A difficult skill to teach for a volleyball coach is team building. There are some good volleyball drills that can help build teamwork and camaraderie with your players. You will want to work on this skill in order for each player to be able to trust in their teammates and know that they can count on them to make the plays that is expected of them. One of the most important concepts you will want to instill in your team is that a team is 6 players working in tandem, rather than 6 people trying to carry everything on their own. These volleyball drills will go a long way toward helping build this team spirit.
One of the great volleyball drills that will help build team work is a race of sorts. Pick a relatively long distance and have the team run together. You will want to set a realistic time to beat for the entire team. Once that is established, let the team start out running. In order to work correctly, however, you will need to set certain consequences depending upon the outcome. Because they are running as a team, you can establish that there will be a penalty of 1 suicide for every 5 seconds that elapses between the first team mate to cross the finish line and the last. This will help your team work together to cross as closely together as possible. That is also where the time limit comes into play. The same type of penalty can apply for every 5 seconds that the team misses the limit by. This will help prevent the entire team from simply walking together. These types of volleyball drills will help your team work together toward a common goal.
Using an obstacle course as teamwork building volleyball drills can be another interesting change of pace. One of the great ways to accomplish this is to set up a course that is designed to be done by a pair of players. You want to make players have to help each other. If your players are forced to help each other, they will come to depend upon each other. Using time limits will also help ensure that your teams try their hardest, rather than just coasting through the course. You can offer penalties for too much difference in the times between teams finishing, or add the times of the teams together as one overall time. This is a good way to use volleyball drills to condition as well as build a cohesive team.
Not all volleyball drills have to offer penalties to the team to be effective. You can help your team grow together by simply using typical strategies found in traditional team building camps. These can include anything that you think will help your players come to trust and rely on each other. A great example of this is having half of your team close their eyes and fall backwards into the arms of one of their teammates. This is one of the best ways to instill trust in each other. With a little imagination, you can integrate many different trust building skills into your volleyball drills.
A team is only as good as its weakest player. This is why you want to use volleyball drills to help your team come together as a cohesive unit. By building a team spirit, you will help ensure that you have a single team on the court at any time, rather then just 6 individual players. Team building volleyball drills can be as important as any other type of drill you will work on through the season.