Volleyball is an exciting and fun game to play with your mates and it gives you ample workout opportunity no matter at what level you are playing. In the recent years, the game has also seen a surge in popularity—in US and elsewhere—thanks chiefly to the highly successful and entertaining Japanese manga anime series ‘Hakyuu’. You can play volleyball indoors, at the beach, at outdoor volleyball courts or right in your garden if you want.
Getting Started in Volleyball
If you want to pursue volleyball as a recreational activity, let us put it right off the bat that age is not a bar. You can start as late as 20 or older and can still participate in various competitive leagues and achieve a good degree of skill and finesse as a volleyball player.
In most big cities across US, you’ll find volleyball leagues consisting of 4 or 5 tiers. So, as long as you put in some practice and master the basic skills, you can participate in competitive volleyball and play in a league tier that suits your current volleyball skills.
However, first things first—you need to find a place to play and some people to play the game with. A good place to start looking is the community centers in and around your area that offer recreational level play. Also keep a lookout for volleyball meetups in your area and for community centers and gyms that offer open gym for the sport.
You can also try to find players and locations online. One great online resource for this purpose and one that we highly recommend is www.meetup.com.
Playing the Game
Now, once you’ve been through this process and are also fairly conversant with all the different rules of the game, now is the time to learn the basic volleyball skills and techniques. And these include all the different aspects of the sport—digging, receiving, blocking, serving, bumping, setting and attacking.
Of course, if you are a complete beginner, you’ll not find it easy at first. However, as long as you stay motivated and put in practice and effort, things will gradually start to appear more fun and less arduous.
However, at this point, the thing we want to stress most is that you should LEARN THE RIGHT TECHNIQUES for each of the different skills (such as digging, serving, swinging, and so on). Having the right techniques RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING will not only ensure your learning fast, but will also greatly reduce risks of injury.
So, as you are starting out, pay attention to all the little details regarding techniques and stick fast to them. For example, how you should cup your hands while receiving, should you join your elbows or keep them apart, what should be the ideal distance between your elbows—all these little technical details are important if you wish to learn fast and learn effectively.
Coaching Resources
For complete beginners, we can recommend two very good (and free) online coaching resources. Both of these are YouTube channels. The first is The Art of Coaching Volleyball and the other coach Donny’s Elevate Yourself. You should check out the various videos that explain in detail all the different techniques and then try to implement them during your volleyball drills (some of which you can practice at home itself).
At the same time however, we strongly suggest that you receive some real life training from a competent coach. While online tutorials are helpful, on-court supervision will help you evaluate how well you are able to put into practice whatever you’ve learnt online. Competent, live coaching will fast-track your progress and will help grow your confidence.
