit” during those years, I figured I should pick up a sport again. After a few injuries sustained in basketball, I wanted to look for a more non-contact but physical sport and that’s how I found my interest in volleyball.
As with learning everything else, I knew the fundamentals and the foundation of volleyball was critical. You can’t build a pyramid upside down, you know? I wasn’t very motivated to learn something new entirely. But if I was going to dedicate my time to something, I wanted to get good at it. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take 10,000 hours to get good at something. It can simply take 20 hours equating to 45 minutes a day for a month. Now that’s not exactly how dedicated I was, but it helps to put into perspective that it doesn’t take 10 years to learn something new.
I started doing some research and looked for local volleyball clinics and found one in the Toronto area.
If you want to improve your skills, clinics are a great place to start. As I improved slowly, I began looking for places to drop in and play. Practice does make (close to) perfect. It’s a good idea to participate in clinics as well as go to drop-ins so you can constantly apply what you’ve learned to real life games. It provides a sense of satisfaction and success. Since I was new to the sport, the clinic allowed me to drop in to spectate before committing to their 10 week long program. I started from their beginner class and practiced enough to get to their advance class.
Believe it or not, Youtube also played a big part in my interest. My girlfriend always makes fun of me, but when I get interested in something, I’ll watch Youtube videos for hours to learn the skill. As a more visual person, watching something slowly, continuously was a good way for me to learn. But remember, take what you learn to the clinic so they can help correct and improve your posture. You don’t want to injure yourself from doing something you learned on Youtube!
In the next post, I’ll introduce you to a few Youtube channels I found particularly helpful. Stay tuned…
Update: New Cap at 24 Players
It’s been 3 months since we’ve launched SpikeThru and we’ve built strong group of players. We’ve listened to your feedback and made adjustments as we went along. Based on most recent feedback, we will be capping our event at 24 players to ensure everyone gets quality play time. I will comment on the event once it gets full.
When I first started attending volleyball drop ins, I found that finding out if there was space or not when I got there was a bit of a pain hence why SpikeThru coordinates through Facebook events. If you cannot make it, please notify me 1-2 days in advance, so I can contact those on the wait list.
Events get posted every Monday nights around 11pm on our Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/spikethru, so make sure you “LIKE” the page and subscribe to get the most recent event postings. It is first come first serve, so make sure you sign up early. Events do get full within 24 hours.
See you guys on Monday!
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