Volleyball Conditioning Drills

Summer no break for Jensen soccer standout Townsend

If you were looking through the central casting file for an actress to portray a high school soccer player, Jensen Beach High School junior Taylor Townsend might not exactly conjure up images of a young Mia Hamm.

Thin and nearly 6 feet tall, the red-haired Falcons forward and midfielder looks more like someone who'd excel in a height-conscious jumping sport such as volleyball or basketball than in the running-based game of soccer.

Yet Townsend, a Jensen Beach resident who turns 17 on July 3, ran through the competition during her junior season. Her 19 goals and seven assists earned her a spot among The Palm Beach Post's 2011 Winter High School All-Area Teams, along with teammates Cat Rizzuti (goaltender), Mallory Gillespie (defender) and Rachelle Harvey (defender).

Perhaps that success is the result of soccer practically being a blood type for Townsend and her two sisters, 18-year-old Kayla and 13-year-old Emma.

"Kayla and I played together for Jensen Beach when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore," Taylor Townsend said. "She played defender and center midfield, and was a very heady player, but she had to quit afterward because she blew out her knee. Emma plays practically all positions on the right or left sides of the field, and her Jupiter United team is great."

Jensen Beach reached the District 14-4A semifinals in January before losing to Lincoln Park Academy, a school that also placed four players among The Post's all-area teams. But Townsend's ascension into the starting lineup helped the Falcons overcome several notable losses from her sophomore year.

"We graduated 10 seniors before my junior season," she said. "So we had a really young team. All things considered, I think we did pretty well."

Asked if she had time for any hobbies, Townsend 's answer was succinct, and perhaps predictable.

"More soccer," she said .

She wasn't kidding. On a hot late-June afternoon at Jupiter Community Park, with the Falcons' season long over and a day off from practice with her club team, Team Boca, Taylor Townsend accompanied Emma to her own practice. And the youngest Townsend wasn't the only one wearing a uniform and doing conditioning drills.

"It's a perfect day for soccer, nice and hot," Taylor Townsend said, perhaps explaining why she prefers outdoor sports (she took up soccer at age 7, and ran track in fourth grade) to climate-controlled basketball and volleyball.

Drills for Volleyball Conditioning | Hayley Merrett

Volleyball Conditioning Drills

When drilling for volleyball, there are three main classes of drills to use: conditioning, technical, and tactical drills. All classes of drills play an important part in the overall success of your team. But volleyball conditioning drills are often the most overlooked and under worked set of drills in practice. These drills should be used all year round, especially in the off-season. Volleyball conditioning drills are used to keep the body conditioned for volleyball, so it is important to tailor them to what the body of a player will need. The three main purposes of these drills is to train strength, agility, and stamina.

Volleyball conditioning drills will definitely help build strength in the volleyball player. The important strengths to work on is arm and leg strength. Arm strength is used to hit the ball harder, while leg strength will help the players jump and move faster. Since strength building is a simple matter of building muscle, simple weight training will work for this part. Lifting weights, doing pushups, or even chore-type tasks like chopping wood will all work great in building muscle and strength.

Agility is another important goal of volleyball conditioning drills. Players need to be able to shift and hop all over the court in a game. Because of this, agility is an important factor to train. Drills that involve jumping or hopping over blocks, keeping balance at high speeds, and twisting the body will all help build strong agility in players. This agility will translate into quicker turns and faster jumps in a real game. This will often be just the edge needed to put your team ahead of their opponents. Having a slight edge is often just enough to win a game over the toughest of opponents.

The last factor that volleyball conditioning drills focus on is stamina. Obviously, the longer an individual player can play, the better chance that that player will be able to get into a comfortable zone against an opponent. Stamina for the volleyball player is different than it is for a football player or a long distance runner, however. A typical volleyball rally lasts approximately 15 seconds, with a brief 5 second rest period in between. The drills used should be focused on this type of stamina. It is important to create drills that will force the player to exert themselves for 15 to 30 seconds then relax for a few seconds in between. A good example of this is having the players sprint for 15 seconds, jog for 5 seconds, and then run again.

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