I promise, this will be short, sweet, and the end of attacking.
I have learned over the years if you give young girls the tools, the knowledge and a challenge, they take it upon themselves to meet that challenge. Developing the ability to toss a ball up, approach and hit it is a challenge for most high school players. But introducing this to young players will pay great benefits to your program down the road.
There are many pieces to the self-tossing puzzle to fit together. For most high school players, that puzzle is a tough one. For young players it may seem like an enormous waste of time and effort. I disagree.
In many of the lead-up activities I have shared, issues begin when the player has to apply multiple aspects of a skill - when things must be performed simultaneously or in succession. Processing and performing each aspect comes to fruition at different times – with different frustration and success rates. There is nothing different here. This will test them, but the future benefit is worth the early frustration.
Tossing a ball up for yourself to hit, although tough, is not beyond many young players. The fascinating thing is young kids will struggle, but they don't give up. Before practice, after practice, you will find the really determined ones off by themselves or with a friend trying to get it. Watch from afar, but make sure they know you're watching.
This changes the dynamics of a team’s approach to the whole game.
There are 3 basic rules for learning to toss a ball up and hit it:
Start with the ball in your hitting hand with your left foot slightly forward. Be sure to stand at a slight angle to the direction you will be hitting. There is no difference between this and approaching a set ball.
Toss the ball when you begin approaching to hit the ball. Toss the ball to where your approach will take you. Players will find it a bit easier to toss the ball as they take that first left step. The toss must be high enough to give the player time to complete the approach and jump. Most players will toss too low or too short. Getting the height and distance correct is tough. It takes hours of practice to get it just right.
Take a normal approach. Jump. And hit the ball. I will recommend this once again: forget about a net. The players need to master the combination of the toss and approach before they even think about hitting it over a net. They should be tossing, approaching, jumping, and driving the ball into the ground over and over and over. At this point, the net is an unneeded distraction.
Make practicing this skill part of the daily practice warm-up. They will struggle at first. But more and more of them will get better and better.
The last high school program I worked with used this as the hitting warm-up every day. We would start with a back row attack from all three areas, go to the front row from all three areas, and end up hitting off one foot down the 3-meter line.
When we first started, the success rate was low and the frustration rate high. As the season progressed, we flipped that around. The kids got better with time and repetition.
We developed several kids who could jump-serve and many who could attack an out-of-system ball who would have rolled it over Before. Using the self-toss as a warmup not only gave them reps, it also gave them the confidence to jump-serve and aggressively attack out-of-system balls during matches.
Just imagine how much better these kids would have been if they would have been exposed to self-tossing in the fifth or sixth grade. Instead, it was high school when they learned the basics.
Sure, young kids struggle with self-tossing. Give them four or five years of daily practice and they will develop into confident servers and back row attackers. This can change the dynamics of a team’s approach to the whole game.
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