Video Review: A “setting accuracy” drill

Here’s a drill I came across that says it “is a drill to work on accuracy while setting”. You may need to go full screen to see it all.

What this drill could be used for:

– Developing power to push the ball over longer distances.

– Accuracy in placing balls over. Though I’d want opposed practice to work on seeing the court and decision-making.

What this drill should not be used for:

– Setting accuracy.

I honestly don’t think this drill works on setting at all. What they are doing is volleying the ball over with their hands. There’s nothing about this that relates to setting the ball to a hitter.

Why?

The distance is too long. Just watch the players and you’ll notice there’s more focus on power generation than on true accuracy. They firstly need to play the ball far enough to even reach the target.

There’s no trajectory consideration. Sets are based on timing with the hitter, and that links to set trajectory. Faster sets have flatter trajectories than slower sets (generally). This drill doesn’t have any kind of constraint around trajectory, so it’s certainly not working on anything slower than a shoot set. If it were, there would be something to set over, or something elevated to drop the ball into.

The target may actually be too small. This might sound strange, but bear with me. Most sets happen over a distance of 20 feet or less. The sets in this drill are more like double that. Let’s say you want a normal tempo set to be 3′ off the net, expecting an error range of about 1′ in either direction, so your range is 2′ in total. Generally speaking, a 1′ error at 20 feet is a 2′ error at 40 feet. That means your range at 40 feet is 4′ in total. Those hoops are not 4′ across. So sets that would be acceptable from 20 feet will miss at 40. You may say that means the player has to be more accurate, but account for the psychological aspect of doubling the failure rate.

If you want your players to be better at pushing the ball to open areas of the court, this could be a starting point. If you want to actually work on setting, I’d pick something else.

For help on designing drills and games that actually work on the things you want them working on, check out The Perfect Drill.