Best 3 Volleyball Passing Drills For Beginners

My recent experiences working with top-tier coaches have shown me the truth: practice and more practice are the pillars of efficient passing. How to receive strong float serve? Powerful jump-spin? How to receive short serve? You always have to start with the basics and repetitions Let’s take a look at some drills that are great for beginners and that I would recommend even for experienced players. I did them in the past and I am still doing them to keep my passing skills at the top! If you are a coach for youth you will find these very useful.

1. Wall Passing Drill

You have probably already heard of the wall passing drills. It is one of the best drills you can give the players before practice and will drastically improve players’ receiving skills. And the best thing is they can do as many repetitions as they want and work on the technique they might be lacking. It is one of the most boring exercises but it works!

What you need:
1. A wall.
2. Enough space around.
3. And of course a volleyball.
The main Part:
1. Passing Against the Wall:
  1. Player Toss the ball against the wall.
  2. As it rebounds back, the player makes a pass (Forearm pass) against the wall.
  3. Repeat for a set number of reps (e.g., 15-20).
Tips:
1. Choose a spot on the wall (e.g., a specific brick or area) as the player’s target. You can draw a circle also.
2. Aim to pass the ball to that spot consistently.
3. If the ball doesn’t hit the target, no problem, the player has to keep working to find consistency so he/she can translate skills into the court.

Wall passing drill example.

2. Russian Passing Drill

Another great passing drill is called The Russian Passing Drill. It’s quite simple however in comparison with the wall passing drill it requires 3 players to do it. The passing player who stands in the middle of the two works especially on footwork, and because the exercise involves a lot of movements back and forth it can be very hard physically. It’s a great exercise to work on the conditioning as well. Here’s how you do it and some variations of it.

Setup:
1. Form a straight line with three players, standing about 4 to 5 meters apart from each other.
2. (the passer) stand in the middle, facing one of the players.
Execution:
1. The first player tosses or even spikes the ball to the passer.
2. The passing player bumps a ball back to the tossing player
3. Then the player who is passing turns around and the other player throws or spikes the ball.
4. Repeat the sequence as the ball moves down the line.

Russian passing drill example

3. Butterfly Passing Drill

Next on the passing drills list, you can incorporate in your training is called a butterfly passing drill, however for this drill, you need more players. It’s one of the best team warmup workouts, that you as a coach can incorporate into your practice. What is best is that All the players will do everything from serving, setting and what’s the priority here passing! You can start with serving float and then transition to spin serve so the passers can get a feel for both.

Setup:
1. Form two lines of servers on each side of the court starting in position 1.
2. 2 players on each side of the net are setting
3. And 2 players on each side of the net are passing in zone 5.
Execution:
1. The first server serves the ball over the net to the passer on the other side.
2. The passer passes the ball to the setting player standing on the middle of the net.
3. Then the player near the net sets the ball.
4. The serving player goes to passing and the passing player moves to setting position.
5. Then you continue this cycle, and after some time make a switch the serving positions from 1 to 5.
6. Also, the receiving players switch the zones from 5 to zone 1.

Butterfly passing drill example

Those are the 3 basic passing drills that I recommend the most for beginners and that you can (if you are a coach) easily incorporate into your next practice. And help your team improve the reception! If you have any additional passing drills (examples) feel free to share those with us!

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