How to Prepare for the New Volleyball Season

After the volleyball season finishes athletes shouldn’t stop their training. Now, it’s time for volleyball players to start getting ready for the next season. Obviously, volleyball players should focus on so called off-season training.

It’s important to know there are 3 key ingredients for achieving success in pre-season preparation. These include the following: fitness, nutrition as well as practice. In other words, it’s crucial for volleyball players to continue building endurance, eating healthy and developing their volleyball skills during off-season training.

If you are not happy with the results that you (or your team) have demonstrated during the current volleyball season – don’t fall into despair. Keep in mind the new volleyball season gives you a great opportunity to improve your results dramatically. All you need to do is to get ready for the new volleyball season properly. Here are some off-season training tips to help you prepare for the new volleyball season successfully.

Volleyball Off-season Should Always Start with the Rest

It goes without saying that athletes shouldn’t play the game of volleyball all the time. You should certainly take a good rest and get the most out of your off-season. Obviously, it makes sense to take a short break from volleyball game and switch to other sport activities during the off-season. That means that athletes should diversify their off-season volleyball training program with other activities.

You need to know that the volleyball off-season is great time to do such sport activities such as biking, hiking, jumping rope, running, swimming as well as cardiovascular exercises. It’s worth noting that doing each of these sport activities positively affects volleyball player’s strength and endurance. On the other hand, getting involved into these activities helps athletes take a rest from the sport of volleyball for a short period of time.

It’s incredibly important for volleyball players to get enough sleep during the off season as well. The reality is getting enough sleep during the off-season helps volleyball players rest properly, restore the body and prepare for the next volleyball season successfully. You need to know that in average an athlete should sleep about 7 – 9 hours per night.

Volleyball Off-season Endurance Training

It’s widely known that endurance training has to be a key part of volleyball player’s training program. On the other hand, volleyball players also need to pay a close attention to endurance training during the off-season months.

What helps volleyball players improve their endurance and performance on the court? Actually, it’s one of common questions that so many volleyball players receive again and again. Here are some of the best ways to increase your volleyball endurance.

It’s common knowledge that activities like running, biking and walking as well as cardio training, strength training exercises and swimming have a huge positive impact on volleyball player’s endurance and strength.

However, the problem is that athletes usually don’t have a lot of time to do these activities during the playing season. So, it’s best to focus on these activities during the off-season.

The bottom line is doing endurance training exercises during the off-season will certainly help you get in shape for volleyball quickly and prepare for the next season successfully. However, the most important thing is that your endurance will increase dramatically.

Off-season Nutrition Tips for Volleyball Players 

Nutrition plays a key role in volleyball player’s success. That means that athletes need to focus on eating healthy. You obviously should watch what you eat all the time. Eating a balanced breakfast during the playing season will help you raise your energy levels and improve your performance on the court dramatically. Volleyball players also need to maintain healthy eating habits during the off-season too. You need to know that such healthy foods as milk, oatmeal, yogurt as well as fruits and vegetables have to be a part of a volleyball player’s diet.

The Off-season is Good Time to Develop Volleyball Skills

The off-season provides athletes with the perfect opportunity to develop their volleyball skills. It goes without saying that exercises for blocking, digging, hitting, passing, setting and serving have to be a part of your off-season volleyball training program.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to watch videos of matches and practices during the off-season. By doing this, athletes will be able to see their own mistakes and analyze them carefully. There is no doubt that you should work on your mistakes during off-season training and do your best to avoid them in the future volleyball matches and practices.

Conditioning for Volleyball during the Off-season

It’s hard to become a successful volleyball player without getting the proper conditioning training. It’s no surprise that cardio exercises are used for conditioning training in many sports. Volleyball sport is not the exception! Among the best cardio exercises for volleyball are: circuit training, plyos as well as sprints.

Without a doubt, your off-season conditioning training for volleyball has to contain high intensity interval training exercises (such as jumping on the treadmill and others). Bear in mind that if you do high intensity interval training during the off-season you’ll be able to increase your cardiovascular limits significantly.

The off-season is great time for doing different types of strength training exercises. Obviously, volleyball players need to focus on doing exercises for strengthening their legs (such exercises as lunges, wall sits, jumping jacks) as well as exercises for strengthening the entire body (such exercises as sit-ups, workouts for building arms, back and core as well as dumbbell raises).

It’s a good idea to do stability exercises during the off-season as well. There is no doubt that doing such exercises as bridges and planks regularly will help you develop your internal core stabilizing muscles successfully. Another important thing is that doing such exercises are essential for preventing different types of joint problems.

Low impact plyometrics will certainly become a good addition to your off-season volleyball conditioning training. The big advantage of low impact plyometrics is that this type of volleyball conditioning greatly contributes to player’s endurance. Additionally, doing low impact plyometrics helps athletes improve their footwork. Athletes, who do low impact plyometrics regularly, usually begin to move much quicker on the court over time. It’s incredibly important for volleyball players to do the right low impact plyometrics. You should definitely include so called ladder drills, dot drills, low impact jumps, footwork drills in the volleyball player’s endurance training program.

Mental Imagery Has to be a Key Part of Off-Season Volleyball Training

Volleyball players can take advantage of mental imagery during the off-season as well. Don’t miss such a great opportunity! It’s important to understand that mental imagery delivers multiple important benefits to volleyball players of all levels.

There is the evidence that mental imagery positively affects volleyball player’s performance on the court. Mental imagery on can help you develop new volleyball skills, improve your existing skills, improve focus and increase your self-confidence dramatically. Above all, mental imagery plays a big role in helping volleyball players prepare for the next season. That’s why it’s so important for athletes to master the visualization techniques and use them to prepare for the next volleyball season.

Off-season Volleyball Training Tips for Better Jump

As previously mentioned, low impact plyometrics are important for volleyball player’s conditioning training. It’s also important to note that plyometric workouts will be a good addition to your cardio training. What is great about doing plyometric workouts is that they positively affect volleyball player’s muscles and teach them to react quickly.

The reality is doing plyometric training exercises has a big positive impact on a volleyball player’s explosive speed and jump as well. In other words, if you do plyometric workouts on a regular basis you’ll certainly jump higher over time. Volleyball coaches recommend their athletes to do plyometric workouts regularly at least 2 times per week.

There are also many other exercises that volleyball players can do to improve their jump. So, if you are a volleyball player who wants to jump higher then you obviously need to consider adding such exercises as frog jumps, jump box as well as jump shrugs to your off-season volleyball training program.

That’s it. Thank you so much reading our tips for off-season volleyball training. Remember, if your volleyball playing season has finished that doesn’t mean that you need to stop training and wait until the new season begins. Use our off-season volleyball training tips and do everything you can to prepare yourself for the next volleyball season successfully! The best of luck!