Pressure Drill #1
By: Coach Houser - CoachHouser.com
Motivate by using conditioning exercises.
Several months ago, my team was preparing for the Old Dominion Region Bid Tournament. We were fortunate enough to win that tournament and advance to the 2006 Junior Nationals in Atlanta. After we warmed up and stretched, we spent nearly the entire rest of practice going through pressure and handicapped drills. Shew, what a mentally touch practice!
Pressure Drill #1: Server vs. Server With Consequences After Each Rotation
Split the girls into "starters" and "six." Have them do a rock/paper/scissors for 1st serve. Whoever is in the "1" spot on one team would serve 4 balls. The rally would play out completely after each serve, with coach being the referee.
After 4 rallies, the other team's 1 spot person would serve 4 balls. Whichever team was in the lead at that point is the winner of the drill. Each team will do 10 crunches for each rally they lost (as both motivation and conditioning), then both teams will rotate 1 and the drill was run again.
Note: After each rotation, substitutions were made. I only had 9 girls on my team, so the other 3 spots were filled in practice players who were members of other teams in our program.
Variations:
- Have only the losing team do consequences. Their consequences will be X number crunches for each point they lose by! In other words if one team won 7 points to 1, the losers do 6x crunches.
- Each rotation, change consequences to pushup, squats, etc.
