10 Helpful Volleyball Tips For Beginners to Start Playing

Volleyball is such a fun sport to play, having the many health benefits that help you burn calories, too! However, it isn’t something that you can begin picking up on immediately, as it takes skill and practice. As a beginner, it can be quite daunting trying to figure out how to start learning.

But not to worry, it’s actually easy to start as long as you know the basics and exercises to help improve the way you play. Wondering what to do first? Then read on as I show you the top ten volleyball tips for beginners to help you out!

The Benefits Of Playing Volleyball

Before we get into the different volleyball tips for beginners, what makes the sport so beneficial anyway? Here are some of the advantages of playing volleyball has to offer, for both beginners and professionals:

Playing volleyball strengthens many parts of the body, including the upper body, thighs, lower legs, as well as your arms and shoulders. It builds and tones these muscles, as well as enhances bone health, creating a better physique and stronger body.
This is a cardiovascular sport combined with strength exercises, which burns a lot of calories and fat! This is great for weight loss and maintenance, especially since it can positively affect your body’s metabolic rate, enhancing fat burn and increase your energy levels.
Volleyball improves one’s blood circulation, which improves your bodily functions and reducing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension.
The sport works the mind as well, improving your body coordination and developing quick thinking and reflexes when playing.

Ten Volleyball Tips For Beginners

How can you begin playing volleyball like a pro, though? It takes work to build up skill, but you can get it with consistency and proper training. With that being said, here are ten effective volleyball tips for beginners to follow:

1. Learn the Basic Stance

When you aren’t serving, you should learn the basic stance. This is a common position and the first one to learn so you’re able to ready yourself for any other movement you’ll make while playing.

To practice your basic stance, the feet need to be placed a bit wider than the shoulders, with your weight on the toes. Bend your knees and both arms should be in front of you, free and ready to take action immediately.

2. Practice Serving

The basic service would have the ball go over the net, into the other court to begin rallying. You can do a basic serve behind the serving line. There are two types of serves:

Overhand Serve

Toss a volleyball in front of you then raise your hand, bending your elbow with your hand closer to the shoulder. Straighten the elbow, striking the ball.

Underhand Serve

Hold the ball and make a fist, pulling your hand down to the side. The elbow is bent slightly with your thumb stretched. Strike the ball from waist level with your fist, it should hit against the bent thumb and your index finger.

3. Bumping the Ball

This is a move that has you pass the ball to the team’s setter. To do this, you make a fist with the left hand, wrapping it with your right. The thumbs are flat and thumbnails are facing upward.

Rotate and lock elbows with your arms straight out at a downward angle. The ball should be in front of you and strike it with your forearms, ensuring that your feet are shoulder-width apart.

4. Practice Setting

To practice setting, follow these steps:

Hold your hands in the air, making a triangle window to see from it. Your feet need to be shoulder-width apart with the legs slightly bent.
Hit the volleyball using the fingertips as the ball reaches your eye level. After that, push upward using your legs.
Do NOT slap the ball with the palm of your hand, as this would be called out for “lifting.”

5. Learning How to Spike

Spiking might seem a bit intimidating to some, especially if you haven’t started practicing how to do this yet. It’s known as the attack and can have you score if done correctly.

To do this, approach the ball about to come to you, lifting your dominant hand while doing so. Curve your hand to the shape of the ball with your elbow bent.

Jump up then strike with your palm, reaching it as high as possible for the most power. The ball should travel down sharply so it won’t be returned.

6. Getting Ready to Block

Blocking helps stop attacks or spikes. The offensive block keeps the volleyball on your opponent’s courtside. Defensive block stops the ball’s power so you’re able to send it back to the opponent.

Learn to block both ways, starting off with a soft block. The ball should hit your palm and roll along your fingertips, which another player will receive.

7. How to Dig

This is like a dive, which is a very powerful move that has a player save the volleyball from hitting the ground by diving to the ground. This takes reflex and agility, so make sure that you do your drills and practice!

to do this, you need to land on your chest with arms outstretched. Make sure that when diving, you have kneepads and land well, doing a rolling technique to prevent injury.

8. Have Drills

Warmup and cool down after each training, and don’t forget to practice basic volleyball drills to help you work your arms and feet better when playing games. Here are some drills you can follow:

Toss and Pass

Toss an easy ball to another player, then they pass the ball back to you. Work your way up by peppering the ball, passing it back and forth in quick successions.

Wall Hitting

Pick an empty spot on the wall to hit on. Toss the ball and hit that spot on the wall, with it bouncing back to you. Use the proper arm swig techniques as you do so.

Wall Blocks

Perform block jumps in front of the volleyball net or wall. Begin the drill and stand in front of the wall or net with the blocking position, then jump up as high as they can with the proper blocking form, landing in a good position.

1-on-1 Setting Drills

Two players would set back and forth over the net. If the player can’t set the ball, bump it then set it over, doing this drill for as long as possible.

Line Passing

All players should be in two lines, facing each other. the players begin to line pass the ball up until it reaches the end of the lines. It should be done in a certain time frame.

9. Stay Consistent and Passionate

You can’t continue improving in volleyball (or any other skill) if you don’t stay consistent at it. Have your own training schedule and stick to it, slowly working your way up every one or two weeks. Keep working on the basic drills and also play competitively with fellow volleyball players during training to get a gist of how a game works. Also, ensure that you use the right equipment, from the quality ball down to the best volleyball shoes to improve your skill even better.

Besides that, I recommend that you pair volleyball training with strength exercises to further improve your muscles when serving and spiking. It’s best to do these exercises twice a week during your off-training days.

10. Practice With Strategy

Volleyball isn’t just a physical game, but you also play mentally, too. Besides quick reflexes and body coordination, you have to create strategies before and during games so you have a sure win. You can’t play as a team if you don’t cooperate as one, which is why you all have to create a plan and strategy to take the opposing team by surprise.

Have designated roles and make sure your teammates are able to operate in tandem, working smoothly. Base these roles (setters, spikers, and defenders) on their skill and what they are strongest at during training.

To learn more about the different exercises and techniques to practice during training, check out this informative video:

Wrapping It Up

While it may seem intimidating to see all these volleyball players spiking and doing quick footwork, you’ll be able to do it as well! Through following proper positioning and being passionate and consistent with training, you can reach goals and play seriously in the future. Just remember to take it slowly and build your way up to reach goals safely and better.

I hope that this article on the ten volleyball tips for beginners helped you out. So don’t wait any longer and begin following these steps today! If you have any questions or want to share your tips and experiences when playing volleyball, then comment below. I would love to hear what you have to think.