Fixing Bad Serving Habits!
By: Coach Houser - About Volleyball
They may have helped early on, but now all they do is cause you errors.
Players often pick up bad overhand serving habits when they are young. In their efforts to get the ball over the net, they cheat a little by using some of these bad habits:
- A stroll
- A lean
- Atilt
- An across the body follow through. I call it "soft-balling" the follow through.
While these cheating-habits may get the job done early on, they do not help in the end. At camp, I give my players an analogy. When you first started shooting a basketball, did you not learn a shot that was just an effort to get the ball to the rim? It was crazy looking, remember? Then, as you grew older and stronger, you had to change your shot? Serving a volleyball overhand is the same thing! However, you have to understand not only what cheating-habits you are doing, but also what you are failing to do correctly.
Trim That Fat
As you get more experienced, you want to "trim the fat off" your serve.
Get rid of all the extra movements, which only promote inconsistency in the serve. The stroll is useless and only provides the illusion of gained power.
The lean/tilt will lead to an occasional "grandma serve," rifling into the bleachers, causing the unsuspecting grandmas to duck for cover. With the lean/tilt/soft-ball, your shoulders move away from the ball, which makes it more difficult to keep the center of the hand contacting the center of the ball.
Soft-balling a serve will create an occasion pulled serve (like a pulled hit in baseball) or a shanked serve as the ball hits the outside of the your hand. These habits increase errors by 5% to 10%, and that is more than enough to require a sub each time it is your turn to serve.
Sacrifice Power for Consistency
Sure, if you eliminate these bad habits, you will at first, loose some of your power. Eventually you will get it back. However, is loosing power really a bad thing? I tell my kids, "You want 20 mph in the court, or 30 mph out?"
What is More Important, Looking Cool, or Winning?
Younger and smaller players, you will have to make a tough decision: overhand serve correctly and only get 50% in the court; overhand serve incorrectly and get 70% in the court (but all those habits will have to be broken in a few years) or; serve underhand. There is a huge amount of peer pressure against the underhand serve. Learning to serve overhand is a milestone and many inexperienced players feel that it is a direct indication of a player's skill level. However, I tell my kids, "I want you to serve 90% in the court. If you can't, you will most likely lose the privilege of serving in a match."
Fix the Toss, Fix the Problems
Some girls toss the ball too high. "But coach, if I toss it lower, I can't serve it." Well, Phyllis, that is because right after you toss the ball, you drop your serving hand. Then you have to bring it back up, prepare it, and then swing. After that, yeah, the toss is too low to hit.
If you were to merely "toss, prepare, step, hit," then your toss could be much lower. The advantage to a low toss: the ball is only traveling about 1 mph when a player contacts it. Anybody can hit something traveling that slowly! However, if you toss the ball higher, the dropping speed increases, thus increasing error. I've heard some kids say, "If I don't toss it high, I can't hit it." That's like saying, "The only squirrel I can shoot, is the one that's running. If it's just sitting there, I always miss." That makes so sense at all.
Use the Toss to Get the Results You Want
There are some important things about the toss that you can use. If you want the ball to travel higher, you toss the ball closer (more over your head). If you want the ball to travel lower, then you toss the ball more in front. However, an out-in-front toss is risky because it requires more arm speed to hit the ball so that gravity does not pull the serve down into the net. This, logically, increases serving errors.
So my final thoughts on overhand serving: The mantra is "Toss, prepare, step, hit". That's it. No lean, no twist. A follow-through isn't even necessary. "Toss, prepare, step, hit." Shoulders parallel to the floor and to the wall behind her. The server hits the center of the ball with the center of her hand. If done properly, she will notice an added benefit: The ball will FLOAT, all right!
