High School Volleyball Tryout Prep: The 4-Week Plan

Everything in this plan builds toward the serving game on day one and the mixed six-on-six on day two, when you are tired and the coach is watching what you do about it.

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Two minutes of arm circles, ten slow swings with no ball, ten easy tosses, before every serving session, every day. Then the routine: bounce twice, breathe out, toss, hit. Fifty serves at a target on the far court or a tape square on the wall. Count the hits. Feel the toss go up in front of your hitting shoulder and your hand finish toward the target. Write the number down. You will beat it next week.

Platform: one hand in the other, thumbs together pointing down, elbows locked, shoulders rounded so your forearms are one flat surface. Six feet from the wall, continuous passes, ten in a row, then a step back. Four steps is the ladder. Contact above the wrists, legs lift, arms stay still. If the ball spins, your platform is uneven; fix the thumbs.

The line drill: baseline to the attack line and back, to the center line and back, to the far attack line and back, to the far baseline and back. Five rounds, ninety seconds of walking between. Time every round and write them down. Feel your feet stay under you on the turns; the turn is where the seconds go.

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Warm the shoulder. Then serve ten in a row at the target. A miss resets to zero. Keep the routine exactly the same after a miss: same bounces, same breath, same toss. When you get ten, do it once more. This is the day-one serving game, and the kid who has felt the reset in a driveway is the kid who serves the same ball in the gym.

Partner serves from twenty feet, easy, then harder, then from thirty. Before it crosses, say "mine" and move your feet so the ball is in front of your hips. Pass to the cone. Twenty-five reps. If the partner can float it, even better; that is what you will see from a coach on day one. Feel the platform angle toward the cone before contact, not after.

Start at the net in a ready position, hands up at shoulder height. Shuffle two steps left, jump straight up with hands pressing over the net, land on two feet, soft and quiet. Two steps right, same. Ten each direction, small jumps first, then full jumps only when the landings are quiet. Coaches run this on day one and can see immediately who has done it.

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Warm the shoulder. One round of the line drill, then immediately ten serves at the target. Rest sixty seconds. Four rounds. Your toss will drift by round three. Fix the toss, not the swing. This is the closest thing to the end of day one you can build alone.

Partner tosses a serve, you pass to yourself, set to yourself, then take a three-step approach and hit the ball into the floor toward the partner, contact high and in front of the shoulder, landing on two feet. Fifteen reps. Then partner tosses sets that are off on purpose and you keep the ball in play, softly if you must. Coaches keep the players who can do something with a bad ball.

Thirty tosses anywhere in a ten-foot circle. Call "mine" before every contact, then say what you would say in a game after: "short," "deep," "cover." Talking on a court of strangers is a habit, not a personality trait, and it is built here.

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Three rounds only, full rest. Best times of the month. Then stop. The conditioning is in the bank; this week you are keeping it, not adding to it.

Warm the shoulder, serve ten in a row at the target with the routine, then stop. End every serving session this week on a make.

Two days before tryouts, walk through the day at half speed: the paperwork line, the warm-up, the conditioning test, serving, serve receive, block footwork, six-on-six. Nothing at tryouts should be new. Then sleep.

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Run the plan, then after the first tryout day, tell us how the serving game went and what the coach installed first. That is where the next plan starts.